The Concerts for Kampuchea

Rockpile ( with Robert Plant) : Little Sister

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For four nights, from December 26-29 of 1979, some of the biggest names in rock and roll performed at the Hammersmith Odeon in London to raise money for the victims of war-torn Cambodia. The shows, billed as the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, featured Queen, The Clash, The Who, Elvis Costello, The Pretenders, and the last show by Wings. A double album recorded during those evenings would finally be released in March of 1981. My high school band The Geeks performed our own version of the single from that album, "Little Sister",  with lyrics changed to make fun of teachers.

The first night, on Boxing Day, featured a 28-song set by Queen just as their  UK#2 single "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" began dropping out of the Top 30. They were the only band playing that night.

Ian Dury and The Blockheads performed 11 songs on the second night, followed by the British reggae band Matumbi.

Then came The Clash, just weeks after releasing London Calling in the U.K. Seven of the 16 songs they played came from the new album. Here they are playing "Armagideon Time", the B side of their single "London Calling" which had just entered the U.K.  Top 30 at #29.

The Pretenders kicked off night three followed by The Specials and The Who. Their debut album was still a week of two away.

The Who's set featured 25 songs and their new drummer, Kenney Jones. 

Elvis Costello and the Attractions opened up the final night. Rockpile came on next with a short set highlighted by the surprise appearance of Robert Plant. Finally Wings took the stage , playing 20 songs including Beatles numbers "Fool On The Hill" "Yesterday" and "Got To Get You Into My Life". 

It all ended with a four song set by Rockestra, a thirty musician supergroup.

In January of 1980 some American bands, The Beach Boys, Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Starship ,  would perform at a benefit concert at Oakland Coliseum for the people of Kampuchea.

Ready Freddie

Queen : Crazy Little Thing Called Love

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On October 14, 1979 Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" debuted on the U.K charts at #33. The single, anticipating the return of rockabilly and even the stardom of the Stray Cats, would peak at U.K. #2, but top the U.S. charts for four weeks beginning February 23.

In 1981 Freddie Mercury told Melody Maker he thought of the song in a bubble bath and wrote it quickly:

'Crazy Little Thing Called Love' took me five or ten minutes. I did that on the guitar, which I can't play for nuts, and in one way it was quite a good thing because I was restricted, knowing only a few chords. It's a good discipline because I simply had to write within a small framework. I couldn't work through too many chords and because of that restriction I wrote a good song, I think.

The song, a tribute to Elvis Presley,  appears on The Game, released nine months later.

U.K. Top 20 : March 19, 1979

U.K. Top 20 March 19, 1979

"Clog Dance", an instrumental by two members of the Electric Light Orchestra and new singles by Queen and The Village People enter the U.K. Top 20, a list made up of far too many disco songs as well as a few classics that will always stand up to the test of time. (I'm looking at you Gloria, Elvis, Lene and Chic).

1 I Will Survive --Gloria Gaynor
2 Oliver's Army --Elvis Costello and the Attractions
3 Lucky Number --Lene Lovich
4 Something Else /Frriggin' In the Riggin' The Sex Pistols

 5 Can You Feel the Force? Real Thing

 6 Tragedy -The Bee Gees
 7 I Want Your Love --Chic
 8 Keep On Dancing Gary's Gang

 9 Waiting For An Alibi -Thin Lizzy
 10 Into the Vally --Skids
11 Painter Man-- Boney M
12 Get Down-- Gene Chandler

13 Don't Stop Me Now --Queen
14 Hold the Line --Toto
15 Money in My Pocket --Dennis Brown

16 In the Navy --The Village People
17 Clog Dance --Violinski

18 You Bet Your Life --Herbie Hancock
19 Get It --Darts
20 Turn the Music Up --Players Association

Mister Fahrenheit

Queen : Don't Stop Me Now

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On November 10, 1978 Queen released Jazz, the band's follow-up to News of the World. I owned News of the World and listened to it repeatedly but at no point did I ever feel the need to buy Jazz. Based on "Bicycle Race"/"Fat Bottomed Girls" I assumed the band had become a parody of themselves.  Now, with the release of the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, I suppose everything Queen ever did is up for reevaluation so I've spent the past week listening to the album. It's entertaining and, thanks to Roy Thomas Baker's return, it sounds great. But how did we get here from News of the World in one year?

