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.
