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

the level of critical animosity directed at Queen in their heyday (actually, their entire career) is hard for me to fathom. now, they are a relatively uncontroversial part of the "classic rock" canon. to my mind, they were a great band, one with near-universal appeal: a charismatic and distinctive lead singer, great melodies, inventive arrangements, catchy hooks/licks, a very broad musical range. what's not to like, really? of course, I won't begrudge anyone disliking the band for whatever reason(s), but the critical hatred for them transcends questions of individual taste.

here's Dave Marsh's review of Jazz (one of the very best of their LPs IMO) from Rolling Stone, 1979. I've boldfaced the most (in)famous part of the review:

There's no Jazz on Queen's new record, in case fans of either were worried about the defilement of an icon. Queen hasn't the imagination to play jazz — Queen hasn't the imagination, for that matter, to play rock & roll. Jazz is just more of the same dull pastiche that's dominated all of this British supergroup's work: tight guitar/bass/drums heavy-metal clichés, light-classical pianistics, four-part harmonies that make the Four Freshmen sound funky and Freddie Mercury's throat-scratching lead vocals.

Anyway, it shouldn't be surprising that Queen calls its album "jazz." The guiding principle of these arrogant brats seems to be that anything Freddie & Company want, Freddie & Company get. What's most disconcerting about their arrogance is that it's so unfounded: Led Zeppelin may be as ruthless as medieval aristocrats, but at least Jimmy Page has an original electronic approach that earns his band some of its elitist notions. The only thing Queen does better than anyone else is express contempt.

Take the LP's opening song, "Mustapha." It begins with a parody of a muezzin's shriek and dissolves into an approximation of Arabic music. This is part of Queen's grand design. Freddie Mercury is worldly and sophisticated, a man who knows what the muezzin sounds like. More to the point, you don't. What trips the group up, as usual, is the music. "Mustapha" is merely a clumsy and pretentious rewrite of "Hernando's Hideaway," which has about as much to do with Middle Eastern culture as street-corner souvlaki.

But it's easy to ascribe too much ambition to Queen. "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.

the bottom line -- i'm curious if anyone can help reconstruct a moment in history and a particular taste culture where Queen are perceived as the bogeyman. b/c I can't quite do it.

"supergroup" ?!?!

i just do not get the "fascist" label; for me, it's as if Dave Marsh (a critic I can appreciate on occasion) is coming from Mars. is he just translating the band's obvious theatricality and over-the-top-ness into his own spiteful terms? or is there something more to it? b/c he was not the only one to make a version of that charge.

does that guy maceo? or michelangelo? or whatever post here anymore? i feel like he would have interesting things to say about this for some reason.

Holy shit, super talented musicians playing like they're having fun, constantly rewarding albums, and a live show like no other, and critics didn't like 'em? Who'd a thunk?

it's hard not to see homophobia here "these creeps and their polluting ideas"

There's a 'something for everyone' element to Queen that imo rubs critics completely the wrong way

fuck dude, sometimes it seems like anyone who dared book a show at stadium that wasn't the Who or Springsteen in 1977-1978 was going to get on the wrong side of that guy…but as someone who has long despised DM to the point where I drunkenly heckled him at SXSW once, I gotta say that some of the things he sez about "mustapha" a recording I treasure, are spot the fuck on.

To your point: I think Queen hit a bunch of sore spots in 1979 re: rockcrits. Them pencil necked geeks, most recently shamed by punk rock to renounce anything with a corporate taint, would not like Queen's unambiguous celebration of expensive hedonism. They were perceived as corporate, plastic, willfully frivolous…and I would think that they would be uncomfortable with a gay guy who cares nothing about social justice, etc…this was a band that would play Sun City in 1984…and of the four Queen dudes, Freddie was likely the least troubled by the implications. The show tune aspect…the guy looked like a village Person…they were not on the right side of anything a rock critic in the late 70s/early 80s on the either side of the atlantic was supposed to rep for.

more succinctly: probly more than any other, Queen were the act that punk rock 1977-78 opposed. CF: NME caption of Freddie: "IS THIS MAN A PRAT?" and Sid Vicious running into Freddie at the studio: SV: "Eh Fred, bringing ballet to the masses?" FM: "well, we're doing the best we can, Mr, Ferocious, dear!"

