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

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.

and rap. and funk.

I love disco, glam, rap, and funk, but despise broadway, and am 50/50 on metal.

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."

Freddie rules so hard

Hubbard too, obv, lol

otm (x2)

Was it Wayne's World that shifted opinions from "they're so serious" to "they're in on the fun"?

they could be serious AND funny. in the same song. which i like.

yeah, i dunno about pegging reassessment to any particular thing. i figure it's more likely generational progression. i grew up w/ queen as a radio staple, both their old classic rock chestnuts and their then-contemporary MTV hits ("another one bites the dust", "under pressure", etc). i didn't have to process them as the opposition to anything i might hold dear, they were just THERE, part of the eternal pop architecture. from the beginning (mine, i mean), it seemed obvious that they were awesome, funny and very clearly in on their own joke - but not so much so as to spoil it.

Anxiety about pop fascism seems to have largely faded, but if one were to dredge it up again, wouldn't the obsessive "nation"-building attempts that seem so ubiquitous now (from reverb to live to e-street to ford) seem to be yearnings toward that hegemonic "glory" of mid-70s arena rock?

For ppl my age and I guess thereabouts (I'm 35) the Wayne's World thing ws MASSIVE, me and loads of guys I knew at school bought (or got copied) Queen's Greatest Hits 1 and 2 and got into Queen overall cos of it

Freddie's voice when he does that "scat" thing that sounds like he has a hairball in his throat is literally the most unpleasant sound in all of nature

Bizarrely, I saw a clip of the famous live aid footage (I think?) and it was just him doing that for like 5 minutes

queen shite

& for dicks

There are still some Queen records I think are great (Don't Stop Me Now, Under Pressure, Another One Bits The Dust) and more that I find teeth-grindingly impossible to listen to (Bo Rap, We Are The Champions, We Will Rock You, Radio Ga Ga, anything involving girls with large bottoms), but they've become the epitome of something really quite horrible in British culture that has nothing to do with why critics hated them in the 70s and 80s. I've met people who still say that Queen are their favourite band and they all seem to be the worst kind of reactionary Middle England types.

I accept that this stigma probably doesn't exist in the US (or at least you have your own version of them, although I'm not sure who that would be).

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

This is certainly how i've always understood the criticism. Stadium rock's emphasis on slickness, power and manipulative theatricality was seen to be an echo of Nuremberg. As the slickest and most theatrical, and as a band that played with some martial themes, Queen were the most obvious target for this. Laibach's Geburt Einer Nation is an excellent parody.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwdOX19_ETI

No idea what big queen fans are like over here. Guitar mag dudes, obviously. We hosted a German exchange student in high school and the only CDs she brought with her were the first two greatest hits volumes, but she was mostly just quiet and studious.

are mustaches an echo of Hitler?

Queen was invisible in the US between "I Want To Break Free" and Wayne's World. You wouldn't even hear their older stuff on "classic rock" radio (though "Rock You" and "Champions" were still heard at sporting events). Their records during that time always tanked here, although I do remember "One Vision" getting a little airplay.

Their fans here now seem to be largely casual "classic rock" listeners who also dig Zeppelin and maybe Sabbath and a little Floyd. I've never met a single hard-core Queen fan, or anyone who's even heard their post-1983 records, much less owns any of them.

If I were to meet someone today who claimed that Queen were their favourite band I would automatically make a load of other assumptions about things they like (The Rocky Horror Show, The Great Escape, Jeremy Clarkson). I'm aware this doesn't reflect particularly well on me but I basically associate them with Alan Partridge.

The strange thing about Queen animus is that at least on paper the band wasn't up to too much that Bowie wasn't doing and/or had done, and critics loved Bowie. So maybe with Queen is was a matter of too much, too late? That is, just when everyone (incl. Bowie) was stripping things down or going New Wave, Queen was getting bigger (in every sense).

(I read an interesting interview with Roy Thomas Baker about the Cars, where he notes that as austere as that early stuff is, he still enlists the same massed vocals that marked Queen, it's just the backdrop is not as bombastic.)

