Queen

September 24, 2010 | By admin In World of Queen | Comments(0)

It was 1969 and guitarist Brian May a student at London’s Imperial College, and friend Tim Staffell decided to form a group. Tim played the bass guitar, and so the two decided they needed a drummer. So May placed an advertisement on the college notice board for a “Mitch Mitchell/Ginger Baker type” drummer. It was Roger Taylor, a young dental student at the college who auditioned and got the job. They called the group Smile. They became quite good together, and served as a support act for bands such as Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Yes and the original Genesis.

Smile signed a contract with Mercury Records in 1969, and had their first session in Trident Studios that same year. Tim Staffell was attending Ealing Art College. He became friends with Farrokh Bulsara, later known as Freddie Mercury, and introduced him to the band. Bulsara soon became a huge fan. Staffell left the group in 1970 to join another band, and the remaining Smile members, encouraged by Bulsara, changed their name to “Queen” . The band had a number of bass players during this period, as they tried to replace Staffell. It was not until February 1971 that they settled on John Deacon and began to rehearse for the first album as Queen.

It wasn’t until 1973 they released their first album. It was a self-titled project, and was influenced by the heavy metal and progressive rock of the day. The album although received well by critics; Gordon Fletcher of Rolling Stone said “their debut album is superb,” and Chicago’s Daily Herald called it an “above average debut”, drew little mainstream attention and the lead single “Keep Yourself Alive,” written by Brian May, sold quite poorly. Greg Prato of Allmusic called it “one of the most underrated hard rock debuts of all time.”

1.) Keep Yourself Alive (Music and Lyrics)

Keep Yourself Alive (Video)

2.) Doing All Right

3.) Great King Rat

4.) My Fairy King

5.) Liar

6.) The Night Comes Down

7.) Modern Times Rock n Roll

8.) Son and Daughter

9.) Jesus

10.) Seven Seas of Rhye

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Jazz

September 24, 2010 | By admin In World of Queen | Comments(0)

One of my personal favorites, though it seems some would not agree… ( DAVE MARSH (Posted: Feb 8, 1979) ). Jazz was the band’s seventh studio album, and shows Freddie’s diversity by using a number of different styles of music. They include disco-funk (“Fun It”), vaudeville (“Dreamer’s Ball”), hard rock (“Dead On Time”) and a country-flavored stomp (“Fat Bottomed Girls” (one of my all time fav’s!)). To promote “Fat Bottomed Girls”, the band had intended to sell the album with a poster depicting the all-female nude bicycle race, but in the USA it was only available through mail order. A small version of the poster comes with the Crown Jewels box set. Two side notes… first album recorded outside of the UK… and Roy Thomas Baker produced… his last for the group.

Jazz Jazz

1.) Mustapha

2.) Fat Bottomed Girls(Music and Lyrics)
Fat Bottomed Girls(Video)

3.) Jealousy

4.) Bicycle Race
Bicycle Race(Video)

5.) If You Can’t Beat Them

6.) Let Me Entertain You

7.) Dead On Time

8.) In Only Seven Days

9.) Dreamers Ball

10.) Fun It

11.) Leaving Home Ain’t Easy

12.) Don’t Stop Me Now

13.) More Of That Jazz

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A Day At The Races

September 24, 2010 | By admin In World of Queen | Comments(0)

Breakthrough era (1974–1979)

Because of medical complications, Brian May was absent when the band started work on their next album, Sheer Heart Attack, released in 1974. The album went all the way to number two in the UK,and sold well throughout Europe, it went gold in the United States. It was the band’s first real taste of commercial success. Sheer Heart Attack introduced new sound much more “radio friendly” then their first two albums and this would be refined on their next album A Night at the Opera.

The single “Killer Queen” reached number two on the British charts, and became their first U.S. hit. It reached number twelve on the Billboard Top 40 The album’s second single, “Now I’m Here”, a more traditional hard rock composition, was a number eleven hit in Britain.

In 1975, the band left for a world tour. They created costumes and had banks of lights and special effects. They toured the US, headlining for the first time, and played in Canada for the first time in April of 1975. After the band’s manager Jim Beach negotiated them out of their Trident contract, they contacted Elton John’s manager, John Reid, who accepted the position. In April 1975 the band toured Japan for the first time.

Later that year the band recorded and released A Night at the Opera. At the time, it was the most expensive album ever produced. Like Killer Queen, the album featured diverse musical styles and also some experimentation with stereo sound. In “The Prophet’s Song”, an eight-minute epic, the middle section is a canon, with simple phrases layered to create a full-choral sound. The album was very successful in Britain, and went triple platinum in the United States.

The album also featured the hit single “Bohemian Rhapsody”, which was number one in the United Kingdom for nine weeks, and is Britain’s third-best-selling single of all time. It reached reached number nine in the United States (a 1992 re-release reached number two!). The second single from the album, “You’re My Best Friend”, peaked at sixteen in the United States and went on to become a worldwide Top Ten hit.

By 1976, Queen were back in the studio, where they recorded A Day at the Races. Its cover was similar to that of A Night at the Opera, a variation on the same Queen Crest. Musically, the album was a hit with both fans and critics. It reached number one on the British charts. The major hit on the album, “Somebody to Love”, was a gospel-inspired song in which Mercury, May, and Taylor multi-tracked their voices to make a 100-voice gospel choir. The song went to number two in the United Kingdom, and number thirteen on the U.S. singles chart
Also in 1976, Queen played one of their most famous gigs, a 1976 free concert in Hyde Park, London. It set an attendance record, with 150,000 people confirmed in the audience.

A Day at the Races A Day at the Races


1.) Tie Your Mother Down

2.) You Take My Breath Away

3.) Long Away

4.) The Millionaire Waltz

5.) You and I

6.) Somebody To Love

8.) White Man

9.) Good Old-Fashioned Loverboy

10.) Drowse

11.) Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together)

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