CONTAINS RECYCLED MATERIAL
Whilst sitting in the pub yesterday afternoon, a friend asked me about my visceral dislike of the popular beat combo outfit Queen. I was a little stumped at first. Why I do hate Queen so much? It’s a good question and there’s an even easier answer: I can’t stand their music.
When they first broke through, I kind of liked their first single Keep Yourself Alive, which didn’t chart at all. It was almost hard rock but there was more than a hint of saccharin to it. The band were already boasting ‘no synthesisers’ on their record covers, but strangely failing to make reference to what became a theme with the band: the mass of multitracked harmonies that turned challenging rock music into rock for the elderly and even mere pop music.
Queen made progress, if you can call it that, with Seven Seas of Rhye which I found, at best, okay, at least in short does, but next came Killer Queen, brief redemption of a sort with Now I’m Here followed by properly shitting the bed with the wretched Bohemian Rhapsody. Six minutes of pure dreck, the most streamed song of the 20th century.
I don’t hate a lot of things. Margaret Thatcher, Carling Lager, Rupert Murdoch, Root canal surgery, that kind of thing, but Queen are right up there. I would rather listen to Black Lace’s Greatest Hits or sit through a Daniel O’Donnell concert (and I have done that: it was terrible). Anything that is more than a split second of Queen, just long enough to turn the radio off, is way too much.
Apart from their truly terrible music, there is more to hate about Queen. In 1984, with the band on the slide, their great days, if you can call them great days, long behind them, the band accepted thirty pieces of silver to play Sun City, a major symbol of apartheid-era entertainment complex South Africa. It was in the face of a UN cultural boycott and the Musicians Union, but that was of no consequence to Queen who played 11 shows to predominately white audiences. A handful of free tickets were donated to a few black people, so that’s all right then. (Drummer Roger Taylor later said it was probably “a mistake” to play Sun City, adding that Rod Stewart and Barry Manilow also played Sun City. “They didn’t get any stick,” said Taylor, “but we did.” Probably not much of a mistake then, eh?)
Queen were rescued by Live Aid back in 1985 where they “stole the show” with a 20 minute greatest hits set. What is unarguable is that the band rocked Wembley Stadium like no other act on the day. I will maintain to my dying day that they were absolutely shite, playing shite songs, but what I think doesn’t matter. The concert to save millions starving in Africa relaunched Queen into the stratosphere where they have, annoying, remained even since Freddie Mercury’s death. In fact, they’re bigger today than they ever were.
Even some of their biggest fans reluctantly admit that Queen were a singles band and that their only albums that weren’t largely filler were the various Greatest Hits collections. But I suppose if you actually like Bohemian Rhapsody, it’s a small step to Killer Queen, We Will Rock You and the execrable Radio Ga Ga. Even the presence of David Bowie on Under Pressure cannot save the song. I doubt that any number of Beatles or Stones could either.
Long after Mercury’s tragic death at the age of 45, back in 1991, hasn’t derailed the money train, with two of the surviving members teaming up with alternative singers to keep the pounds rolling in. And Queen fans seem to love it. To me, it’s like the Rolling Stones touring without Mick Jagger, Led Zeppelin touring without Robert Plant and the Beach Boys touring without a single Wilson brother, which they (Mike Love and Bruce Johnston) still do to this day.
My hatred of Queen may seem irrational to some folk. I know it did to my fellow drinkers in the pub yesterday but believe me I hate them with a passion, just as I hate the Shake ‘N’ Vac woman on the TV ads (one for the teenagers, there) and the former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie.
Queen played Live Aid, they played Sun City and above all they played terrible music. Your honour, I rest my case.
