QUEEN - HOT SPACE @ 40

 

May 21st marks the 40th anniversary of Queen’s tenth studio LP, Hot Space, which was released on this day in 1982. Widely considered the band’s most disappointing and misguided album, it remains grossly under appreciated and misunderstood, even by the surviving band members themselves. It took decades for me to embrace it, but in the end, it won me over with its daring and risk taking and the quality of the song writing.

Queen were never a band to allow themselves to be constrained by stylistic restrictions. Indeed, their willingness to explore genres, styles and techniques was one of their biggest assets and a key reason many people appreciated them, myself included. But their foray into electronic dance music on Hot Space ended up being a measure too far for many, including some members of the band. That shift began in 1980 on The Game with the runaway smash hit, Another One Bites the Dust. Bassist John Deacon, who composed the song, was central to this shift as he’d always leaned towards soul and R&B influences. His interest was reinforced by Freddie Mercury, who was also listening to the counsel of his then manager, Paul Prenter, who like Mercury, was drawn to the gay club scenes of the day and wanted Queen’s music to move into this arena. Prenter, while holding sway over Mercury, was notably hated by the rest of the band, who were troubled by the degree of his influence over the singer. And then there was none other than Michael Jackson, who upon hearing Another One Bites the Dusk, strongly encouraged the group to release it as a single. All of this momentum coupled with the unprecedented success of the single, ended up leaving the more rock oriented May and Taylor in the position of having to reluctantly adapt to the tides of the times.

While Queen had tried to curb their studio time and indulgences after the excesses of landmark albums like A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, recording for Hot Space dragged on longer than any album they’d previously done. Recorded at their studio in Munich, part of this had to do with some in the band getting more heavily involved in drug and alcohol consumption, something which left the group struggling and leaving all of them in "deep emotional trouble".

Technically, while they’d spent the previous decade proudly proclaiming “no synths” on their albums, since The Game, they’d embraced using an Oberheim OB-X. They went a step further on Hot Space by bringing a drum machine into the equation for the first time. Roger hated the muted, flat sound of the drums that was de rigueur for dance music of the day, so he was fine with a machine taking up the role to achieve that sound in this context.

The band didn’t completely abandon their rock roots, but their forays into the style were much lighter and more pop friendly than the heavy rock of their early days. Brian’s role on guitar was substantially reduced within this context as well. Guitars weren’t the central musical component like they had been on previous albums. Instead, they were a mostly textural element or used to shade the arrangements. Fans looking for a flat out rocker on the album were left out in the cold.

When the album was released, it managed to garner some decent sales, but a lot of that was due to the fact it had been used as a home for the massive hit single by Queen and David Bowie, Under Pressure, which was tacked onto the album as the closing track. Bowie had also contributed to another song on the album, Cool Cat, but he was unsatisfied with the results and his contributions only made it as far as a test pressing before the track was remixed to remove his vocals. That version has since survived as a commonly available bootleg. Body Language also managed to do well as a single, helped along by a particularly salacious video which was so sexually charged it was banned in some markets and relegated to only late night rotation on MTV, but it was still enough to propel the single to #11 on the US charts.

Critical reception for the album was decidedly not supportive of their new direction with some commenting on how out of step the band were when disco music in general had become so demonized by this time. This was further compounded by the reaction of fans to the new songs when they were played live, especially in the US where “DISCO SUCKS” T-shirts were a common sight in the audience. Mercury was even captured on stage lamenting the negative response, scolding the audience saying “It’s only music”. That was a major factor in the band’s decision to stop touring in the US after the Hot Space gigs. While the band went on a number of world tours before retiring from the stage entirely at the end of 1986 due to Mercury’s HIV related health issues, they bypassed the US market after 1982, opting for South America instead. They would not return to the US again until well after Mercury's death when they reconstituted with Paul Rogers in the 2000s.

At the time the album was released, my interest in the band was at its lowest ebb. It was a time when I was moving into progressively more experimental and obscure music and my days of being a Queen fan were quickly falling behind me. It wasn’t until the turn of the millennium that I started to revive my interest in them and reconsider their output through the 1980s. When I did take the time to give that work a closer listen, I was taken by surprise by how much I now enjoyed the music on Hot Space, which has become my favorite album of theirs from that decade.

When I listen to it now, I can appreciate its idiosyncrasies. Queen’s willingness to take risks was always something I admired and, in retrospect, I don’t think they ever stepped further out of their comfort zone than this LP. Yet it continues to be maligned and dismissed as a “disaster” or “misguided”. Were they overreaching? What does that even mean for a band like Queen? I can hear so many things on this album that are worthy of praise and appreciation that the criticism is meaningless to me. Michael Jackson, again, loved the album so much that he cited it as a major influence on him when working on his most successful release, Thriller. Though Jackson’s own legacy may be tarnished, that vote of confidence still, I think, means something.

I hope that time will offer up a revision of judgement for this album because it does have charms that become apparent when one is willing to sweep aside preconceptions and expectations and just let the music speak for itself. I only wish I’d been open minded enough to discover its worth sooner than I did.