The Game (1980)
The good news in late 1979 when Queen's new single Crazy Little Thing Called Love hit store shelves was that Queen disposed of producer Roy Thomas Baker for the last time. This meant Roger Taylor's great big drum sound was back after an album's absence. With new partner in crime Reinhold Mack on board to co-produce, the forthcoming album, The Game, ditched Jazz's weaker, tinnier sound, reclaiming a warmer, fuller sound.
The bad news was apparent to everyone owning a record player who put side one on their turntables, laid the needle down on the first track and listened in bewilderment as the opening seconds of Play the Game filled their bedrooms: SYNTHESIZERS. And LOTS of them. Overlapping, cascading synthesizers, crashing down upon your head for 17 unspeakable seconds that rent reality into little pieces on the floor.
With many decades' hindsight, it's understandable that new Queen devotees in the 21st century struggle comprehending why this was such a big deal, or why it was a deal at all. But prior to 1980 it was a big deal, and the band themselves made it so. For their first five albums, from 1973's Queen through 1976's A Day at the Races, Queen went out of their way to draw your attention to the fact that there certainly weren't any lowly synthesizers anywhere in the mix of these records. "Nobody played synthesizer" said Queen's credits. "Nobody played synthesizer... again" said Queen II. Sheer Heart Attack kept it simple: "No synthesizer." A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races yelled in your face: "No synthesizers!" and "No synths!"
For those of us meat and potato rock'n'roll kids who grew up with 70s Queen, buying the records as they came out, this was the Queen Seal of Quality, assuring us year after year that there was no funny stuff with these guys: this was a Rock Band, guitar/bass/drums/piano only, with none of that frilly 70s arrangement overwhelmed by inauthentic synthesizers and proggy Moogs and God knows what else. These guys were keeping it real. They didn't like that synthesizer shit, didn't need that synthesizer shit.
And how very, very wrong we were. Turns out the band never had anything against synthesizers in the first place. Those credits on the first five albums were a hedge against critics misinterpreting Brian May's guitar pyrotechnics for something electronically created.
It is an accident of history that Queen's evolution is neatly marked by a change of decades, but it's very interesting how the dividing line between Old Queen and New Queen is the round number of 1980. 1970s Queen was long-haired, clean-shaven Freddie and No Synthesizers! 1980s Queen was short-haired, mustachioed-Freddie and synthesizers in every nook and cranny of each album's arrangement.
So Play the Game's arrangement was no mere aberration. The Game is Queen's transition album, the nexus between, as we shall see, a rock band that America embraced, and a pop band that America abandoned.
Queen had some world conquering to do before the falling out, however. The Game went to #1 in the U.S., their first album to do so. It sold millions of copies and was a worldwide phenomenon and I am happy to tell you I will never, ever be anything approaching objective about this album. I bought it as a kid and listened to it over and over until the vinyl was shot and I still love every second of it as a middle-aged man.
But I can understand why someone wouldn't like Don't Try Suicide or Rock It (Prime Jive). The former brazenly rips off The Police's Walking on the Moon before Freddie admonishes whomever it is he's trying to talk out of killing themselves for being a "prick teaser." The latter contains the most shit-all stupid lyrics Roger Taylor ever wrote with a heavy dose of insufferable 80s synthesizer.
And then, like our knight in shining armor, Brian May storms in and saves the day on both songs, giving Suicide a shot in the arm at the 2:18 mark and sending Taylor's synthesizers packing on Rock It with a totally genius stutter-step metal solo that brings joy to life. There's also a ton of joy to be found in the song's 1-minute intro, where - to a I-IV-V progression, suitably - Freddie intones his love of real rock and roll, with Taylor adding some unexpectedly gorgeous harmony vocals. Additionally: hearing the band sing the word "suicide" as a barbershop quartet in Don't Try Suicide is wonderfully jarring. Please take a moment to check it out. And on a personal note, Don't Try Suicide was the first time in my life I heard the phrase "get on my tits," and I've used it ever since whenever applicable. Another invaluable contribution to my cultural literacy, courtesy the inimitable Freddie Mercury.
Two other songs with forgettable lyrics that are utterly meaningless are May's Sail Away Sweet Sister and Deacon's Need Your Loving Tonight. And understand: it doesn't matter one iota. The lyrics are nothing much to write home about but musically they're these big, lovely things that make life a grand proposition. Catchy melodies and harmonies and fabulous Brian May leads. The dude was so on at this point in his career that with each new song we just sat in dizzy anticipation, waiting to hear what glorious sounds he'd bring forth from his Red Special, and he never, ever disappointed.
