Sheer Heart Attack
Sheer Heart Attack is the third studio album by the British rock band Queen, released on 8 November 1974 by EMI Records in the United Kingdom and by Elektra Records in the United States. Departing from the progressive themes featured on their first two albums, the album featured more pop-centric and conventional rock tracks and marked a step towards the "classic" Queen sound. It was produced by the band and Roy Thomas Baker, and launched Queen to mainstream popularity in the UK and throughout the world.
The album's first single "Killer Queen" reached number two on the UK singles chart and provided the band with their first top 20 hit in the US, peaking at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. Sheer Heart Attack was the first Queen album to hit the US top 20, peaking at number 12 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape Chart in 1975. It has been acknowledged for containing "a wealth of outstanding hard rock guitar tracks". Retrospectively, it has been listed by multiple publications as one of the band's best works and has been deemed an essential glam rock album.
Background and recording
After completing their second album, Queen embarked on their Queen II Tour as a support act for Mott the Hoople. After touring extensively throughout the UK, the two groups decided to tour together in the US, marking Queen's first tour in the country. The bands would remain on friendly terms for the rest of their career, with Ian Hunter performing "All the Young Dudes" at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert. Queen played their first US show on 16 April 1974 in Denver, Colorado, as a support, which Freddie Mercury reportedly disliked, saying: "Being support is one of the most traumatic experiences of my life". At the climax of the tour in Boston, Brian May was discovered to have hepatitis, possibly from the use of a contaminated needle during vaccinations the group received before travelling to Australia. The remainder of the tour was subsequently cancelled and Queen flew back home, where May was hospitalised.In June, the band gathered together at Trident Studios to start rehearsing material for the album. Koh Hasebe interviewed Mercury, Roger Taylor and John Deacon when they were rehearsing on 13 June. At the beginning of July, May joined them for rehearsals. The band were just preparing to record, and on 7 July, they trekked three and a half hours to get to the Rockfield Studios in Wales, where they would record ten backing tracks, finishing on 28 July. At the start of August, work shifted to Wessex Sound Studios. Work there would not last long, however, as May, who was starting to feel uneasy, went to a specialist clinic on 2 August. He collapsed at the clinic, as a result of a duodenal ulcer, and would be operated on the following day, but discharged from the hospital soon after so he could recover at home. While the band were overdubbing at Wessex, May booked studio time at AIR Studios, where he recorded "Dear Friends" and "She Makes Me". In the meantime, Taylor and Deacon made an appearance at an EMI/Radio Luxembourg motor rally at Brands Hatch on 11 August. By late August, May was working with the band again, and the rest of the band would add their parts to the songs he had recorded. There was still one song that needed to be recorded as the band worked into September, and that was "Now I'm Here". They recorded the backing track for this one at Wessex, and saved the rest to be completed during the mixing sessions.
Mixing commenced in the middle of September. The band were still overdubbing at this point, so they hired someone to deliver tapes from recording studio to mixing studio via motorcycle. The heart of the mixing sessions took place at Trident Studios, and one or two days was spent mixing each of the majority of the songs. "Brighton Rock", on the other hand, took four days to mix, with six hours' worth of different mixes created during that time. Each song was mixed in little edited sections that were about fifteen to twenty seconds in length. At this point, Trident had just installed a 24-track machine in their studio that had been around since 1972, but was not functioning until 1974. In fact, the album was Trident's first 24-track project. Even though Trident had expanded their recording flexibility by eight tracks, this was still not enough to be able to mix each track individually. "Bring Back That Leroy Brown", for example, had 70 vocal tracks and had to be mixed down to work with the 24-track mixer.
On 20 September, it was announced the band were attempting to secure a release date for the album of 1 November, though it seemed unlikely that they would be finished in time to meet that deadline. They mixed "Now I'm Here", which was the last thing to be mixed, on 22 October. May did an interview the next day that explained what finishing the album was like. In total, the band used four different studios in the making of Sheer Heart Attack: most of the backing tracks were recorded at Rockfield, two backing tracks and some guitar overdubs were recorded at AIR Studios, most of the overdubs and one backing track were recorded at Wessex, and the mixing was done at Trident.
