why did rock critics hate Queen so much in the 1970s/80s?

I think a lyrical exhortation to dance is fundamentally different from one that threatens violence yes.

― Οὖτις, Sunday, May 18, 2014 2:57 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we will we will rock you in your face, stab your brain with your nose bone

we need trigger warnings on Queen songs

WARNING: You may get blood on your face from listening to this song.

we will we will rock you in your face, stab your brain with your nose bone
stomp, stomp left, stomp, stomp right.
boks in your face til there´s no teeth left.
stomp, stomp left, stomp, stomp right.
boks in your face til your face flows red.
stomp, stomp left, stomp, stomp right.
boks in your bollox now your seed don´t spread.
stomp, stomp left, stomp, stomp right.
i´m happy standing toe to toe trading blows,
but if you fall i´m gonna make your arse READ THESE BOKS
i´ll smack you in the mouth, show you what a real mans about,
when you drop you´re gonna READ THESE BOKS
heel to your jaw, blood spils on the floor,
i viciously ensure you READ THESE BOKS
stomping on your head til your brains brown bread,
as i´m kicking you dead, READ THESE BOKS

Queen's "Don't Try Suicide" is probably more pro-suicide than Ozzy's "Suicide Solution," which came out the same year, where were the PMRC on that one

I kind of alluded to this earlier, but as someone who was never exposed to classic rock radio as a kid, some of the bands here that are being mentioned as being on a similar/larger level (Zep/Eagles/Who) were completely foreign to me as a kid, even while Queen felt like they were always around? I've still never knowingly heard the Who other than "My Generation".

fwiw, the Who are by far the worst-sellers out of those four: only one top 10 single ("I Can See For Miles" topped out at #9 in 1967), and no #1 albums.

Queen was definitely 'pop' on some level that the Beatles were and a lot of those bands kinda weren't

This was alluded to earlier in this thread but it's worth noting, given previous statements about Nazis and "white guys,": it seems unlikely that Hitler would have considered Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara) to be a "white guy"

some dude otm re:Queen and pop

I was an obsessive Queen fan for most of my childhood and still love the first four albums unreservedly. I don't think it's a coincidence that my checking out as fan and the intense critical backlash came around Jazz and later: Brian May stopped playing distorted rhythmic electric guitar nearly as much, which made Roger Taylor's failings as a drummer (which are many and huge -- as a drummer, Roger Taylor has a startling falsetto voice) much more obvious when drum machines or heavy Freddie rhythm piano were not present; and, I think more importantly, they started getting lazy with their songwriting, doing it in the studio more and more, with more and more group credit. There is no question that homophobia played a huge part in the TONE of the backlash against them, but they were a band with lots of flaws, and I think it's hard to love both "March of the Black Queen" AND "Crazy Little Thing Called Love".

I love both

OK, but you are a weird creep with a strange obsession for me.

Queen's "Don't Try Suicide" is probably more pro-suicide than Ozzy's "Suicide Solution," which came out the same year, where were the PMRC on that one

― some dude, Sunday, May 18, 2014 7:13 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sample lyrics: "Don't try suicide, you're just gonna hate it!", "So you think it's the easy way out? Think you're gonna slash your wrists this time? Babe, when you do it all you do is get on my tits", "You can't be a prick teaser all of your life"... etc.

Lol xpost

Funny, but it's probably Animal House, Stripes, and Private Benjamin that convinced 9-year-old U.S.-kid me that the "We Will Rock You" drill sergeant was American. So never felt the fascist overtones.

Then again, I thought the schoolkids in "Another Brick in the Wall" were Japanese, so...

Queen (ft. Eileen Brennan)

don't stop believin' was played on the Sopranos

am i the only person who loves this? i might be...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONWGmu84TnE

marsh's 'fascist' criticism is ludicrous hyperbole and i'm honestly surprised to see anyone defending it. it's along the same lines as bangs saying he wanted to track down and kill james taylor, except that bangs's hyperbole is funny and marsh's just seems uptight and prissy.

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.

No, this is funny.

So is Queen. They're not a great band by most objective measure, but they're funny on occasion, which is more than a lot of bands have been able to manage. So Queen should be proud of their accomplishments.

*measures

curious to know what a few of the objective measures to which you refer might be, Mr MBJ (ttEG).

As I posted upthread,

Queen for me was always a workmanlike (at their absolute pinnacle) rhythm section, a not-wholly-uninteresting guitarist (the apolitical Tom Morello of his day), and a singer who, to paraphrase one musician's view of trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, exemplified "the Rolls-Royce aesthetic, but without the Rolls-Royce."

I'll grant that ymmv, but nothing in their most universally celebrated work suggests any deep or lasting influence.

(I should also note that I'm coming around a bit on Freddie Hubbard, but still think he can't hold a candle to Lee Morgan, among others.)

Yeah I think it would have been quite easy to ignore Zeppelin if you weren't actively paying attention, I mean obviously they were huge but the kind of huge where you also needed to be looking in the right direction? Obviously I wasn't around at the time but I've never got the sense that they crashed into the centre of the popular consciousness in the way that Bowie or Queen or even the glam bands did.

Part of it was that if a band really wanted to make an impact on the non-music-obsessing public then you had to appear on TOTP and that was pretty much the one TV show through which British pop culture was filtered, and Zeppelin basically opted out of that. Ironically if there was one bit of Zeppelin music that most people would have been familiar with it was the riff from Whole Lotta Love by virtue of being the TOTP theme tune.

x-post no deep or lasting influence?