Writing for Rolling Stone, critic Dave Marsh argued Jazz is a fascist album by a fascist band:

There’s no Jazz on Queen’s new record, in case fans of either were worried about the defilement of an icon. Queen hasn’t the imagination to play jazz — Queen hasn’t the imagination, for that matter, to play rock + roll. Jazz is just more of the same dull pastiche that’s dominated all of this British supergroup’s work: tight guitar/bass/drums heavy-metal clichés, light-classical pianistics, four-part harmonies that make the Four Freshmen sound funky and Freddie Mercury’s throat-scratching lead vocals. 

 Anyway, it shouldn’t be surprising that Queen calls its album “jazz.” The guiding principle of these arrogant brats seems to be that anything Freddie +  Company want, Freddie + Company get. What’s most disconcerting about their arrogance is that it’s so unfounded: Led Zeppelin may be as ruthless as medieval aristocrats, but at least Jimmy Page has an original electronic approach that earns his band some of its elitist notions. The only thing Queen does better than anyone else is express contempt.

Take the LP’s opening song, “Mustapha.” It begins with a parody of a muezzin’s shriek and dissolves into an approximation of Arabic music. This is part of Queen’s grand design. Freddie Mercury is worldly and sophisticated, a man who knows what the muezzin sounds like. More to the point, you don’t. What trips the group up, as usual, is the music. “Mustapha” is merely a clumsy and pretentious rewrite of “Hernando’s Hideaway,” which has about as much to do with Middle Eastern culture as street-corner souvlaki.

 But it’s easy to ascribe too much ambition to Queen. “Fat Bottomed Girls” isn’t sexist — it regards women not as sex objects but as objects, period (the way the band regards people in general). When Mercury chants, in “Let Me Entertain You,” about selling his body and his willingness to use any device to thrill an audience, he isn’t talking about a sacrifice for his art. He’s just confessing his shamelessness, mostly because he’s too much of a boor to feel stupid about it.

 Whatever its claims, Queen isn’t here just to entertain. This group has come to make it clear exactly who is superior and who is inferior. Its anthem, “We Will Rock You,” is a marching order: you will not rock us, we will rock you. Indeed, Queen may be the first truly fascist rock band. The whole thing makes me wonder why anyone would indulge these creeps and their polluting ideas.

So In-Now-In-Now-Inarticulate

Queen : Sheer Heart Attack

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On October 28, 1977 Queen released News of the World, an album that must have appealed to every 13 year old boy alive. At that age we are particularly susceptible to the fascist stomp of "We Will Rock You" and the boastful chant of "We Are the Champions". As a 13 year old I found much that appealed to me, especially the album cover by Frank Kelly Freas. 

Bart Testa wrote this review for Rolling Stone.

 Queen makes elaborate music from shards of nostalgia for the British Empire. They push boys' public-school chorales and English martial music through the funnel of hard rock, aiming carefully at romantic crescendos embellished with heavy echo. Apparently, the intention is that the long-tarnished glories of "tradition" will be repolished on the band's hard pumice.

 Most of the songs on News of the World either challenge Queen's artistic enemies or endeavor to establish a vision of the new order. "We Are the Champions" ends with the line, "No time for losers, 'cause we are the champions -- of the world." It's an appropriate comment for a side that also includes "We Will Rock You," which has the atmosphere of a political rally in a Leni Riefenstahl movie and is at once a rock anthem and a commandment. "Sheer Heart Attack" makes Queen the first major band to attempt a demonstration of superiority over punk rock by marching onto its stylistic turf. It works, too, because the power trio behind vocalist Freddie Mercury is truly primitive. Once you've seen Queen onstage , away from the cut and paste of the studio, it's painfully clear that "Sheer Heart Attack" is less a matter of slumming than of warfare among equals in incompetent musicianship. 

The rest of side one uses the elaborate Led Zeppelin approach for which Queen is famous, but the songs go even further into punk sociology, reaching a peak with "Fight from the Inside," which seems nothing less than a Tory's sketch for a junta. It's sung like a slogan fired from a machine gun. This is chilling stuff, but the coldness seems to befit Queen. On side two, the group lolls through a series of songs about sexual failure (hers!), stardom and ennui as they make a mildly persuasive argument for boredom as the proper posture prior to the apocalypse. 

Late sons of the Empire though they may be, Queen has nothing to fear, or to do. In their moneyed superiority, they are indeed champions. Such are the salient fictions of which todays' Top Ten albums are made.