Songs
The album noticeably shifts away from the progressive rock themes of its predecessors, and has been categorised as hard rock and glam rock. The Daily Vault described it as "an important transition album" because it showcased "what the band would soon become while giving a nod to their hard-rock past," while Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic observed that, although there are still references to the fantasy themes of their earlier works, particularly on "In the Lap of the Gods" and "Lily of the Valley", "the fantasy does not overwhelm as it did on the first two records"."Killer Queen" was written in a single night, which contrasts with the, as Mercury put it, "ages" it took to write "The March of the Black Queen". "Brighton Rock" was written during the making of Queen II; "Stone Cold Crazy" had its genesis in Mercury's pre-Queen band Wreckage; and Mercury wrote "Flick of the Wrist" during May's illness-induced absence. As it included the first song written by John Deacon that Queen recorded alongside tracks written by the other members of the band, Sheer Heart Attack was the first of the group's albums to contain at least one song written by each member; "Stone Cold Crazy" was the band's first song for which all four members shared the writing credit.
"Brighton Rock"
"Brighton Rock" was written by Brian May during the Queen II sessions, but was not recorded at that time, as the group felt it would not fit with the rest of the album. Lyrically, it tells the story of two young lovers named Jenny and Jimmy, who meet in Brighton on a public holiday. Mods travelling to Brighton on bank holidays was a popular narrative at the time, as in the Who's Quadrophenia.The song includes a three-minute unaccompanied guitar solo interlude, which makes extensive use of delay to build up guitar harmony and contrapuntal melodic lines. It grew out of May's experimentation with an Echoplex unit while he attempted to recreate his guitar orchestrations for live performances of "Son and Daughter". He had made modifications to the original unit so he could change the delay times, and ran each echo through a separate amplifier to avoid interference.
The studio version of the solo only contains one "main" guitar and one "echoed" guitar for a short section, but, live, May would usually split his guitar signal into one "main" and two "echoed" guitars, with each going to a separate bank of amplifiers. In concert, the solo has been performed as part of "Brighton Rock", in a medley with another song, or as a standalone piece. For example, May performed some of it at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Considered one of May's finest solos, Guitar World ranked it No. 41 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time.
At the very start of this song you can hear the sound of a Carousel. This was taken from a sound effects album called "Authentic Sound Effects Volume 1" originally released in 1960.
"Killer Queen"
"Killer Queen" was written by Freddie Mercury and was the band's first international hit single. Mercury played a jangle piano as well as a grand piano on the recording. After it charted as a single, the band performed the song on Top of the Pops."Tenement Funster"/"Flick of the Wrist"/"Lily of the Valley"
wrote "Tenement Funster" about youth and rebellion and sang lead vocals, while John Deacon played the song's prominent acoustic guitar parts in May's absence. It segues into Mercury's "Flick of the Wrist", and then into a softer, piano-based Mercury song, "Lily of the Valley", making the three songs continuous."Now I'm Here"
"Now I'm Here" was written by May while hospitalised, and recalls the group's early tour supporting Mott the Hoople. It was recorded during the last week of the sessions for the album, with May playing piano."In the Lap of the Gods"
"In the Lap of the Gods" was written by Mercury and featured multiple vocal overdubs from himself and Roger Taylor. It features one of the highest notes on the album, sung by Taylor."Stone Cold Crazy"
"Stone Cold Crazy" was one of the earliest tracks that Queen performed live, and had several different arrangements before being recorded for Sheer Heart Attack. No band member was able to remember who had written the lyrics when the album was released, so they shared the writing credit, the first of their songs to do so. The lyrics deal with gangsters and include a reference to Al Capone. The track has a fast tempo and heavy distortion, presaging speed metal. Music magazine Q described "Stone Cold Crazy" as "thrash metal before the term was invented", although this was not the first song in the style of "proto-thrash", with Deep Purple's "Hard Lovin' Man" predating it by four years. The song was played live at almost every Queen concert between 1974 and 1978 and also in the cut version during European leg of The Works Tour in 1984.Metallica covered the song as their contribution to the 1990 compilation album Rubáiyát: Elektra's 40th Anniversary. This cover version won a Grammy Award in 1991; it also appeared on the band's compilation ''Garage Inc.''