Another thing worth mentioning. No one knew or cared that Freddie Mercury was gay back then. No one knew Rob Halford was gay either. And back then, people weren't all that open-minded.

Fuck no. Rush was considered a kick ass heavy rock band. Their nerdiness seems to be a new construct based on the people that picked them up after they jumped the shark, post-Moving Pictures.

Styx is another matter.

Their early stuff is also downright progressive. Ogre Battle? Phenomenal song.

I don't know. I always felt that most of Queen I and Queen II were just Led Zeppelin rip-offs with a little extra style. They really didn't hit their stride until Sheer Heart Attack (their third album). Sheer Heart Attack has so many different music styles from song to song that it will make you question if you are listening to the same band after each song ends and the new one begins.

I love everything they ever did but I have to say my least favorite album of their is either The Works, The Miracle, or Innuendo. Probably The Works is the least listened to by me. I love Radio Ga Ga but most of the other songs are really uninteresting.

Both The Miracle and Innuendo sound like they are trying to hard and the awful lyrics on many of those songs from those two albums are embarrassing bad.

Hot Space gets shit on all the time but I personally love that album. Yeah, a lot of the lyrics suck on it but dig the funky horns on Staying Power. Dancer, Action This Day, and Put Out The Fire are all rocking. Body Language is a very sexy song and of course you have the one hit, Under Pressure with David Bowie. You couldn't escape that song on MTV when it was released. But I remember Bowie always getting more credit on that song than Queen when it was played. Like Queen was his backing band on that song or something.

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See, this is why the OP asked his question. The stuff after The Game is not hard rock like they played previously. I knew of no one that bought any Queen albums after The Game - even that album was shunned by the rock crowd and made successful by the new MTV market. (I liked Play The Game and Sail Away Sweet Sister and thats about it.)

My favorite Queen album is the "A Kind of Magic," because it's basically the Highlander soundtrack all in one.

I had several friends become Queen fans (or at least listened to them without laughing) after they realized they did the music for the cult movie Highlander of which appears on It's A Kind Of Magic.

There is some good stuff on that album and it is right between The Works and The Miracle.

But I do believe that album bombed just like the movie did. People seemed to discover that album years later once the movie caught an audience on video.

Funny. I was typing my above response at the same time you posted this.

I remember ending up with "A Kind of Magic" after going into a store and asking for the Highlander soundtrack album. It's missing a couple songs from the movie, but it is the only place you can get Highlander songs short of the bonus disc that came with one version of Highlander on DVD and hits packages that have a few of the singles.

I've always enjoyed potion of the Flash Gordon soundtrack as well. Beyond the famous title song (Ah-ahhhh!) the Battle Theme and The Hero are quite good. Great guitar work.

And I am a huge fan of Queen, Rush, and Styx. All 3 definitely have their ups and downs and are love them or hate them bands.

Same here. "Who Wants to Live Forever" is my all-time favorite of theirs.

As an 80s kid, I mainly knew them as the guys who did 'We Will Rock You' and 'We Are the Champions' (which I knew from the medley video MTV played and Revenge of the Nerds for 'WATC'). I also remember 'Radio Ga Ga', and remember being embarrassed to admit I liked "I Want It All' (which came out when I was in my hair band/headbanger years).

I had never even heard of 'Under Pressure' until 'Ice Ice Baby', and had never heard of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' until Wayne's World. And even looking back, 'Under Pressure' didn't seem to make much of a blip on the US scene at original release... it peaked at #29 on the Hot 100, while 'Body Language' from the same album made it to #11. As much as people hate what Vanilla Ice did with 'Pressure', I guarantee he brought a slew of new fans to the song that may have never discovered it otherwise.

Under Pressure was HUGE on MTV.

I think I had the "One Vision" 45. In fact, I know I did, because there was no way in hell I was buying the "Iron Eagle" soundtrack. That was a great single.

"Iron Eagle"... mein leiber gott.

Oh, they did. In England at least, everyone knew. But nobody talked about it. It was kind of funny, actually.