Sister also features a groovy Freddie cameo after the second chorus and an unexpectedly etherial outro thanks to John Deacon's thoughtful bass playing (and a superb cymbal crash at the 3:15 mark). And Deacon, looking to one-up his rhythm section partner, finds new life in in rock's foundational chord progression. This is harder than it looks. The venerable I-IV-V is the oldest, most-used progression in all of rock'n'roll, and real skill is needed coming up with original, inventive melodies to pair with it. All in a day's work for John Deacon of Leicester.
Taylor's Coming Soon has been either neglected or maligned for 43 years now, so some serious course correction is due. Even contemporary writers, way more kind to the band than the hacks reviewing the albums as they came out in the 70s and 80s, call the song "weak material" (Garth Cartwright) and a "faceless new wave rocker" (Georg Purvis). We at Ranting Russell are honored to be the first to finally set the record straight and say that Cartwright, Purvis and everyone who agrees with them are full of shit, and Coming Soon totally rocks. The lyrics are dumb, but they aren't nearly as dumb as Rock It (Prime Jive), and its virtues are many: Freddie giving it his all ("Somebody naggin' you when you're out with the boys!"), yet more beautiful Queen harmonies, and a righteous Brian May lead. Hallelujah. Turn this mo-fo up loud.
With Save Me, the guitarist goes all Freddie Mercury, writing about love and love lost. He is fully up to the task, closing the album with a beautiful ode to a real-life friend who was "going through a bad time." The 2nd verse concisely sums up everything you and I have ever felt going through an awful breakup, and live the song became even stronger, with Taylor stepping everything up a bit (check out his drum roles after the final verse on both Queen Rock Montreal and Live at the Bowl, and his accents at the end of each). Poignant and rocking, Save Me is superlative Brian May.
Play the Game begins with the aforementioned synthesizers, heralding the apocalypse to longtime Queen fans, but it's all a short ruse. Despite more Freddie nonsense about love and falling in love (for those of you keeping a tally of Freddie singing about love, almost mind-numbingly so, this comes after Funny How Love Is [Queen II], Love of My Life [A Night at the Opera], You Take My Breath Away, The Millionaire Waltz, and Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy [all from A Day at the Races], and Jealousy [Jazz]), this is absolutely primo Mercury, amply aided by outstanding performances from all three of his bandmates. The synthesizers abruptly cut out (exactly like at the beginning of Death On Two Legs five years earlier) and it's just those sublime half-step piano notes and Freddie's sublime melody, joined shortly by Roger Taylor's big, beefy drum sound - he would never sound this good in the mix again - John Deacon's beautifully complementary bass line, weaving an elegant web of octaves around piano and drums, topped off by Brian May's gigantic chords, giving the whole thing a pretty damn magisterial vibe. Shit, who needs synthesizers? (Queen, apparently.) It's still a revelation even in 2023, 43 years later, having heard this song dozens and dozens of times over the course of my life, getting to the stunning bridge Freddie wrote, and getting swept away one more time by its key change and unexpected chords. Great stuff, this one. I always dug the way Freddie tears May's guitar off of him in the song's video (a Strat?? Sounds like the Red Special to me) and throws it back to him in time for the solo. Action packed.
Freddie Mercury wrote Crazy Little Thing Called Love in 10 minutes sitting in a bathtub. Imagine having that level of talent. 10 minutes in a bathtub and Queen had their first #1 single in the U.S.A. It is pitch-perfect rockabilly, a loving homage to Freddie's 50s rock heroes forged into perfection by Deacon's spot-on bass walks, baritone woo-woo backing vocals, and May's cracking leads, played on a Fender Telecaster in a terrifically successful attempt to dial in James Burton. Crazy was a crowd pleaser and never left the band's set after 1979, and you can hear why, listening to Live at Wembley or Montreal. The song became a pile driver live, with Taylor doing a huge fill all the way through what used to be a bass break after the "ready Freddie" bit, May gleefully wailing over an extended outro, and You're My Best Friend's ending grafted on for the big finale.
