“You crank the shit out of it”: The 1974 album Chad Smith thinks Queen never topped
Does the phrase “danga‑danga, waaaaah” ring any bells? Perhaps it’s a loose reimagining of “a wella wella wella ooh” from Grease or the sound a drunk uncle makes when attempting the opening of ‘Immigrant Song’ at a wedding?
It is, in fact, how Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith describes the sound of a track on his favourite album of all time, and it’s a fittingly chaotic description from a man who is equal parts silly goose and musical tour de force.
Smith has spent half his career being (somewhat intentionally) comically mistaken for Will Ferrell, but behind the viral drum‑offs and late‑night skits, he also happens to be one of the most powerful drummers of his generation, and beneath that, there’s simply a boy who grew up as a wide‑eyed music fan, especially of Queen.
Queen made so many great albums in the 1970s, like Sheer Heart Attack, News of the World, Jazz, A Day at the Races and, most famously, A Night at the Opera, but for Smith, the best of them, the one that never left him, is Queen II. Released on March 8th, 1974, the album was once deemed the heaviest of all Queen albums, so it makes sense that it is the favourite of a drummer whose playing style was forged in the era of hair metal.
Smith’s hard‑hitting approach almost became a point of contention in the early Chili Peppers, who weren’t sure his power would gel with their wiry funk‑rock, but once he got in the practice room with Flea, the band knew instantly that he was the chosen one. As Anthony Kiedis recalled in Scar Tissue, “It was a big eruption of sound and energy, and all I could do was laugh hysterically, thinking how funny it was that the goofiest guy we’d ever seen blew all of us away right in our rehearsal studio.”
It makes sense that the same explosive energy that made Smith the Chili Peppers’ secret weapon is exactly what drew him to Queen II. Beginning with the instrumental ‘Procession’ and ending with the hit single ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’, the album famously split its vinyl into Side White and Side Black. The former was largely the domain of Brian May, save for Roger Taylor’s ‘The Loser in the End’, while the latter was Freddie Mercury at his most theatrical, from the hard‑rocking ‘Ogre Battle’ to the flamboyant baroque of ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master‑Stroke’.
In a 2009 interview with Classic Rock, Smith named Queen II his favourite album, full stop, calling it “a little more off the wall” for the band and discussed his listening process for the album, noting the rise and fall of the track progression: “I always turn it up, and that’s a good trick. You crank the shit out of it, so by the time ‘Father to Son’ kicks in, that’s the volume they want you to hear it at”.
He continued, “I don’t know if they toured so much with the first record, but the second one sounds more cohesive as a band. They had a sound! It says on the record, ‘No synthesisers’. That’s so cool. And I love ‘Ogre Battle’: danga‑danga, waaaaah!”
