I have a lot of people reading the articles I share about this band. Some are also posting these on their web-sites with a credit to my site. It all ends up with a lot of people visiting here to read about Queen. I really like to have a lot of visitors, so I strongly encourage more of it. And then in return I will promise to post more about this fantastic band.
Read on!
And then, from out of the primordial mists stepped
THE GUITARIST
… and then, out of the woodwork stepped Mick Houghton to check out what Brian May (for it is he) had to say on such matters as Queen, punks, and other topics of current import.
QUEEN ARE a much maligned group. There can’t be any criticism that hasn’t been hurled at them during their life-span. Certainly it’s to be expected that any enourmously successful group is going to be a target, but Queen have suffered critical brick-bats right from the word go. Yet Queen, to my mind, however irrelevant their music is, and that seems to be its worst fault, are to the Seventies what the Beach Boys and the Beatles were in the third quarter of the Sixties — a supreme pop band. It’s just that today pop is a dirty word except for attempts to recreate earlier ‘pop’ styles of the Fifties and Sixties. Whereas Queen are true Seventies pop.
Queen, for their sins, are creating pop which uses the year 1969 onwards for its starting point with all its incumbent trends of heavy metal, glam rock and technological overkill. And whatever has been said about them, there is nothing like their music from any other Seventies group. Theirs is a unique synthesis of Seventies and late Sixties rock transformed into pop. Sure they go over the top at times, but didn’t the Beach Boys? Why do we fall over backwards to defend albums like ‘Smiley Smile’ and ‘Friends’?
It’s only the passage of time that has called for a re-think. Well, Queen have no visible Sixties pedigree and it seems they’ll suffer for that for a long, long time. Till the eighties, no doubt. Queen, however, were around in the Sixties, it’s just that their formative days went unrecorded and that shouldn’t be held against them.
Still, they are well placed now. When they return from their current U.S. tour they’ll have confirmed their place in the superleague with Led Zep, the Who and the Stones. Not bad for a group that no-one had heard of four years ago. That’s their other sin. They are relative upstarts in the big league. Hence the theories that they have been working to some master plan, but really, their success is only down to careful and astute management at the right time in their career, and their own ability to deliver the goods.
They never ran before they could walk and that’s a watchword that any rock act should follow at whatever level. Queen have observed the way things are and slotted themselves in. Their conquering of America, for example, is just a step by step blueprint for other groups to follow.
Like I said, they’re well placed now. The next album is the killer, the real test, that if they come through will clinch their future. Even now they’re experimenting with video ideas that have developed through their work on brilliantly professional promotional films. Given their approach to record making they are the most ideally placed group to explore the possibilities of video in rock.
Queen in the studios are like four painters, each daubing their ideas on one canvas. If, on stage, Freddie Mercury dominates, in the studio it’s Brian May who is the master craftsman. He denies it. But that’s his modesty. May is one of the most affable and unassuming blokes in rock. Below he talks about himself and various aspects of the group. No great lines that jump out of the pages and a fair amount of what appears to be clichés. They’re not.
We began by talking about a little known R&B group popular around the Twickenham/Richmond area in 1964. The Others, they were called, all contemporary with May at Hampton Grammar School. The Others produced a classic of British R&B, their version of `Oh Yeah`. It predates the Shadows of Knight version by two years and I`d be most surprised if the Chicago High School punks hadn`t copped an earful of the Others at some point. Incidentally, `Oh Yeah` by the Others, will soon be available on a UA collection of British beat group and R&B gems, called `Beat Merchants`.
O.K., so over to you, Brian.
“It`s strange, because the people who were in the Others at school at that time were the kind of rebels who weren`t interested in the academic side and were disapproved of by the establishment. I admired them because they got on with what they wanted to do which was play music. I was very much the academic then, partly through inclination and partly through upbringing.
“So, while I played in various groups none of them ever got anywhere because we never played any real gigs or took it that seriously. I was envious of those people at the time for making the break but ironically, now they’ve all gone back to respectable jobs or studying, whereas I did it the other way round.
