One could reasonably argue that the apex of Queen’s toxic relationship with the music press was the period between September 11, 1976 and June 18, 1977.
September of '76 saw the New Musical Express’ Phil McNeill unleash a truly impressive array of insults in an article reviewing Queen’s performance that summer at the Edinburgh Festival, contemptuously taking them to task for everything from Brighton Rock (“meaningless exercise”) to Death On Two Legs (“self-righteous... unflinching immaturity...”) to Flick of the Wrist (“a treasure trove of superficialities”) to A Night at the Opera as a whole (“heavy-handed idiocy”) to even the medley the band did every night (a “garish, posturing event”). Odd that he accused the band of self-righteousness, when his article is self-righteousness writ large. Irony on a base level, as the late Bill Hicks would say.
June of '77 saw NME’s Tony Stewart being a total creep to Freddie under the belligerent headline, “Is This Man a Prat?” After conceding he didn’t request the interview to play nice (“the confrontation undoubtedly started with some mutual hostility”), Stewart seemingly enjoys being rude and insufferable to the singer for as long as Freddie will take it. He taunts. He baits. He criticizes Queen for not abiding by the “great musical change” perpetrated by the “New Wave” bands that don’t treat concerts as “the ceremonial idolisation of Star by Fans.” (Here Freddie only adds to the perception that Queen are a bunch of pretentious egos: “[Fans] want to see you rush off in limousines. They get a buzz.”) Freddie angrily calls Stewart “narrowminded” and “arrogant.” Stewart calls Queen’s new album, A Day at the Races, “bland and unsubstantial, musically and lyrically... artistically on the decline.”
And so it went. In this day and age of Post-Wayne’s World, Bohemian-Rhapsody-Starring-Rami-Malek-as-the-Beloved-Genius-Freddie-Mercury Age of Queen Adulation, it's easy to forget how frequently the music press, both in the UK and the USA, heaped scorn on the band – indeed, relished doing so – prior to Freddie’s death. Both of the above articles followed a template getting depressingly familiar to Queen fans by then: music magazines going well out of their way to find the writer on staff who most despised the band, and assigning that person to interview the band or review the new record.
Into this animosity came A Day at the Races, an album destined to be the bastard stepchild of the Queen catalog, hitting stores one year after A Night at the Opera. How does a band one-up their masterpiece?
Even Queen fans are divided on answering that question. BBC Radio DJ Paul Gambaccini was one of those who was skeptical: “I had been happy that You’re My Best Friend followed Bohemian Rhapsody because it was so different. It was going from this amazing segmented masterpiece to a heartfelt pop song. Keep the variety going. That was always the secret of The Beatles, and Elton (Bleah. – Ed). Every single is different.
“Somebody to Love (A Day at the Races’ first single) comes out, and it is very obviously Son of Bohemian Rhapsody. And although, if Bohemian Rhapsody had never appeared, Somebody to Love would’ve seemed like a breakthrough – it wasn’t a breakthrough. And you always worry for a group because they’ve got to somehow keep the momentum going.”
We here at Ranting Russell wholeheartedly concur with Mr. Gambaccini: Queen’s Somebody to Love is remarkably unremarkable – wildly overrated, in fact – and we’ve never understood why the band kept it in their live set for so many years. James McNair once called it “a yearning, masterfully arranged vocal extravaganza” and “a bona fide classic.” If, by “masterful” and “classic” he meant “cloying,” “overwrought,” and “boring,” then we back him 100%.
But the album’s lead single being one of Freddie’s weaker efforts is just one reason A Day at the Races, for many years, had the peculiar honor of being The Long-Lost Queen Album After They Got Huge, despite its going to #1 in the UK and #5 in the U.S. at the time of its release. Another reason was the arrival of Live Killers in June of 1979, the first official Queen live product. For Queen fans who came of age in the late 70s/early 80s, Live Killers was a seismic event. An exhilarating document of a (nearly) complete Queen concert, it acted as a greatest hits album two-and-a-half years before the arrival of the actual Greatest Hits album. It quickly became our go-to record for ages. All the hits and great songs, electrified with that special energy that comes only from a live performance, replete with adoring fans and Freddie leading the charge.
And out of 22 songs, only 1 track from A Day at the Races.
Tie Your Mother Down appears as the second song on side four. Think about that: fans listening to Live Killers from beginning to end were reminded that A Day at the Races ever even existed only deep into the set, just before the encore. Otherwise, the two-record set draws heavily from A Night at the Opera (7 songs) and News of the World (6 songs). The album they were touring at the time of Live Killers’ release, Jazz, is represented by four songs (and a brief snippet of a fifth), Sheer Heart Attack by three songs, and Queen by one song.
