Queen - "No Synthesizers!"

I was watching disc II of The Making Of + 30th Anniversary of "A Night At The Opera", with the audio commentary by the band switched on, and at about the 27 minute mark, Roger Taylor mentioned the reason for the "No Synthesizers!" credit on the albums Queen II through A Day At The Races:

On the first album, Brian did a lot of stuff on guitar featuring specific harmony guitars, which was a fairly new thing at the time. And a lot of reviewers in England - I can quote one, Chris Welch in the Melody Maker, a paper famous for its inaccuracy, I might add - said "Great use of synthesizers here!" and of course it was all guitar, and that got up our noses quite a lot... We were a bit put off by the early synthesizers and decided we would actually say from then on - for the next 4 albums or so - that we had no synthesizers on them."

 

And after that, they started using synthesizers.

 

For no good reason, too.

Just silly noises on things like "Get Down Make Love" and "Another One Bites The Dust"...

 

It's been years since I perused the sleevenotes of "News Of The World" but didn't the proud "No synthesisers!" boast remain in place until "The Game"? I remember my schoolmate Javus telling me that there were no synths on "Get Down Make Love", and he was a guitarist so I had no choice other than believe him...

 

All down hill after the synths appeared. "No Synthesizers" was a mark of quality.

 

Some good songs after that, but yeah, the production was dreadful. The Live At Wembley show, for all it's recording imperfections, provides my go-to versions for all the singles off The Works and A Kind Of Magic.

 

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Liner notes from "The Game":

This album includes the first appearance of a Synthesizer (an Oberheim OBX) on a Queen album.

 

THE GAME had a disclaimer on it that it was the first queen album to use a synthesizer

get down make love has some trippy sounds on it. i guess they did it using tape echo and tape manipulation???

 

I guess there's a difference between "keyboards" and "synthesizer."

I'd love to know how they did it, then.

 

10cc was accused of much the same thing early on but, of course, they had Godley & Creme's Gizmo and also the staggered vocals for "I'm Not in Love" (which Billy Joel also later used for "Just the Way You Are" although in his case it might have been a sythesizer).

 

I dunno...I didnt mind the stylistic change on The Game. However, it went way the heck too far on Hot Space and then continued to rear its (sometimes) ugly head on later albums...I am thinking specifically of songs like "The Invisible Man."

JQ

 

I appreciate the quote the OP put up. It has bugged me a trivial amount that Queen would put a "no synthesizers" note on their liner notes when the guitars on the album would be played in a way that made them sound like synthesizers. It struck me as a distinction without a difference. And I still think it is! But the quote says that it is an important difference to the members of Queen themselves, and at least some fans given the response on this thread. And as long as the disclaimer is relevant for someone, it's not the head-scratcher it used to be to me.

 

The "no synthesizers" statement reminds me of the "there is no Fairlight on this record" note on the 1985 "No Jacket Required" album by Phil Collins.

Peter Gabriel (who's on the album) must have loved that, being (along with Kate Bush) the Fairlight no.1 fan!

 

I really have to agree.

 

I agree. The guitars are so tweaked/masked/modified that it's really kind of silly not to use a synth at that point. At the same time, I guess I can understand their frustration over the review that said "Nice use of synths." But isn't that the reaction they were trying to achieve?

 

I'm pretty sure it's Brian May's guitar through some early sort of pitch shifter. I've heard that effect on some multieffect racks where it was called "flying fifths".
The BBC version features that effect on vocals too.

 

I remember reading it was one of Brians harmonizers or something, not really sure what they did though...
Though I love Queens 70s work (their best) if ever there was a time they should have used synths it should have been then when synths sounded great - moogs, mellotrons, arps etc...as it was the synth sounds in the 80s were comparitively very poor IMO. One only has to compare the synth sounds on 70s Genesis next to 80s Genesis to hear some particularly bad sounds.
As it was Queen never had to use the synths in the 70s and just got by on ingenuity though one wishes they had used them a bit more carefully when they eventually did use them, though regardless of the 80s synths it really is the production in that era which takes it down a bit more than anything and few bands didn't fall into that trap...

 

Iron Maiden had the same boast prior to Somewhere In Time.

 

my first press CDN copy of 'Queen' states "and nobody played synthesizer" on the back cover.

 

Listen to the beeps on Queen II between Procession & Father To Son.
When played very slowly you can hear it was build up out of a guitarloop.

 

These are good points, particularly when looking at guitar equipment. Originally, Brian May used tape delays and created his own harmonizing by effectively playing over his own solos and layering them. This would be considered analogue and much more "organic" than using digital delays, which he did switch over to, in the mid 70's. Whether one considers digital delays and digital harmonizer effects to be as organic as tape effects is another question altogether, but the sounds are certainly "synthesized",to a degree.

For those asking about Harmonizers check this short video out and you can see how this is a fast and easy way, of creating the Brian May sound, with hardly any of the effort needed to do it via the analogue/tape method. The guitar sound is processed to double or triple the guitar notes and can be manipulated to create different types of harmonies with the original notes. Some work, some sound awful, depending on the intervals chosen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcXnB1MsjKI

 

Noting a lack of synthesizers seems silly to me. Is that really a difference maker in most people's decision to purchase?

 

The whole point Queen were trying to make was that they made these records the hard way, by hand. No shortcuts, and not by pushing a button, as many folks thought, particularly with the vocal and guitar arrangements.

If you want to have an idea of just how much work they did, have a look at this. 21 Guitar tracks to re-create a dixieland band sound.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POsOP3TF-XY

and this, how to build/ layer a Brian May solo organically
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhTRoOWR8ag

 

Queen

"Noting a lack of synthesizers seems silly to me. Is that really a difference maker in most people's decision to purchase?"

+++++++++++++++

Probably not. People would likely have already heard one or more of the album's songs on the radio which compelled them to buy the album. As far as what instruments or devices were used to create the sounds on the album I doubt that most fans cared about what was used to create the album.

Scott