With their limos, huge entourages and rapacious appetities for pleasure, even their long-time publicist, Phil Symes, concedes his boys wre hard to handle. "They were so confident that it often came across as being extremely arrogant. There were these four guys who played up the androgynous look with lots of make-up and black nail varnish. A lot of people couldn't handle them. The 'look' in the rock scene was tattered denims and long hair, then here comes Queen dressed in Zandra Rhodes satin threads. It was unheard of."

http://www.brianmay.com/queen/wwry/OZ/freddielives.html

doesn't wash. a lot of band from that era fit those criteria, more or less, but did get their fair share of critical love. thinking of blue oyster cult in particular (but then i would).

i think maybe the idea is that the theater of pop is inherently fascist. it rejects youth tribe collectivism and "authentic expression" (the "natural", "passionate", "soulful", etc.) in favor of a strict audience-performer divide and the contrivance of false baubles to be delivered from on high to the lowly masses. from this position, queen's populist pomp could be seen as cynical, condescending, manipulative, etc. it's a massively hypocritical argument, especially since applied selectively. i.e., basic rockism.

to pick up the glove thrown down by sleeve, BOC rather cartoonishly, even boorishly, het macho, always underlining their dudeness. course in retrospect, we'd say they dressed like leather daddies, but those were different times etc.

Queen are liked more now than in their prime. It's true Marsh didn't like them. And Christgau was lukewarm at best. My only guess is they were too bombastic, if that's the word, for the times. Not unlike the Prog groups that were fading in the late 70's.

Creem's review of Jazz, invoking more fascism

FOR A FEW weeks in 1978, an FM radio station in New York City was trying, earnestly and imaginatively, to create rock 'n' roll counter-programming. A ratings turnaround didn't happen fast enough, so it changed its format to something called "the Rock Champions" (i.e., more AOR elitism).

This was around the same time that every film clip of The Yankees on television was scored with ‘We Are The Champions’, and the movie FM attempted to pass off ‘We Will Rock You’ as the ‘We Shall Overcome’ of the rock revolution. I started to despise Queen; a two-sided platinum single of aristocratic, pompous, triumph-of-the-will arrogance in 4/4 time (if marches are to resound over the airwaves, better Ace Frehley's ‘New York Groove’ any day) summed up for me the worst in royalist rock, and I couldn't remember more joyless, numbing, contemptuous music reaching a mass audience. Frankly, I was wary of the implications.

I know this answer won't please anyone who's a fan, but I don't think it's a confusing question to anyone who remembers that moment. There were a lot of reasons, many already spelled out above. It's like with Rush. Putting my own opinions aside, these bands were simply not liked by critics in the late '70s.

to be fair, hearing "Rock You" at a sports event is going to give you Triumph of the Will vibes

hey now contendo I was just quoting their publicist, not sure I agree w/him

would like to see more bad reviews from the era

(Or at the very least, by the most of the critics who would have voted in Pazz & Jop--I'm sure they had some critical support.)

pretty impressive calling Queen "fascist" before they accidentally played Sun City

accidentally?

"We've thought a lot about the morals of it a lot," claimed Brian May at the time, "and it is something we've decided to do. The band is not political - we play to anybody who wants to come and listen."

shocked

Ugh, "not political" -- what a fucking bullshit cop-out.

Also worth noting is that to get off the UN boycott list, all an artist had to do was issue an apology for having played South Africa and promise not to do it again. It's telling that Queen did nothing of the sort.

(One group -- possibly the only group -- that apologized and got off the UN register were the O'Jays; they were profoundly embarrassed at having played there, seemingly duped into it by unscrupulous promoters.)

by playing to anybody who wanted to come and listen Brian was explicitly demanding the release of Nelson Mandela

They were stunning showmen; I've never NOT been impressed by a live clip I've seen. The Live Aid appearance deserves the received notions about its awesomeness.

