Queen

Rock band

For the Record…

Innovative Album Reached Number One

Versatility Captured New Audiences

Became International Superstars

Selected discography

Sources

Following their debut in 1973, Queen, a completely different sort of band, was hailed as “a fresh, new breeze into the world of rock.” The English group is perhaps best known for their flamboyant lead singer Freddie Mercury, whose dramatic vocal style and outrageous onstage antics have formed much of the band’s reputation and personality—deservedly or not. Often overlooked are the band’s considerable musical skill and their talent for songwriting—the four members of Queen have been responsible for an impressively imaginative and diverse body of work that includes such songs as the ingenious operatic experiment “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the harmonic “Somebody to Love,” the playful “Fat Bottom Girls,” the cocky “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions,” the rhythmic “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” and what became a popular football stadium anthem, “Another One Bites the Dust.”

Formed in 1971, Queen’s lineup includes guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor, both former members of the band Smile, vocalist/keyboardist Freddie Mercury, and bass player John Deacon. After a short time

For the Record…

Band formed in England in 1971; members include Freddie Mercury (born Frederick Bulsara, September 8, 1946, in Zanzibar), lead vocals and keyboards; Brian May (born July 19, 1947, in Hampton, Middlesex, England), lead guitar; John Deacon (born August 19, 1951, in Leicester, England), bass; and Roger Meadows Taylor (born July 26, 1949, in Kingslynn, Norfolk, England), drums. Taylor has children. All four members have attended universities: Mercury has a degree in graphic design and illustration; May has a degree in physics and has done graduate work in astronomy; Taylor has a degree in biology; and Deacon earned a degree in electronics with first-class honors.

Awards: Rolling Stone Reader’s Poll citations for single of the year, 1976, for “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and 1980, for “Another One Bites the Dust,” and for artist of the year, 1980.

Addresses: Record company— Hollywood Records (Elektra), 75 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10019.

spent in rehearsal, the group began their search for a record company in 1973 and signed almost immediately with EMI. Their self-titled first album sold extremely well in both Britain and the United States, and their second album, Queen II, yielded the British top-ten single “Seven Seas of Rhye.” Queen’s big breakthrough in the United States came in 1975 with Sheer Heart Attack —a best-selling album containing the top-ten single “Killer Queen.” Their successful tour season met with mixed criticism. One writer for the New York Times introduced them as “a British quartet still subscribing to the principles of blitzkrieg rock,” referring to the group’s lavish production values, and commented that though their music was “scarcely superoriginal,” the band evidently “touched a responsive chord that should allow Queen to reign quite happily in this area.”

Innovative Album Reached Number One

The following year the group hit number one in the United States with the remarkable A Night at the Opera album featuring Taylor’s amusing “I’m in Love with My Car,” Deacon’s catchy “You’re My Best Friend,” and two of May’s sensitive and often overlooked tunes, the time-travel-inspired ballad “’39” and more delightful fantasy fare of “The Prophet’s Song.” The album also spawned a major worldwide hit in “Bohemian Rhapsody”—an unprecedented six-minute cut that mingled “introspection with Gilbert and Sullivan operatics,” as a Time critic described it. The group followed their masterwork with another in the same vein. A Day at the Races contained Mercury’s falsetto-laced “Somebody to Love,” another catchy Deacon cut, “You and I,” and still more gentle departures from the “blitzkrieg” rock they had been known for in May’s lovely Japanese/English anthem “TeoTorriatte (Let Us Cling Together).”

Known for simply being themselves, Queen offered audiences a bravado sound coupled with a campy style that would likely have met with disdain a short decade before. As Brian May told Time: “We’re not styled on anybody.” And no one could successfully style themselves on Queen, who in the mid-1970s prided themselves on not using synthesizers but instead “complex overdubbings of electric guitar with varied amplifiers” which gave their albums a full orchestral sound, as the Time writer noted. Another unique feature was their use of dazzling a cappella interludes and flawless vocal harmony as in “The Prophet’s Song” and “Somebody to Love.” Such poetic and sensitive moments, however, were balanced by songs like “Death on Two Legs,” which included such language as “You suck my blood like a leech … you’re a sewer rat decaying in a cesspool of pride.” The group’s multifaceted style was echoed by Mercury’s chameleon-like vocals; as Ralph Novak of People commented, “Not many vocalists can go from sweet to abrasive as rapidly as he can.”