This had the curious effect of rendering A Day at the Races, years later, as an intriguing unofficial Rarities album, a kind of unintentional collection of deep cuts. May’s Long Away is one of the Great Queen Songs You’ve Never Heard, with all the gorgeous melodies, harmonies, and chord progressions that seemed to flow so readily from the guitarist’s fertile mind and ridiculously long fingers during the band’s golden, pre-synthesizer era. It’s also one of the few genuinely despairing songs in the band’s oeuvre, with poignant lyrics that still connect to this day (“Does anyone care anyway? For all the prayers in heaven, so much of life’s this way” to the denouement “I’m leaving here, I’m long away…”). Deacon’s You and I doesn’t have You’re My Best Friend’s instantly-catchy hook, but its bright tunefulness grows on you mercilessly over repeated listens, lurching feverishly from time change to time change.
It’s impossible not getting swept along by Freddie’s Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy, this album’s music hall/vaudeville submission (see “Bring Back that Leroy Brown” and “Seaside Rendezvous”). It’s not meant to be anything other than a giddy song about romancing and sex, but Freddie was the master of endlessly catchy, giddy songs about romancing and sex, and there's no way not to love this song. Taylor’s drumming is impeccable.
As regards Roger Taylor, his one contribution here, Drowse, is yet another ever-annoying nostalgic take on childhood – his childhood, to be sure – and the endless boredom, the “easier lays,” he must endure before becoming a rock god. Although lyrically redundant in light of Sheer Heart Attack’s Tenement Funster, it’s one more song from Races that doesn’t seem to have much to recommend it until it grows on you and you just fucking love it. At first you want it to rock harder than it does, but then it occurs to you that its borderline excruciatingly slow tempo (in 6/8, same as I’m In Love with My Car) is symbiotic with the lyrics, and once you make this connection, Taylor’s genius becomes clear, and the lyrics go from irritating to damned funny, and even moving. The genius of everything else in the mix then falls naturally into place: May’s minimalist slide guitar, and Taylor’s perfectly-placed cymbal crash at 0:08, jarringly capturing all of childhood’s boredom and uncertainty (That is, if you weren’t born in Syria or Democratic Republic of the Congo – Ed.).
Alas, May’s White Man is a not-so-deep-cut, the guitarist’s honest, if misguided, attempt to weigh in on the horrors of Native American genocide. It would be five-and-a-half years before May would go political again, with better results the second time around on 1982’s Hot Space. White Man sounded much better live.
Somebody to Love struck Paul Gambaccini as Son of Bohemian Rhapsody, but really it's The Millionaire Waltz, Freddie’s 5-minute epic (lyrically almost indistinguishable from Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy) that more closely follow's Bo Rap's blueprint. At least six different parts play almost one after the other, with no formal verse-chorus-verse-chorus-middle-eight structure. Although not as instantly tuneful as Bo Rap, Millionaire has that solid It-Grows-On-You quality, prevalent throughout the entire album, that consumes you after repeated listenings. Deacon’s lead bass playing makes me laugh out of pure joy every time I listen to it, and the whole staff recommends you crank your volume up to eleven when the Loud Part starts at 2:20. It rocks. Hard.
You Take My Breath Away is one of the most remarkable songs Freddie ever wrote. With no obvious, ready-for-airplay chord progressions, and the most beautiful lyric he ever wrote for any of his multitudinous love songs (“Every time you make a move you destroy my mind”), Breath’s stark arrangement sets it apart from the rest of the album’s mildly bombastic vibe. It was even more mind-bendingly gorgeous live, as you can hear on the Hyde Park version (an extra on the 2011 Races remaster), and the Earls Court version, where Freddie stays solidly on point after some loud, accidental feedback at 1:59 (although we’d like to believe it was Roger Taylor intentionally messing with the frontman).
Album opener Tie Your Mother Down is seriously rocking, raucous fun, containing a sprinkle of everything we love Queen for: soaring harmonies, a Brian May lead that starts as an Ace Frehley-esque 70s rock solo and ends with some over-the-top slide, and Freddie, front and center, at the height of his vocal prowess. Freddie’s voice never sounded so strong and assured as it does on this album, and never would again. He's at his glorious peak here in 1976. Tie Your Mother Down, You Take My Breath Away, and The Millionaire Waltz constitute the most powerful work Mercury – one of the great rock ‘n’ roll vocalists – ever committed to tape.
Having received a hero’s welcome in Japan for their spring 1975 tour, Brian May returned the favor by writing two verses in Japanese for Races’ album closer, Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together). May’s dark side once again counterbalances Mercury’s music hall numbers in a song about death and separation, a theme he returned to on the band’s next album. It would seem, listening to this, Tie Your Mother Down, and Long Away, that the guitarist was simply incapable of writing anything that wasn’t either catchy as hell or straight-up lovely. Another marvelous Queen song, and a perfect way to wrap up an album that didn’t – and still hasn’t – gotten its due as one of the band’s finer efforts.
A Day at the Races began its ascent in the charts in December of 1976, two months after Stiff Records released The Damned’s New Rose. Punk Rock was the new rage, and Queen stood on shaky ground as their grandiosness and bombast were cast in sharp relief by Punk’s straightforward, barre chord assault. No doubt Tony Stewart was one of many who watched, knife in hand, waiting to see how the band would respond.
1 comment:
Great stuff. Can't wait for the News of the World piece.
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