The 1974 Queen album that became their first “giant step”
Every single album Queen ever made was about trying to make something different.
They never felt comfortable doing the same thing twice when they walked into the studio, and even if they had a singular Queen sound, no one could have managed to pull off the kind of genre switches that they did whenever they performed. They were willing to bring any style of music into the arena, but Brian May could tell when some albums kicked things up a notch from what they were used to playing.
Being one of the biggest stadium acts of all time was never going to suffice for them, and they figured that it was important to make music that gave them a shot of adrenaline whenever they heard. They were still out there to create massive hits, but no one would have imagined getting a song like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ from the same band by the time they reached the 1980s.
But even with all of their massive radio hits, it’s easy to forget how heavy Queen could sound on some of their records. ‘Stone Cold Crazy’ was the closest precursor to speed metal up until that point, and even though ‘We Will Rock You’ has become more of a football chant than a song these days, the guitar solo at the end of the track is still one of the best moments of the tune when May’s guitar starts feeding back.
After all, May was the one bringing something heavier to the mix whenever he made tunes like ‘Tie Your Mother Down’, but after spending time hashing things out on their debut, Queen II was the first time that they felt totally in control of their own music. Their first record had been full of songs that they had been working on for years, but if ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’ on that album was a teaser of what was to come, no one would have expected their sophomore record to be this heavy.
The band didn’t necessarily pull a bait-and-switch by any stretch, but their second record is the closest thing to a prog album that they ever made. The whole album is broken up into a White and Black side, and while there are still some Queen favourites on here, tunes like ‘The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke’ and ‘Ogre Battle’ was proof that the band could have held their own next to bands like Led Zeppelin if they wanted to.
The album might not have been given the same amount of love that it deserved, but May felt that what they achieved on Queen II helped them grow up as players, saying, “I’ve always been a big advocate of that album because I think it was a giant step. We’re going from a band that is hardly allowed in the studio – except a few hours in dead time – to a band that actually has studio time. We can indulge ourselves. We can experiment, and we make a giant leap with painting pictures on the canvas of the tapes on Queen II. I love that album.”
And were it not for them painting those sonic landscapes, they probably wouldn’t have had the discipline to make something like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ later. The master tape on their masterpiece was almost see-through by the time they were finished, but that was only because they were taking the kinds of risks that they were when they realised what the studio was capable of.
They were already being inspired by what bands like The Beatles had done whenever they walked into the studio, but even if Queen II didn’t sell as well as they had hoped, there would have been no forward momentum for them without it. They were ready to become true rock and roll heavyweights, and this was the moment where they went from a garage band that could have one too many overdubs to a rock and roll juggernaut that still had a ton of overdubs.
