Progressive rock wasn't dead in 1975. It's generally a bad idea to call any genre dead, given music's propensity for crate-diving and stylistic revivalism, but even by those caveats, prog was never as close to dead as, say, swing jazz or ragtime piano have been. Still, after the barrage of lineup changes, dissolutions, and critical pannings that assaulted prog in '73 and '74, it was clear that there would be a time in the near future when the genre would have to sink or swim. Enter Queen.
To be fair, Queen had entered quite some time before 1975. The band had existed in some form since 1968 (originally under the name "Smile"), and their classic lineup of singer Freddie Mercury, guitarist Brian May, bassist John Deacon, and drummer Roger Taylor had all been playing together since 1971. Their first album, self-titled, had come out in 1973, and by the beginning of 1975, they had, in the grand tradition of '70s rock bands, released a second self-titled (Roman-numeraled, naturally) and Sheer Heart Attack, which had peaked at #5 and #2, respectively, on the UK charts. So it's not like these guys were some out-of-nowhere act. But 1975, and specifically the release of their fourth album, A Night at the Opera, was definitely the moment the band fully "arrived." Their most commercially successful act to date, A Night at the Opera hit #1 in not only the UK but also Australia and the Netherlands, and its lead single, "Bohemian Rhapsody," went #1 pretty much everywhere.
But why am I telling you all this? You know Queen. Everyone knows Queen. We can all head-bang to the guitar part of "Bohemian Rhapsody" together, and it'll be great. In fact, of all the bands covered thus far in this Prog Progress series, Queen is the most popular by a substantial margin. But I'm guessing at least a few of you are reading this and scratching your heads and drawing Venn diagrams between "Close to the Edge" and "Killer Queen" with big question marks above it and wondering, "They're prog?" Well, yes they are... were. But unless you'd dug into their first few albums, not that you'd know.
Queen was never purely progressive rock in the sense that the genre's heavyweights—Yes and Genesis and King Crimson—were, or even in the brief way that Jethro Tull was. There were no 20-minute epics or flights of avant-garde frenzy or Hindu shastra lyrics. They didn't even have a dedicated keyboardist, practically the cornerstone of the prog sound after guitars. Many sections of their first two albums flirt with heavy metal a la Black Sabbath, in fact. But when you get right down to it, Queen and Queen II and even most of Sheer Heart Attack are still basically prog, albeit a less ambitious and experimental variety than the most visible genre torchbearers. Brian May's knotty guitar passages (oftentimes composed on piano before hashed out on the axe), the meandering, multi-section melodies of their songs, the suite-like progression of their tracks—that's all prog. But while prog's sun begins to set in the mid-'70s, Queen's is ascendant. And that's not just the mysterious whims of music commercialism at play here; what Queen does in 1974 and especially 1975 is shrewd and savvy.
Starting with Sheer Heart Attack in 1974, Queen begins to sprinkle their heavy, proggy guitar rock with something that previously had little place in the prog canon: pop. You've heard it: it's called "Killer Queen," and it peaked at #2 in the UK. Filled with finger snaps, soaring Freddie Mercury vocals, doo-wop backing, and an infectious melody, this is likely the sound that came to your head when I first mentioned Queen. Either that or "We Will Rock You." Or "Fat Bottomed Girls." Or "Radio Ga Ga." That's because Queen's legacy is as a particularly operatic arena pop/rock band, not a progressive rock band.
And that's what makes 1975's A Night at the Opera so interesting. It catches the band at the exact moment when it makes that pivot from early-'70s guitar prog to late-'70s arena pop, and the result is a fascinating convergence of styles that makes the record both an artifact of this particular moment in the band's trajectory and a timeless piece of gonzo, sublime genre fusion. As successful and fresh as "Killer Queen" was, it's almost out of place on Sheer Heart Attack, which doesn't really have a song that even approaches that single's hummability, instead filling out the rest of the album with the same (if slightly more refined) type of guitar muscle that defined the first two albums. But A Night at the Opera is a completely different story. And it's awesome.
The first thing we hear on "Death on Two Legs (Dedicated To...)" [1] is a cascading piano ballooned by heavy, atonal guitar strokes over a screeching second guitar, and for a moment, it sounds like we're in for the proggiest thing Queen ever did. But then there's a scream, and all of the sudden, we're in the middle of a baroque (if furious) pop song framed by bouncy piano chords and Mercury's clean, precise vocals. Then the chorus hits, and Mercury's voice soars on a swell of what sounds like a practical orchestra of overdubbed voices. When the song ends, the record cuts abruptly to "Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon," a jaunty, turn-of-the-century-showtune-esque number that somehow becomes a vehicle for an out-of-nowhere Brian May guitar solo that flips us into the absurd hard-rock pomp of "I'm in Love with My Car." This is A Night at the Opera in a nutshell: flitting from sound to sound, genre to genre, from irony to aching sincerity, with a reckless enthusiasm that's giddy and unhinged. It's delightfully weird, and while prog has never shied away from weirdness, this is a flavor of weirdness not often seen from the likes of Yes, et al: it's camp.
