This is the last of the 1975 albums that I’ve heard before, and this one I always used to find was good for getting you out of a bad mood, especially Side One as it moves from the angry Death On Two Legs to help you wallow in the mood, before a quick music hall interlude with Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon shocks you into another sensibility. Roger Taylor’s swirling paeon to driving with I’m In Love With My Car brings back a bit of heaviness, through various tracks until another, longer, bit of Edwardian music hall silliness with Seaside Rendezvous. Those tracks in between are the Brian May sci-fi sea shanty about relativity (like a jaunty Hawkwind) that is ’39, John Deacon’s joyful tune dedicated to his wife, You’re My Best Friend, and probably the most mundane track on the side, the straight rocker Sweet Lady.
I wasn’t in a bad mood when I started it this time, so I can’t say for sure that it still works, but getting to Seaside Rendezvous did bring a smile to my face. Listening this time I noticed a few more things. How Queen are still going for the heavy production (Death On Two Legs has lots of patches of sound that are all over the place spatially if you listen with headphones), but not as heavy as Queen II. The slightly homoerotic nature to the lyrics of I’m In Love With My Car (“with my hand on your grease gun”). Just the sense of joy in the recording.
This is a little like The White Album in its variety, which I said was The Beatles making what they wanted because they didn’t need the fame and money, but by this stage Queen were still poor, Freddie Mercury living in a flat with rising damp and mildew, for example, largely thanks to the dedicatee of Death On Two Legs ripping them off with the royalties.
On to Side Two, an altogether grander and proggier affair, dominated by two monster tracks. One of them is Bohemian Rhapsody which - hot take - I don’t particularly like. It’s just so overplayed, I think. Perhaps because the video gave me nightmares back when I was about six years old. Perhaps all that “Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the fandango?” stuff is just so silly. I don’t know. I’ve heard it enough for my lifetime, I think.
Better, because it’s the overlooked one next to the famous one, is the 8-minute epic The Prophet that starts the side. Equally big and bombastic, with a slightly freaky echoey a-capella bit in the middle, I prefer it because it’s more obscure. It’s also a Brian May composition while Bo Rhap is a Mercury one, and they tend to be a little less meandering. Stuck in between these two behemoths is the plaintive and heartfelt Love Of My Life, a big concert singalong number apparently.
This was another from my parents’ record collection and, true to form, was slightly damaged. There was a needle stick right at the end of Bo Rhap, at the point where the music fades down and Mercury softly sings “Any way the wind blows” over some soft piano. Only our version said “Any way *pop* Any way *pop* Any way *pop* Any way*pop*” ad infinitum.
I’m happy to say that this was a good one to revisit, and was as a good as I remember. Okay. Even Bohemian bleedin’ Rhapsody. (Wanders off muttering “little silhouetto of a man, load of rubbish”).
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