Katy Perry: "Freddie Mercury was - and remains - my biggest influence. The combination of his sarcastic approach to writing lyrics and his 'I don't give a fuck' attitude really inspired my music.

Why is influence important?

Queen influenced a tooooooon of people from hard rockers to pop singers and everywhere in between.

I don't know Queen albums well, but Brian May definitely strikes me as a genuinely interesting guitarist. His sound is very unique.

For me Freddie is maybe the least annoying thing about Queen - May is a good guitarist but his tone drives me crazy, and Taylor's habit of opening the hi hat on the snare provokes a similar reaction.

Unique to Queen, no doubt, but not for me

it is absolutely true that Taylor is notorious among drummers for the "Pea Soup" faux pas M of T describes.

I don't know Queen albums well, but Brian May definitely strikes me as a genuinely interesting guitarist. His sound is very unique.

― timellison

For me Freddie is maybe the least annoying thing about Queen - May is a good guitarist but his tone drives me crazy...

― Master of Treacle

(cf. "Toniiiiight / we are yoooooung")

I was also thinking about the "fascist" accusations. From the very beginning, Queen produced what i'm tempted to call triumphalist cheese. Their music seems to strive for this sense of soaring (yes) supremacy, proud and erect atop a mountain's peak, the wind flowing through our golden hair. The vibe is intrinsically collective, it invites us into a shared feeling: "Here, comrade. Stand with us atop this mountain in joyful unity. The view is incredible." The appollonian strain of prog often seem to reach for this, a sense of almost superhuman majesty in acheivement, optimistic, insistent on excellence, truly olympian - and Queen took that theme further than any of their peers.

I can see why some might see in this an echo of fascist triumphalism, especially when turned to singalong pop, but the key difference is that it isn't fascist. It's not dedicated to the eradication or suppression of anything. No group is damned or othered, no obedience enforced. I suppose it could conceivably be put to use by fascists, but that's true of a great many not-particularly-offensive things. Some people enjoy the feeling of minty-fresh athletic ecstacy invoked, while others don't. Iused to reject this sort of music on general principle, insisting on filth-dripping nihilist vulgarity, but I was never tempted to view Queen-style operatic grandeur as evil. I just thought it was sort of gross, too easy, lacking the violent thrill of negation.

it seems unlikely that Hitler would have considered Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara) to be a "white guy"

Well, yeah, tbh, it's particularly striking that the first South Asian man to become this successful as a musician in the Empire's language should be charged with things like "Aryan/Nordic supremacy", especially at a time when so many actually white rock musicians were playing with explicitly racist or fascist ideas.

For me Freddie is maybe the least annoying thing about Queen - May is a good guitarist but his tone drives me crazy, and Taylor's habit of opening the hi hat on the snare provokes a similar reaction.

Unique to Queen, no doubt, but not for me

― Master of Treacle, Sunday, May 18, 2014 10:36 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's one of my favourite things about his drumming. Couldn't imagine 'Brighton Rock' or 'Liar', to name two, without it.

I never knew May was a Vox AC30 guy! Apparently, he went from using nine of them on stage to using twelve in the early '80s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyyTBeAmZIc

The influence thing is a red herring - people like Pat Smear were devotees. And the likes of Shudder To Think are probably more obvious but even so, I would suspect you would find a lot of Queen fans in bands without an obvious trace of Queen influence.

sund4r otm

That NME "Is This Man A Prat?" interview circa '77 makes for some great reading. There's hostility there from both sides.

"Darling, if everything you read in the press about me was true then I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you today, because I would be so worried about my ego. Actually, if it was all accurate, I would have burnt myself out by now. I really would have."

But you do appreciate the mystique which has developed around you.

"I think I need it. I like all that. It's my character. Certainly I'm a flamboyant person. I like to live life. I certainly work hard for it, and I want to have a good time. Don't deny me that. It might not come again and I want to enjoy myself a little."

"I hope," he adds, tilting his head and quietly smirking, "that when you better yourself in your profession you enjoy yourself too."

The influence thing is a red herring - people like Pat Smear were devotees. And the likes of Shudder To Think are probably more obvious but even so, I would suspect you would find a lot of Queen fans in bands without an obvious trace of Queen influence.

― Master of Treacle, Sunday, May 18, 2014 7:54 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i totally agree. Fugazi, for instance, worship Queen.

http://www.queenonline.com/en/the-band/interviews/freddie-mercury-1/is-this-man-a-prat-/

As incredible as it is to believe, the indie band Field Music are massive Queen fans. In the inlay to their second album, Tones Of Town, there's a picture of them sitting around their studio. On the floor is a copy of Queen's Jazz.

i think it's probably impossible to come off as Queen-influenced unless you have a really skilled/bold singer who can pull off even a hint of what Freddie does, and/or a guitarist who's unafraid to rip off May's distinctive tone. without one of those 2 things, you can pretty much pillage Queen songs for ideas and influences without anyone noticing it or pointing it out.

All this talk of influence and this obvious one hasn't come up?:
http://www.queenzone.com/articles/open-letter-to-brian-from-joe-elliot-def-leppard.aspx

I dunno, man, Muse's 'United States Of Eurasia' features a very obvious Queen rip!

well, Muse are a good example of a band who use enough Queen-style vocal and guitar sounds to make it obvious

I heard a ton of Queen in Jellyfish's music.

Jellyfish were well known Queen fans