Versatility Captured New Audiences

The group’s popularity increased with glowing reviews for the 1977 single release of “We Are the Champions” and the delightful rockabilly-style “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” from the 1980 album The Game, which was both a commercial success and well received by critics. “Another One Bites the Dust,” a funky pseudo-rap cut, provided the group with a successful single, topping both the soul and pop charts in the United States. This departure from the heavily overdubbed and complex musical styles of earlier hits attracted a large black audience that had, for the most part, been ignoring Queen the previous decade.

Two years later, Hot Space continued the sound of “Another One Bites the Dust,” devoting an entire side to funky, danceable tunes that appealed to a much broader audience than in the past. Still, the album met with mixed reviews and was their slowest seller since Queen II. A well-crafted record with an impressive compositional range and tight vocal harmonies “grafted seamlessly into [a] kinetic brew,” the disk was nevertheless faulted because under the superb production the group was grinding out what Sam Sutherland in High Fidelity labeled a “noxious mix of sexual manipulation and mean spiritedness” in such cuts as “Back Chat” and “Body Language.” The latter made little impact on the singles chart before vanishing entirely. Even the more melodic “Life Is Real (Song for Lennon),” a eulogy for John Lennon, was criticized by Sutherland as “cheapened by the precision with which Queen apes the vocal and keyboard timbres of ‘Imagine.’”

Queen’s 1984 album, The Works, fared much better than Hot Space. Layered vocals and multitracked guitars were cut out, leaving “a lean hard-rock sound, making The Works perhaps the first record to refute the maxim that the words Queen and listenable are, of necessity, mutually exclusive,” as Rolling Stone contributor Parke Puterbaugh observed. The group offered such thundering tracks as “Tear It Up” and “Hammerto Fall,” balanced against the more melodic “Keep Passing the Open Windows,” the fifties-style “Man on The Prowl” and the harder to classify “Is This the World We Created…?,” which Puterbaugh termed “an acoustic meditation on hunger and hate and generational responsibility.” Despite such critical praise, the album failed to produce a top hit.

Became International Superstars

While Queen’s American chart success was on the decline, the group was enjoying increasing popularity as an international stage act, rivalling the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen in their drawing power. A 1981 concert in Brazil set records for the largest paying audience to see a single performance by one band, and the group’s set at the 1985 Live Aid fund-raising concert was lauded by fans and critics. The band’s stage performances have been balanced between new material and crowd pleasers—even numbers impossible to reproduce on stage, such as “Bohemian Rhapsody,” whose complicated, layered, a cappella vocal section is filled in by tape as lights flicker crazily around the empty stage. Queen’s notorious stage pyrotechnics have earned them a reputation as a can’t-miss concert act. As May told Charles McCardell in Musician, “Somewhere in the course of the last couple of years, something clicked and we reached a new level. We weren’t only a pop group anymore. We sort of got written in as one of the thing[s] people have to see.”

The band had not played a live date in the United States since 1982, however, and by the late 1980s Queen was meeting with some scathing criticism from American critics. A Kind of Magic, released in 1986, won great regard in Britain and elsewhere, but U.S. fans were unimpressed, and the album sank back as a non-event “absolutely bankrupt of gauche imagination … dominated by barren slabs of synthscape,” as Rolling Stone contributor Mark Coleman commented. Taylor’s “Radio Ga Ga,” which placed high on the charts in nineteen countries, made it only to the sixteenth slot in the United States. Any power the group previously had demonstrated was absent on the album, replaced by what Coleman characterized as “a mechanical thud rather than a metalized threat.”

The group’s musical style was changing, and so were attitudes toward them. As Taylor commented, “We never tried to pander to what we feel people want. A lot of people want to hear rehashes… but that would be death for us. That’s really unfair, because we have changed a lot.” “We really start with a clean slate each time,” May similarly told McCardell. “No matter the producer, no matter the song, it’s still Queen. We don’t have to reproduce any formulas. And we’ve never had an audience that hemmed us in.” Nevertheless, the band has been looking to recapture their lost American popularity. As May continued: “America now for us is an island. We have every territory around it, but we don’t have that big corner of the world.”

With the 1991 release of Innuendo, Queen regained some of the critical respect and radio airplay they had lost in the States. Craig Tomashoff of People, for instance, noted that Innuendo “is so over-the-top it’s enjoyable,” and added that “it’s nice to hear this reversion to the old exaggerated ways.” “There’s no getting around the new album’s craft,” Chuck Eddy stated in Rolling Stone, for “these old entertainers sound like they’ve decided to stop trying so hard, like they’re finally satisfied with their lot in life.” And that lot, the critic concluded, is a considerable one: “Queen is well aware that its forte has always been eclectic excess for its own sake…. These shameless all-time glam survivors would try anything once, and amid their messes they attained classical-kitsch pinnacles, helped invent rap music and … [have been] explicitly acknowledged as an important inspiration by arty hardcore ensembles and funk-metal and industrial-drone bands alike.”

