QUEEN II (March 1974)
The answer, if you were an avid reader of Britain’s Record Mirror, was a resounding “no.” In his review of Queen II, writer Chris Poole mercilessly attacked the album as “the dregs of glam rock. Weak and over-produced, if this band are our brightest hope for the future, then we are committing rock and roll suicide.”
This was a half-truth, actually; over-arranged is more accurate. On Queen II the band discovered their stock in trade: MULTI-TRACKING. Layers upon layers upon layers of vocals and guitars, turning every song into a prog-rock epic. The band defiantly wore critical attacks on this approach as a badge of honor, and in so doing, began formulating the Queen aesthetic: we’re going to be as pompous and bombastic as possible, and don’t give a shit what the critics think.
That, as it turned out, was a good thing, building solidarity in the ranks, bringing the band closer together. What wasn’t good – and what Poole undoubtedly meant when he called the album “weak” – was the band’s ongoing, excruciating obsession with Dungeons and Dragons lyrics. Of the album’s eleven songs (and one is an instrumental), fully seven are mind-numbing excursions into JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth, which is a damn shame, because Queen’s sound really takes hold here. Had Freddie written different lyrics to songs like Ogre Battle, The March of the Black Queen, and Seven Seas of Rhye – had he really written about something – history would view Queen II differently. Ignoring its lyrics (“The ogre men are coming out from the two-way mirror mountain, they’re running up behind and they’re coming all about; can’t go east ‘cos you gotta go south”), Ogre Battle is a grand, grand 70s metal song with a killer hook, tight-as-shit bass and drums, and superlative vocals from Freddie. After sounding somewhat hesitant on Queen, here Freddie pushes himself, finally truly confident of his range and tone.
Black Queen, Freddie’s obligatory bazillion-parts mini-opera, is beautiful stuff, replete with sublime melodies, soaring Queen harmonies and Brian May playing the beejeezus out of his Red Special. But along come the abominable lyrics, everything from “water babies singing in a lily-pool delight” to “the city of the fireflies.” It could have been brilliant. It really could have. The same goes for “Seven Seas of Rhye.” Fleshed out into a proper song here, it positively slays – that is, until you catch the line “I challenge the mighty titan and his troubadours…,” and you slowly, reluctantly go back to the lyric sheet, and you realize that Freddie is once again hammering away, ceaselessly, nay, relentlessly, at his fantasy role-playing game motif. Seven Seas of Rhye is, in fact, where this Queen yin and yang of rocking music/shit-all stupid lyrics reaches its crescendo. At 2.47 it’s a crazed microcosm of what this band was capable of, a majestic blast of careening piano and slashing Brian May licks that landed the group their first top-10 single in England.
But then the “lords and lady preachers,” “privy counselors” and “shod and shady senators” show up, depriving Freddie of the Seven Seas of Rhye. Natch’. It’s enough to make you seriously wonder what the guy was getting at, and why - and yet, it gets worse. The album’s nadir is The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, Freddie’s two minute, 41 second homage to Richard Dadd’s mid-19th century painting Fairy Fellers’ Master-Stroke. A dense, unique work of art, Dadd later helpfully wrote a bizarre, 3,718 word essay/poem called Elimination of a picture and its subject - called the feller's master stroke, explaining each character in the painting. It is from this screed that Freddie lifted most of the lyrics for his song: politicians with senatorial pipes, a dragonfly trumpeter, and the tale’s arch-magician. Unlike Seven Seas of Rhye, Stroke’s music is cloy and grating, the kind of thing your fucked up friends – the ones who still game, even though they’re in their 40s – would force you to endure after tricking you into a weekend with the Society for Creative Anachronism. It hurts. Bad.
Nevermore is a short, pretty piano ballad about love lost, but is tainted again by prog rock lyrics. Speaking of love lost, Funny How Love Is is the first of seemingly hundreds of dull, pointless lyrics about love, falling in love, being hurt by love, looking for love, dreaming about love, etc., that Freddie and Queen would write for the next 17 years. It begins a troubling pattern for the band, a pattern that guaranteed Queen would never be taken seriously by snobby music fans of the real stuff: Queen lyrics are too literal. They're always literal. There’s nothing to ponder, no subtext, no layers, no poetry to songs like Funny How Love Is. The band weren’t incapable of writing something weighty, as they proved beginning on their next album. But all too often it seemed like Freddie’s blasé attitude towards Queen’s “disposable” songs was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or maybe they worked so tirelessly on the music that the lyrics became the redheaded stepchild of the creative process?
American ex-pat Paul Gambaccini once said, "one reason why Queen were never taken seriously by the press in the pop world was that they were not leaders of a social movement. They didn’t stand for anything, except themselves. In that sense, which is normal in a person’s employment, they may have even seemed a bit egocentric."
Saying the band was "a bit" egocentric is being unduly kind. Queen was always about one thing: Queen. And you can trash them all you want for this blatant, gratuitous egocentricism, but I look at it this way: at least they were honest about their single-minded pursuit of money and fame, and at least they had the chops to back it up. They weren't trying to change the world, and they never, ever pretended that was their goal. They just wanted to play in a rock band and get laid. In that sense, these guys were the real deal. (More real than, say, Led Zeppelin - a band always counted amongst the great Rock bands - that always feigned profundity.) No pretenses, no kowtowing to the Lou Reed crowd. And the lyrics bear this out on every album.
