by Georg Purvis
The only links to their past was on ‘We Are The Champions’, ‘Spread Your Wings’ and especially ‘It’s Late’, a song so raucous that it should have put the punks to shame. It was impossible to end the album in any other fashion than with the rollicking drum burst concluding that song, but the band chose to close with ‘My Melancholy Blues’, Freddie’s sublime piano-based composition featuring no guitar whatsoever.
One complaint about the album may be the lack of coherence among the songs. Only five feature all four band members collectively: ‘We Are The Champions’, ‘Spread Your Wings’, ‘Get Down, Make Love’, ‘Who Needs You’ and ‘It’s Late’. Even though Freddie does harmonize with Brian on ‘All Dead, All Dead’, it’s almost entirely the guitarist’s show since the vocalist makes no other significant contribution. ‘We Will Rock You’ features footstomps and handclaps, but the only true instrumentals come from Brian’s guitar, and ‘Sleeping On The Sidewalk’ is performed by a power trio comprising Brian, Roger and John. Indeed, the only band member who’s consistently on every recording is Roger, and it’s this jostling of instruments and personnel that gives News Of The World a disjointed feel, and because the band weren’t recording with a producer (only Mike Stone, who assisted the band with their recording) and were working against a tight deadline, the result is rushed, with many of the tracks sounding like aggrandized demos.
In hindsight, with an additional month and better production, this album could have been as polished as the previous five, but this was the opposite desired effect: the band were deliberately pushing themselves out of their comfort zone to redefine their sound. More importantly, it worked: upon its release in October 1977, the album, boosted by ‘We Are The Champions’, raced to No. 4 in the UK. If this was a disappointment after the chart-topping A Night At The Opera and A Day At The Races, there was consolation from the USA, where it hit No. 3, making it the band’s only studio album that did better in America than in Britain. No doubt the band’s two American tours in 1977 contributed to that status.
“In many ways this is the most intriguing Queen album since their finest, Sheer Heart Attack,” commented the Daily Mirror. “Whether all the obvious tension within the band will spur them on to greater things, or simply pull them apart, remains to be seen.” Record Mirror, however, was indifferent: “This is Queen stripped down to almost basics. The track ‘Sheer Heart Attack’ is a Queen attempt at new wave, a classy version of the Sex Pistols with some very heavy lyrics. It’s not a bad album by any means, but could have been better.” And Sounds nitpicked over the little things: “Aw, Queen, why did you do this to us? Why doesn’t this album say ‘no synthesizers’? Side one is foreboding, side two much better after a disillusioning beginning with ‘Get Down, Make Love’ ... but how nice of [them] to finish so exquisitely with ‘My Melancholy Blues’. Sweet fantasy.”
The Valley News opined that their first four albums were their strongest, and picked out high points of the new album, but wasn’t impressed overall: “Although News is a rockier disc than Races, it appears that Queen wants to focus on accessible styles that have wide appeal. As a result, the two latest albums are tamer, less exciting works than the band’s first four LPs. But Queen still pulls off top honors with its colorful vocals (Mercury reigns supreme here), rich harmonies, May’s guitar virtuosity and the band’s sharp production work.” Meanwhile, The Washington Post boiled the album’s sound down to pure pop: “Queen’s sixth album, News Of The World, reveals another facet of the group’s musical identity. This album represents a departure from the usual Queen flamboyance and dynamism of musical effects which sustained, for example, A Night At The Opera or Sheer Heart Attack. Less flamboyance, less implicit drama, less operatic overtones characterize this album; more understatement (with one monumental exception – ‘Get Down, Make Love’), more experimentation in the range between hard and soft rock, more intelligence and moderation of conception ... Because of Queen’s liberal absorption of musical styles and themes over the last ten years, it is difficult to pinpoint what individualizes their personal style. But if we can isolate their most distinguishing characteristic, it is a heavy metal bass line – heavy on guitar and drums – which both support and play against a multi-voiced melodic line. A case in point is the first cut of the album, ‘We Will Rock You’, which has a marvelously primitive, ritualistic, tribal quality to it ... ‘It’s Late’, a plaintive rock song in typical Queen style about a failed relationship, is less successful than ‘We Will Rock You’, though it is still likable. It is flawed by the instrumental break and high-powered instrumental ending, both of which go off on a drum and guitar bonanza, interrupting the otherwise neat structure and undercutting the melodic poignancy. And this seems to be a major problem with Queen: they don’t know when to end a song, they frequently succumb to excess in effects, and they tend to supply their songs with instrumental breaks that have little to do with anything. Still, ‘We Will Rock You’ is a song that both reflects and helps the criteria applicable to the best in rock music: energy, communal reveling, insistent percussion, celebrative rebelliousness against any norm. And, fortunately, there are additional rays of intelligence, talent and craft throughout the album.”
