Guten Morgen, Sie wünschten, geweckt zu werden
On the 9th of June 1986 14 year-old me walked into W.H Smith’s in Bridgwater and bought quite a controversial LP, Queen Hot Space*. I’d been obsessed with them since Live Aid and spent some of my holiday money on News Of The World the week before. This time I went for the one with the bright cover that I didn’t know anything about at all.
The controversy over Queen’s new musical direction on Hot Space, which along with some injudicious personal management decisions wrecked the band in the US. Basically you see, folks thought that Queen had gone all dancey, all funky, a bit effete you might say; they had abandoned the ROCK!
With the luxury of my patented leopard-skin affect hindsight-o-goggles I can see this is all tied into the ‘Disco Sucks!’ movement that blighted the States at the time and the odd binary of rock/black music radio stations at the time. Questions of musical taste aside** most cultural historians see that movement as being steeped in racial and homophobic overtones, essentially a non-urban howl of ‘what is all this Latino/black non-straight shit that’s being pushed at us and why does my Linda-Lou want to dance to it?’.
Enter Queen, having hit big with ‘Another One Bites The Dust’, deciding to tack their musical course in that direction. By some accounts also fuelled by Mr Mercury wanting to reproduce the more synth-based funk music he could hear in gay clubs. At their best Queen were great musical chameleons, always able to add their own stamp to a variety of genres, so as long as the songs were good enough, who would care? right?
Hot Space opens energetically with ‘Staying Power’ all funk stylings and Arif Mardin horns. It’s fine, upbeat but just sounds too clean, a bit sanitised to truly swing home. You can see why Michael Jackson liked it enough to claim Hot Space as an inspiration for that quite popular one of his. See also ‘Back Chat’, another good tune on this side of the album.
Brian May turns in the best track on the LP next with ‘Dancer’, which really is a bit of a hidden Queen gem. ‘Dancer’ is a slinky, over-dramatic prowling story, with some hidden guitar bite; love it. I was shocked to read today that what the voice later on says is (in German) ‘Good morning, you wanted to be woken up’, when for 36 years I thought it was (in English) ‘we’ve all night and lots of things to do’. My world has turned slightly.
Now, I loved ‘Body Language’ for all its sexy-sexiness when I was 14, now I’m 50 I find it utterly excruciatingly bad; possibly due to lowering testosterone levels, or it’s total lack of any musical merit. Guys, I’m not cross, just very disappointed in you. Better by far is Roger Taylor’s ‘Action This Day’ sounding a touch like a synth Bowie number^, I really like the sax on this one.
Hot Space rocks it up a bit on ‘Put Out The Fire’, I used to really go for this one but it really sounds unconvincing now. Ditto ‘Life Is Real (Song For Lennon)’, of which Mrs 1537 said earlier ‘Is this someone taking the piss?’ I am too scared to disagree. The line ‘breastfeeding myself’ may actually be the band’s nadir, if not 1982’s nadir^^.
Better by far is ‘Las Parablas De Amor’, although an unkind sort of chap might call it a poor man’s ‘Teo Torriate (Let Us Cling Together)’^*, but hey it’s a step in the right direction. It’s a pleasant track and it has Mercury’s best vocal performance on the LP. That’ll do.
David Bowie performed the original vocals for ‘Cool Cat’, then insisted his vocals be removed; a bootlegged demo version apparently exists out there somewhere in its pre-deBowiefication state. I quite like this lazy track and enjoy Mercury going full falsetto on it.
It pains me to say that Queen commit the awful sin of plagiarism on their Bowie duet ‘Under Pressure’. It’s absolutely outrageous, they blatantly rip off that brilliant bass riff from Vanilla Ice ‘Ice Ice Baby’; no attempt to even disguise it. It disgusts me, but the joke is on them as their track despite that great instrumental start is the inferior one. I have never much cared for ‘Under Pressure’, John Deacon’s contribution aside, I find it smacks of amateur dramatics. True story.
Picked apart track by track Hot Space is actually a touch better than I thought it was. I think it suffers from a, mostly, samey sound. For me the majesty of Queen always stood in their ability to put 10 tracks on an album that sounded nothing like each other, different forms, genres, sounds, whatever. Being a bit over-reliant on synths Hot Space doesn’t give us that BUT it is definitely rewards a little exploration, even if it would benefit from oodles more noodling from Mr May.
We've all night and lots of things to do ...
I’ve always had a soft spot for the sub-Warholian cover art of Hot Space. It is nice and bright and trades rather cleverly on how different from each other but recognizable the band are.
1150 Down.
PS: Mostly Bowie just seems to add some vague ‘bom, bom, bom‘ noises in the background:
*my 6th LP. Also my 6th Queen LP. I did actually buy one by someone else next time out.
**the best disco stuff easily qualifies as some of the very best and utterly life-affirming music of the 70’s in my utterly unhumble opinion.
^they should have called that guy, done a duet or something.
^^I just enjoy typing the word ‘nadir’.
^*from A Day At The Races.