Selected discography

Queen, EMI, 1973.

Queen II (includes “Seven Seas of Rhye”), EMI, 1974.

Sheer Heart Attack (includes “Killer Queen”), EMI, 1974.

A Night at the Opera (includes “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “You’re My Best Friend,” “’39,” and “The Prophet’s Song”) EMI, 1975.

A Day at the Races (includes “Somebody to Love”), EMI, 1976.

News of the World (includes “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions”), EMI, 1977.

Jazz (includes “Fat Bottom Girls”), EMI, 1978.

Live Killers, EMI, 1979.

The Game (includes “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and “Another One Bites the Dust”), EMI, 1980.

Flash Gordon (film soundtrack), EMI, 1980.

Greatest Hits, EMI, 1981.

Hot Space, EMI, 1982.

The Works, EMI, 1984.

A Kind of Magic, Capitol, 1986.

The Miracle, Capitol, 1989.

Innuendo, Hollywood, 1991.

Sources

Books

Anderson, Christopher P., The New Book of People, Perigee, 1986.

Periodicals

Detroit Free Press, August 6, 1982.

High Fidelity, August 1982.

Musician, November 1986.

New York Times, May 9, 1974; February 18, 1975; February 7, 1976; February 7, 1977; December 3, 1977; November 18, 1978; January 1, 1982; July 21, 1982; July 30, 1982.

People, August 25, 1986; April 1, 1991.

Rock Express, Number 106, 1986.

Rolling Stone, January 25, 1979; April 12, 1984; October 9, 1986; March 7, 1991.

Time, February 9, 1976.

—Meg Mac Donald

Queen

Rock group

Following their debut in 1973, Queen, a completely different sort of band, was hailed as "a fresh, new breeze into the world of rock." The English group became best known for their flamboyant lead singer, the late Freddie Mercury, whose dramatic vocal style and outrageous onstage antics formed much of the band's reputation and personality—deservedly or not. Often overlooked are the band's considerable musical skill and their talent for songwriting—the original four members of Queen were responsible for an impressively imaginative and diverse body of work that included such songs as the ingenious operatic experiment "Bohemian Rhapsody," the harmonic "Somebody to Love," the playful "Fat Bottom Girls," the cocky "We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions," the rhythmic "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," and what became a popular football stadium anthem, "Another One Bites the Dust."

Formed in 1971, Queen's lineup included guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor, both former members of the band Smile, bass player John Deacon, and Mercury. After a short time spent in rehearsal, the group began their search for a record company in 1973 and signed almost immediately with EMI. Their self-titled first album sold extremely well in both Britain and the United States, and their second album, Queen II, yielded the British top-ten single "Seven Seas of Rhye." Queen's big breakthrough in the United States came in late 1974 with Sheer Heart Attack —a best-selling album containing the top-ten single "Killer Queen." Their successful tour season met with mixed criticism. One writer for the New York Times introduced them as "a British quartet still subscribing to the principles of blitzkrieg rock," referring to the group's lavish production values, and commented that though their music was "scarcely superoriginal," the band evidently "touched a responsive chord that should allow Queen to reign quite happily in this area."

The following year the group hit number one in the United States with the remarkable A Night at the Opera album featuring Taylor's amusing "I'm in Love with My Car," Deacon's catchy "You're My Best Friend," and two of May's sensitive and often overlooked tunes, the time-travel-inspired ballad "'39" and the more delightful fantasy fare of "The Prophet's Song." The album also spawned a major worldwide hit in "Bohemian Rhapsody"—an unprecedented six-minute cut that mingled "introspection with Gilbert and Sullivan operatics," as a Time critic described it. The group followed their masterwork with another in the same vein. A Day at the Races contained Mercury's falsetto-laced "Somebody to Love," another catchy Deacon cut, "You and I," and still more gentle departures from the "blitzkrieg" rock they had been known for in May's lovely Japanese/English anthem "Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together)."

