The band Brian May knew would be remembered forever: “Long after all of us have left”
There are very few rock and roll bands that have been able to register in everyone’s hearts and minds quite like Queen has.
Even if Brian May was only looking to make the best albums that the band could under the right circumstances, the fact is that most of their records held together because they were simply making hooks that no one else could have possibly touched in those days. They were making music that was meant to last forever, but May felt that some of the best bands that came after them were working with a similar template to what they had done.
Because, as much as May probably loves the royalty checks that come in from songs like ‘We Will Rock You’, there was an entire generation of kids who wanted to play those massive stadiums just like he did. And while many of them tried their best to make some of the most insane guitar flourishes whenever they strapped on their six-string, the fact is that the songs that sound good in arenas are the ones that require a lot more crowd participation.
‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was already one of the greatest tunes of all time, but the reason why it works so well in a stadium is seeing thousands upon thousands of people headbanging the minute that the guitar riff starts halfway through the song, and while May was still gigging with Mott the Hoople in the late 1970s, Joe Elliott was putting together the pieces for what would become Def Leppard in Sheffield.
The New Wave of British Heavy Metal had just begun a few years earlier, but Elliott never wanted to be known as a strictly heavy metal singer for the rest of his days – he had a lot more to offer the world, and when the band worked with Mutt Lange on Pyromania, the rest of the world got a better taste of what they could do. This was hard rock with a pop edge, and while that wasn’t the most hip combination in the world, that was more than enough to get on May’s good side.
There were already plenty of kids who were trying to do the same thing on the Sunset Strip later down the line, but May could see something special in how Leppard approached their songs. They were pulling from the greats of British pop that May had grown up with, and even if they had a fixation on people like Ian Hunter and David Bowie, May figured that they were going to be known more for the strength of their material more often than not.
The press could have a field day saying as much as they wanted to, but May knew that all of the people would be the deciding factor when inducting the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, saying, “They released 50 singles, many of which were hits. There was this feeling abroad in the press, particularly in the UK, that maybe made them uncool. But let me tell you, the fact that they wrote real songs that people can sing and carry in their heads is the reason that Def Leppard will be remembered in hearts and minds long after all of us have left the building.”
And if I’m being perfectly honest, Leppard is head and shoulders above any other band that they were put in conjunction with. As much as people loved to throw them into the same pile of hairspray that everyone latched onto when bands like Poison got their first hits, the reason why Leppard endured was because of the strength of their songs. No other band from Sunset should have had a hit past 1992, and yet ‘Promises’ still hits just as hard as anything they released in the 1980s.
So while the massive hairdos have faded and the band continue to play massive shows across the world, the reason why all of them work so well is because of how easy it is to sing ‘Photograph’ and ‘Armageddon It’ without really thinking about it. Their songs were designed to be some of the best tunes in the world, and even if they had to go through mountains upon mountains of bullshit to reach legendary status, those songs are enough to put them next to their heroes like Bowie.