For me, a gay man and rock critic, I just don't hear many impressive tunes on the four albums I've heard. Bizarre, for they had it all: excellent frontman, flash guitarist, solid rhythm section. And four songwriters in the band. Few rock bands had every one of its members write songs, all of which were hits in some chart or other. A lot of those songs aren't very good. They lack...mystery, without which their formidable audience-instinct powers looked hollow or at their rare worst grotesque. Plus, Roxy Music!

But I'm totally up for a reconsideration of Body Language, A Kind of Magic, etc!

The stomping beat of "we vill rock you" sounded like jackboots to boomer rockcritics who also saw the arena concert scene as Nazi rallies revisited. "we will rock you" quickly became crowd-pumping music at sports events in the 70s which further explains some of the Fascist association. Truth be told, even Queen's best work could wear pretty thin when you heard it on the radio all day every day. Like their contemporaries Steely Dan & Hall/Oates I think Queen are best appreciated at a distance in measured doses. Constant involuntary exposure to elaborately produced OTT rock bombast such as Queen could make it sound oppressive.

of course Burce Sprungsteen is guilty of some of the same sins as Queen - musically anyway - so on that level Dave Marsh seems heavy-handed/hypocritical.

i forget when Springsteen supported apartheid

dave marsh seems like a really, really angry guy. he even seems angry when he's writing about stuff he likes. i have a soft spot for him because you never really see his byline anywhere anymore (or at least i don't -- is he currently writing for anything?) and thinking about him takes me back to high school, when i'd spend a lot of lunch hours in the library pouring through things like that huge red rolling stone history of rock book, and he was all over that. i remember he had an essay in there about neil young that was so contemptuous and dismissive of him that i was surprised later when i realized that young is mostly pretty highly regarded. i also remember a piece he wrote about kurt cobain's death where he expressed horror and disbelief that cobain actually admired and looked up to freddie mercury.

The difference for me, m, is I want to return to those Steely Dan and H&O songs after airplay has worn them down to nubbins; they persuade me to listen to those albums. Queen don't do this to me.

Dave Marsh is on record as "hating" Neil Young. Because Neil Young said nice things about Reagan, Marsh says, Neil Young killed his dad. Thanks to Neil Young and Reagan, Marsh's dad could not retire and thus worked until he dropped dead.

x post me neither!

god i feel like a jerk thinking about queen singles while dave marsh's dad is dead

i can't believe dave marsh was ever wrong about something.

can't believe Dave Marsh took money from a racist political regime

What Marsh wrote about Young/Reagan/his dad was absolutely meant to be taken literally/at face value.

So was that.

"Freddie Mercury is worldly and sophisticated, a man who knows what the muezzin sounds like. More to the point, you don't. What trips the group up, as usual, is the music. "Mustapha" is merely a clumsy and pretentious rewrite of "Hernando's Hideaway," which has about as much to do with Middle Eastern culture as street-corner souvlaki."

lol, freddie (aka Farrokh Bulsara) was probably THE most successful zoroastrian of parsi descent in history.

ty scott, did not know that

that's a whole lotta rrongg

Give'em credit -- looked up those foreign words in a Spanish dictionary.

dave marsh seems like a really, really angry guy. he even seems angry when he's writing about stuff he likes. i have a soft spot for him because you never really see his byline anywhere anymore (or at least i don't -- is he currently writing for anything?)

He has a blog, although at a glance it looks like he's been specializing in obituaries as of late (Pete Seeger, Bobby Bland, Chet Flippo, Lou Reed...). He has an entry about Rock & Rap Confidential that mentions his growing silence as a writer. It seems like he pops up in Mojo every once in a while to say something about Motown, or The Who, or Bruce. He also used to have a hosted blog at some newspaper site back in the early 2000s--I seem to recall one post about his Buffy fandom, which was surprising to say the least.

He has two weekly shows on Sirius XM: one called Kick Out The Jams, which is largely political, and another called Live From E Street Nation, which is self-explanatory.