Known for simply being themselves, Queen offered audiences a bravado sound coupled with a campy style that would likely have met with disdain a short decade before. As Brian May told Time, "We're not styled on anybody." And no one could successfully style themselves on Queen, who in the mid-1970s prided themselves on not using synthesizers but instead "complex overdubbings of electric guitar with varied amplifiers" which gave their albums a full orchestral sound, as the Time writer noted. Another unique feature was their use of dazzling a cappella interludes and flawless vocal harmony as in "The Prophet's Song" and "Somebody to Love." Such poetic and sensitive moments, however, were balanced by songs like "Death on Two Legs," which included such language as "You suck my blood like a leech … you're a sewer rat decaying in a cesspool of pride." The group's multifaceted style was echoed by Mercury's chameleon-like vocals; as Ralph Novak of People commented, "Not many vocalists can go from sweet to abrasive as rapidly as he can."

The group's popularity increased with glowing reviews for the 1977 single release of "We Are the Champions" and the delightful rockabilly-style "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" from the 1980 album The Game, which was both a commercial success and well received by critics. "Another One Bites the Dust," a funky pseudo-rap cut, provided the group with a successful single, topping both the soul and pop charts in the United States. This departure from the heavily overdubbed and complex musical styles of earlier hits attracted a large black audience that had, for the most part, been ignoring Queen the previous decade.

Two years later, Hot Space continued the sound of "Another One Bites the Dust," devoting an entire side to funky, danceable tunes that appealed to a much broader audience than in the past. Still, the album met with mixed reviews and was their slowest seller since Queen II. A well-crafted record with an impressive compositional range and tight vocal harmonies "grafted seamlessly into [a] kinetic brew," the disk was nevertheless faulted because under the superb production the group was grinding out what Sam Sutherland in High Fidelity labeled a "noxious mix of sexual manipulation and mean spiritedness" in such cuts as "Back Chat" and "Body Language." The latter made little impact on the singles chart before vanishing entirely. Even the more melodic "Life Is Real (Song for Lennon)," a eulogy for John Lennon, was criticized by Sutherland as "cheapened by the precision with which Queen apes the vocal and keyboard timbres of 'Imagine.'"

Queen's 1984 album, The Works, fared much better than Hot Space. Layered vocals and multitracked guitars were cut out, leaving "a lean hard-rock sound, making The Works perhaps the first record to refute the maxim that the words Queen and listenable are, of necessity, mutually exclusive," as Rolling Stone contributor Parke Puterbaugh observed. The group offered such thundering tracks as "Tear It Up" and "Hammer to Fall," balanced against the more melodic "Keep Passing the Open Windows," the fifties-style "Man on The Prowl" and the harder to classify "Is This the World We Created … ?," which Puterbaugh termed "an acoustic meditation on hunger and hate and generational responsibility." Despite such critical praise, the album failed to produce a top hit.

While Queen's American chart success was on the decline, the group was enjoying increasing popularity as an international stage act, rivalling the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen in their drawing power. A 1981 concert in Brazil set records for the largest paying audience to see a single performance by one band, and the group's set at the 1985 Live Aid fund-raising concert was lauded by fans and critics. The band's stage performances at this time were balanced between new material and crowd pleasers—even numbers impossible to reproduce on stage, such as "Bohemian Rhapsody," whose complicated, layered, a cappella vocal section was filled in by tape as lights flicker crazily around the empty stage. Queen's notorious stage pyrotechnics had earned them a reputation as a can't-miss concert act. As May told Charles McCardell in Musician, "Somewhere in the course of the last couple of years, something clicked and we reached a new level. We weren't only a pop group anymore. We sort of got written in as one of the thing[s] people have to see."

For the Record …

Members include Freddie Mercury (born Frederick Bulsara on September 8, 1946, in Zanzibar; died of complications from AIDS on November 24, 1991, in London, England), lead vocals and keyboards; Brian May (born on July 19, 1947, in Hampton, Middlesex, England), lead guitar; John Deacon (born on August 19, 1951, in Leicester, England), bass; Roger Meadows Taylor (born on July 26, 1949, in Kingslynn, Norfolk, England), drums. Education: All four members have attended universities: Mercury had a degree in graphic design and illustration; May has a degree in physics and has done graduate work in as tronomy; Taylor has a degree in biology; Deacon earned a degree in electronics with first-class honors.

Group formed in London, England, 1971; released de but album Queen, 1973; released Queen II and Sheer Heart Attack, 1974; had first number one record in the U.S. with A Night at the Opera, 1975; released The Game, which included singles "We Are the Champions" and "Another One Bites the Dust," 1980; released sev eral albums in the 1980s; released their final original album, Innuendo, 1991; Mercury died, 1991; Made in Heaven released, 1995.