Rolling Stone offered a backhanded compliment, noting that the album “makes Queen the first major band to attempt a demonstration of superiority over punk rock by marching onto its stylistic turf. It works, too, because the power trio behind vocalist Freddie Mercury is truly primitive. Once you’ve seen Queen on stage, away from the cut and paste of the studio, it’s painfully clear that ‘Sheer Heart Attack’ is less a matter of slumming than of warfare among equals in incompetent musicianship.” The review continued, calling the material “chilling stuff, but the coldness seems to befit Queen ... Late sons of the Empire though they may be, Queen has nothing to fear, or to do. In their moneyed superiority, they are indeed champions.”
It’s difficult to argue with that assertion. From this point on, Queen were no longer innocent progressive rockers playing campy songs about call girls, faeries and ogres. They were now world-class champions with one eye focused on the charts and the other on world domination, and they couldn’t have been happier.
JAZZ
EMI EMA 788, November 1978 [2]
Elektra 6E-166, November 1978 [6]
EMI CDP 7 46210 2, December 1986
Hollywood HR-61062-2, June 1991
Parlophone CDPCSD 133, 1994
‘Mustapha’ (3’01), ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ (4’17), ‘Jealousy’ (3’13), ‘Bicycle Race’ (3’03), ‘If You Can’t Beat Them’ (4’15), ‘Let Me Entertain You’ (3’02), ‘Dead On Time’ (3’23), ‘In Only Seven Days’ (2’29), ‘Dreamers Ball’ (3’30), ‘Fun It’ (3’29), ‘Leaving Home Ain’t Easy’ (3’15), ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ (3’29), ‘More Of That Jazz’ (4’15)
Bonus tracks on 1991 Hollywood Records reissue: ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ (remix by Brian Malouf) (4’27), ‘Bicycle Race’ (remix by Junior Vasquez) (4’57)
Bonus tracks on 2011 Universal Records deluxe reissue: ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ (single version) (3’23), ‘Bicycle Race’ (instrumental mix) (3’09), ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ (long-lost guitar mix) (3’34), ‘Let Me Entertain You’ (live version, Montreal Forum, November 1981) (2’48), ‘Dreamers Ball’ (early acoustic take, August 1978) (3’40)
Bonus videos, 2011 iTunes-only editions: ‘Bicycle Race’ (promotional video), ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ (live version, Milton Keynes Bowl, June 1982), ‘Let Me Entertain You’ (live version, Japan, April 1979)
Musicians: John Deacon (bass guitar, acoustic guitar on ‘In Only Seven Days’), Brian May (guitars, vocals, lead vocals on ‘Leaving Home Ain’t Easy’), Freddie Mercury (vocals, piano, co-lead vocals on ‘Fun It’), Roger Taylor (drums, percussion, vocals, electronic drums on ‘Fun It’, lead vocals, rhythm and bass guitars on ‘Fun It’ and ‘More Of That Jazz’)
Recorded: July–October 1978 at Superbear Studios, Nice, and Mountain Studios, Montreux
Produce
rs: Queen and Roy Thomas Baker
Queen were due for a mis-step; they already had six studio albums under their collective belts, and they had been working non-stop since 1970. Nobody expected them to falter so soon, but Jazz demonstrates just that: it was as if the endless concentric circles that make up the cover sleeve was a visual representative of the band, going round and round in circles, repeating endless style after endless style, and delivering a Queen-like album whenever it was expected of them. The only visual that would have been more telling would have been if the band took a plate of food, threw it at a wall, and took a picture of whatever stuck – but Yes beat them to that punch with their equally directionless and confused Tormato, released the same year.
