QUEEN – "Innuendo"

Excellent review Tom. What’s most surprising about this one (only their second unaugmented no 1 after many near misses) is what an obscurity it’s become. It was in and out of the charts in 5 weeks during which its musical qualities were overlooked in favour of speculating why the video had no current footage of Freddie and radio hasn’t touched it since, the usual fate of over-long records that aren’t much cop.

The whole album had a rushed, half-baked feel to it which isn’t surprising given the circumstances.

There are three reasons why I don’t comment on some Popular entries:

A) I’ve changed my mind about a particular record since I wrote my specially pre-written comments on it and haven’t got the time (or in some cases the inclination) to do a complete revision (which doesn’t mean that I won’t go back and do one at a later date but usually it means that I don’t feel the urgency to revise).

B) Some records are too personal for me to talk about on a public forum.

C) Records and artists, and/or associated events, with whom or which I have a personal connection.

As “Innuendo” falls under category C I’ll sit this one out, but have given it a mark out of ten which in this case I’m also going to keep confidential.

#3, Out of interest, which was the reason for Iron Maiden?

# 4 In turn Jim I think the line about “ineptly chasing trends” is a bit unfair. With four independent songwriters in the band they were unusually open to many different influences and I don’t think even the most diehard Queen fan would claim to like every song. “Hot Space” (which I’m guessing is at the forefront of your thinking) was a botched attempt to follow up the US success of their own “Another One Bites The Dust” rather than follow the prevalent New Pop trend.

As Tom said, this was one that had no hoopla beyond the snazzy sleeve, and the song/track was free of the usual “Freddieness”, and was the first Queen single I’d actively liked since “Under Pressure”, possibly for the same reason.

I dunno about holding “These are the days of our lives” as a fitting tribute, but I shall opine no further until the (obviously to be enormous) [bunny]

#5: Iron Maiden – category A.

#7 Well yes, I was thinking of bits of Hot Space (although there’s still lots to love on that album) but also other odd clutches at populism through the rest of the decade – Machines from The Works, or Don’t Lose Your Head from A Kind of Magic, and of course 89’s The Invisible Man. It wasn’t meant to be harsh though. I think the way lots of their 80s work did try and fail to emulate other musical trends is at worst endearing, and quite often resulted in songs which, though odd, were still great in their own ways.

Let’s just say that I prepare a tranche of them in advance at regular intervals.

#14, ah yes fair enough.

Although “The show must go on” would have made a more ‘appropriate’ or even “schmaltzy” post-mortem tribute, I’m glad they avoided that.

Freddie looked like a very different person without the moustache (fellow ’91 charter Vic Reeves is someone else I think of as two different performers on account of the difference a pair of spectacles alone seemed to make) and I had a reaction similar to when Elton swapped the hat for that awful wig.

I don’t think I’d heard this for twenty years. I’m afraid that my reaction was no different to my eighteen year-old one: When on earth is this pompous, platitudinous, effortful, spendthrift slog going to finish?

The most interesting aspect of this particular stretch of number ones is that what with Cliff, Iron Maiden and Queen all enjoying chart toppers with lesser material, the release-scheduling and marketing departments at EMI were clearly at the top of their game at that point in time, even if their acts weren’t.

When “Innuendo” reached #1 I felt…well I can’t honestly remember how I felt. So it comes as no surprise that on listening to it now, it just makes me feel incredibly sad. The image of Freddie, as easily the best and most compelling frontman at Live Aid is the one I prefer to remember him by. The fateful drum roll gives way to synths and Brian May’s grand guitar motif. And then…Freddie, elevated in his tower, calling into a vast amphitheatre where the faithful gather to hear his words,”keep tryin’ until the end of time”, ultimately a promise he knows he cannot keep. The fact that he, or the rest of the band had not been involved in the promo video, which was on heavy rotation on MTV,(that I do remember) must have signalled to the Queen faithful, that all was indeed not well, that Freddie was weakening. Not that you’d notice on the strength of this vocal. He had some fight left in him, didn’t he?

And I agree with most, that the middle section with Steve Howe is a little gem, a proper eye of the storm interlude. In hindsight the, “Surrender your ego/Be free to yourself” line is the doomed prophet passing on wisdom to his disciples. He knows he doesn’t have much time left. So the whole Innuendo album lays down the groundwork for a last farewell to the army of fans who elevated Queen to one of the most, if not the most, beloved British band since The Beatles. That is to say not necessarily the critics’ choice, but maybe the people’s choice. I’d like to think that was the case, anyway.

