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Authors: Georg Purvis
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March Of The Black Queen’ ), Queen and Roy Thomas Baker ( all other tracks )
“Considering the abuse we’ve had lately, I’m surprised that the new LP has done so well. I suppose it’s basically because people like the band.” These words were spoken by Roger Taylor to Sounds mere weeks after Queen’s second album was released. Still considered something of a cult band – thanks in no small part to the virtual failure of their debut album and single – Queen had toured Britain relentlessly in the latter part of 1973, playing wherever they could and hoping to gain as much exposure as possible. They were even invited to perform on a few BBC radio specials: their September gig at the Golders Green Hippodrome was broadcast on In Concert , and in December they played again on John Peel’s Sounds Of The Seventies , their third appearance on that show in twelve months.
All this publicity should have been beneficial to Queen but they were still receiving negative press, lambasting them for being too excessive and self-indulgent. Listening to their first album, it’s difficult to agree with that criticism, but it certainly seems more justified after a run-through of their second release, unimaginatively titled Queen II . “To me, Queen II was the sort of emotional music we’d always wanted to be able to play,” Brian said, “although we couldn’t play most of it on stage because it was too complicated. We were trying to push studio techniques to a new limit for rock groups – it was fulfilling all our dreams because we didn’t have much opportunity for that on the first album. It went through our minds to call the album Over the Top .”
However, it is this album that has remained, along with A Day At The Races , a fan favourite to this day. It shows Queen at their finest, producing music that was deliberately not tailored for the hit parade. Queen II is a superior collection of complex music awash in guitarlayers, vocal overdubs and ambiguous lyrics. Some have even argued that it’s the band’s own version of a concept album, like The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band of 1967, which every band since had attempted to imitate. Some were successful – Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon , The Who’s Tommy , Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway and even Yes’ fascinating Relayer . But most were just extravagant, overproduced affairs straining towards a theme that was too muddled or so overwritten that the result seemed contrived and pompous. This was not the case with Queen II ; not a concept album but a collection of songs with a loose theme running throughout. If A Night At The Opera was Queen’s Sgt. Pepper , then this album was their Revolver .
Sessions for the album took place almost as soon as sessions for the debut had wrapped up. In August 1973, the band went back to Trident Studios with Roy Thomas Baker and Mike Stone, and demanded of the Sheffields the necessary studio time to complete this album instead of recording during down-time. The result of that meeting enabled Queen to complete the album within the month; the band had several ideas they wanted to explore, and were able to flesh them out fully with the additional time granted. Interestingly, several songs that had already appeared in concert but not on the debut album were recorded: ‘Father To Son’, ‘Ogre Battle’, ‘White Queen (As It Began)’ and ‘Procession’ had all been premiered as early as 1972, with some of the songs dating back to at least 1969. A notable omission from the sessions was ‘Stone Cold Crazy’, which had been in the set list for years; that song would be revisited for their next album, though in a more accelerated form. Several outtakes from the August sessions indicate that portions of ‘The Prophets Song’ were also rehearsed; that song would finally appear on A Night At The Opera over two years later.
Clearly, the band were in a creative period: Brian and Freddie were both
“Considering the abuse we’ve had lately, I’m surprised that the new LP has done so well. I suppose it’s basically because people like the band.” These words were spoken by Roger Taylor to Sounds mere weeks after Queen’s second album was released. Still considered something of a cult band – thanks in no small part to the virtual failure of their debut album and single – Queen had toured Britain relentlessly in the latter part of 1973, playing wherever they could and hoping to gain as much exposure as possible. They were even invited to perform on a few BBC radio specials: their September gig at the Golders Green Hippodrome was broadcast on In Concert , and in December they played again on John Peel’s Sounds Of The Seventies , their third appearance on that show in twelve months.
All this publicity should have been beneficial to Queen but they were still receiving negative press, lambasting them for being too excessive and self-indulgent. Listening to their first album, it’s difficult to agree with that criticism, but it certainly seems more justified after a run-through of their second release, unimaginatively titled Queen II . “To me, Queen II was the sort of emotional music we’d always wanted to be able to play,” Brian said, “although we couldn’t play most of it on stage because it was too complicated. We were trying to push studio techniques to a new limit for rock groups – it was fulfilling all our dreams because we didn’t have much opportunity for that on the first album. It went through our minds to call the album Over the Top .”
However, it is this album that has remained, along with A Day At The Races , a fan favourite to this day. It shows Queen at their finest, producing music that was deliberately not tailored for the hit parade. Queen II is a superior collection of complex music awash in guitarlayers, vocal overdubs and ambiguous lyrics. Some have even argued that it’s the band’s own version of a concept album, like The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band of 1967, which every band since had attempted to imitate. Some were successful – Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon , The Who’s Tommy , Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway and even Yes’ fascinating Relayer . But most were just extravagant, overproduced affairs straining towards a theme that was too muddled or so overwritten that the result seemed contrived and pompous. This was not the case with Queen II ; not a concept album but a collection of songs with a loose theme running throughout. If A Night At The Opera was Queen’s Sgt. Pepper , then this album was their Revolver .
Sessions for the album took place almost as soon as sessions for the debut had wrapped up. In August 1973, the band went back to Trident Studios with Roy Thomas Baker and Mike Stone, and demanded of the Sheffields the necessary studio time to complete this album instead of recording during down-time. The result of that meeting enabled Queen to complete the album within the month; the band had several ideas they wanted to explore, and were able to flesh them out fully with the additional time granted. Interestingly, several songs that had already appeared in concert but not on the debut album were recorded: ‘Father To Son’, ‘Ogre Battle’, ‘White Queen (As It Began)’ and ‘Procession’ had all been premiered as early as 1972, with some of the songs dating back to at least 1969. A notable omission from the sessions was ‘Stone Cold Crazy’, which had been in the set list for years; that song would be revisited for their next album, though in a more accelerated form. Several outtakes from the August sessions indicate that portions of ‘The Prophets Song’ were also rehearsed; that song would finally appear on A Night At The Opera over two years later.
Clearly, the band were in a creative period: Brian and Freddie were both
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