It should have been the perfect formula for success: Roy Thomas Baker, after amicably parting ways with Queen in 1975, was asked to produce their follow-up to News Of The World. Instead of recording in England, though, the band became tax exiles and recorded their album inexpensively in France and Switzerland. The surroundings were enough to inspire new musical outlets: Freddie wrote ‘Bicycle Race’ after watching it in his Swiss hotel room, and Brian’s ‘Dreamers Ball’ was inspired by the legion of jazz musicians performing at the Montreux Jazz Festival.
So what went wrong? To begin with, there are thirteen tracks on the album, the most ever presented on a Queen album since Sheer Heart Attack. How songs like ‘Mustapha’, ‘Fun It’ and ‘More Of That Jazz’ ever made the cut invites an analysis of Queen’s creative health; a bit of prudent trimming, or perhaps a few rewrites, would have made the album more palatable. Even worse is the line-up of songs, imposing a disjointed feel on the album. ‘Bicycle Race’ and ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ should have been placed side-by-side, while ‘Let Me Entertain You’ should have opened the album instead of being placed at the close of the first side. The album bounces back and forth between different styles and, with little regard to a prescribed sequence, results in an uneven and awkward listen.
The production, too, is uncharacteristic. Gone are the natural drum sounds the band had so meticulously perfected; instead, Roger’s kit is tinny and devoid of depth. Fresh from production duties with new wave rockers The Cars, Baker introduced those new techniques into Queen’s sessions, while Queen were still rooted in their own methods. Even Brian, the eternal diplomat, wasn’t convinced, telling Guitar in 1991, “Jazz suffered from having too much level in too short a space ... Some of our backing tracks on the Jazz album had become quite perfect but had lost the initial enthusiasm – our method was to do it and do it until it was right, because we had been told you couldn’t drop in to a multi-track machine.”
The album isn’t entirely substandard, though, with such understated ballads as Freddie’s ‘Jealousy’ and John’s ‘In Only Seven Days’, easily one of the bassist’s most splendid ballads ever. Freddie, too, was writing quality material and, except for the unremarkable ‘Mustapha’, his songs were on the mark. Brian, too, was on a roll, with each of his four songs firmly entrenching Queen as both heavy rockers (‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ and ‘Dead On Time’) and poignant balladeers (‘Leaving Home Ain’t Easy’ and ‘Dreamers Ball’). Roger’s songs were the least successful: ‘Fun It’ is a disturbing slice of cool funk that should never have been written, and the chunky ‘More Of That Jazz’ is nothing more than filler, certainly not capable of ending the album on an upstroke (‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ should have claimed that honour). Roger agreed in a 2008 Mojo interview: “My songs were very patchy. Jazz never thrilled me. It was an ambitious album that didn’t live up to its ambition. The double A-side single was good, but I was never happy with the sound ... it never thrilled me.”
While the diametrically different writing styles had often contributed to what made up a solid Queen album, the band were repeating a formula here, hoping to make an album as diverse as Sheer Heart Attack or A Night At The Opera, but with most of the good ideas getting lost in the process. Brian hinted at the mental health of the band at that time in a 1989 interview with the Chicago Tribune: “Around the Jazz album we were all getting into our own things and nobody much liked what the other guys were doing. To be honest, there were times when we couldn’t tolerate each other off-stage.”
Sessions for the album started in Montreux in July 1978, after a significant amount of time had been allowed for the band’s recovery from the strenuous European tour. Mountain Studios was used first, after it was decided not to record in England; this new studio would start a healthy relationship with that city, one which lasted until the end of Queen’s career. Though the band eventually purchased Mountain Studios in 1979 (when resident engineer David Richards asked what they planned to do with the facility, Freddie infamously replied, “Why, dump it in the lake, dear!”), it would for seven years become their secondary studio after Musicland Studios since Freddie preferred the nightlife that Munich offered.
