taylor-mayed's Full Review: Queen (1st LP) [Limited] by Queen
Every band has to begin somewhere. In many cases, the first album a group or artist ever produced is never usually regarded as one of their best, being seen more as an experiment, a test, a chance to prove that they could cut it in the musical world before they soared to their highest points on the following albums.
In Queen’s case, their first album had a somewhat longer gestation period than many others. The three main members, singer Freddie Mercury, guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor (here still credited as Meddows-Taylor) had known each other since the late 1960s and formed Queen in April 1970. Bass player John Deacon (here ‘Deacon John’ on the sleeve notes, a joke on the others’ part of which he did not approve) was recruited to the fold in 1971, after a succession of temporary players in that role, and the soon-to-be legendary line-up was finally complete.
Nevertheless, it was some two years before “Queen” appeared on the shelves of UK record stores in 1973, the band eventually getting a deal with Trident Records after cutting a four-track demo tape in a new studio being set up by some people who a friend of Brian May’s girlfriend was working for, who invited the band to come in and play while they did some acoustic testing on the studio.
As such, Queen’s eponymous debut album is made up of a mish-mash of material written by Mercury, May and Taylor over the course of two or three years and tried out on various live audiences before it ever reached the studio. The band, unproven as they were, also had to squeeze production of the album into studio ‘down time’ – when the facilities were not required by any other artist, which meant they had to do a lot of waiting around twiddling their thumbs and recording at odd times of the day.
Bearing in mind all of this, it is somewhat surprising to find that “Queen” is a very promising debut album and an indication of the greater things that were to come from the band in the next few years. It begins with “Keep Yourself Alive”, unquestionably the high point of the whole record and the first in a long line of what were to become traditional Brian May rockers – head-banging, foot-stomping, hand-clapping, sing-a-long stadium rock anthems that in many ways came to define what Queen were all about, live at any rate.
Although Mercury’s vocal does seem a little too low in the mix in places, with the backing track obscuring it, there is no doubting from the first line that he is one of rock music’s superior singers. May’s guitar playing on this track also announces his arrival on the music scene with a bang and foreshadows such great moments as the “Tie Your Mother Down” and “Driven By You” solos of later years.
But it’s the production work on the track that makes an immediately impact – this is not the raw, ‘dirty’ rock sound of a traditional heavy metal band, but then again nor is it the highly-produced studio complexity of later Beatles works. Instead it is somewhere in between, with the artificially-created harmonies of May, Taylor and Mercury’s voices singing the chorus, the guitar harmonies and raucous rock tempo all uniting to create what would later come to be defined as the ‘Queen sound’ – as much as a band whose work was as varied and all-encompassing as Queen’s can be said to have a definitive sound.
Inexplicably, when released as a single, “Keep Yourself Alive” failed to make any headway in either the UK or the USA – indeed, in the UK it was rejected an incredible seven times by the Radio One play list panel. It was however a hit in Japan, the first country whose music fans really took Queen to their hearts, lifting them to rock star status there before they were even well-known in their native UK.
The album’s second track, “Doing All Right”, is one of the tiny handful of Queen songs from their long career to have been co-written with someone from outside of the band. In this case, Brian May co-wrote the song with Tim Staffell in the late 1960s, when they, together with Taylor, made up the three-piece band Smile, with Staffell as bassist/vocalist. Smile even recorded their own version of the song during sessions for Mercury Records in 1969, although these only led to an obscure Japanese EP release to cash in on Queen’s popularity in 1976.
When Staffell left Smile to join Humpy Bong and disappear into obscurity, Taylor and May hooked up with Mercury and eventually Queen was born. They chose to cover “Doing All Right” on their first album as it was one of the best of the Smile compositions, and the song does act as a very good showcase for Queen’s abilities.
It begins as a simple but effective piano-based ballad of the type Queen would later prove to be so effective at on songs such as “Love of My Life”. Here Mercury’s voice is highly successful with the tender lyric, but when the song dramatically switches to guitar-based hard rock with some powerful licks from May, Mercury’s voice is just as capable and rises to the challenge of such a varying track admirably. The varying nature of the track foreshadows later epics such as “Bohemian Rhapsody”, and although obviously not in the same league as that all-time classic, “Doing All Right” is another indicator of what a great band Queen were to become and how good they already were.
“Great King Rat” is the first ever Queen song to be credited to Freddie Mercury, and while it’s certainly not the best of his works by any stretch of the imagination, neither is it his worst. The fantastical-religious nature of the lyric is in the style of many of his contributions to the first two albums, but unlike much of the self-indulgent material that, for me, spoils the second album, “Great King Rat” remains listenable due to it’s great pace, nice musical arrangement and mature vocal performance from Mercury. The solo from May is one of the best on this album, and on the whole this song, while no classic, is certainly something that bears up to repeated listening far better than some of their other early, prog-rock genre songs. The changes of pace and style again signal what would later to become Queen trademarks, and the whole thing sounds like a work-in-progress version of Queen’s career.