From Billboard:

Queen's characteristic use of grandiosity rising from a basic rock lineup drives the group's latest LP through its soundtrack-like song structure. Alternating between clear melodic piano to solid driving rock guitar force, the songs range from a strolling acoustic samba/ballad to a heavy dose of punk frenzy. Freddie Mercury's crystal operatic voice spearheads vocal contributions from the entire quartet featuring moments of rich harmonic texture. Songs of self-potential realization, youthful searching, frustration and love memories comprise the group's writing and production efforts. Best cuts: "We Are The Champions," "Sheer Heart Attack," "It's Late."

From Hamish Champ, The 100 Best-Selling Albums of the 70s

1977, the year that punk rock exploded in the UK, saw Queen produce its third blockbusting album in a row. The band's two previous "companion" albums, A Night At The Opera and A Day At The Races, had confirmed the four piece as one of the best "pomp" rock acts around, but News Of The World, which reached Number Four in the UK and the third slot in the US, took Queen to the next level, powering them to become one of the world's premier stadium acts. And what better to play in a stadium than an anthem? The album possessed two such epics, in the form of "We Will Rock You" and "We Are The Champions," both of which featured on one single released in the UK and US, hitting Numbers Two and Four respectively in these countries' charts. The single gave Elektra records their first 2,000,000 selling single, while the album spent 37 weeks in the charts.

News Of The World, despite being the band's quickest album to record, is no two-track wonder. It also contains brooding numbers such asd "Spread Your Wings" and the jazz-like "My Melancholy Blues," together with full-speed rock tracks such as "Sheer Heart Attack," seen by many fans the band's riposte to the burgeoning punk movement, which saw in Queen everything that was overblown in rock. The album cover is by the renowned sci-fi artist Frank Kelly Freas. 

 As of 2004, News Of The World was the #52 best-selling album of the 70s.

40 Year Itch : Queen's huge thank you

"I think that Hyde Park was one of the most significant gigs in our career. There was a great affection because we'd kind of made it in a lot of countries by that time, but England was still, you know, we weren't really sure if we were really acceptable here. So it was a wonderful feeling to come back and see that crowd and get that response."
-Brian May

(click to read review)

On September 18, 1976, a crowd of 150,000 attended Queen's free concert in Hyde Park. For the band, this was a thank you to fans who helped 1975's A Night at the Opera debut at #1 on the UK charts, on its way to selling more than six million copies. Freddie Mercury wore white so the people way in the back could see him. 

 Although the concert was shot by a professional television crew only "White Queen" aired ( on the Old Grey Whistle Test). So all we have is the poorly mastered, poor sounding video below...with one exception."You Take My Breath Away", from the forthcoming A Day at the Races, was remastered for a 2011 Universal Records reissue. There are constant promises that a DVD will be made available someday.

Virgin's Richard Branson organized the concert and made sure his label's Steve Hillage got some stage time to promote L, an album the former Gong guitarist recorded with Todd Rundgren producing. More on that later this month.

40 Year Itch : Any Way the Wind Blows

   In 1975, I was a skinny private-schooled alien from Connecticut who suddenly fell from the sky and landed in in a dust cloud called Sparks, Nevada. My step-father had moved there with my mom and younger sister because he was convinced he could make a living counting cards in the casinos. Every night, he'd go through a six pack of Budweiser at the kitchen table while my mom dealt him black jack cards.

   He was smarter than the average hustler, but the casinos had seen him coming from a mile away and he got banned from John Ascuaga's Nugget, The Eldorado, Circus Circus,  Harrah's and every gambling establishment in the state. One night he headed off to a casino and didn't come back. Mom had a practiced hand at shuffling and dealing cards by then so she got a job at a Circus Circus. She was barely earning a living, but she agreed to take me and my other sister in. 

  That's how I wound up going to Sparks Middle School, the only kid walking into class wearing business casual instead of K-Mart t-shirts with illustrations of sports cars and surfboards. It sucked. My mom sent us off to school with 35 cents, the cost of a subsidized school lunch. From a an upper-middle class lifestyle, I was now living like a poor boy from a poor family. 

But for some reason a kid with the presidential name of John Adams, befriended me and brought me to his house one day. He wanted to play me a 45 he had just bought with lawn mowing money: Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody".

It was the greatest song he'd ever heard. And I had to say I agreed. 

