Read all about it! John’s track-by-track thoughts on Queen’s News Of The World! Released on this day in 1977!
We Will Rock You
Considering that this is my personal favourite Queen album, News Of The World gets off to a shaky start.
This is more of a “It’s Not You, It’s Me” deal. As a chap with autism and misophonia (hatred of crowd noise/crowd singing), We Will Rock You’s shouty chant stomp is not exactly my cup of tea. Plus, whenever I hear it, I always picture that Season 5 Friends episode in which Ross (with laughable mullet) moves in with Joey and Chandler, and wipes their answerphone message with a weedy “We will… we will… call you back!”
Having said that, I’m willing to give We Will Rock You a free pass. The music of Queen continues to attract new generations of fans, and this now includes my youngest daughter, age seven. One day she came home from school, singing the chorus of We Will Rock You, and my heart melted into a gooey mess.
We Are The Champions
It’s a conundrum. If I’m not keen on We Will Rock You, why then do I like We Are The Champions?
After all, it runs along the same sort of lines as its double A-side bedfellow. A singalong anthem tailor made for swathes of people – which would, no doubt, make me run to the hills. It’s the classic lighters-aloft, scarf waving cliché hollered at full time football matches. Surely no good can come from this?
The recorded version, however, isn’t that shouty. In fact, it’s a hundred times more melodic than We Will Rock You. That’s a plus point in my book. The instrumentation is top rate, as per usual – the contrast between the gentle piano at the start and Brian May’s frenzied guitar crescendo at the end is inspired.
On a personal note, it brings back happy memories of the vinyl copy of Queen’s Greatest Hits. Dad used to work for a company that had a pretty nifty record library, and one August day in 1986, he returned home with a pile of records that included Greatest Hits. I played it to death, and later insisted that Dad borrow it again twice the following year. No surprise that I became a fan, and quickly plundered their back catalogue.
Plus, the lyrics – which deceptively champion the underdog (“I’ve had my share of sand kicked in my face”) and chronicle the challenges of being in the public eye (“It’s been no bed of roses/No pleasure cruise”). It’s the ultimate triumph over adversity track, and what’s not to like about that? The public agreed, sending the track to Number Two in Autumn 1977.
Sheer Heart Attack
By 1977, Queen had ended up in something of a stylistic cul-de-sac. The rapid rise of punk meant that the band’s brand of grandiose rock was about as fashionable as Max Bygraves. A Day At The Races – released days after the notorious Today Interview in which sneering butter sell-out Johnny Rotten did battle with Bill Grundy – was Exhibit A for the punks. To be honest, I always thought that A Day At The Races was the weakest Queen album. Some highs for sure, but too much pomp and little in the way of likeability.
Give Queen their due. They were willing to move with the times, and so – It’s Late aside – came up with concise, more straight-ahead rock that clocked in at less than five minutes. The result is my favourite by the band, and it’s generally highly regarded by fans. Queen may be seen as a heavy rock band, but in fact, their back catalogue darts back and forth between all kinds of musical genres.
Sheer Heart Attack ironically out-punks The Sex Pistols and makes them look like Walter The Softy and his chums from The Beano. It rocks like a daddy, moving at a hell of a lick. The phased chorus vocals are an interesting choice. The thrash metal drums and heavy bass make for an effective combination, and there’s also a really weird instrumental break that sounds like a squeaky tea trolley. In fact, it’s guitar feedback from Brian, still in the days before synthesisers were allowed.
Otherwise, this is largely a Roger Taylor solo with Freddie Mercury as guest vocalist. The original plan was to feature Roger singing lead, but the take with Freddie on vocals was considered the better choice. Another curious factoid is that this track was meant to be included on the album of the same name. I find this amazing, since the raw thrash punk would have stuck out like a sore thumb on this album. It also makes the lyrics a bit more difficult to decode. Some sources claim that the track is a blistering attack on punk (“You know what I mean/There’s a lot of space between your ears”), but punk was only a speck on the horizon in 1974. Although the lyrics could have been re-written to tie in with the burgeoning movement of 1977.
