Jazz (November 1978)
"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." - Paul Gambaccini
*****
It's worth reprinting, in full, the hysterical review of Queen's Jazz that the sanctimonious, grumpy critic Dave Marsh wrote for Rolling Stone in February of 1979:
"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 cliches, light-classical pianistics, four-part harmonies that make the Four Freshman 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."
*****
Describing his days as a young man working at Creem magazine, Dave Marsh said "I had a vision for what the magazine could do for kids who were out there being ridiculed, and beat up, and all that shit. The idea I had about Creem was, that even in rock'n'roll, it had come to pass that there was a stuffy ways of dealing with people. And I thought that part of your job as a human being was to oppose that. And if it meant that you bled a little for it, so what? Because there's some other kids who's gonna read this thing and be freed by it."
Apparently it never crossed Marsh's simplistic mind that there were many gay kids getting ridiculed and beat up for being effeminate in the 70s who loved Queen because of their effeminate lead singer. I'd bet good money many of them would tell you they were freed by the band's music. It also apparently never crossed his mind just how stuffy he was being when he trashed all the bands he hated in print and in interviews.
Why, it is logical to ask, does a man who hates so much music get paid to write about music? Because in a capitalist set-up, even miscreants and malcontents like Dave Marsh can throw their bitterness and bile at the wall and see if it sticks. That Creem and Rolling Stone flourished (for a time) printing nonsense like Marsh's Jazz review just shows you how many other bitter, close-minded people there are in the world who enjoy (or think they do) reading total junk. "Fascist rock band?" I'm not sure anything quite as idiotic has ever been written in an album review.
Fast forward 20 years and magazines like Q, Uncut, Mojo, Classic Rock, and yes, Rolling Stone, regularly lavish praise on Queen, and even Jazz. This is an approach that makes sense: find people who actually like the bands to write reviews of the records. Because there's nothing whatsoever to be gained by criticism that savages the subject, whether it's an album, book, or movie. All art is valid. Every last bit of it. Personally, I can't stand Journey or Billy Joel, but they are outstanding musicians and their music is loved by millions. I am, therefore, the last person who should be writing a review about any of their records. It's the people who dig Journey and Billy Joel who should review their records. There's plenty to be gained by hearing about why they love it, why old fans would like or dislike the new album, and why newcomers should give it a listen. Tearing down a band and their music just because you - one of eight billion motherfuckers on this planet, none of whom is more important than another - don't like it accomplishes absolutely nothing. If anything it takes us back a few steps, and it makes you sound like a whining, obnoxious crank. Negativity lowers the quality of life for everyone. I'm tired of a low quality of life. We all deserve better.
Unquestionably, Jazz is "pretentious" and Queen were frequently "arrogant." But anyone who makes that their main sticking point, in an industry brimming over with the likes of Elton John, Bob Dylan, Gene Simmons, Paul Hewson, Prince, and Mick Jagger, is taking himself way, way too seriously and ought to find another line of work.
As for the album: Dead On Time rocks, and rocks very, very hard. It is one of the all-time great Queen songs, and is so frantic and crazed you expect it to careen off the tracks at any moment. The main riff for the verses sounds like Brian May is making it up as he goes, just trying to keep up with the rhythm section. Some interesting trivia: Brian May lifted Dead On Time's out-of-hand chorus from the so-called "Fast" version of We Will Rock You, originally recorded in October of 1977 for the BBC. For years afterwards Queen opened their shows with We Will Rock You (Fast), but most fans - especially those in the U.S. who weren't able to listen to the BBC - never realized that May took Rock You (Fast)'s chorus, bumped it up a full step from E to G-flat, and reconfigured it for Dead On Time. And no jury would convict him. Dead On Time is right up there with Sheer Heart Attack and Death On Two Legs. Turn the volume way up and see what life has to offer.
Mustapha, incidentally, is hardly a clumsy and pretentious rewrite of Hernando's Hideaway. It's a fiery album-opener, waiting a full minute and nineteen seconds before the bass and low end storm into the mix (nice touch, that), making you scramble to turn the volume down so your speakers don't blow. Or, if you're smart, you just leave the volume up, speakers be damned. What's not to love? Life is short. Take advantage of the good things.
May's Dreamers Ball (minus the possessive apostrophe) is the perfect song for sitting on your porch on a summer night with a glass of bourbon, gazing at the moon with the lights out, just blending into the dark, all by yourself, existing perfectly in the moment. John Deacon meets the moment with some fine bass playing, and Freddie channels his inner lounge singer even better than he did a year earlier in My Melancholy Blues.
