Celebrating 45 years on the racks today is the 6th studio album by Queen, News of the World, which was released this day on October 28th, 1977. After hitting the heights with Bohemian Rhapsody in 1975 and its parent album, A Night At the Opera, 1976’s A Day at the Races was met with some ambivalence, a situation which put the band against the wall and “under pressure” (wink) to prove they were yet to hit their high water mark. Not that …Races wasn’t a success, but it was not quite as successful as …Opera and, in the fickle minds of the music press, any hint of weakness was enough to start sharpening knives for the feast. Critics were merciless with ...Races, calling it “boring” and dismissing it as a rehash of what had come before. No one loves to tear down idols more than those who put them on their pedestals to being with.
With the previous album, the band had continued along the path of studio excess established with Rhapsody and pushed the embellishments even further in some cases. But by 1977, the punk aesthetic was challenging the “dinosaurs” of rock and their indulgences and Queen were looking a little bloated by the standards of leaner and meaner bands like the Sex Pistols. There’s even an infamous anecdote about Freddie Mercury having a run-in with Sid Vicious during the recording of NotW when both bands happened to be working in the same studio. Sid popped his head in the room Mercury was in and quipped, “Still trying to spread ballet to the masses?” Not that it ruffled Mercury’s feathers at all, but the zeitgeist of the day was all about simplifying and going for something much more minimal. Queen weren’t averse to this, however, as they’d begun to feel like they’d exhausted themselves on overproduction and were more than ready to get back to something primal.
The album opens with a 1-2 punch of songs which would be released as a double A-side single, We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions. The first track, a May composition, was intended as something which could be used during live shows to encourage audience participation. May sussed out what he thought an audience could do in unison at a show and came up with the “stomp-stomp-clap” rhythm, which defined the track and required no more than the feet and hands of the fans. The rest of it was all Mercury’s vocal with a ripping great guitar solo to wrap it up. We Are the Champions, on the other hand, was Mercury’s baby. It comes off, at first, like a bit of braggadocio, but the reality of it is that the spirit evoked by Mercury is inclusive, not exclusive. Freddie doesn’t sing “I am the Champion”. It’s that “we” part that encompasses the band’s fans and stands as a statement of mutual support within that collective against the ridicule and dismissal of those who questioned the group’s abilities and the dedication of their admirers.
The remainder of the album offers a wide variety of styles and moods, though with a determinedly restrained, edgier feel, especially with the more rocking songs. Sheer Heart Attack, a Taylor song, was a holdover from the LP of the same name, but it got dropped back then in favor of other songs. It seems to have been for the best as the version on NotW couldn’t be more perfectly timed to be a response to the “punk” sensibilities of the times. It’s simply one of the most ripping, ferocious rockers the band ever put on record.
The final iconic element of this album is the cover, something that has scared more than one impressionable child over the years. It was inspired by an old 1953 anthology book of science fiction short stories. Roger suggested it and the group managed to track down the original artist to do a variation, which included the band. I remember my little cousin being particularly disturbed by it and me having to tell her that it was just ketchup on that dead-eyed robot's finger. Years later, when Family Guy would do an episode where Stewie is totally freaked out by the image, I knew that this was something which must have happened to a lot of kids after the album was released.
The album and lead single would prove to be the perfect response to critics who were ready to write the band off, though this pattern would repeat itself throughout the bands career. Still, News of the World would bring the band to new heights of success, especially in the US. I'd only discovered Queen a little more than a year earlier when I saw a video of them on the Midnight Special performing Tie Your Mother Down from A Day at the Races. In that brief time I'd backtracked to pick up all their previous LPs and was at the peak of my obsession with the band when NotW landed in the shops. It served to bolster my commitment to them and had me buying posters, T-shirts, badges, belt buckles and fan club memberships for the next couple of years. I guess it was kinda ironic for a deeply closeted gay kid to be running around his high school covered in Queen paraphernalia! HELLO!!!
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