  The first instrument you hear on Freddie Mercury's "Opera Song", written on various scraps of paper, and recorded with 180 overdubs and a vocal section that took 70 hours to record, is the same piano Paul McCartney used to record "Hey Jude". I've heard the many interpretations people have come up with over the years. Most thinking it's Mercury's "coming out" song.

  But that afternoon, I heard a melodramatic plea from a doomed murderer to his mother. And, 40 years later, I'm sticking with that.

  With "Bohemian Rhapsody" playing in my head I walked home and discovered an old Ford pick up parked in front of the house. My step-father had returned. He was now driving a cab and needed a place to crash.

40 Year Itch: Heroes of the Ginza

Queen: Now I'm Here

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   After a ten day vacation in Hawaii, following the US leg of their Sheer Heart Attack Tour, Queen arrived in Japan where they were met by 3,000 fans at the airport.

  "Now we were the Beatles" guitarist Brian May would later say. "We literally had to be carried over the heads of these kids...this wasn't a rock band thing, this was being a teen idol".

  Sumo wrestlers were hired as bodyguards during the concerts but they could do nothing to prevent the teenage girls from sweeping over them to the front of the stage. Hysteria followed Queen wherever they ventured so each member was assigned his own bodyguard.

    In August they'd be back in the studio to begin recording A Night at the Opera where the band and producer Roy Thomas Baker would face a phenomenal challenge, recording a long tune with many twists and turns and even some operatic "Gallileo"s tossed in for good measure. It was known to the rest of Queen as  "Fred's Thing". But it would be known to the world as "Bohemian Rhapsody".

UK Top 10 December 7, 1974

1. David Essex : Gonna Make You a Star

2. Barry White : You're The First the Last, My Everything

3. Gary Glitter : Oh Yes! You're Beautiful

4. Rubettes : Juke Box Jive

5. Queen : Killer Queen

6. Bachman-Turner Overdrive : You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

7. Suzi Quatro : The Wild One

8. Eddie Holman : Hey There Lonely Girl

9. The Peppers : Pepper Box

10. Chi-Lites : Too Good To Be Forgotten

40 Year Itch : Moët et Chandon In Her Pretty Cabinet

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   Writing this blog is a sonic journey for me. All the time I find myself explaining to other music fans that I don't know what's going on these days because, musically, I live in 1974. You might be listening to the radio. I'm listening to albums from 1974.  On some days, that means listening to something the world has thankfully forgotten. But on other days I get to hear great albums I hadn't bothered to discover.  Sheer Heart Attack, released November 7, 1974, is one of those albums. 

      Of course I knew "Killer Queen", Freddie Mercury's UK#2/US#12 single that broke the band on both sides of the Atlantic. It's the first Queen song that truly sounds like Queen. That's really the exciting thing about listening to Sheer Heart Attack. You get to hear a great band discover it's one of a kind, elaborately layered sound,  especially vocals ("Lap of the Gods"). "Killer Queen" alone has 12 overdubs of electric guitar and two overdubs of bass. Of the hit single, guitarist Brian May says:

   'Killer Queen' was the turning point. It was the song that best summed up our kind of music, and a big hit, and we desperately needed it as a mark of something successful happening for us... I was always very happy with this song. The whole record was made in a very craftsman-like manner. I still enjoy listening to it because there's a lot to listen to, but it never gets cluttered. There's always space for all the little ideas to come through. And of course, I like the solo, with that three-part section, where each part has its own voice

      The album came out just eight months after Queen II.  May came down with a case of hepatitis , ending the band's US tour with Mott the Hoople. Then May was hospitalized with an ulcer as recording began for Sheer Heart Attack. The rest of the band recorded without him, leaving room for guitar solos. When he recovered, May went into the studio for two weeks of intense recordings. The results speak for themselves.

    Sheer Heart Attack is a great argument for not buying greatest hits albums. You might have discovered "Killer Queen" , "Now I'm Here" and "Stone Cold Crazy" on one of the compilations, but you would have missed such glorious deep cuts as bassist John Deacon's "Misfire" and drummer Roger Taylor's "Tenement Funster". Two songs that add entire dimensions to this classic album.

40 Year Itch: Hazy, Shell-Shocked and Crazy

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Peaking at #5 on the charts, Queen II is the first UK hit album for these pomp rockers. And, to these years,  one of 1974's most rewarding "growers". The first dozen times you hear the album, you may get lost in the muddle of its soupy mix, busy arrangements and  lyrics about ogres, black queens and fairies. Robert Christgau probably did. He calls the album a "wimpoid royaloid heavyoid android void." 