Marsh otm in original post imo. Queen is def fascist and it creeps me out, even when its of the campy gay variety.

GrissoM: Can you post a link to the Rock & Rap Confidential piece? I'd like to read that. I looked around his blog, couldn't find it.

It's this about SXSW, and in the introduction he mentions in passing that he hasn't been writing as much, but hopes to fix that. Not a full piece about R&RC, or why exactly he slowed down.

I'm trying to think of an example of, when there was an artist or act who made music over time that I viscerally disliked, I thought those people were truly evil, worthless and otherwise detrimental to humankind. Yeah, I don't think that I've ever thought that about someone based on making music I didn't like. I might have known musicians personally who were repulsive, but that ain't the same.

marsh give the impression that making music he likes is right, and that making music he strongly dislikes is wrong, and that where an artist/act falls w/r/t his own aesthetic determines whether they are good or bad for humanity. This is boomer narcissism, to which many many critics of his generation succumb.

I so wish Zombie Formalist would do like a AMA about the differences btwn 70s/80s RS/Creem/Hit parader/Lisa Robinson-era (is the reason there has been no thread about her book is because she's terrible and always has been?) rock press milieu vs the 90s-10s one that I reckon most of us worked in.

fucking pseudo-Broadway leatherman shit that makes me embarrassed to be a fag

fwiw i kinda hate Springsteen and '70s Who too

queen rox and u r all gay

they were awesome. they could do anything kinda. but i'm a hard rock fan who loves disco and broadway and glam. so they were kinda made for me.

and pop. and metal.

oh god that's awful

It's one thing for a pithy sign in your record store, but the official slogan…man.

kind of reminds me of "it's not the coffee, it's the bunk!" in christmas in july-- dick powell decides this is a great slogan for a coffee brand, and everyone who he tells this to is like, "um... ok?"

Let's just hope nobody in that record store is buying any luxury sofa-beds on credit based on his future slogan-writing prize-winnings.

It's an awful slogan, but if it convinces even one person not to ever fucking say "vinyls," we might have something.

oh wait, i guess this is a more general campaign, the local store didn't come up with it. but they've kind of owned it by handing out stickers and buttons and bags that say "the plural of vinyl is vinyl."

IDGI

http://thepluralofvinyl.com/

as soon as this era of vinyl fetishism is over, i'll be happy man.

btw we should be talking about QUEEN

The Plural of Queen Vinyl is Vinyl Fascism.

I knew a heavy metal sound guy who became a major opera fan by working on a good production of Don Giovanni for a full summer. Which brings us back to Queen.

The plural of vinyl is RECORDS!

that or nerds

Wait are people saying "I need to buy some vinyls" the way some would saw "you were eating those popcorns" or "can I offer you some coffees" (cf Viva Shaf Vegas for the last)?

Took me decades to like opera. Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny turned out to be the gateway.

I had a dream last night where Ralf Hutter was fronting Queen, and the music and theatrics were just fucking insane. I believe this thread caused me to have said dream, so thank you all so fucking much!

the problem is, U2's songs aren't generally about anything at all, so a book musical with their songs would be the most gaseous musical ever.

― display name changed. (amateurist), Wednesday, May 21, 2014 7:06 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's why they would be perfect! you could throw any ol' uplifting story on it.

i mean its not like abba's songs were about trysts on greek islands (or whatever that musical was about)

dat's true.

except ABBA's tone is often playful and silly, U2's us unrelentingly Serious and Important

they've already done some U2 songs on glee AFAIK

There was a monthly all-employee work rally at my job, and they closed the presentation with "We Will Rock You" blasting through the hotel ballroom speakers.

(moments ago)

Didn't U2 score an ill-fated Spiderman Broadway show?

Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_Turn_Off_the_Dark

Bono, admitting that his description is a little "pretentious," has referred to it as "pop-up, pop-art opera," noting that Julie Taymor is calling it a "rock-and-roll circus drama."

calling anything a rock and roll circus drama is going to make me hesitate before moving forward. i might step back a little...