Awards: Rolling Stone Reader's Poll Award, Single of the Year for "Bohemian Rhapsody," 1976; Single of the Year for "Another One Bites the Dust," 1980; Artist of the Year, 1980.

Addresses: Office— The Mercury Phoenix Trust, P.O. Box 1026, Maidenhead, SL6 9FR, United Kingdom, website: http://www.mercuryphoenixtrust.com.

The band had not played a live date in the United States since 1982, however, and by the late 1980s Queen was meeting with some scathing criticism from American critics. A Kind of Magic, released in 1986, won great regard in Britain and elsewhere, but American fans were unimpressed, and the album sank back as a non-event "absolutely bankrupt of gauche imagination … dominated by barren slabs of synthscape," as Rolling Stone contributor Mark Coleman commented. Taylor's "Radio Ga Ga," which placed high on the charts in nineteen countries, made it only to the sixteenth slot in the United States. Any power the group had previously demonstrated was absent on the album, replaced by what Coleman characterized as "a mechanical thud rather than a metalized threat."

The group's musical style was changing, and so were attitudes toward them. As Taylor commented, "We never tried to pander to what we feel people want. A lot of people want to hear rehashes … but that would be death for us. That's really unfair, because we have changed a lot." "We really start with a clean slate each time," May similarly told McCardell. "No matter the producer, no matter the song, it's still Queen. We don't have to reproduce any formulas. And we've never had an audience that hemmed us in." Nevertheless, the band had been looking to recapture their lost American popularity. As May continued: "America now for us is an island. We have every territory around it, but we don't have that big corner of the world."

With the 1991 release of Innuendo, Queen regained some of the critical respect and radio airplay they had lost in the States. Craig Tomashoff of People, for instance, noted that Innuendo "is so over-the-top it's enjoyable," and added that "it's nice to hear this reversion to the old exaggerated ways." "There's no getting around the new album's craft," Chuck Eddy stated in Rolling Stone, for "these old entertainers sound like they've decided to stop trying so hard, like they're finally satisfied with their lot in life." And that lot, the critic concluded, is a considerable one: "Queen is well aware that its forte has always been eclectic excess for its own sake.… These shameless all-time glam survivors would try anything once, and amid their messes they attained classical-kitsch pinnacles, helped invent rap music and … [have been] explicitly acknowledged as an important inspiration by arty hardcore ensembles and funk-metal and industrial-drone bands alike."

Mercury failed to appear at events promoting the release of Innuendo, fueling rumors that the star rocker was seriously ill. His refusing to grant interviews or appear publicly during this time did nothing to quell the rumors, and Mercury finally admitted on November 23, 1991, that he had AIDS. "The time has now come," Mercury said in a statement quoted by Audrey Wood of the Associated Press, "for my friends and fans around the world to know the truth and I hope that everyone will join with me, my doctors and all those worldwide in the fight against this terrible disease." Mercury died the next day of pneumonia brought on by the illness.

Taking Mercury's last words to heart, the surviving members of the band, along with their manager, Jim Beach, formed an AIDS charity called the Mercury Phoenix Trust. Launched with the 1992 Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness, the fund raised millions of dollars by the 2000s to support AIDS relief and research efforts worldwide. This money included profits from the final Queen release featuring Freddie Mercury, Made in Heaven, which hit stores shelves to wide acclaim in 1995, and from sales of downloadable Queen songs made available by EMI beginning in 2003.

Selected discography

Queen, EMI, 1973.

Queen II, EMI, 1974.

Sheer Heart Attack, EMI, 1974.

A Night at the Opera, EMI, 1975.

A Day at the Races, EMI, 1976.

News of the World, EMI, 1977.

Jazz, EMI, 1978.

Live Killers, EMI, 1979.

The Game, EMI, 1980.

Flash Gordon (soundtrack), EMI, 1980.

Greatest Hits, EMI, 1981.

Hot Space, EMI, 1982.

The Works, EMI, 1984.

A Kind of Magic, Capitol, 1986.

The Miracle, Capitol, 1989.

Innuendo, Hollywood, 1991.

Made in Heaven, Hollywood, 1995.

Sources

Books

Anderson, Christopher P., The New Book of People, Perigee, 1986.

Periodicals

Associated Press, November 26, 1991.

Boston Herald, November 29, 2003, p. 35.

Coventry Evening Telegraph, November 24, 2003, p. 2.

Detroit Free Press, August 6, 1982.