The biggest American hit of Queen's career almost wasn't. Somehow not understanding its enormous commercial potential, the band released three other singles (Crazy Little Thing, Save Me, and Play the Game) from The Game before Michael Jackson convinced them to release Another One Bites the Dust as a single. And Wacko Jacko's intuition was watertight: suddenly Queen was the hottest band in the states, living every British musician's dream. Drawing inspiration from Bernard Edward's monster bass line on Chic's Good Times, John Deacon wrote a sparse, straightforward dance song so infectious that it was impossible to avoid in the fall of 1980. Some great, jazzy guitar playing starts in the 2nd verse, and it may very well be Deacy playing it, as he played bass, guitar, and piano on the recording. The garlic in a delicious stew, that guitar part. The song also served as fodder for Weird Al Yankovic, who served up Another One Rides the Bus in 1981. Damned brilliant.
For lack of a better word, Queen nerds typically describe May's Dragon Attack as "funk rock," but I think that's selling short what is The Game's best track, and one of the better song's in Queen's oeuvre. In my mind this song has always transcended any label a critic deigned to affix upon it, as it seemed to have appeared - to my 11-year-old mind anyway (I didn't know a hell of a lot at that age) - wholly out of a vacuum. It didn't, of course, but holy fucking fuck, the song opens cold with that riff that any 2nd-year guitar student can play but no one else ever thought to write, and then drops out entirely, just leaving the drums, and then Freddie not singing (no melody really, something else that blew my young mind) so much as proclaiming "Take me to the room where the red's all red, take me outta my head's what I said..." Whoa! This sure as shit ain't about love or fat bottomed girls or friends fallen on hard times. "Take me outta my head?" Was this a drug song? No time to figure it out, listening to the truly cool way May plays two ascending chords in the chorus against Deacon still playing the verse's bass line.
As a kid I never understood why the first line of the second verse seemed to tail off incomplete. Could Brian not think of anything here? Or were they improvising? "Gonna eat that sound, hey, yeah yeah yeah..." What did that mean? My young, green mind couldn't make any sense out of it. Still can't even now, which is why I love it.
And in the midst of all this extreme coolness something extraordinary happens in the 2nd chorus: May plays the two ascending chords again but Deacon instead goes rogue, laying down a bass line that to this day I still play over and over, trying to figure out what he's doing. You think Deaky's bass playing is all funky on Another One Bites the Dust? Check out what the dude plays when Freddie says "She don't take no prisoners." This guy is a natural-born, bass-playing fool.
Taylor then lays down one fierce-ass drum solo for four bars. Reminds me of Phil Rudd, how hard he hits them. "Get down," Freddie commands. Fuck yeah, my friends. This here is the straight-up dope. He hands the baton back to Deacon for some more funkiness, and then Brian May steps in, assuming total command.
That first note shreds your eardrums (hopefully you're listening to this very, very loud) and the guitarist, ever the restless genius, serves up a brand-new descending chord progression for his lead, but even this stops after just a few bars as May reaches deep down inside the Red Special and himself, tearing off a phrase that he pummels over and over, even playing another guitar over it to ensure these jagged notes embed themselves in your neurons for the long haul. The bass disappears completely, May duels with himself a little longer, and then those lovely, angelic Queen harmonies come out of nowhere, flying over Freddie as he summons forth one last chorus (Deacon plays that funky bass line again here; makes me laugh with delight every time I hear it) before the band slides back into the descending chord progression, and no one in the world would be faulted for thinking the song will just fade out at this point. But at the 3:34 mark the Red Special bursts forth anew, frantically building to another phrase that May rips up with pick squeals like the world is ending soon and there's this last bit of business to attend to, FAST... and then the song's opening riff gently brings everything back down to earth and the song ends neatly, evenly, after eight symmetric bars.
I know it's melodramatic, but the way this song ends, calmly after some riotous screeching, sometimes reminds me of Benjamin Compson: “Ben's voice roared and roared. Queenie moved again, her feet began to clop-clop steadily again, and at once Ben hushed... The broken flower drooped over Ben's fist and his eyes were empty and blue and serene again as cornice and facade flowed smoothly once more from left to right, post and tree, window and doorway and signboard each in its ordered place. ”
All four members of Queen shone on The Game, but none more so than Brian May. The guitarist had already delivered Now I'm Here in 1974, Long Away in 1976, It's Late in 1977, and Dead On Time in 1978, but The Game found him moving from strength to strength authoritatively, with his own songs and his bandmates'. The winning streak would continue later in the year, when he delivered the most essential components to their next project, the soundtrack for a movie which, like the band, would be damned with faint praise until a generation passed and it was finally embraced as the milestone it is.