"Bono has also described the production as "wrestling with the same stuff" as "Rilke, Blake, Wings of Desire, Roy Lichtenstein, and the Ramones."

Bono starts to seem like a better lyricist when you realize how many terrible things he says in interviews that don't find their way into the songs

lol

Lady Gaga could learn a thing or two from him

turn off the dork

(what i say when bono is talking)

calling anything a rock and roll circus drama is going to make me hesitate before moving forward. i might step back a little...

― scott seward,

not a fan of Bowie's non-linear Gothic drama hypercycle?

There was only one rock and roll circus drama:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhwie_the-who-a-quick-one_music

Surprised this thread didn't get revived when this happened: http://www.ew.com/article/2016/07/18/rnc-donald-trump-we-are-champions-queen

that review OP posted makes Queen sound so much better than they actually were.

Queen were awesome. I was so OTM on this thread.

By the way I think there's a legitimate case to be made for "We Will Rock You" being a "Born in the USA"-style ironic anthem (albeit a bit of a clumsy one). If I'm reading the lyrics right they follow the protagonist through three phases of life: first he's a rowdy kid "playin' in the street," next some kind of nationalist thug ("waving your banner all over the place"), and then finally an old man "pleadin' with your eyes gonna make you some peace some day" — i.e. regretting his life of violence? At the very least there's some ambiguity there, though it does tend to be overshadowed by the stomping and the giant chorus.

Also, yes, Queen are/were awesome

Queen is one of the best rock bands of all time fuiud

i still can't get over the fact that Brian May played the same guitar that he made when he was a kid on every Queen album. that is just so endlessly cool to me! You think of all those big flashy rock bands with their truckloads of guitars...

Surprised this thread didn't get revived when this happened: http://www.ew.com/article/2016/07/18/rnc-donald-trump-we-are-champions-queen

― goodoldneon

I wrote this in July: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/5-reasons-trump-shouldnt-use-a-queen-song-in-his-campaign-w430028

I tried listening to a Queen album a while back and there were like THREE 20s/30s pastiches on it - I thought, fuck this McCartneyesque empty eclecticism tbh.

― A frenzied geologist (Tom D.), Sunday, 18 May 2014 16:13 (two years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ah so this is the thread where I posted this. OTM, still.

Queen is one of the best rock bands of all time fuiud

― though she denies it to the press, (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Saturday, November 5, 2016 7:09 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM.

id

i still can't get over the fact that Brian May played the same guitar that he made when he was a kid on every Queen album. that is just so endlessly cool to me! You think of all those big flashy rock bands with their truckloads of guitars...

I love that story about how when they were tracking "Crazy Little Thing..." it was decided they needed a Telecaster tone to achieve the desired Rockabilly feel, and Brian was all like, "Give me a couple hours, and I can make [my guitar] sound like a Tele!"--To which Mercury or somebody responded by having an engineer pull a Telecaster from the gear vault and saying something to the effect of, "No! Real Telecaster! You play--Now!"...and that ended up being the one song in the catalogue he didn't use his own guitar on.

haha

The solo to 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love' was done on an Esquire, I think, even though he used a Tele in the vid.

this is one of my fave things on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ_OamX-PA8

I think there's a video on Youtube from the early '80s where he just demonstrates riff after riff...

Spent the afternoon reading this thread, it was fun!

Few rock bands had every one of its members write songs, all of which were hits in some chart or other.

I just noticed that every member of Madness wrote songs - that's seven writers. I don't know if they all wrote hits but at least five of them did.

TS: Queen vs Madness

I'm afraid the Queen revival is over. In New Zealand.

(Note: smug man with cellphone = embattled deputy prime minister)

‘Listen up’ – Winston Peters plays Queen’s Radio Ga Ga to journalists during questioning of SFO investigation
- https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/-listen-up-winston-peters-plays-queen-s-radio-ga-journalists-during-questioning-sfo-investigation

Just hope no politician tries to ruin the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy

Dave Marsh otm