High Fidelity, August 1982.

Musician, November 1986.

New York Times, May 9, 1974; February 18, 1975; February 7, 1976; February 7, 1977; December 3, 1977; November 18, 1978; January 1, 1982; July 21, 1982; July 30, 1982.

People, August 25, 1986; April 1, 1991.

Rock Express, Number 106, 1986.

Rolling Stone, January 25, 1979; April 12, 1984; October 9, 1986; March 7, 1991.

Time, February 9, 1976.

Online

"Made in Heaven," All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com (February 19, 2004).

"Queen," All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com (February 19, 2004).

"Introduction," Mercury Phoenix Trust, http://www.mercuryphoenixtrust.com/index2.html (February 19, 2004).

—Meg Mac Donald and

Michael Belfiore

Queen

Queen , successful British group of the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. Membership:Freddie Mercury (Frederick Bulsara) lead voc, kybd. (b. Zanzibar, Africa, Sept. 5, 1946; d. Kensington, England, Nov. 24, 1991); Brian May, lead gtr. (b. Twickenham, Middlesex, England, July 19, 1947); John Deacon, bs. (b. Leicester, England, Aug. 19, 1951); Roger Taylor, drm. (b. Kings Lynn, Norfolk, England, July 26, 1949).

Despite critical hostility, Queen were one of the foremost glitter-rock bands of the era, thanks to the outlandish costumes and flamboyant and blatantly sexual onstage behavior of lead singer Freddie Mercury. Eschewing synthesizers until 1980, Queen broke through into international popularity with 1976’s near-smash hit single “Bohemian Rhapsody”; its video helped pioneer rock video in the days before MTV. Recording classics such as “We Will Rock You” and “Another One Bites the Dust,” Queen suffered declining popularity in the United States after the mid-1980s. Discontinuing touring in 1986, Queen eventually recorded their most personal and emotionally accessible album, The Miracle, in 1989. After years of persistent rumors that he had contracted AIDS, Freddie Mercury died one day after acknowledging the fact (the first rock star to do so). A1992 tribute concert to Mercury, viewed by as many as one billion people, helped publicize the need to find a cure for the disease.

Queen was formed in 1971 by Brian May and Roger Taylor, former members of the group Smile, and Freddie Mercury from the group Wreckage. John Deacon was recruited through an advertisement, and the band rehearsed for 18 months before performing at showcase engagements in 1972, without playing any clubs or other small venues. Quickly signed to EMI Records (Elektra in the United States), Queen’s debut album was accompanied by a massive promotional campaign that alienated many critics. It included the anthemic “Keep Yourself Alive” and yielded a major British hit with “Seven Seas of Rhye” yet failed to produce even a minor American hit. In 1973 Mercury covered the Beach Boys’ classic “I Can Hear Music” as “Larry Lurex,” and following Queen II the group toured Great Britain and America, opening for Mott the Hoople.

Queen broke through in 1975 with the major hit “Killer Queen” from Sheer Heart Attack. They subsequently toured the world and became international stars with 1976’s A Night at the Opera. The album stayed on the charts for more than a year and contained Mercury’s near- smash hit “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Deacon’s major hit “You’re My Best Friend,” and May’s overlooked ballad “39.” The promotional video for “Bohemian Rhapsody” helped pioneer rock videos long before the advent of MTV. The follow-up, A Day at the Races, produced a major hit with Mercury’s “Somebody to Love,” and their next album, News of the World, featured the smash hit “We Are the Champions” (by Mercury) and the classic “We Will Rock You” (by May). The diversified album Jazz produced a two-sided hit with the controversial “Bicycle Race”/”Fat Bottomed Girls.”

One of the world’s most popular touring bands by the late 1970s, Queen recorded The Game after the live set Queen Live Killers. The Game topped the album charts and remained there for nearly a year, producing two top hits with Mercury’s rockabilly-style “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and Deacon’s “Another One Bites the Dust,” which surprisingly also became a smash R&B hit. The album yielded the moderate hits “Play the Game,” which featured the group’s first use of the synthesizer, and “Need Your Loving Tonight.” Buoyed by the crossover success of “Another One Bites the Dust,” Queen subsequently favored a dance-style sound through the mid-1980s. Major hits through 1984 included “Under Pressure,” recorded with David Bowie; “Body Language”; and “Radio Ga-Ga,” the last for their new label, Capitol.