This is a cracker. One of my all-time Desert Island Queen Discs. And as a stupidly pointless detail, I love the way it stops so abruptly. Perfection.
All Dead All Dead
Queen may have shortened their songs, but they were still masters of variety. A Night At The Opera is a classic example, encompassing heavy metal, torch ballad, prog, vaudeville, and George Formby, to name but five.
After the less adventurous Day At The Races, News Of The World redressed the balance. After Sheer Heart Attack came to a sudden halt, a melancholy piano kicks in as Brian gently recalls the “babe without a name” who “came without a farthing”. Apparently, part of the inspiration of All Dead All Dead is Brian’s boyhood pet cat. Anyone who’s regarded a pet as part of the family can relate to this quietly thoughtful musing.
A brief nod to John Deacon’s distinctive bass rhythm which provides sturdy support. Plus, Brian himself again comes up with another wonderfully unusual guitar instrumental break, which seems to draw inspiration from the never-ending ascending staircase effect that bookended A Day At The Races. It lends the track a dreamy, childlike air with just a hint of the sinister.
Spread Your Wings
In terms of the charts, Queen had more than their fair share of hits. But from time to time, they would miss the bullseye.
Spread Your Wings is a case in point. Released in February 1978, it could only muster a Number 34 position. It’s an odd choice for a single, an unobtrusive ballad that for once, only features Freddie on lead vocals without multiple overdubs. Perhaps buyers were puzzled by this less commercial clip from an album that they probably already had. On which subject, the album stayed in the charts for a lot longer in America than it did in the UK – roughly double the length.
In its own modest way though, Spread Your Wings promotes the same message as We Are The Champions – in which the modest underdog can triumph against the odds. Unusually, it tells the tale in the third person – hapless Sammy, who’s miserably sweeping up the Emerald Bar. Not only is he being hectored by his abrasive boss, he’s spending evenings alone in his hotel room, down on his luck.
But after being told to “Spread your wings and fly away”, Sammy is urged to pull himself together “Cos you know you should do better/That’s because you’re a free man.” The record buying public may not have taken to Spread Your Wings, but John Deacon’s underrated sleeper was a favourite of Freddie’s – praise indeed.
Fight From The Inside
Like John, Roger was fast becoming a breakout star. While Freddie and Brian had previously claimed the lion’s share of songwriting duties, the other two were making their own mark.
Two of my favourites on News Of The World are actually the Roger-penned tracks. Fight From The Inside is a brilliant bit of new wave rock, and is all but a Roger Taylor solo track. With Freddie and John popping out for a cuppa, and Brian only pitching in with the odd guitar solo, this is Roger’s show all the way. As well as lead and background vocals, he contributes rhythm and bass guitars, plus drums.
Plus screams. Don’t forget the screams.
It’s no coincidence that Roger was the first Queen member to try out a solo career. If we discount Freddie’s alter ego Larry Lurex, who covered The Beach Boys’ I Can Hear Music, then Roger had already released I Wanna Testify in Summer 1977. While it flopped, his debut album Fun In Space did better in 1981 – worth a listen, BTW. It took longer for Freddie and Brian to go it alone – Freddie released Love Kills in 1984 and album Mr Bad Guy a year later. Brian, meanwhile, waited until the ’90s to release Driven By You and Back To The Light (not counting the Star Fleet thing).
The snarling lyrics still ring true today. I get the impression that Fight From The Inside criticises manufactured pop stars – and I guess that extends to the fad that was The Sex Pistols. “You’re just another picture on a teenage wall/You’re just another sucker ready for a fall,” he growls, later adding “You’re just another money-spinning tool.”
Get Down Make Love
The striking cover art of News Of The World is a marked contrast to the plaintive logos of Opera and Races. Having agreed to design the cover, American sci-fi artist Frank Kelly Freas replicated his original artwork for a 1953 cover of Astounding Science Fiction. The cover art depicts a grim dystopia in which a giant robot holds the lifeless corpses of Freddie and Brian, while dropping John and Roger to the ground far below. The inner gatefold sleeve, meanwhile, shows a terrified audience fleeing from a stadium as the robot reaches through its torn-off roof to claim more victims.