American ex-pat Paul Gambaccini once said, "one reason why Queen were never taken seriously by the press in the pop world was that they were not leaders of a social movement. They didn’t stand for anything, except themselves. In that sense, which is normal in a person’s employment, they may have even seemed a bit egocentric."
Saying the band was "a bit" egocentric is being unduly kind. Queen was always about one thing: Queen. And you can trash them all you want for this blatant, gratuitous egocentricism, but I look at it this way: at least they were honest about their single-minded pursuit of money and fame, and at least they had the chops to back it up. They weren't trying to change the world, and they never, ever pretended that was their goal. They just wanted to play in a rock band and get laid. In that sense, these guys were the real deal. (More real than, say, Led Zeppelin - a band always counted amongst the great Rock bands - that always feigned profundity.) No pretenses, no kowtowing to the Lou Reed crowd. And the lyrics bear this out on every album.
But in a world of opposites and wide open spectrums, I embrace as much as I can. Sometimes, it's simply ok if a band's lyrics don't match up to Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. They can't always. And what the snobs of the world won't admit is, they shouldn't always have to. And really, most don't. Even those that try. Sometimes it's the music itself that alters your life's trajectory, and lyrics are secondary.
The rest of Queen II, Side White (on the original vinyl, Freddie’s songs were all on – and this is some spooky shit – Side Black), consists of four May songs and one Roger Taylor song. With the exception of Procession, a short multi-tracked guitar instrumental, each one encapsulates the Queen II paradox: great music, spot-on performances, and a maddening lost opportunity with lyrics. Taylor’s song, The Loser in the End, is a poor man’s She’s Leaving Home, and is, thank God Almighty, one of two songs on Queen II not invoking castles, monarchs, fairies, or any other Lord of the Rings castoffs. Lyrically simplistic, it at the very least sports a nice melody, and was Taylor’s last warm-up before he came into his own on Sheer Heart Attack. Father to Son is May’s answer to Freddie’s March of the Black Queen, a long, multi-part epic that calls to mind John Boorman’s Excalibur. White Queen (As It Began)’s verses find Brian May laying down the kind of arpeggios that bands like Metallica would later lift for their 90s and aughts Metal Power Ballads.
Some Day One Day is the exception here, and is an object lesson in how production and arrangement can completely alter a song. Brian May is trying here, truly, and nearly delivers the goods in a non-D&D song about doomed love. The melody is beauteous, and the lyrics manage to approach something meaningful: "Today the cloud it hangs over us and all is grey - but some day, one day…" But the band's headlong rush into multi-tracking works against them in this one instance. Some Day One Day should be sparse - guitars, bass, drums, vox. Or even guitar and vox.
The rest of Queen II, Side White (on the original vinyl, Freddie’s songs were all on – and this is some spooky shit – Side Black), consists of four May songs and one Roger Taylor song. With the exception of Procession, a short multi-tracked guitar instrumental, each one encapsulates the Queen II paradox: great music, spot-on performances, and a maddening lost opportunity with lyrics. Taylor’s song, The Loser in the End, is a poor man’s She’s Leaving Home, and is, thank God Almighty, one of two songs on Queen II not invoking castles, monarchs, fairies, or any other Lord of the Rings castoffs. Lyrically simplistic, it at the very least sports a nice melody, and was Taylor’s last warm-up before he came into his own on Sheer Heart Attack. Father to Son is May’s answer to Freddie’s March of the Black Queen, a long, multi-part epic that calls to mind John Boorman’s Excalibur. White Queen (As It Began)’s verses find Brian May laying down the kind of arpeggios that bands like Metallica would later lift for their 90s and aughts Metal Power Ballads.
Some Day One Day is the exception here, and is an object lesson in how production and arrangement can completely alter a song. Brian May is trying here, truly, and nearly delivers the goods in a non-D&D song about doomed love. The melody is beauteous, and the lyrics manage to approach something meaningful: "Today the cloud it hangs over us and all is grey - but some day, one day…" But the band's headlong rush into multi-tracking works against them in this one instance. Some Day One Day should be sparse - guitars, bass, drums, vox. Or even guitar and vox.
Queen II landed at number five in the British charts, but only eked it out to number 49 in the U.S. On the plus side, Roy Thomas Baker’s production, with an invaluable assist by engineer Mike Stone, is leagues beyond Queen. The first album’s cardboard drums are crisp and full here, and a lot of time was clearly taken with the mix – these guys sounded like a bona-fide band this time around. On the down side, Chris Poole may have been right; what’s the point of finding your sound and writing great music, only to round it out with vacuous lyrics about chalice quests? Whereas Queen sounded like a band struggling for identity, Queen II sounded like tremendous talent wasted. The next album, already being recorded and readied for release later that same year, would decide, finally: was Queen the Gary Gygax House Band, or a real band?
1 comment:
“ They weren't trying to change the world, and they never, ever pretended that was their goal. They just wanted to play in a rock band and get laid.” I’m living for this!
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