Brian, especially, found it difficult to be torn away from the comforts of home: on 15 June, he and wife Chrissy became proud parents to James, but Brian was soon quickly summoned to the sessions, leaving behind his new family. This left Brian an emotional mess, and he channelled his frustrations into song, penning the beautiful and mournful ‘Leaving Home Ain’t Easy’, a song so personal that Freddie was banned from singing it. John, too, had become a father once again, when Veronica gave birth to Michael on 3 February, and a distinct line was drawn between fathers (Brian and John) and fun-lovers (Roger and Freddie). Midway through the sessions, a birthday party was held for the twenty-nine-year-old drummer, and Freddie endeared himself to the partygoers by leaping onto a crystal chandelier. Elsewhere, in his private life, the singer became more interested in the gay world, cruising night clubs and developing lasting friendships with gay men, including Peter Straker, a theatre actor who made his album debut with This One’s On Me, a forgettable amalgam of glam rock and show tunes. Freddie was confident enough in Straker’s abilities that he invested £20,000 into the album, and asked Roy Thomas Baker to produce the sessions, and only confirmed that Freddie was starting to lose interest in the endless cycle of writing, recording and touring.
The album was completed by October, with the lead-off single, the double A-sided ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ / ‘Bicycle Race’, being released towards the end of the month, reaching only a modest No. 11 in the UK. The album, when issued in November, charted at No. 2 in their native country and a respectable No. 6 in America, significantly boosted by an extensive stage campaign throughout the last two months of 1978, a tour which would become their last in the US until June 1980. Audaciously, the band had included with the album a free poster bearing the naked beauties from the banned ‘Bicycle Race’ video. Unfortunately for their American fans, there was a tremendous public outcry and the poster was banned; those lucky enough to receive their parents’ or spouse’s approval could send away for it.
Reviews for the album were understandably censorious – not new for Queen, but until now, mostly unjustified. NME said of the album, “If you have deaf relatives, buy this low-class replica of Gilbert and Sullivan as a Christmas present,” while Sounds offered, “I’d love to care about Queen in the same way as I did in the beginning of the decade, but now, with an album like this, it seems impossible.” Creem absolutely destroyed it: “Queen used to make enjoyably ludicrous records like ‘Liar’ and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, and Roy Thomas Baker gave their music an entertaining artrock veneer that he adapted so successfully for The Cars. But now, even their best jokes – ‘Let Me Entertain You’, a parody of their own worthlessness; ‘Dreamers Ball’, an extravagantly condescending jazz-blues – are pummelled by the approach to the material. All four of Queen’s writers seem to know what a song is (they’ve learned and stolen from the worst of The Beatles just as Cheap Trick have absorbed and adapted the best) and when to stop, qualities lacking in many of their progressive competitors, and stripped of their pretentious overlays, the tunes on Jazz turn out to be swipes from The Cowsills, ‘Holly Holy’, Magical Mystery Tour, Disraeli Gears,
Mott The Who-ple. If only Queen could lock into the simplest formula without attaching dead weights, if Freddie Mercury weren’t such a screeching bore (even his cock-rock, like ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, is flaccid), if their arrangements weren’t on the basic level of Mel Brooks’ ‘Prisoners Of Love’, then Jazz could be studied as a catalogue of pop-rock sources ... Maybe Queen thinks all this is funny, that their undisguised condescension (‘rock ‘n’ roll just pays the bills’) and operatic mannerisms atop a beat more Rockette than rock is entertainment, but it’s not my idea of a good time. For me, their snappiest one-liner is on the inner sleeve: ‘Written, arranged and performed exclusively by Queen.’ As if anyone else would want to step forward and take credit.”
Dave Marsh, as ever, lambasted the album in Rolling Stone. “It’s easy to ascribe too much ambition to Queen,” he wrote. “‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ isn’t sexist – it regards women not as sex objects but as objects, period (the way the band regards people in general). When Mercury chants, in ‘Let Me Entertain You’, about selling his body and his willingness to use any device to thrill an audience, he isn’t talking about a sacrifice for his art. He’s just confessing his shamelessness, mostly because he’s too much of a boor to feel stupid about it. Whatever its claims, Queen isn’t here just to entertain. This group has come to make it clear exactly who is superior and who is inferior. Its anthem, ‘We Will Rock You’, is a marching order: you will not rock us, we will rock you. Indeed, Queen may be the first truly fascist rock band. The whole thing makes me wonder why anyone would indulge these creeps and their polluting ideas.”