Mercury sings In Only Seven Days with more feeling than this short filler track probably deserves. The singer's unwavering dedication to his craft saves the song from its forgettable lyrics ("gratingly naive," according to Georg Purvis). This is what you'd call "serviceable" John Deacon.
As always, May singing one of his own songs adds another layer of texture to an album awash in different textures. Leaving Home Ain't Easy is filler, but it's elegant filler, all acoustic with no solo - one of those rare instances before the synthesizer years where the Red Special is nowhere to be heard. The guitarist sneaks in one painfully sarcastic lyric (I'm a happy man, don't it look that way?), and hearing Freddie's voice peaking over some of the backing vocals is a beautiful thing.
Roger Taylor is not quite up to his usual form on this record. The drummer, who contributed two of the most stunning songs in Queen's oeuvre on News of the World, shows up here with More of that Jazz and Fun It. More of that Jazz isn't A-list stuff, yet over the years I've grown closer to its lyrics, neatly conjuring up the kind of crippling ennui that can take you out if you're not careful, and the chorus' chord progression is freakin' awesome, you have to admit. C'mon, E to A-flat to E-flat to G? With a pick scratch in there? Even when he's not firing on all cylinders this guy's got something worth your time. Probably he played all the instruments again, as he did on News of the World. And people say Freddie had a huge ego?
Fun It is officially Queen's First Foray Into Disco. Casual Queen fans might think it was Deacon's Another One Bites the Dust, but no, it was Roger Taylor, bad-boy drummer extraordinaire, the man who wrote Modern Times Rock and Roll and Sheer Heart Attack, who first got all funky on a Queen album, ponying up three and-a-half minutes of disco-tinged, ass-shaking danciness along with some dubious lyrics ("fun's for free," etc.). There's nothing to love here, but I tell ya, there's no way to hate it, either. How can you? It's just kind of odd and harmless. For better or worse, it probably planted the seed for Another One Bites the Dust, giving the band a massive world-wide hit two years later.
I always enjoy reading what Queen fanboys have to say about Deacon's If You Can't Beat Them. Characterizing it as a "snarling rocker" and "vicious" are two faves. Don't be fooled - it is neither. It is a decent enough pop/rock song sabotaged by juvenile, insipid lyrics that I can't even believe Freddie agreed to sing. Here are the cliches Freddie sings without a hint of facetiousness: "keep your chin up," "don't let them get you down," "give as good as you get," "I'll play you at your own game," and of course, the title itself. And yet, under the "Plays" column in my Apple Music, this song registers a hefty 46. This is solely because at the 3:03 mark, with one minute and twelve seconds to go, the band roars to a halt and then blasts into an outro based on the verses that is enormous fun. Roger Taylor giddily beats his drums up, Brian May puts some phase on his Red Special, and a previously silly filler song transmogrifies before your very ears into a seriously joyous romp. This is what great bands in their prime are capable of: taking 2nd or 3rd tier songs and injecting them with something that still makes them worth your while. I can listen to those final 72 seconds all day long.
Freddie deftly borrows a chord progression from Lily of the Valley in Jealousy, an overlooked song that is the third song on side one and yet was never performed live by the band. Listen to the lead-in to the chorus ("You couldn't lose you couldn't fail, you had suspicion on my trail") and then listen to the bit in Lily of the Valley where Freddie sings "I lie and wait with open eyes, I carry on through stormy skies." Different keys, but Lily's chord pattern and melody are embedded within Jealousy's more complicated structure. And it really is gloriously complicated: what seems at first pass like a straightforward ballad about love and loss is rife with sharps, sixths, sevenths, diminished chords and unorthodox ascending patterns, while the verses change gears halfway through their arrangement each time, dropping from F to E flat. John Deacon's bass playing is typically brilliant. You know those movies or books you love that only a very small cadre of people are aware of, and you feel like you're a member of some secret, superior club? Jealousy is a song that only Queen fans know and we like it that way. In an incident reflecting the perils of the transition from the analog to the digital age, when Hollywood Records issued the entire Queen catalog on CD in 1991, the kick drum was nowhere to be heard on Jealousy. It was successfully restored in 2011 on the remastered Jazz.