It's not that the progressive tendencies have disappeared, exactly—the guitar pyrotechnics are there, as are the stadium-sized sounds, multi-part suites, and sudden dynamic shifts; we've even got a self-serious, 8-minute epic inspired by the Bible ("The Prophet's Song"). But the album is not just prog, even by the loose Queen standards; there's also music hall and jazz and glam and pop and folk and skiffle and tap dance and soul. One of the central ironies of progressive rock that prog haters love to bring up is that the word "progressive" belies the fact that the genre tends to be kind of regressive, since it appropriates genres from the past like classical and jazz and grafts them onto rock in the name of "progress" rather than making true innovations [2]. On Opera, Queen seems to be goofing on this regression by adding these splashes of pre-rock genre pastiche (e.g. skiffle and tap dance, sounds not heard on a Queen album before or since) to its established prog rock sound—"Oh, you're going all prep-school artsy by quoting Bach in your rock epic? Well, here's some vaudeville atchya!" And even when Queen does go straight for the prog vein, it's as if they decided to double down on prog's sillier, theatrical elements and overwrought emotions (e.g. the aforementioned "I'm in Love with My Car," which is an all-holds-barred love letter to an automobile, complete with engine sound effects) or isolate elements of the genre from one another in order to cast those elements in sharp, sometimes humorous relief (e.g. "The Prophet's Song," which jumps right from heavy guitars to an extended a cappella section). Making an album that knowingly winked at the inherent silliness of prog's core features while still delivering complex, heady musicianship was probably the smartest approach to the genre at this point in prog's life cycle, and Queen, of all groups, had the depth of perspective to do so.
Queen isn't exactly making fun of prog, per se, but they're walking the genre up to the precipice of self-parody and then kicking it right off the edge, only in a way that also feels affectionate and sincere, as goofy as it can get. Like I said, Queen is diving full-bore into camp here, and it's camp mixed with a generous helping of straight-up humor, both sentiments rarities within prog that I welcome with open arms here because the music is an absolute blast. This of course all culminates in the defining Queen moment and (with the possible exception of "We Will Rock You" [3]) the band's most popular song: "Bohemian Rhapsody," a wild, ridiculous, hilarious, and strangely moving suite that crashes all the album's various impulses together into a dizzying climax where any such distinctions between musical tribes cease to matter. Is this a parody? Is it trying to say something profound? Does this even count as prog? Does this even count as rock? Who cares—it's friggin' Queen, and it's magnificent.
An important part of how successful this is has to do with just how nimble everything feels, especially when compared to prog's experimental vanguard. This is a spryer prog than we've seen up to this point, a prog that, for once, sets its sights on refining those elements of prog often placed on the back burner by the genre's more high-minded torchbearer: lyrics, melody, songcraft. A lot of genres have fused themselves to Queen's sound on this album, but the most prominent fusion of them all is the one that's really more of an ethos than any specific techniques: pop music, that relentless push toward catchy tunes and relentless earworms above all else. As I said earlier, this pop sensibility is a relatively new development for Queen. Not that they were a particularly impenetrable band before, but with A Night at the Opera, you see a clear ambition to follow up on "Killer Queen" instead of, for example, "In the Lap of the Gods." They are modeling themselves as a pop band, and in doing so, they twist progressive rock into the most amusing shapes they can before shaking it off completely in the second half of the '70s.
A Night at the Opera is a significant, one-of-a-kind album in rock music in general, but it's its specific role in Queen's evolution that makes it significant to prog instead of just some one-off oddity, because with it, Queen, intentionally or not, sets the path forward for most prog bands who had any intention of surviving into the late-'70s and beyond. Time and time again, you see prominent prog bands make this pivot from prog to pop: Genesis became a synth pop band, Yes became a new wave group, the Moody Blues reincarnated itself as a rock/pop outfit, Emerson, Lake & Palmer became whatever this is; even an obscure prog/jazz-fusion group named Journey got into the game and became, well, Journey. Not all of this was a planned trajectory by the bands. Often, these changes coincided with key members leaving the group or new creative voices joining. But the trend is there: as the '70s progressed and intellectual, complex rock compositions fell out of fashion, prog groups became increasingly pop-friendly. The popular narrative often cited is that punk killed prog, but the truth is, prog euthanized itself; rather than toil in obscurity on labyrinthine concept albums, they all just kind of decided to go where the market winds blew strongest.
That's not to suggest that these guys "sold out" or any of that credibility shibbolething that oftentimes makes music fandom so tiresome. A few of these bands produced legitimately good work in their pop phases. The best of these, by far, is Queen, whose string of albums following A Night at the Opera are, while never quite up to this classic's high water mark, as solid and inventive as any pop group of the era. To be honest, Queen were never all that great at the prog thing anyway. They just wanted to have fun. Some of these other guys, on the other hand... well, we'll get to that next time.
See you in 1976!
1] Dedicated to Norman Sheffield, it turns out—the band's first manager and all-around tool, if this song is to be believed: "You never had a heart of your own: kill joy, bad guy, big-talking small fry," goes the first chorus. Sheffield sued the band for defamation over the song.
2] This criticism is silly, of course, because it assumes that musical innovation is some magical thing that comes out of the air without any precedent. But we'll let the haters have their moment here, I guess.
3] Sports arenas have put their thumb on the scales a bit here, I think.
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