Queen – Musicland Studios Munich 1979
Introduction
As I have reported earlier in the articles on Jazz and, particularly, Like Killers, my love for Queen was over after Like Killers. The last studio album I really liked was Jazz. But how justified is that? Is The Game really that mediocre?
After Jazz and Live Killers
The first Queen live album, Like Killers, was released on June 22, 1979. It was a summation of the tour the band played while promoting their then latest studio album Jazz, an album I loved. While the band was compiling the double live album Like Killers the idea was born for the band to create the soundtrack for the Flash Gordon movie. Apparently, director Dino De Laurentis didn’t know who/what Queen was, given his question “…but who are the queens?” After providing some more background information, Queen was approached and they agreed.
Even though the band had recently bought the Mountain Studios in Switzerland, which provided them with the peace and calm to work on new material, the sessions for their first upcoming studio album would not take place there. Also, for the second time, and this time for good, the band said goodbye to producer Roy Thomas Baker. The band wasn’t entirely satisfied with the way of working and production of Jazz and the search for a new producer was on. He was quickly found in (Reinhold) Mack, who had previously worked on albums by Scorpions, Deep Purple, Rory Gallagher and The Rolling Stones, but was primarily known as the co-founder of Giorgio Moroder’s Musicland Studios in Munich, West-Germany. Early June 1979 Moroder told Mack “I hear you are working with Freddie Mercury.” Mack didn’t have a clue (yet)…
Queen – Crazy Tour 1979 – Tour program
By late June 1979 the band went into the studio with Mack to get acquainted and to test the waters. The June/July session yielded 4 new (finished) songs for a future project, one of them being Crazy Little Thing Called Love, a rockabilly song written by Freddie Mercury, which was released as a single on October 12, 1979. It turned into a huge hit, their biggest hit yet in the US, reaching number 1 on the Billboard charts! Also, Queen seized the opportunity to enhance their image.
‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ took me five or ten minutes. I did that on the guitar, which I can’t play for nuts, and in one way it was quite a good thing because I was restricted, knowing only a few chords. It’s a good discipline because I simply had to write within a small framework. I couldn’t work through too many chords and because of that restriction I wrote a good song, I think.
Freddie Mercury, Melody Maker, 02/05/1981
The band did a month long tour in the UK, Scotland and Ireland, starting late November 1979, with rehearsals starting in October. The Crazy Tour was a big sold out success, which saw the band debuting the new songs Crazy Little Thing Called Love and Save Me.
On January 25, 1980, the single Save Me was released, which was less successful than the previous single. Between February and May 1980 the band was once again in the studio, recording new songs and finishing the upcoming album. The band was inspired and the recording sessions went smoothly. Besides music for The Game, music for the Flash Gordon soundtrack was also in the works. On May 30, 1980, the single Play The Game was released, accompanied by a video showing Mercury with the moustache for the very first time. The moustache would soon almost have a life on its own, especially in the US.
Queen – The Game
The Game
On June 30, 1980, a bit over a year after Like Killers, The Game saw the light of day. The album was highly successful, particularly in the as yet unexplored markets of Canada and the US. In Europe the success was slightly disappointing, when compared to the previous albums, even though it could hardly be called a failure.
The band’s image was new, the 1980s had arrived for Queen as well. The music was pure pop, rock could only sparingly be found. Rockabilly had introduced the album, the old Queen sound had been modernized in the follow-up singles, but the real monster hit came from disco/funk and Chic influences: the John Deacon song Another One Bites The Dust.
Michael Jackson & Freddie Mercury 1980
Another One Bites The Dust
In English music magazine NME Chic’s Bernard Edwards said: “Well, that Queen record came about because that bass player… spent some time hanging out with us at our studio”. Whether or not that’s true, is uncertain.
I’d been wanting to do a track like ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ for a while, but originally all I had was the line and the bass riff. Gradually, I filled it in and the band added ideas. I could hear it as a song for dancing but had no idea it would become as big as it did. The song got picked up off our album and some of the black radio stations in the US started playing it, which we’ve never had before. Michael Jackson actually suggested we release it as a single. He was a fan of ours and used to come to our shows.
John Deacon, Bassist & Bass Techniques, April 1996
It turned into the second (and last) number 1 hit in the US. With 12 million copies sold it’s (still) the most successful single of Queen’s entire body of work. As John Deacon stated, it was Michael Jackson who convinced the band to release the song as a single, and he was (more than) right. For a while, Queen was as big in the US, as it had been in Europe the preceding years. Contrary to previous albums, The Game was more geared to rhythm and less focused on melody and layer-on-layer-on-layer choirs, The music was more direct. But the most remarkable change was the announcement in the album’s liner notes.
This album includes the first appearance of a Synthesizer (an Oberheim OBX) on a Queen album.
And, the production was clear and more down-to-earth, resulting in a fresher sound for the songs.
Yeah, that was when we started trying to get outside what was normal for us. Plus we had a new engineer in Mack and a new environment in Munich. Everything was different. We turned our whole studio technique around in a sense, because Mack had come from a different background from us. We thought there was only one way of doing things, like doing a backing tracks: We would just do it until we got it right. If there were some bits where it speeded up or slowed down, then we would do it again until it was right. We had done some of our old backing tracks so many times, they were too stiff. Mack’s first contribution was to say, “Well you don’t have to do that. I can drop the whole thing in. If it breaks down after half a minute, then we can edit in and carry on if you just play along with the tempo”. We laughed and said “Don’t be silly. You can’t do that”. But in facts, you can. What you gain is the freshness, because often a lot of the backing tracks is first time though. It really helped a lot. There was less guitar on that album, but that’s really not going to be the same forever; that was just an experiment.