“My Fairy King”, another Mercury track, is again a fantastical lyric with a very impressive vocal performance from Mercury that you can’t help but be carried along by. I have to confess, as anyone who has read my review of “Queen II” will know, I’m not a particular fan of the early prog-rock style of Mercury’s songs, but I find the efforts on the first album more bearable than the over-the-top excesses of the second. Queen’s increasing maturity in terms of use of the studio is increasingly apparent as the album progresses, with “My Fairy King” sounding very slick and well produced indeed.
Mercury’s “Liar” is the album’s truly epic track, running to some six and a half minutes, and from the beginning it has the feel of one of those really iconic Queen tracks with it’s atmospheric, understated intro building up to a guitar crescendo that in turn leads into Mercury’s quiet balladry. This continues to build in volume and texture again and the cries of ‘Liar!’ in response to Mercury’s pleas seem to indicate a kind of subconscious prototype for the central section of “Bohemian Rhapsody”. We even get several appearances from the word ‘Mama’ and changes in tempo that seem to back up this idea of “Liar” as a template for greatness.
Of course “Liar” isn’t in the same league as “Bohemian Rhapsody” and only a fool would try and claim so, in fact I think the song is a little over-long and goes downhill somewhat after the opening three minutes of so. Nevertheless, regarded purely as an experiment to see how far they could push their limits it can be seen as a success, and as with the entire album the musical and vocal skill is beyond reproach.
Brian May’s “The Night Comes Down” is one of the album’s few out-and-out ballads, and although I think it suffers from an overlong intro, Mercury’s vocal is particularly good here. The lyric also makes a refreshing change from the fantasy/religion themes of Mercury’s tracks. May even finds the time to thrown in a Beatles reference – “Lucy was high and so was I” – and although this is neither as moving or musically inspired as some of the later and more famous Queen ballads, it stands out for me as one of the better tracks of the first album.
“Modern Times Rock ‘N’ Roll” is drummer Roger Taylor’s first song writing contribution to the Queen catalogue, a short, almost thrash-rock style piece on which he also takes lead vocal duties, making it the first Queen track not to be sung by Mercury. Taylor wrote some of the all-time classic Queen tracks down the years – songs like “Radio Ga Ga” and “A Kind of Magic” – but it’s far to say that “Modern Times Rock ‘N’ Roll” isn’t really one of them. As with other Taylor-written and sung album tracks from later Queen records, it suffers from the lead vocal being quite difficult to make out in places, a change from Mercury’s piercingly clear vocals. But then again Taylor was never in the same league as Mercury as a singer so perhaps this was only to be expected.
The eighth track, “Son and Daughter”, is Brian May’s final contribution to the album, a slow but heavy rock number with a rather unusual-sounding vocal performance from Mercury that sounds (deliberately) rougher and dirtier than the more melodic moments of this album, to fit in with the harder-edged rock sound here. It’s also possibly the only Queen song ever to include a four-letter expletive, in the line “To buckle down and to shovel s**t”, quite surprising you may feel from one of the ‘good guy’ bands of rock and roll. The first time I heard the line I was quite taken aback and had to re-listen, having one of those “did he just say….?” moments. This is just about the only memorable, for all the wrong reasons, moment of one of May’s more average contributions to the Queen catalogue.
The last full song on the album is “Jesus”, another Freddie Mercury song with an obviously overtly religious tone. Not so heavy as some of the other material on the album, this is best described as ‘melodic rock’ a genre which Queen would come to make their very own. The Queen studio harmonies are all present and correct and together with a very good lead vocal performance from Mercury this is a good song on which to close the album proper – not as great as the first two tracks, but not as poor as some from the middle either.
The very last piece of music on the album is a just over one minute long instrumental piece called “Seven Seas of Rhye”, a Mercury number that is in many ways simply a slower demo version of the full song of the same name that closes the second album. I prefer the version from “Queen II” as that was their first hit single and really launched the ‘proper’, stadium rock Queen, but there is some nice guitar and piano work on this early version and it makes a nice coda to a good album.
In many ways Queen shot their bolt with their first album by placing the two best tracks, “Keep Yourself Alive” and “Doing All Right” first and second on the track listing. Nothing that follows ever quite lives up to these two songs, but the album as a whole is far from being a disappointment. It sees the birth of the Queen sound, the debut of some terrifically talented musicians and songwriters and an approach to rock music that had not been equalled before and has not done since.
Every legend has a beginning, every epic story a first page. Although they went on to blot their copybook a little with the poor second album, with their eponymous debut album Queen had begun to establish themselves as a band to watch.
Recommended:
Yes
Great Music to Play While: Getting ready to go out
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