Cities Made of Song, 1974

Cities Made of Song, 1974 - Seven Seas of Rhye by Queen​

I once met someone who laughed when I mentioned "favorite Queen albums".

"Why would you care about the albums?" he asked. "They were a singles band."

Phooie! And again, I say phooie! Queen were a group just as capable of composing sophisticated albums in the studio as they were of dominating the radio waves. The fact that their LP discography seems rarely remembered is a real pity, since they put out several incredible rock albums through the 70s, and for that matter, several good ones later on. In all honestly, "Innuendo" is actually my favorite, followed by "Sheer Heart Attack", and then "Queen II".

"Queen II" is an odd duck. Like most bands of the time, Queen had started in clubs a few years before they ever recorded a record, and their first album is about as standard hard rock as you can get. But it's clear that being another Led Zeppelin clone was never going to rest well with any member of this group, whose ambitions always stretched much further. So after an uncommonly long production period, running from mid 1973 to the first days of 1974, Queen showed us a little more of the band that they would become with this excellent record.

There's a bit of chessboard imagery here, and the album is divided into a "white" side and a "black" side. They're tied together by a number of songs covering a loose fantasy theme, showing progressive rock influences without ever quite crossing over into that genre. Actually, the type of rock on display is pretty undefinable, which I like very much. It's still hard rock of a sort, but there's tinges of prog, tinges of metal, tinges of glam, and everything in between. I'm a particular fan of the thumping Ogre Battle which eventually gave its name to an entertaining strategy game series by Enix. March of the Black Queen is notable for being sort of a proto-Bohemian Rhapsody, the second longest tune in Queen's catalog, and musically very complex. Seemingly it was a pain in the neck to produce, but the results are undeniably spectacular. This song has received a lot of heightened attention online in the last couple of years because of a line which, at least in the original version of the song, contains the N-word. It's startling just how much standards of what is and isn't acceptable in music have changed in the last 50 years.

Seven Seas of Rhye was intended as radio bait, and hey, it worked. It peaked at #10 on the UK charts and has been one of Queen's most enduring hits. The only complaint I have about it is that it's so short! That intro is one of the most interesting instrumental sequences Queen ever did, and the soaring harmony in the middle eighth is just divine. I profess a special fondness for the fade-out in the coda and the singing of I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside; I'm tempted by the coincidence that Pertwee rattled off this same tune just earlier in the first part of Death to the Daleks, but to steal a phrase from Ghosts of N-Space, it's probably just another case of synchronicity!

For all the flaws of its longest and most ambitious track, this album shows heaps of promise for a band that was rapidly coming into its own. Perhaps we'll visit Queen again for one of the future Cities Made of Song posts. For now, I'll be doing my denouement post for the Pertwee era. Cheers.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 13 April 2021.)