Originally, I had this on tape, which didn’t do this magnificent masterpiece justice. Neither does my MP3 download. I did have the vinyl for a short time, before it was washed away in a flood – but it was a nice souvenir while it lasted.
I only mention this because musically, Get Down Make Love sounds the closest to Freas’ artwork. Lyrically, there’s not much to it, but as an avant-garde sonic experiment, it works. The musique concrete style sounds like the soundtrack from a sci-fi movie, especially the disturbing instrumental break in which Freddie’s treated screams and moans play out over Roger’s ominous lone drumbeat and weird sound effects. When I first heard it, I questioned the claim that “No synthesisers were used”, but ingeniously, this is all Brian’s guitar and a gizmo called an Electroharmonix Frequency Analyser Pedal. It enables the sound to be distorted and treated, so that it sounds like something quite alien.
Sleeping On The Sidewalk
News Of The World is unique in a number of ways. It marks some notable firsts – most notably some of the band members going AWOL for the odd track or two (in this case, Freddie’s vamoosed again). And also – and this is a surprise for a perfectionist band – it includes a one-take track.
Sleeping On The Sidewalk ticks both of these boxes, a loose blues jam sung by Brian. It’s said that this was recorded straight off the bat in one take, and while the finished product may lack the sheen of previous Queen tracks, it’s a refreshing example of this albums more back to basics approach.
Who Needs You
Queen spin the musical genre wheel again, and this time the arrow lands between Latin Calypso and reggae.
Who Needs You’s simplicity may send it to the back of the queue for some, but it’s a nice change of pace. The lilting Spanish guitar meshes well with the more traditional Queen guitar sound, and there are some cool incidental touches, such as the use of shakers and cowbell. Plus, if you’re listening to this one on headphones, you’ll notice that Freddie’s vocals can only be heard on the right hand side, and the lead guitar on the left.
Which is a right pain when only one speaker works.
It’s Late
Out of the 11 tracks, It’s Late has more in common with Queen’s earlier stuff. It’s the only cut to exceed five minutes – six, in fact. Its roots are more grounded in the heavy rock style, as opposed to punk, blues or calypso. And while it doesn’t have gimmicks like multi-tracked operatic overdubs, It’s Late still manages to achieve a sense of rock grandeur.
This was pitched by Brian as a three-act tragedy, and it says as much on the inner lyric sleeve. Specifically, a tragedy of a relationship that’s hit the buffers, culminating in the realisation that “It’s all too late” to salvage it.
While News Of The World only spawned two singles in the UK, It’s Late was released in America. It didn’t quite match the success of its parent album, only managing a meagre 78 on the Billboard charts. No real surprise, since the single version was edited down. Why buy something that’s incomplete when you can hear the full version on the album?
My Melancholy Blues
Previous Queen albums had ended by ramping up the Pomp-ometer to the max. The national anthem on Opera. The turgid singalong of Teo Torriatte and In The Lap Of The Gods… Revisited. Even Seven Seas Of Rhye ends with a ghastly singsong of I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside.
News Of The World, however, ends with a hungover jazz-influenced shuffle. You can smell the spit and sawdust of the pub, as a bleary-eyed Freddie bemoans “Another party’s over/And I’m left cold sober/Baby left me for somebody new.”
Right up to the end of the album, Queen are trying out new experiments, which is what makes News Of The World so compelling. Rather than rehashing past glories, the band come up with something fresh and in the process, their most interesting album to that point. My Melancholy Blues again plays musical chairs, as Brian sits this one out to leave Roger on the drum brushes and John on bass, as Freddie takes his woes to the pub piano.
An essential Queen album that sees the band in a state of flux. While there are echoes of the past, there are also nods to the future – not just with a more compact style of songwriting, but also a willingness to explore other musical avenues.
(Cover art credited to Frank Kelly Freas, based on an idea by Freas and Queen)
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