Dec 14

Queen

QUEEN
 
 
Queen  are a British rock band formed in London in 1970, originally consisting of Freddie Mercury (lead vocals, piano), Brian May (guitar, vocals), John Deacon (bass guitar), and Roger Taylor (drums, vocals).  Queen’s earliest works were influenced by progressive rock, hard rock and heavy metal; but the band gradually ventured into more conventional and radio-friendly works by incorporating further styles, such as arena rock and pop rock, into their music.  By the early 1980’s, Queen were one of the biggest stadium rock bands in the world, with “Another One Bites the Dust” their best selling single; and their performance at 1985’s Live Aid is regarded as one of the greatest in rock history.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
Even progressive rock bands whose albums sold well from the beginning often didn’t reach their creative peak for awhile.  The magnum opus for Emerson, Lake and Palmer, “Karn Evil 9” was on their fifth album, Brain Salad Surgery.  Jethro Tull’s classic album Aqualung was their fourth album.  This also applies for several rock bands of the same time period that do not truly fit the progressive rock category.  It was Queen’s fourth album, A Night at the Opera that included their unforgettable “Bohemian Rhapsody”.  Canadian hard rockers Rush came up with 2112 as their fourth album (that title is exactly 100 years from now, as it happens).  The Dark Side of the Moon – Pink Floyd’s space-rock masterpiece that took up near permanent residency on the Billboard album charts – was the band’s eighth album.  With Trillion though, the band was never given the opportunity to develop an audience or to refine their sound. 
 
(October 2012)
 
*       *       *
 

Other 1970’s recordings have danced around gay issues, such as Rod Stewart’s 1976 minor hit “The Killing of Georgie” – about the murder of a gay friend of his in New York back when he was in Faces – and it was an open secret that Freddie Mercury was gay though closeted; he was the frontman of a band called Queen after all.  It was many years later though before openly gay songs and performers would arrive on the popular music scene, such as British musician Tom Robinson in the late 1970’s (he collaborated with Peter Gabriel on one EP that I own), and mid-1980’s sensation Frankie Goes to Hollywood.  By the way, it is interesting that the first hit songs by arguably the two most famous Liverpool rock bands – the Beatles’ “Please Please Me” and Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax” – deal fairly openly with the topic of oral sex. 

 

(March 2013)

 
*       *       *
 

In 2004, Linda Ronstadt quietly released Hummin’ to Myself that was recorded with a jazz combo; it made #2 on the Billboard Top Jazz Albums chart.  Linda Ronstadt created an album of lullabies crafted from rock standards in 1996 called Dedicated to the One I Love; remarkably, one of these was the Queen arena classic “We Will Rock You”.  Her holiday album, A Merry Little Christmas came out in 2000. 

 

(October 2013)

 

*       *       *

 

Wikipedia states:  “The band [Eleven] cites their major influences as Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin, Queen, The Beatles, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Sergei Prokofiev.  With Chris Cornell [of Soundgarden and Audioslave], they recorded [Natasha] Shneider’s arrangement of Franz Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria’, which appears on the album, A Very Special Christmas 3 [1997], in the liner notes of which they state they deliberately chose a classical work to help interest young people in classical music.” 

 

(April 2015/1)

 

*       *       *

 

Many of the songs that Natasha Shneider wrote or co-wrote have also been recorded by other bands and artists over the years; I have already given numerous examples.  For the soundtrack album Spider-Man 2 (Music From and Inspired By) (2004), Jimmy Gnecco along with Brian May of Queen recorded “Someone to Die For” that was co-written by Alain Johannes, Natasha Shneider and Chris Cornell.  Alain Johannes and Natasha Shneider co-produced the song “Wave Goodbye” by Steadman for the soundtrack of the 2004 film New York Minute. 

 

(April 2015/2)

 

*       *       *

 

The same issue came up with the Vanilla Ice hit song “Ice Ice Baby” (1990) that was released on the heels of “U Can’t Touch This”, where in this case the sample was taken from “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie. 
 
(September 2016)
 
*       *       *
 
For some reason, over the years the 1970’s have gotten a reputation as a poor decade for music. (So do the 1950’s, for that matter, even though that is where rock and roll came from). It certainly cannot be because everything sounded the same. Most of the British Invasion bands were still active. The top American acts were still going strong as well – Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Carole King, Simon and Garfunkel, Linda Ronstadt, the Beach Boys, the Band, Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, etc. – and major stars who arrived in the 1970’s include Elton John, Michael Jackson, Queen, ABBA, Billy Joel, Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, AC/DC, Prince, James Taylor, and Tom Petty. Anyone who says they are a music fan has to be able to find someone, and probably several someones on that list that they like a lot.
(December 2016)
Last edited: March 22, 2021