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Given that I was an easily
excitable lad of 14 in November 1978, when Queen released its seventh album,
the full-color, fold-out poster that came with "Jazz" was no small part of
its appeal, since it depicted 50 naked female bicyclists cued up at the
starting line in a raunchy, distaff version of the Tour de France.
My mom confiscated the
poster the day I bought the album, and it wasn't long before controversy
prompted the English rockers to pull it from subsequent vinyl pressings.
Nevertheless, "Jazz" remains a visceral and thrilling effort, and all the
more so for its hints of forbidden pleasures.
"What is the deal with
that guy?" Mom asked one day as she overheard Freddie Mercury yelping,
"I'll pull you and I'll pill you / I'll Cruella-De-Vil you / And to thrill
you, I'll use any device!" I had no idea then and I haven't really
figured it out now, but it sure is a kick.
The strangest, most
absurdly ambitious and most unlikely band in the classic-rock pantheon,
Queen traces its roots to a group called Smile, typical of the blues-based,
proto-heavy-metal rockers proliferating in the wake of psychedelia. When
their singer quit in 1971, Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor formed a new
band with operatic baritone Freddie Mercury and melodic bassist John Deacon,
and over the course of their first three albums, they established Queen as
flirtatiously ambisexual hard-rockers bridging the gap between metal and the
glam movement.
The group began to show
the breadth of its musical vision and perfect its style of symphonic rock
with "A Night at the Opera" -- which featured the studio masterpiece
"Bohemian Rhapsody" -- and "A Day at the Races," recorded at the same time
but released a year apart in late '75 and '76. The band then proceeded to
score its biggest commercial success to date with "News of the World," which
yielded two smash hits in '77 with "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the
Champions."
Some bands would have
been daunted in crafting a follow-up, but Queen spent the months between
July and October '78 shuttling between studios in Montreux, Switzerland, and
Nice, France, blissfully ignoring the outside world while writing and
recording with Roy Thomas Baker, who had earlier produced "Bohemian
Rhapsody."
In the interim after
"News of the World," punk had exploded, and suddenly rock superstars were
being excoriated for wretched excess and clueless conservatism. Some
responded by paring back and punching up their sounds, a la the Rolling
Stones on "Some Girls," Pink Floyd on "Animals" or Yes on "Going for the
One." But Queen remained as unapologetically over-the-top as ever, from the
incredibly lush sounds of "Jazz" to the inner gatefold sleeve depicting the
musicians lounging around the studio amid an array of 14 guitars, a grand
piano, two giant drum sets and a massive gong (though the front cover art,
inspired by some graffiti Taylor saw on the Berlin Wall, was unusually
minimalist for the group).
A genre-hopping tour of
diverse musical styles -- including almost everything but jazz, oddly enough
-- the album opens with Mercury singing nonsensical Arabic lyrics over the
Middle Eastern-flavored "Mustapha." (The vocalist had been born as Farrokh
Bulsara to Indian Parsi parents in Zanzibar.) Next comes the first of the
disc's two hits on a double A-side single, "Fat Bottomed Girls," a loving
homage to zaftig ladies penned by May and inspired by risque memories of his
baby-sitter ("She was such a naughty nanny / You big woman you made a bad
boy out of me").
The album's other hit
was, of course, "Bicycle Race," a tour de force of layered backing vocals,
intertwining guitar riffs and celebratory silliness ("Get on your bikes
and ride!") which inspired that notorious poster and the naked cyclists
who rode across the stage on tour. (I still don't think Mom knows my high
school pal Luigi DePinto and I snuck into New York from Hoboken to see that
show at Madison Square Garden.)
Elsewhere, Queen flirts
with old-time vaudeville ("Dreamers Ball"); sexy disco/funk ("Fun It" and
"More of That Jazz," which predict later efforts such as "The Game" and the
"Flash Gordon" soundtrack); heartfelt Beatles-esque balladry ("Jealousy,"
"Leaving Home Ain't Easy," "In Only Seven Days"); heavy metal ("Dead on
Time," "Stone Cold Crazy," "If You Can't Beat Them"), and defiant, anthemic
rockers heralding its status as arena champions ("We'll give you crazy
performance / We'll give you grounds for divorce / We'll give you piece de
resistance / And a tour de force, of course!" Mercury sings in "Let Me
Entertain You," while "Don't Stop Me Now" finds him proclaiming, "I'm a
shooting star leaping through the skies!").
Predictably, English
critics obsessed with punk panned "Jazz" upon its release. "If you have deaf
relatives, you would buy this low-class replica of Gilbert and Sullivan as a
Christmas present," wrote the New Musical Express, though in retrospect, you
could argue that by adhering to its own weirdly distinctive and diverse
vision, Queen made more of a "punk" statement than many dedicated followers
of fashion.
What ultimately keeps me
coming back to the album, however, is that ambiguous sexual energy running
through all 13 tracks; the fact that each of them boasts more hooks than
some bands have on an entire album, and the inviting sonic density of it
all, painstakingly crafted via countless overdubs in the days before
computers and Pro Tools.
"Just thinking of the
hours and hours of careful, loving embroidery that went into that ... I
don't know how we did it all, frankly," May told me recently. "The great,
grand plan of it all was simply stupendous." Almost as stupendous, in fact,
as 50 naked female bicyclists.
IN CONCERT
Brian May and Roger
Taylor perform with the former vocalist of Free and Bad Company as "Queen +
Paul Rodgers" at 8 p.m. Thursday at the Allstate Arena, 6920 N. Mannheim
Rd., Rosemont. Tickets are $35-$200, through Ticket-master, (312) 559-1212;
www.ticketmaster.com.
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