Subsequent 1980s recordings by Queen fared less well, as their American popularity faded. Nonetheless, their success grew across the world thanks to well-received international tours. During the decade the members of Queen began pursuing projects away from the group. May composed and recorded soundtracks, most notably for the films Mad Max and The Road Warrior (also known as Mad Max 2). He joined Eddie Van Halen and REO Speedwagon’s Alan Gratzer for 1983’s minialbum Star Fleet Project. Roger Taylor recorded two solo albums before forming his own band, the Cross, in 1987. In 1984 Freddie Mercury scored a minor hit with “Love Kills” from the movie Metropolis; he later recorded Mr. Bad Guy for Columbia Records.

The group’s next album was the disjointed A Kind of Magic, which produced a moderate hit with the title song in 1986, the year the group stopped touring. In 1987 Freddie Mercury performed with Spanish opera singer Montserrat Caballé in Barcelona; recordings from the engagement were eventually released in 1992. Queen’s next album, The Miracle, was perhaps the group’s best work, with a surprisingly personal and honest tone. It includes “Invisible Man,” “Rain Must Fall,” “Was It All Worth It,” and “I Want It All” (a minor hit). The foreboding Innuendo, Queen’s final studio album, featured “These Are the Days of Our Lives” and “The Show Must Go On.”

Badgered for years about reports that he had contracted AIDS through his legendary sexual exploits, Freddie Mercury maintained his stance of refusing to give interviews. On Nov. 23, 1991, he publicly acknowledged that he did indeed have AIDS, and he died at his Kensington home in west London the next day. In April 1992 a tribute concert to Freddie Mercury was staged at Wembley Stadium in London, with performances by vocalists George Michael, Liza Minnelli, Elton John, and David Bowie backed by the surviving members of Queen, as well as Def Leppard, Metallica, and Guns N’ Roses. The show, broadcast to more than 70 nations, reached upwards of one billion people.

Queen was introduced to an entirely new audience when the 1992 hit movie Wayne’s World featured “Bohemian Rhapsody”; the song returned to MTV and reached #2 on the pop charts. By 1993, with the dissolution of Queen, Brian May had formed his own band to record Back to the Light and tour in support of Guns N’ Roses.

Discography

QUEEN : Q. (1973); At the BBC (ree. 1973; rei. 1995); Q. II (1974); Sheer Heart Attack (1974); A Night at the Opera (1975); A Day at the Races (1977); News of the World (1977); Jazz (1978); Q. Live Killers (1979); The Game (1980); Flash Gordon (soundtrack; 1980); Greatest Hits (1981); Hof Space (1982); The Works (1984); A Kind of Magic (1986); The Miracle (1989); Innuendo (1991); Live at Wembley (1992); Classic Q. (1992); Greatest Hits (1992); Q. Collection (1992); Made in Heaven (1995); Greatest Hits, I and II (1995). QUEEN AND GEORGE MICHAEL: Five Uve (1993). BRIAN MAY: Patrick (soundtrack; 1980); Patrick/Roadgames (soundtracks) (1992); Mad Max (soundtrack; 1980); The Road Warrior (soundtrack; reissued as Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, 1983); Death Before Dishonor (soundtrack; 1988); The Day After Halloween (soundtrack; 1981); The Day After Halloween/Harlequin (soundtracks) (1992); Back to the Light (1993). BRIAN MAY AND FRIENDS: Star Fleet Project (mini) (1983). ROGER TAYLOR: Fun in Space (1982); Strange Frontier (1984). THE CROSS: Shove It (1988). FREDDIE MERCURY: Mr. Bad Guy (1985); The Great Pretender (1992). FREDDIE MERCURY AND MONTSERRAT CABALLÉ: Barcelona (1992).

Bibliography

G. Tremlett, The Q. Story (London, 1978); J. Davis, Q.: An Illustrated Biography (London, 1981); R. Clarke, A Kind of Magic: A Tribute to Freddie Mercury (London, 1992); R. Sky, The Show Must Go On: The Life of Freddie Mercury (London, 1992).

—Brock Helander

Queen

The term queen denotes a gender and/or sexual category that is notable for its simultaneous ambiguity and concreteness: It creates a specific image while subtly eliding what, exactly, that image refers to. Its grammatical function mirrors its social one. It is most often used in conjunction with another word, but it is unclear which word is the noun and which is the modifier. Examples are drag queen, drama queen, and scream queen. Its similarity to the word queer is not coincidental, and when queen is used by itself (in description of a nonroyal personage), it almost always denotes homosexuality. This can take the form of false titles, such as when Michael Holroyd dubbed the British artist and personality Quentin Crisp "the Queen of Queer Street," or it may be used as a solo adjective, such as in the 1982 film Victor/Victoria, in which Robert Preston says of himself "there's nothing worse than an old queen with a head cold."

