Why do so few famous artists like Queen?

How well did they handle the background vocals live?

 

you must have missed the 'and that's just one of their attributes' part that I wrote

 

I love the fans who are responding with cries of "Jealousy!" here. Do you really believe that musicians in such legendary acts as the Beatles and the Who are envious of Queen's undeniable success? They had a very distinctive, inimitable sound, but all that pomp and circumstance just doesn't agree with everyone. Presumably, some musicians prefer something that's a little less pretentious, more down to earth. (I would describe myself as a moderate fan.)

Yeah, that strikes me as a bizarre measurement of greatness. I'm not too interested in stadium chants myself. That was one aspect of their megastardom that was a bit of a turnoff for me: "No time for losers, we are the champions!" Didn't one critic once dub them "fascist rock"?

 

saw them in '76 and '77 and the sheer power of the instruments overpowered anything lacking in the thinner 'live background vocals' sound.

 

One possible reason for the lack of "artists" public enthusiasm for Queen is the whole Freddie Mercury, Brian May thing. You know, these guys are / were seriously uncool, critically reviled and all that glam / pomp never did much for a large section of the public audience. They weren't the literate guys of rock or the bad boys. They were too camp and laughable to take seriously. When they were popular, the stuff that hipsters listened to couldn't have been further removed from what Queen was doing. Queen were always at the very bottom of my ladder of likes, sharing a rung with Chris De Burgh. They epitomised all I loathed about 70's / 80's music. Time hasn't changed this but......

With that said, I can also see how they did well commercially. The guy could sing, May could play alright despite having the absolute worst ever guitar tone / soloing ever committed to tape and they wrote proper songs unlike some of the trash today. Queen were good but certainly not for everyone, myself included.

 

When it comes to revivals The Beatles always clean up. I think Freddie Mercury is the better showman than songwriter. There's always the lipstick, mascara and mustache selling point I guess.

 

When it comes to revivals The Beatles always clean up. I think Freddie Mercury is the better showman than songwriter. There's always the lipstick, mascara and mustache selling point I guess.

 

Well, certainly it was difficult to handle all those harmonies and gazillions of overdubs that were on the studio recordings like Bohemian Rhapsody or Killer Queen, so they had to cut down on that a good deal. But it didn't affect the quality of the performances as far as I'm concerned. Whatever limitations they faced trying to reproduce all that studio trickery, they compensated that with the sheer power of their live sound and Freddie's charisma, of course.
To give you an idea how good they were live, check this out:

 

What's cooler than being uncool? Nothing can be cooler than a guy in a ballet suit, the balls you need to have are the kind of thing that a James Dean wannabe will never have since he's too occupied with what a hipster loser will classify as "cool".

 

Don't underestimate the appeal of a pornstache!

 

..and the fat bottomed girls.

 

Ha, like the fact that Freddie grabbed Sid by the collar, pushed him out of the studio room and said "What are you going to do about it?" lol...Queen were an act, a stage show, the Pistols werent anymore relevant or "real" than Queen. They just thought they were.

 

Dave Marsh review in Rolling Stone February 8, 1978 (fascitic quote in bold at end):
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/jazz-19790208

There's no Jazz on Queen's new record, in case fans of either were worried about the defilement of an icon. Queen hasn't the imagination to play jazz — Queen hasn't the imagination, for that matter, to play rock & roll. Jazz is just more of the same dull pastiche that's dominated all of this British supergroup's work: tight guitar/bass/drums heavy-metal clichés, light-classical pianistics, four-part harmonies that make the Four Freshmen sound funky and Freddie Mercury's throat-scratching lead vocals.

Anyway, it shouldn't be surprising that Queen calls its album "jazz." The guiding principle of these arrogant brats seems to be that anything Freddie & Company want, Freddie & Company get. What's most disconcerting about their arrogance is that it's so unfounded: Led Zeppelin may be as ruthless as medieval aristocrats, but at least Jimmy Page has an original electronic approach that earns his band some of its elitist notions. The only thing Queen does better than anyone else is express contempt.

Take the LP's opening song, "Mustapha." It begins with a parody of a muezzin's shriek and dissolves into an approximation of Arabic music. This is part of Queen's grand design. Freddie Mercury is worldly and sophisticated, a man who knows what the muezzin sounds like. More to the point, you don't. What trips the group up, as usual, is the music. "Mustapha" is merely a clumsy and pretentious rewrite of "Hernando's Hideaway," which has about as much to do with Middle Eastern culture as street-corner souvlaki.

But it's easy to ascribe too much ambition to Queen. "Fat Bottomed Girls" isn't sexist — it regards women not as sex objects but as objects, period (the way the band regards people in general). When Mercury chants, in "Let Me Entertain You," about selling his body and his willingness to use any device to thrill an audience, he isn't talking about a sacrifice for his art. He's just confessing his shamelessness, mostly because he's too much of a boor to feel stupid about it.

Whatever its claims, Queen isn't here just to entertain. This group has come to make it clear exactly who is superior and who is inferior. Its anthem, "We Will Rock You," is a marching order: you will not rock us, we will rock you. Indeed, Queen may be the first truly fascist rock band. The whole thing makes me wonder why anyone would indulge these creeps and their polluting ideas.

 

I hear you. I think the friend I mentioned always had these insecurities that came out as being egotistical and sometimes pretty rude. I used to put up wth it years ago but I think now I'm a bit older that's no longer the case. It really made me uncomfortable and I also felt sorry for him that he needed to act like that.

Anyway, back on topic.......

 

Not as full and complex as on the albums, but they were still great, and sometimes better than in the studio. They left the stage and played the studio version on operatic section of Bohemian Rhapsody.

 

Because they are.

Queen didn't fall out of favor after The Game anywhere except in North America. They remained huge not only in Britain, but in Europe, Japan, South America and elsewhere.

 

Gotta love ol' Dave Marsh. He was spot on about Queen (and most other artists he wrote about). He certainly knows his stuff where rock music is concerned and he wasn't taken in by false pretenders and glam posturing.

 

Not even one 70s band that went through the 80s and 90s rocked as hard as Hitman on Innuendo. But no, Queen is like Liberace with guitars... Jimmy Page wore ridiculous pants with a rainbow dragon knitted on them but there's no excuse for Freddie's moustache.

It's only rock'n'roll, not an academic article. Glitter is welcome! I think we lack it in "serious" modern rock music... And it sounds so boring!

 

Someone needs to eat their All Bran ... As with Lefties generally, the charge of Fascism is thrown when they have no substantive argument to make. DM could have merely said "I don't like these guys' music." Instead he has to pass gas for several paragraphs, to justify his salary.

 

That's how Dave Marsh operated. He always threw the "Fascist!" and "racist!!" cards around any time he reviewed music he didn't like or couldn't understand why anyone else liked.

Ironically, I generally agreed with Marsh at the time in terms of music that I liked, but he was still a turd. He had no business reviewing albums by bands he was never going to like and then calling them out as "fascists."
He could go on and on about Springsteen though.

Funny, like his fellow '70's Rolling Stone rock critic, Jon Landau, he's now on Springsteen's payroll.

 

Even they're most silly stuff is a joy to hear dissected,check this out haters!

 

Exactly. Stadium Anthems don't equal greatness. The Stones Start Me Up with a stadium Anthem, how does that compare to their classic songs.

 

He's calling them Nazis. He can therefore be safely ignored.

 

Maybe it's because famous artists don't want the spotlight placed on anyone other than themselves.