I actually liked this at the time, and I don’t like most Queen singles (a fact I’ve apologised to fans – including my mother – for so many times that I won’t bother doing it again here). Oddly, I think the reasons I liked it are precisely the same reasons Tom has such a difficult time with it. I liked the fact that it’s doomy, desolate, howl-against-the-hurricane stuff, and sounded less cocky and knowing than most of Mercury’s performances. “Bohemian Rhapsody”, for example, is guilty of prog silliness in the Gilbert and Sullivan middle section, but “Innuendo” manages to keep a consistent mood going despite its equally fragmented structure.

Listening to it again for the first time in years, I’m actually still stunned by its sheer force. I disagree with the fact that it’s an overwhelmingly overcast record – the “We’ll keep on trying” chorus actually sounds like colour trying to break through, only to be bleached out by Freddie in his “harbinger of doom and gloom” mode on return to the main verses. Even the slight upwards shift in the guitar riff from the “We’ll keep on trying” line to after the “Tread that fine line” part is an optimistic ascension, only obviously not one that ultimately wins overall. The main part of the song isn’t quite as straight-down-the-line negative and bluesy as a lot of the grunge rock which would come screaming through at the tail end of 1991, and for my money is a hell of a lot more interesting for that.

Despite Mercury’s rumoured illness, I also seem to remember that the band were taking critical hammerings from a variety of sources at this point, including Dave Lee Travis of all people who I seem to remember got people phoning in complaints when he slagged off “I’m Going Slightly Mad” (which, to be fair to the hairy cornflake, wasn’t a very good choice of single). The band had never been terribly popular with the critics, of course, but for some reason the early part of 1991 really sticks out in my memory as a point where just about everybody had it in for the band. Much as I’m not a Queen fan by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, I did love the sheer defiance of taking something as ungainly and bleak sounding as this to number one.

Sod it, this gets a 7 from me.

Ah, I reviewed this for Leeds Student, if memory serves, and in all probability described it as the very worst moment in the history of recorded music. As, however, I haven’t knowingly had to listen to it at any time in the succeeding two decades, I feel a whole less strongly about it.

If you weren’t a fan, this was a “blink and you miss it” number one, and for me the beginning of the modern era of Popular. Even Iron Maiden had the good grace to stay at the top for a fortnight – this was the first record to enter at the top and drop in week two.

My memory, like Tom’s, is that it was a final attempt to rival Bo Rhap (I’d guess the “keep on trying” part alludes to that). Yes, they’d tried before – with the follow up for starters – but these memories get fogged by time. I wasn’t aware of Kashmir at the time and this sounded to me like a turgid attempt at the epic, and woefully out of step with 1991 (you don’t need me to point out the up-side of that pretty extraordinary year).

Listening to Innuendo now, I certainly don’t hate it. It has a certain power on the verses, restrained by flabby reverb; the “be free” middle section has a Lloyd Webber-ish air which is more Tom’s cuppa tea than me.

Album tracks as singles is something I don’t have any problem with, if by “album track” we mean a song that doesn’t go v/c/v/c/m8/cc. It feels like there is crucial missing section in Innuendo, ie a hook, the payoff that the opening bluster demands. It needs to be longer.

Re 13: Save Me?

#32 Like you Rosie I have a lot of affection for the old R1 DJs and still have a visceral dislike of Bannister (similar to Thatcher). However I don’t think DLT was a good advert for them. Even by the early 80s he seemed out of his time,only interested in self-promotion and totally unfunny which was why he got shifted to the weekends where the musical content was bland and thoughtless and seemed totally subservient to rubbish like the snooker quiz.
Incidentally I’ve heard Chris Moyles described as the new DLT more than once.

#31 I’m a bit confused WL – wasn’t the follow up to Bo Rap “You’re My Best Friend” ? That’s about as far removed from the epic sound as they could get.

I’d say Innuendo’s problem is that it simply tries too hard (or at least appears to try too hard) to ape the likes of Bo Rhap and Somebody To Love. It’s a sweaty blustery thing with none of the grace and lightness of touch you associate with their best singles. I know by this point they had spent the best part of 20 years straddling the rock/pop divide with some aplomb but this strides too far into dull ‘classic’ rock territory for me to ever really appreciate it.