Queen as a gender position denotes flamboyance and extravagance, but also falseness and impersonation. The person in question is not actually a sovereign. The term is sometimes used affectionately or even in admiration in reference to a revered member of a community or one who has persevered through tribulation. In this sense, it does evoke the regal sense of an actual queen, but it always encompasses the metaphorical nature of the title. It may also be used as a term of derision, relating directly to the feminine nature of the title. Gender positions vary widely within the gay community, and the excessively effeminate are often a focus of ridicule, much as is true in the world at large. As with other terms of disrespect, such as faggot and queer, the word queen has been at least partially reclaimed by the gay community and used as a label proudly. It differs from the other terms, however, in that it is mostly used within the gay community, whereas the other terms are used both within the gay community as well as by outsiders when speaking of members of that community.

The most well-known use of the word queen is in the term drag queen. These are men who dress in exaggerated female garb to mock the obvious gap between their biological sex and their gender expression. In the sense of being overdone, larger-than-life approximations of women who could not actually exist, they are like actual queens wearing formal coronation robes that have never been common fashion. They also encompass the contradictory nature of queenness, in that they are so exaggerated that they clearly are not attempting actual female impersonation, yet they are, at least temporarily, eschewing their maleness, creating instead an undefined space outside normative sex and gender.

As Julian Fleisher notes, the term queen also "connotes someone with a defining attraction to a particular type of person or thing. For example, someone who enjoys, say, Latin lovers is called a 'Salsa Queen'" (1996, p. 5). Because the nature of this usage is to call attention to an attraction or desire or to make public that which is usually private, it is often coupled with a term that would otherwise be potentially offensive. For example, a person who is attracted to African American men can be called a chocolate queen, and a person attracted to Asian men can be called a rice queen. Queens can be attracted to certain activities (e.g., gym queens, people who spend a great deal of time on physical fitness, and circuit queens, gay men who frequently attend massive circuit parties). The term also applies to attitudes or a predilection for certain objects: For example, drama queens cultivate chaos in their life and others'; shoe queens take an unusual degree of pleasure in shoes (this is not the same as a shoe fetishist, but merely implies someone who enjoys owning and wearing shoes and probably has quite a collection). The term queen employed in this manner is commonly used in the heterosexual community as well as in the gay community and can be applied to heterosexual men as well as women.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bergling, Tim. 2001. Sissyphobia: Gay Men and Effeminate Behavior. New York: Harrington Park Press.

Fleisher, Julian. 1996. The Drag Queens of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide. New York: Riverhead Books.

Holroyd, Michael. 1977. Preface to The Naked Civil Servant, by Quentin Crisp. New York: Penguin. (Orig. pub. 1968.)

Levine, Martin P. 1998. Gay Macho: The Life and Death of the Homosexual Clone. New York: New York University Press.

Nardi, Peter, ed. 2000. Gay Masculinities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Victor/Victoria. 1982. Directed by Blake Edwards. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

                                           Brian D. Holcomb

queen / kwēn/ • n. 1. the female ruler of an independent state, esp. one who inherits the position by right of birth. ∎  (also queen consort) a king's wife. ∎  a woman or thing regarded as excellent or outstanding of its kind: the queen of romance novelists Venice: Queen of the Adriatic. ∎  a woman or girl chosen to hold the most important position in a festival or event: football stars and homecoming queens. ∎  (the Queen) dated (in the UK) the national anthem when there is a female sovereign. ∎ inf. a man's wife or girlfriend. 2. the most powerful chess piece that each player has, able to move any number of unobstructed squares in any direction along a rank, file, or diagonal on which it stands. 3. a playing card bearing a representation of a queen, normally ranking next below a king and above a jack. 4. Entomol. a reproductive female in a colony of social ants, bees, wasps, etc. 5. an adult female cat that has not been spayed. 6. inf., offens. a male homosexual, typically one regarded as ostentatiously effeminate. ∎  a man with a particular obsession or fetish: a size queen | a leather queen.• v. [tr.] 1. (queen it over) (of a woman) behave in an unpleasant and superior way toward. 2. Chess convert (a pawn) into a queen when it reaches the opponent's back rank on the board.DERIVATIVES: queen·dom / -dəm/ n.queen·like / -ˌlīk/ adj.queen·ship / -ˌship/ n.