“The Others were really excellent though in 1964, easily in the Yardbirds’ class and playing locally very much the same dates. Let’s see, Paul Stewart was the singer, John Stanley, guitar, Nigel Baldwin, drums, Bob Freeman, rhythm and Ian McLintock was on bass. They later got a guitarist called Pete Hammerton, who was one of the best guitarists I’ve ever seen.
“They became the Sands and made a great single called ‘Mrs. Gillespie’s Refridgerator’, written by one of the Bee Gees. They signed with Stigwood but then got completely messed around, just as the Others had been before.
“Their experience, despite being messed around and mismanaged made me want to commit myself more because it was a world I wanted and knew I had to deny myself at the time. It was two years or so, before Smile (later with Roger Taylor as the genesis of Queen) my first serious group got going.
BY THEN I was equally involved academically with my degree and felt it was a waste of time not to see it through having come that far. I’m in the same position with Queen now where I’ve got to pursue it to its conclusion, if there is a conclusion, and take it to its highest point.
“It’s hard to see what that could be. There’s the concrete terms like measuring it by success but those aren’t the reference points you choose. When I feel that we aren’t progressing or developing and then I’ll have to think seriously about what I’m doing.
“Things usually come up to compensate for what you can lose with success. It’s like my progress as a guitar player has slowed down considerably in terms of actual technique but where I’m advancing is in ideas and general feel for what I’m doing. Also there’s the sense of audience which is something you never bargain for at the beginning when your playing is motivated by a purely internal drive.
“Once you discover people are actually listening it becomes a completely different world from that point on. Playing to people becomes worthwhile in its own sense. If my music still gives people pleasure that would become a major factor in my continuing, and in the way that writing and studio recording has become so important that is obviously already very pertinent to me.”
Earlier I compared Queen to the Beatles. Their albums in the build up they receive and (pre-Christmas) timing of release are anticipated the way Beatles albums were in their pop heyday. Queen albums, again like Beatles’ albums, also seem to be structured very similarly, with May and Mercury hogging the writing and Roger Taylor and John Deacon given one cursory song each. Unless May is being overly modest then Queen albums, it appears, are very much co-operative efforts.
“I suppose it seems like there’s a rule that Freddie and I divide up most of the albums in that way but it’s not. John is a very slow writer, Roger has more material than the group has done but it’s just a question of choosing material to give each album the right balance. There are no hard and fast rules.
“In terms of contribution the creative balance has shifted to become much more of a group thing. With the enormous time we spend in the studio it’s inevitable, and very negative, that much of the time we’re not all there together, yet the contributions have become more complementary. This is a very crucial time for the group. It’s the point where it would be easy for us to go off and do separate things but our strength, and that of any group, is that you realise how to use each other in that complementary fashion.
“That’s the most important thing we have. It works not only on the music side where we work on all the arrangements, but in the writing, and in the very important psychological side where you’re holding each other together on tour. We’ve come to know each others strengths and weakness and can play off one another.
“It’s a very delicate balance and I’m very aware that it could very easily be upset by something even from outside which threatens the band internally. That’s why it worries me if the media concentrate on me or Freddie.
“John and Roger are crucial to everything we do, they’re not only a rhythm section. Nothing is farther from the truth. It’s like John is the quiet one. All the press things about John say that, and it’s true in many areas, but in others he’s very much the leader.
“I visualise that the balance will change further internally as time goes by — adjust to individual changes. I expect that comes across to our hard core followers but the danger is with our mass audience, who only buy our singles, and who don’t understand the group. I’d like everyone to be aware of the group as a whole not just me and Freddie.
“We were all late developers really. Late starters and now that John and Roger are fully involved they’ll change, and have changed. It’s interesting that we have arrived where we are so late. Like I was contemporary with the people in the Others. And someone like Jimmy Page who I’ve always admired right through the Sixties. He’s only a few years older than I am.