MikeMCSG #33 – yes, the follow-up single to Bo Rap was indeed “You’re My Best Friend”, part of the soundtrack to that great summer; but Wichita’s clearly thinking of “Somebody To Love”, which was the lead-off single from the follow-up album almost exactly a year after Bo Rap, and for all its vocal overlays and effects swung like a good ‘un. Notably, it topped the “Sounds” single of the year poll in a year during which Sounds had become the house newspaper for punk! “Anarchy in the UK” meanwhile came 8th in the “best single” category and 1st in the “worst single” category. That’s not all that linked those particular two singles, as the bands’ promotional schedules became intertwined one memorable night in December ’76…

The “modern chart era” thing is interesting. It was still extremely rare for two consecutive number ones to be new entries, but by the end of 1991 there’d been six new-entry number ones in twelve months, unprecedented at the time. What to me felt like the start of the new era was the period when (IIRC) there were four of them in the space of eight weeks. This ironically came just after one of the most monumental chart stats of all, which is just nine entries away now!

#37 yes, to mix animal metaphors that bunny has been the elephant in the room since we started 1991.

I think we are at the alltime low point for singles here at least as far as the mainstream went. They really were just loss leader adverts for other product whether the parent albums or films,jeans,cartoons, musicals etc and as alluded to above there wasn’t always a great deal of care in selecting them. You got a bit of a reaction against that in the Britpop era where bands like Oasis and Blur had grown up with classic singles bands such as Madness or The Jam.

With downloads of course you’re in a whole different ballgame; anyone who says this is the start of the “modern” era is betraying that they haven’t engaged with the charts for a while. Not that I have much.

#39 – “all time low” takes some defining, but I don’t think it can be here, when we still had TOTP and still had the Chart Show, so you’d invariably see the current number one a couple of times a week without having to look on specialist channels. In the post-TOTP and rapid-turnover era, I wonder how many people out of a hundred randomly selected on the street would be able to tell you what’s number one now? (OK, Adele at the moment is a bad example!)

You’re right about the download era succeeding what we’re calling the “modern” era here! – although number ones still go straight in more often than not, don’t they?

Listening to “Innuendo” now, it does all seem rather try-hard, like it’s endeavouring to be the band’s Big Statement when we all knew they’d made it with something altogether more personal 15 years earlier. Agree about the pretty sections being good in themselves without having the overall coherence or logic of Bo Rap (sorry, there we go again comparing it to the obvious, but then that’s what they laid themselves open to). And Tom is spot on about the disappointment when the plod returns at the end. One thing no-one’s remarked on is what sounds to me like a man-of-the-match performance from Roger Taylor, whose drums sound by turns epic, energetic and crisp in all the right places.

Hi all. Long-term lurker reporting for duty.
Part of the problem for Queen, I think, when they tried to do the arena-sized heavy rock thing was that their drummer was somewhat short of the task. No disrespect to Mr Taylor, as he certainly gave the band something as a high harmony singer, but if you think about what a Bonham or even a Grohl might have done with this, while competent, Taylor’s really quite leaden.
I think that someone involved in the enterprise knew it too, because the drums occupy a pretty small part of the mix for a song of this type (certainly if you compare it to a Zeppelin track), and they try to get the ‘heaviness’ from big guitars, but it doesn’t quite disguise the lack of basic power, attitude and swing in the drum track. A shame, because I think that the song certainly has its moments, and the band certainly weren’t lacking in other areas, but ultimately I think most of Queen’s best moments come when they stayed away from doing heavy rock/metal.

All grist to the mill, Wheedley – good to see you de-lurking and please stick around!

@40 Timing it for 1 April Tom? And 2 April, and 3 April, and 4 Apri…

The ‘everything straight in at number one’ phenomenon may be coming to an end. There have been a couple of announcements this year that record companies are going to stop releasing singles for radio play before the release date in order to combat illegal downloads. This should have the effect of making stays at number one longer too, looking at the top tens for the last two months seems to indicate that this is on it’s way already.

On an unrelated note, is 1991 the year of Brian May? He seems to have had a hand in four number ones.