Brian May, On The Record, 1982
Queen – The Game – Platinum certification Denmark
Reception
The question is how the album was received this time around. The album was poppier, less bombastic than before. Was the accusation of fascism (read the story on Jazz) a thing of the past?
Rolling Stone magazine, who had called Queen the “first truly fascist rock band” in their Jazz review, was a bit milder, but “simply because it’s harder to get annoyed with a group that’s plugging away at bad rockabilly than with one blasting out crypto-Nazi marching tunes”. The Washington Post wrote “After five years of unchallenging, dismal albums, this was supposed to be Queen’s comeback. But no such luck.” The English NME titled their review “Abandon hope: all ye who enter here…”, basically saying all there is to say. Sounds published a scathing article with a picture of Freddie Mercury, with a moustache clumsily drawn over it and captioned it “The loser”. Only Record Mirror was positive: 5 (out of 5) stars. The Dutch press was unimpressed as well: “… the price that has to be paid for The Game is simply too high” (Algemeen Dagblad), “concise attempts at innovation” (Het Parool) and “The sound they make is proto smugness”.
It’s abundantly clear, Queen and the press were no friends during their heyday and The Game was not the record to change that. Nowadays, the band’s body of work is appraised in a different light, including The Game. The album will never be part of any “best of all time” lists, but it’s valued higher and regarded as a fine pop album.
Review
And that’s precisely what’s wrong with it. At the time, I had denounced Queen full heartedly. The right out hideous Crazy Little Thing Called Love was a first indication, but the singles Save Me and Play The Game were the definite nails in the coffin.
At the time I thought Dragon Attack and Rock It (Prime Jive) were the major songs on the album. I still do. I had hoped that some more songs would qualify after all those years. With the exception of Another One Bites The Dust, no such luck. The entire second half of the album following Rock It (Prime Jive) is far below par.
In a time peroid where The Police had just released their best album (Reggatta De Blanc), the 2-Tone revival swept across Europe (The Specials, One Step Beyond…, Too Much Pressure, I Just Can’t Stop It and More Specials underway), The Clash hit their creative peak (London Calling and the upcoming Sandinista!), The Cure had recently released their influential Seventeen Seconds and countless other acts released one of the other superb album, Queen sounded hopelessly outdated and uninspired. One look at the puke album cover is the ultimate proof.
Queen – The Game – Singles
Singles
The album spawned no less than 5 singles.
- Crazy Little Thing Called Love
(released on October 12, 1979) - Save Me
(released on January 25, 1980) - Play The Game
(released on May 30, 1980) - Another One Bites The Dust
(released on August 22, 1980) - Need Your Loving Tonight
(released on November 18, 1980, in the US)
Queen – The Game – Back cover
Songs
The album is the shortest Queen album ever, totaling at 35:42 minutes.
- Play The Game $
- Dragon Attack #
- Another One Bites the Dust *
- Need Your Loving Tonight *
- Crazy Little Thing Called Love $
- Rock It (Prime Jive) %
- Don’t Try Suicide $
- Sail Away Sweet Sister #
- Coming Soon %
- Save Me #
Written by:
Freddie Mercury $
Brian May #
Roger Taylor %
John Deacon *
Queen – The Game – Inner sleeve
Musicians
- Freddie Mercury – vocals, piano, synthesizer; guitar on Crazy Little Thing Called Love; intro vocals on Rock It (Prime Jive); mid-section vocals on Sail Away Sweet Sister
- Brian May – guitar, background vocals, synthesizer; piano on Save Me; vocals on Sail Away Sweet Sister
- Roger Taylor – drums, percussion, background vocals, synthesizer, guitar; co-vocals on Coming Soon; vocals on Rock It (Prime Jive)
- John Deacon – bass; guitar, piano on Another One Bites The Dust; guitar on Need Your Loving Tonight
- Mack – synthesizer
Queen 1980
After The Game
From October to early November 1980 Queen was in the studio to finish recording the Flash Gordon soundtrack. The band booked the studio time during a break from their 9 month tour that had started on June 30, 1980, in the US and ended on March 21, 1981 in Brazil.
Singer Freddie Mercury’s moustache led to rumors he might be homosexual. Women who missed the black nail-polish and the (male) macho crowd, especially in the US, couldn’t accept that and apparently flooded the stage with throwaway razors ordering Mercury to shave off that dreaded thing. On a bootleg recording Mercury talks about the moustache.
Do you girls like this mustache? Any boys like the mustache? A lot of people are hating it – I don’t give a fuck, actually… it’s my mustache and I’m gonna keep it!
Mercury didn’t respond to the ‘request’ for removing the moustache. It stayed, until April 5, 1984, the day Mercury filmed the mid-segment for the I Want To Break Free video. Soon, the moustache returned and would stay up to 1987, the year he was officially diagnosed with HIV.
The Game ushered in a new era for Queen. The pairing with producer Mack and Mercury’s love for Munich’s night clubs, changed Queen’s musical trajectory. With The Game the US was conquered, for about a year. The soundtrack to the Flash Gordon movie was regarded as a deviation, but by the time their next regular album (Hot Space) was released, the momentum had passed the band by.
By that time Queen had completely dissolved from my radar, only to temporarily return in 1991 when Mercury died of AIDS. I started listening back to all the music I had loved in my early years and ended up rediscovering the Sheer Heart Attack and Jazz albums.
In closing
What’s your take on The Game? Let me know!
Video/Spotify
This story contains an accompanying video. Click on the following link to see it: Video: Queen disappoints with The Game. The A Pop Life playlist on Spotify has been updated as well.
