Queen II
Released on 8th March 1974
Recorded in August 1973 at Trident Studios, Soho, London
Produced by Queen, Roy Thomas Baker & Robin Geoffrey Cable
Engineered by Mike Stone
Music & Lyrics by Brian May, Roger Taylor & Freddie Mercury
Arranged by Queen
Queen Are:
Roger Taylor: Percussion, Vocals
Brian May: Guitar, Vocals, Piano, Percussion
Freddie Mercury: Piano, Vocals, Harpsichord
John Deacon: Bass, Guitar
Additional Musicians:
Roy Thomas Baker: Castanets (Fairy Feller's Master Stroke)
Band + Crew: Vocals (Seven Seas Of Rhye)
Trivia:
First and penultimate album entirely recorded in one studio
First and only album recorded within one month
First and only album featuring a non-sampled harpsichord
First album with John playing guitar as well as bass
Background:
At the time the lads recorded their first album, they’d already written several numbers they decided to save until they could have more studio time. A 28th July 1973 Melody Maker interview (done prior to the recording of the album) already shows that they’d got the idea of having the album as a “good vs evil” battle.
Queen were, at the moment, enjoying a rather limited renown, something that helped them this time because it gave them enough time to arrange and rehearse their material. Freddie had an upright piano at his flat, which gave him a more useful tool to work on – as he was much better pianist than guitarist, he could write more complex and varied pieces there -, and although John Deacon wasn’t yet contributing songs, he was already encouraged to do so by the others.
Songwriting Overview:
‘II’ is an album which tends to be celebrated by the fandom as a musical masterpiece. While that’s true (from a technical perspective, at least), it’s also a dead cert that the album is tad overrated when it comes to musical complexity. The fact that this album was pompous doesn’t necessarily mean it was as layered or arranged as others.
The fact that this effort was “over the top” (compared to some contemporaries) is not denied, but there are some simpler pieces there. All in the entire “concept” (if any – see below) is a very interesting device for any potential musicological research: the track-list is sequenced by blocks of songwriters: first, Brian’s songs, then the only one from Roger, and then a kind of Mercury-medley.
Note that both Brian and Freddie offer their very own dalliance with classical-influenced (Procession, The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke), heavy (Father To Son, Ogre Battle), soft (White Queen, Nevermore) and acoustic-driven (Someday One Day, Funny How Love Is) music. By analysing their input, we can already find some very distinctive qualities on each composer.
Main Influences:
1973 had been a year of concept albums: ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ (Pink Floyd, 24th March), ‘Aladdin Sane’ (David Bowie, 13th April), ‘Desperado’ (Eagles, 17th April), Tubular Bells (Mike Oldfield, 25th May), ‘A Passion Play’ (Jethro Tull, 13th July)… and although Queen never claimed that ‘II’ made part of that wave, it’s sort of obvious that they were influenced by that.
Aspects contributing to the hypothetical stipulation of ‘II’ as a concept album are:
- Procession is based around some melodies of Father To Son (“joyful the sound” is virtually identical to the opening guitar theme, and the final cascade comes from “father to father to father to son”), which gives the album some compositional continuity.
- More continuity: the motif done first on piano, then bass and then bells during the climax of The March Of The Black Queen is then used as the basis for Funny How Love Is. For similar examples in other artists check out ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ or, more recently, blink-182’s untitled album (All Of This is based around one of the riffs in Easy Target).
- Track-segues, which are most likely an influence from producer Roy Thomas Baker. Probably the most important creative idea he added to the band. Even today there are several discussions over where does each track begin or end, for instance, between Black Queen and Funny.
- Overall feeling of contrast between one song and another, or within the same number (e.g. slow and fast parts in Father To Son and Black Queen).
‘Dark Side’ is referenced here several times because it’s probably a very big influence on this album. Very few research has been made looking for connexions between Pink Floyd and Queen, but it’s rather obvious that the latter were aware of the former, as Roger, John and Brian all have mentioned them in interviews and, according to Mercury’s driver, Freddie used to listen to Pink Floyd quite often.
Note some similarities between the two albums:
- ‘Speak to Me’ and ‘Procession’ both open with a fading in sound resembling a heartbeat.
- Pink Floyd’s ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’ contains a poignant word-less screaming, and so do ‘Ogre Battle’, ‘The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke’ and ‘The March Of The Black Queen’ (all of them during climatic sections ending with abrupt arrangement simplification).
- Multi-layered guitars.
- Use of contemporary effects in both albums: ‘Dark Side’ has synthesisers (‘On The Run’, especially), pulse-noises from bass, direct sampling and spoken bits (by crew and guests) added, ‘II’ has bell-like tones from piano (‘Nevermore’), effected guitars (‘Loser In The End’) and a chant added by crew and guests.
Lyrical Themes & Tones:
- Optimistic: Father To Son
- Nostalgic: White Queen, Nevermore
- Utopic and/or naïve: Someday One Day, Funny How Love Is
- Rebellious: The Loser In The End
- Narrative: Ogre Battle, The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke
- Theatrical: The March Of The Black Queen, Seven Seas Of Rhye
Style changes nicely from one song to another, and again a clear distinction between each songwriter and the others can be made with an in-depth scrutiny.
Instrumentation & Arrangements:
‘Queen II’ was far from being the first or only album with loads of overdubs and a broad range of vocals and instruments. But there’s a wide difference between this album and the vast majority of others: Pink Floyd left some of the “dirty work” to Dick Parry, Clare Torry and the backing singers; The Beatles had had session musicians (e.g. horn player in For No One, orchestras here and there, Eric Clapton on While My Guitar Gently Weeps, etc) during all of their intricate and more sophisticated period; Eagles had a string section to orchestrate Desperado (and Jim Ed Norman to arrange and conduct such thing); David Bowie and Elton John had loads of collaborators.
In the case of Queen, at least in this album and others from the same period, at least 99% of the arrangements were conceived and performed by either Roger, Freddie, Brian or John (or several of them). Besides the usual Queen combo of drums, bass, piano and guitars we find some new instruments like harpsichord, castanets, gong and tubular bells (it’d be an incredible coincidence that they used them months after Mike’s album was released, wouldn’t it?).
John Deacon played acoustic guitar throughout the album as well (except on some parts that Brian played the acoustic bits himself, like White Queen and most-likely Someday One Day), which was an important step for his recording career. John had been a very dexterous guitarist for years and reportedly he had a nice fingerpicking technique.
Vocals:
Again, a notable difference (compared with Pink Floyd, for instance, and more precisely to ‘Dark Side’) is the vocal work, which wasn’t only layered and astonishing, but also performed by the band members themselves, without the need of any session singer.
In that respect, very few bands paralleled them. Yes, Eagles and Pink Floyd all had the odd bit of multi-tracked harmony by band members here and there, and even The Beatles had been an important step in that matter with things like Because or Paperback Writer. The Bee Gees were a very strong vocal band and so were ABBA, but very few times such acts were able to score and perform by themselves something like the crazy interlude in Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke or Freddie’s angelical choir in White Queen.