The band wisely used Let Me Entertain You as a blunt instrument at the top of their setlist for a few tours in the late 1970s. It absolutely rocks, and is so wonderfully Freddie that it sums the man up - at least how he approached playing concerts - in just three minutes. Wanna know what kind of a show this shy man from Zanzibar thought bands should give their fans who paid a premium for concert tickets? He actually turns Cruella de Vil into a verb: "I'll pull you and I'll pill you, Crueladaville you, and to thrill you I'll use any device..." As part of the entertainment package he even offers "grounds for divorce." Great fucking lyric. And Brian May reliably adds his indelible signature with some frenzied leads and a good helping of feedback, like just the perfect amount of garlic in a tasty stew. Don't ever let anyone tell you this isn't one of the great Freddie songs.
Another great Freddie song is Don't Stop Me Now, the album's second single, that broke the top 10 in England but didn't do much at all in the U.S. If you're a member of the rock band Queen, perusing the American charts in January 1979, not seeing your latest single in the top 20, this is extremely disappointing. Don't Stop Me Now is one of the great party songs of all time, right up there with Highway to Hell, Celebrate and Let's Go Crazy. How many instantly-singable songs did this guy have sitting around his living room back then? And again: Brian May's lead is straight-up rollicking greatness. Are you familiar with the quote attributed to Michelangelo about how he created his masterpiece, David? "You just chip away the stone that doesn't look like David." May's genius followed a similar path between 1974 and 1980. Hearing those songs from that classic era as a kid, every guitar solo seemed so obvious - not predictable, but so obviously perfect within the structure of each song. Even at that young age I would think, of course, this amazing guitar solo, it makes perfect sense. How could these beautiful notes not be in this song? Brian just got rid of all the extraneous notes obscuring everyone's pathway to bliss, and brought out the notes that should be there - that had to be there - for all of us to absorb. It was enough to make me believe that there really was order in the cosmos.
Jazz's first single was the double A-side Bicycle Race/Fat Bottomed Girls, generating what was then familiar animosity from so-called rock critics. "They deserve all the vitriol that may be further hurled at them," spaketh the New Musical Express, "if this is an accurate preview of the new album." But of course no vitriol whatsoever is warranted. I know Bicycle Race seems authentically ridiculous: that insane chorus bafflingly hammering home Freddie's desire to ride his bicycle, and the annoying bit in the middle with bicycle bells - dumbass stuff, yeah? But such silliness belies the only political song Freddie ever wrote, wherein he takes potshots at Jaws and Star Wars, disparages LBJ and Nixon, and then blasphemes twice, comparing God to make-believe characters like Frankenstein (we're sure he meant "Frankenstein's monster," but give the man some poetic license) and Peter Pan. Woo hoo! This is our kind of song. And thanks to the wonderful geniuses at Hollywood Records, you can listen to the backing track sans vocals on the 2011 Jazz remaster. "They deserve all the vitriol that may be further hurled at them?" What are you, fucking stupid? Listen to the rhythm section during the verses. This is not an easy song to play, and these guys are playing their asses off. It stands to reason that it was no less difficult to write. But hey, why take the time to really listen to a song and understand it when you can take all of three minutes trashing it in a childish review and get paid for it?
When the writer of a song himself is dismissive of his creation, as Brian May is with Fat Bottomed Girls ("I thought [it] was okay, but fairly banal") it is tempting to take the Dave Marsh road to derision and ridicule and total negativity and write the whole thing off. But don't listen to Brian. The guitarist is just being modest. Fat Bottomed Girls is great, guitar-driven rock and roll, and it is still a joy, all these years later, basking in the glow of its D-major dirgeyness, listening to May take his time riffing all over his drop D tuning from beginning to end. It's worth noting the definitive version of this song is on Queen On Fire: Live at the Bowl, where a robust production brings out the low ends and kick drum and is a very good thing to listen to very, very loud.
Which brings us to the one aspect of Jazz that truly is deserving of criticism. If anything actually sucks here, it's the production. Queen roped Roy Thomas Baker back into the fold for Jazz, and alas, their old-time producer, whose sharp ear gave their first four albums such depth and solid grounding, was fresh off his stint producing The Cars' debut album. Filled with loony notions of stripped-down new wave sparseness, Baker declawed Roger Taylor's big, meaty drum sound, a hallmark of every Queen album up until Jazz. The result is an album whose great songs sound only about 70% as good as they should have, leaving everything with a very un-Queen-like, tinny, trebly sheen.
Queen took a year off before recording their next studio album, filling the void with a live album. By the time The Game appeared in June 1980, the band made some major changes, bringing the curtain down on their classic era.