Actually this is the beginning of Queen's classic period. A must have for fans of the band's signature multi-layered guitars and harmonies. Some will even contend this is Queen's finest hour.

                                                                          [Purchase]


       It's extraordinary how un-extraordinary Mott the Hoople's sixth album is. Especially when you consider it's the band's highest charting  in the US ( at #28) and that it follows two masterpieces: 1972's All the Young Dudes and 1973's Mott. Yes, The Hoople has its moments. I like "Alice" even though it may be a re-write of  "Whizz Kidd".



   But the rest of the album reveals a band whose growth is stunted. Why? Perhaps it's the loss of Mick Ralphs ( touring the UK this month in '74 with his new band Bad Company). His replacement "Aeriel Bender" ( Luther Grosvenor, late of Spooky Tooth and Stealers Wheel) didn't have the same power. Or maybe Ian Hunter got tired of writing lyrics. Unfortunately the band would never find its form again.

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At their best Aerosmith teetered on the thin line between crunchy 60's rock like The Yardbirds and Rolling Stones and the amped up 70's area fillers like The Who and Led Zeppelin. You get all of that in one track on  the Jack Douglas produced Get Your Wings: the cover of the Yardbirds ( via Tiny Bradshaw and Johnny Burnette) classic "Train Kept A-Rollin". Douglas would stick around to produce the band's heaviest hitters including Toys in the Attic and Rocks.

                                                                         [Purchase]

       While producing his second album for Grand Funk Railroad, Todd Rundgren heard the band goofing around with the 1963 Little Eva hit, "The Locomotion". He convinced the band it would be a great single. By the Summer of '74 it was #1 on the Hot 100. The rest of the album is simplistic and ponderous. In other words, it was exactly what fans of this Midwestern rock band wanted to hear. Plus, a free pair of 3-D glasses came with every album purchase!

40 Year Itch : Storm the Master Marathon

In late February of  1974, filling in last minute for an unavailable David Bowie,  Queen performed their third single "Seven Seas of Rhye" on Top of the Pops. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of this one TV appearance for the band. NME wrote "this single showcases all their power and drive, their writing talents, and every quality that makes them unique."  The song, featured on the forthcoming Queen II, would be the band's first UK Top 10 hit. Bowie and Queen would team up eventually perform together in 1981 for the UK #1 single "Under Pressure".

40 Year Itch : If I Crossed A Million Rivers

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Thundering right out of the gates with its lead off track "Keep Yourself Alive", Queen released its debut album on July 13th 1973 and immediately drew comparisons to Led Zeppelin.

"With its first album Queen has produced a driving, high energy set which in time may be looked upon with the same reverence Led Zep I now receives" said the Chicago Tribune. 

Rolling Stone's Gordon Fletcher added "There's no doubt that this funky, energetic English quartet has all the tools they'll need to lay claim to the Zep's abdicated heavy-metal throne, and beyond that to become a truly influential force in the rock world. Their debut album is superb.".

It took them long enough. 

     Queen played very few gigs. Its members were all college students. Guitarist Brian May was working on his Ph.D. in astronomy. It took Queen almost all of 1971 just to record five demos at the state of the art De Lane Lea studios in Wembley. Checking out the studio, producers Roy Thomas Baker and John Anthony heard the demos and signed the band to their management company Tribute. What did Queen get out of the deal? An opportunity to record their album only when the studio wasn't booked. 

Usually between 3 am and 7 am.

Pulling all nighters, Queen recorded all the songs by November of 1972 but had to wait another 9 months for the album to be released by EMI and Elektra. 

Thus the poignant point in the liner notes:

"Representing at least something of what Queen's music has been over the last three years."

Despite good reviews, Queen's debut did not sell. It wasn't glam enough for the now waning glam rock scene nor hard enough for the hard rock crowd. There are multi-tracking moments that will remind listeners of what Queen would become but not enough.

A strange footnote: 

While recording the album Freddie Mercury  and the boys agreed to record a cover of the Beach Boys' hit "I Can Hear Music" as  Larry Lurex.

What would push Queen to the next level? Certainly not publicity photos like the one below.

 In August of 1973 they were back in the studio working on Queen II.