REDISCOVERING "QUEEN"

Sometimes it’s nice to blow the dust off a few of the old CDs which you haven’t played for a while, slam them into the CD player in the car (in that old-fashioned way I have) and give them another listen. So it was recently when I found the “spare” copy of “Queen - Greatest Hits II” lying around somewhere where it shouldn’t have been when  I was flapping about trying (and failing) to find something else.

“I haven’t played that for a while...” thunk I, so I picked it up and took it with me to accompany my morning commute, expecting to immediately dismiss it as being the ridiculous bit of old pop nonsense that I had come to believe it was, and found that I had a bit of a blast and really enjoyed it. Especially (for some reason) “Invisible Man”. I honestly believe that I could have put “Invisible Man” on repeat for the entire journey and not tired of it. If I ever came up with a decent enough concept for  TV series, I suspect that, in the best traditions of “C.S.I.”, “Invisible Man” could end up being the theme tune... Well, it’s either that or “One Small Day” by Ultravox, which really needs rediscovering soon, in my humble. Ah well, at least you can be fairly confident that that little dubious delight will never happen on a TV screen near you anytime ever.

Still, you can tell the era I was growing up in can’t you...? (Actually, “growing up” is such a relative term that I’m sure you’ll find enough people who’ll swear blind that I never have...).

I kind of get the impression that the rock band “Queen” as fronted up by the late, lamented Mr Freddie Mercury have become rather unfashionable in recent years. After all, Mr Mercury himself has been dead for just over twenty years now and, despite the rest of the band perpetuating their various careers in the various ways which they have chosen to, so they are hardly likely to feel “current” and “happening”, instead becoming the kind of music that your dad listens to, or that they make West End musicals out of.

“Classical music for the modern era” perhaps...?

Back in the day I was rather a “fan” (in a terribly small way) until I developed the general sense that they had become a bit “naff”, or rather too “popular” and “mainstream”. I bought several of their LPs and cassettes across a number of years, possibly long after other people (and my own developing musical tastes) had tried to persuade me that they were a bit “naff”, or rather too “popular” and “mainstream”.

I very well remember the single “Play the Game” being a cornerstone of the repertoire of our Sunday evening Youth Club soundtrack, and I cringe at the memory of playing both “Flash Gordon” and “The Works” to people I was desperate to impress and to whom I always remained desperately unimpressive, on one of those rare occasions when “the crowd” came round to my house when I was a teenager. The original “Greatest Hits” became something of a permanent fixture on the turntable as I was failing to grow up and then, when I went to college, I was exposed to things that were considered far less “naff”, “popular” or “mainstream”.

But I persevered, and Freddie and the boys, even when the world was turning against them for some less than wise decisions they made, remained a guilty pleasure which I denied more than thrice, despite the persistent call of the cockerel. Sometimes, when you are far away from home, it’s the old familiar tunes that you fall back upon to make you feel better. I well remember being fairly dismissive of some of the bands that were played at me by other, “groovier” students, only to rush out and buy them all when I finally moved home because they reminded me of happier times with those now lost friends.

After a few years in the doldrums, I was, like many, revitalised by their powerhouse appearance at “Live Aid” in 1985 and whilst I will accept that the later albums somehow seemed rather shallow in comparison to their earlier, “rockier” roots, I understood that commercial pressures and the demands of the fickle music market meant that you really did have to adapt to survive and there were always enough tracks that I did enjoy to make the purchases feel at least slightly worthwhile, so long as none of my “cooler” mates ever caught me playing them in the car.

Over the course of about half a dozen years I bought about half of their studio albums on vinyl and tape, switching to CD just in time for “Innuendo” and that notorious first copy of “Queen - Greatest Hits II” and to replace the other “Greatest Hits” in a shiny new format. This was about the time we all got a bit “worried” about Freddie’s health and then he upped and died on us and there was lamentation, woe, huge concerts and various resurrections of the band in new formats, little of which I paid much attention to because I had “moved on” to newer, “funkier” musical pastures.

Or so I thought.

So it came to pass that, having re-explored “Queen - Greatest Hits II” in my car that day, I went over to the dusty old shelves which are still crammed full of our CDs and decided to give the back catalogue a bit of a relisten after years of ignoring it in favour of other, perhaps “trendier” musical choices.

The first album, imaginatively entitled “Queen” surprised me with the sheer “hard rock” roots on display. Strangely, it turns out that this album was recorded at night at the same time and in the same studios in which David Bowie was making his legendary “Spiders from Mars” album and whilst I would never suggest that it is likely to ever be as highly regarded as that acknowledged masterpiece is, it’s still a pretty good album and is certainly a heck of a lot better than I remembered it being.

After this promising start, I worked my way through all the rest of the studio albums and whilst there is a noticeable increase in commercialism over the couple of decades that they were recording their tunes, the thing that struck me most was that across all of the albums is an astounding diversity of musical styles and influences and there is an awful lot of musical “fun” being had. I even found that I quite enjoyed much of “The Miracle” which I had personally regarded as the absolute nadir of their career for many years.

You should never listen to “received opinion” even (or perhaps especially) if it is only your own opinion that you are listening to.

After a couple of weeks of listening to all those old albums in the car whilst heading back and forth between home and work, I came to the rather unoriginal conclusion that, whilst, in the end, there may not be a “classic” Queen album like “Dark Side of the Moon”, “Sergeant Pepper” “Spiders from Mars” or “Pet Sounds”, (although “A Day at the Races” comes pretty close if you ask me) the two “Greatest Hits” albums (It might actually be argued that “Queen - Greatest Hits” is a classic album in itself - wasn’t it the album that Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman believed all music left in a car eventually transformed into in “Good Omens”...?) prove that there are over two dozen “classic” hits and that’s a pretty good legacy for any band to leave behind them...

Only in my opinion, of course, and I seldom listen to that. Hmm, maybe I should listen to my own “back catalogue” sometime...?