LP REVIEW: Rock theater with a metal edge, with Queen, Sheer Hart Attack (1974)
Elektra, P-8516E, JAPAN ISSUE, 1974
ARTIST
Did you see the 2018 movie Bohemian Rhapsody? I thought the actors did a marvelous job impersonating Queen, especially the guy who played Brian May. The movie captured their journey to global stardom very well I thought.
There are so many documentaries on youtube so if you want to refresh your memory just do a search and pick your own, or try this one as it has relevant insights into how our review album came to pass:
LABEL
Elektra was founded in December 1950 by Jac Holzman. Elektra initially recorded folk music, ethnic music, jazz and gospel. By the late ’60s, Elektra managed to sign-up artists like The Doors and Bread, but in the end, it was too difficult for an independent label to survive, and by the early ’70s they were sold to Warner for 10M USD. I don’t think I have seen a label with so many logo changes. Some of them are quite cool.
Elektra was certainly influential. Holzman helped Warner adopt the compact disc, as well as holding a position on the board at the early video game company Atari. At 81, Holzman created an iPad application dedicated to The Doors. It featured links to music, insider stories about the band, a graphic novel, essays, and video contributions. The app was launched on iTunes on Monday 6th May 2013.
In Europe, they used a more boring EMI label.
KNOWLEDGE NUGGETS
/1\ “Killer Queen” was the first international hit single.
/2\ UK music magazine Q dubbed the album “thrash metal before the term was invented”.
/3\ Metallica covered “Stone Cold Crazy” as the B-side of their single “Enter Sandman”. It won a Grammy Award.
/4\ ‘The finest use of echoplex ever committed to vinyl’ someone wrote. Listen for it on Brian May’s guitar on the track Brighton Rock. Echoplex is a tape delay effect, achieved with a machine like the one below.
MUSIC
Many fans regard this album as a transitional record that would signal the future sound of Queen, the album where Queen began to create the music they became so famous for.
It is a hard-charging album, quite an immersive experience what with the short spacing between the tracks, and you can indeed hear how the music was going to evolve from here: the harmonies, the transitions from bombast to slow piano, and that recognizable Brian May guitar sound, the bass lines. Nobody sounded like these guys.
This was 1974 and I am sure they influenced a bunch of heavy metal bands as well. You can hear some of that in the music by Metallica, Twisted Sister, Black Sabbath, Guns & Roses, and Aerosmith, just to name a few. I am talking about vocal inflections, chord changes, hooks, just small things that make you think ‘hey, I think I’ve heard that somewhere else as well’. You think Eddie Van Halen invented that guitar tapping technique, well, it may very well have been Brian May who did that first. The metal link is the standout aspect of this album.
I guess what never made me a through-and-through Queen fan was also part of their signature: that theatrical style, especially in the choruses and things like the cacophony of the intros to tracks A1 and B1. You can see how they got from here to Bohemian Rhapsody on their next album. You can also hear how The Who‘s Tommy influenced Queen. At times it’s like listening to a musical and you can hear why the theater or the stadium was their prime venue and why their star shone brightest in those settings.
In that documentary I linked, someone said ‘you forget what amazing music they created’ and I think that’s true. You tend to only remember the big stadium hits and they are grand, but it is good to listen to the earlier albums and the deeper cuts and realize what an extraordinary band this was.
YOUTUBE LINK
Listen to the album here:
RAW MUSIC STORE
This Japan issue of Queen’s third and important album is available on the RAW MUSIC website for 200AED.
PERSONNEL
- John Deacon; Bass, Double Bass, Electric & Acoustic Guitar
- Brian May; Guitar, Orchestration, Piano, Vocals
- Freddie Mercury; Vocals, Piano
- Roger Meddows-Taylor; Drums, Percussion, Screams, Vocals
TRACKS
Who wrote what on this album: May (tracks: A1, A6, B2, B3, B6), Mercury (tracks: A2, A4, A5, B1, B2, B5, B7), Deacon (tracks: B2, B4), Taylor (tracks: A3, B2)
- A1 Brighton Rock 5:10
- A2 Killer Queen 3:00
- A3 Tenement Funster 2:48
- A4 Flick Of The Wrist 3:18
- A5 Lily Of The Valley 1:41
- A6 Now I’m Here 4:15
- B1 In The Lap Of The Gods 3:23
- B2 Stone Cold Crazy 2:14
- B3 Dear Friends 1:07
- B4 Misfire 1:58
- B5 Bring Back That Leroy Brown 2:17
- B6 She Makes Me (Stormtrooper In Stilettoes) 4:10
- B7 In The Lap Of The Gods… Revisited 3:23