And yeah, Queen fandom in the US is I'd argue as casual or culty as ABBA fandom in the US. Everyone loves "Dancing Queen," but in the US you'd never gather ABBA was the biggest pop act of all time or whatever.

One Vision was on the Iron Eagle soundtrack.

Bowie was dogged by allegations of fascist sympathies for years.

That is, just when everyone (incl. Bowie) was stripping things down or going New Wave, Queen was getting bigger (in every sense).

I dunno...Queen's biggest US hits were "Another One Bites the Dust" and "Crazy Little Thing Called Love"
-- not exactly "new wave," but pretty stripped-down compared to "Bohemian Rhapsody" or "We Are The Champions."

the early 80s US rock audience probably was discomfited by Freddie. Like "Another one…" did not work on rock radio, and heaven knows "Hot space" would be regarded by a 38 special fan as disco those fags and blacks listen to. mainstream "rock" fans were more or less openly racist and loudly homophobic in the early 80s.

Whereas in the UK and the rest of the world, they were consistently amongst the biggest bands extant in the 1980s. I think maybe for an NME reader/ Smiths fan / RiP Rig and Panic partisan in the 80s, their fans in the UK must have been like the lumpen proles who had bad hair, were embarrassing from a quasi-class perspective, etc etc…like imagine Boston/Styx/Foreigner/Journey/Asia (all of whom meant nothing in the UK) rolled into one band, then imagine the people who would go to their concerts…

I've never met a single hard-core Queen fan, or anyone who's even heard their post-1983 records, much less owns any of them.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat)

If I were to meet someone today who claimed that Queen were their favourite band I would automatically make a load of other assumptions about things they like (The Rocky Horror Show, The Great Escape, Jeremy Clarkson).

― Matt DC

mainstream "rock" fans were more or less openly racist and loudly homophobic in the early 80s.

I think that's painting the audience with far too broad a brush, though those elements were certainly there (and vocal). I always assumed that the "I Want To Break Free" video was what killed their career in the US. Boy George could get away with it, but an established stadium rock hero like Mercury appearing in drag -- and I believe a large portion of Queen's audience at that time didn't know Freddie was gay and/or assumed he wasn't -- was unacceptable.

That ws a v srs video and the other three guys're gay now too?

Tho tbf I guess there's not the same popular/comedic drag tradition in the US and it's a little baffling they used the same video there

I raised myself on Marsh/Xgau/Marcus lists so the Queen hate is something I take for granted but it is interesting. like, those guys weren't only about "true", authentic and socially conscious r'n'r and r'n'b. they supported the more pop styles of soul in particular (Doo Wop, Motown, philly, disco, boogie, english postpunk soul, all types of hip hop, new jack...) as opposed to more widely accepted "quality" soul (Xgau's distaste for 70's blaxploitation was particularly refreshing) which I always found useful but it's far from "common sense" music criticism. there was a promotional (Heart of Rock and Soul) radio interview with Marsh where his love for Nolan Strong is treated as weird which I think is a good example of this schism.

That ws a v srs video and the other three guys're gay now too?

It was enough that Mercury was perceived as being gay to an audience that, for the most part, hadn't given it much thought one way or the other up to that point. A similar fate befell Billy Squier, whose career was over after the "Rock Me Tonite" video. The mere suggestion that a mainstream hard-rock artist might be gay was enough to kill a career in the early 80s in the US.

Tho tbf I guess there's not the same popular/comedic drag tradition in the US and it's a little baffling they used the same video there

There's some tradition of it here, from Milton Berle in the 50s to "Bosom Buddies" in the 80s, but I don't know enough about it to understand where/how/why certain lines were drawn vis-a-vis audience acceptance/perceptions.

like, those guys weren't only about "true", authentic and socially conscious r'n'r and r'n'b. they supported the more pop styles of soul in particular (Doo Wop, Motown, philly, disco, boogie, english postpunk soul, all types of hip hop, new jack...)

Yeah, it always bugs me when Marsh gets pegged as someone for whom anything other than REAL ROOTS-ROCKIN' GUITAR is anathema. ffs, he loves Metal Box.

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