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: 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".

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.