“Most people make the decision to take music seriously a lot earlier whereas we were not let loose on the public till a lot later. But we were around, and were playing pretty interesting material. I could play you tapes of Smile which have the same general structures to what we’re doing today.
“I think if people heard these things it would answer a lot of the criticism that we were manipulated or pushed in certain directions. There was just no way to take what we were doing any further at the time.
The world of music seemed unapproachable to us because it was hard to get an in without our fully committing ourselves. The odd gig just wasn’t enough.
“I’ll say one thing for punk rock at the moment. It is creating a way for groups which I think is maybe very healthy. I think maybe people are just being pushed into the limelight too soon, and there is a tendency to get swept along by image to the exclusion of musical direction, but if it’s left I’m sure something valid will come out of it all.
“We never had that trouble because we were just totally ignored for so long, then completely slagged off and slated by everyone. In a way that was a good start for us. There’s no kind of abuse that wasn’t thrown at us. It was only around the time of “Heart Attack’ that it began to change.
I’M always affected by criticism. I think most artists are even if they say they are not. It doesn’t matter how far you get, if someone says you’re a load of shit it hurts.
“But that was just press response because for the rest it was always building up very steadily. ‘Queen I’ sold really well over a longish period and coincided with our breaking ground concertwise. So we really had matured as a group and had our audience before the press caught on to us. I think that actually gave us a better start because we were more prepared.
“It’s hard to think what could have given us the same sort of buzz as that initial recognition by people who would come and see us regularly around the time of our first album. The Hyde Park gig was a real high. The occasion rather than the gig. You know, the tradition of Hyde Park. I went to see the first one with the Floyd and Jethro Tull — great atmosphere and the feeling that it was free.
“We felt it would be nice to revive that but it was fraught with heartache ’cause there were so many problems. Trying to get the place was hard enough, let alone in the evening. We had to make compromises and in the end because the schedule overran by half an hour, which was remarkable considering the hassles, that loss meant we couldn`t do the encore. “It sounds trivial I know but that`s the part of the show where we feel most at home. We`ve got the approval and can really enjoy ourselves, and to be denied that, having worked up to such a pitch was very hard to take. The encore isn`t just a set piece, it`s a bonus thing for us as well as the audience. It doesn`t matter how tense the gig has been, the sense of release is always welcome. I was very depressed after Hyde Park.”
Talking with Brian May there are times when it really seems as if he’d be, if not happier, then far more at home if he’d stuck to astronomy and an academic life. So how does he feel about being in a profession which seems to thrive on competition and its own category of oneupmanship?
“I hate to think of music as a competition, but that element is there and now we’ve reached a stage where there are a few groups who can draw big audiences so I suppose it is competitive in that sense. Whenever I meet a group on the road though, I just don’t feel that.
“Competition can be good in some ways. As you know we’re taking Thin Lizzy as a support in America and Thin Lizzy as a support band is a real challenge. They’ll want to blow us off stage and that can be a very healthy thing. You feed off the energy of others and I know that if they go down a real storm then we’re gonna go on feeling that much higher. It makes for good concerts. We’ve had it the other way round. I think we gave Mott The Hoople a hard time on our first tours of Britain and America.
“But really, this ‘biggest is best’ kind of rivalry I think is largely a media thing. Although, it does mean more ’cause it’s easy to get a buzz out of success. You need new things to get excited about so we’re doing Madison Square this tour. It’s a thrill and a challenge, but after that I suppose we’ll want to do something bigger and better.
“We’re aware of the danger though because you can lose something along the way if you start doing really big places where you can’t project. To say something for us I think we’ve done it gradually. We haven’t tried to run before we could walk.
The last tour we could have done bigger venues but we chose to play smaller places for a few nights and did only the odd massive venue to get the feel of it. Now we feel we can really cope. Everything will be that much better, we’ll be that much better — larger than life.”
Doing it gradually — just in four years. Now that is something. A true Seventies group. Take it or leave it.
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