I was 15 when Queen I was released, 22 when The Game was released. Prior to 1976 there were many bands who were known only to fans of album rock because they got no airplay. Aerosmith, Rush, REO, Styx, Kansas, Foghat and Queen. You discovered these bands because someone you knew had an album and turn you on. At this time Queen was considered hard rock.
Around 1976 things changed. I've read that the popularity of the Boston album caused it, I don't know. Anyway, a lot of bands suddenly faded away, while others suddenly had break through hits and became well known. Queen became bigger than most of them. They became A list. Probably because their albums mostly rocked but had a few pop tunes that became AM hits.
The height of their popularity among rock fans cumulated during News of the World and Jazz. Live Killers is a perfect time capsule of Queen at the height of their popularity among harder rock fans.
Then came The Game. Everybody I knew hated it. Everybody I knew loathed "Another One Bites The Dust". Our rock station played the parody "Another One Rides The Bus" instead.
A lot of rock fans dropped out at this point.

Yeah their artistic decline just happened to coincide with Freddie's outing. Just like Elton John.


I have to admit I was naive about Rob Halford. I had no idea until he came out. Just thought he was a leather dude like other macho metal guys.

Elton John's career didn't start to decline until well after his sexuality was common knowledge; he was going strong well into the late 90s. Every time I hear that sexuality was the reason for Queen's decline, I gotta shake my head. Their 80s output was simply not that great, and most big 70s rock acts were quietly withering away by the time of the Reagan era.

And Halford always seemed gay to me, even as an 80s kid/teen. The short hair and dog collar just reeked of the Blue Oyster Bar...

Halford pretty much created the "leather look" for metal, and it's so funny to see so many hardcore metal guys wearing gay S&M outfits.

For that alone, Rob Halford will forever be one of my favorite rockers.

I don't know where you were listening but around here (mid-south) *all* those bands *except* Queen received lots of airplay on the AOR/Classic Rock stations and were pretty well known. Queen was pretty much ignored and dismissed, much like Kiss, as being "teeny bopper" pop/rock. No one took them seriously.
It wasn't until Jazz that anyone I knew began to give them the time of day and a occasional listen. Partly because that's the first album I know of that received a modicum of airplay in this area. Before that you had to listen to AM or Pop radio to hear them. That's the first album of theirs I owned because of "Fat Bottomed Girls" and discovered it was a generally excellent release. Still, no one else I knew listened to the group other than what came on the AOR format stations (mainly "Fat Bottomed Girls" and occasionally "Bicycle Race").
Just as soon as AOR stations began to play their stuff they released The Game and tanked. A *few* tracks from A Day at the Races and Night at the Opera would receive occasional airplay but The Game pretty much killed what little momentum they'd gained on the AOR stations here.
Yep. I don't know if anyone in this area knew or even cared about Mercury's sexuality. If the music's good, it's good. Their 80s output was horrid stuff and even the pop stations quickly dropped them.

I can't remember the last time I heard a Queen song on the radio. It's been at least 20 years (I listen to a AOR/Classic Rock station at work which has a playlist spanning ~1968-2015).

To answer the OP: The group I ran with never considered them to be "Rock" and they most certainly were *not* "Cool" to listen to. To this day I don't truly consider them to be a "Rock" band although I do now own a few of their albums which receive occasional listens.

In my early teen circles, I remember Queen being one of THE bands around '77/78. News of The World was massive & everywhere. Then Jazz came out & was similarly buzzed about. But in no small part because it contained a fold out poster of a bunch of naked chicks on bicycles. That neatly folded back into the gatefold cover after 'use' where your mom would never think to look.

Then we forgot about them until Wayne's World came out.

Same here. I can appreciate their musicianship and song writing but they just did not interest me. The Stooges, Purple, Sabbath, Ten Years After were much preferred.

Mentioning the poster in Jazz, my Dad destroyed my copy of it and burned the poster. He wanted to go to the record store and have the guy arrested for selling it to me but luckily we had moved to a different city by this time and he couldn't.

He also destroyed my LP of It's A Kind Of Magic because of the lyrics to the song Gimme The Prize (Kurgan's Theme).



My Dad and Mom thought they were singing about Satan. They also destroyed my copy of Night At The Opera because of the Beelzebub reference in Bohemian Rhapsody. Which in turn made them destroy all my other Queen albums. Luckily I had tape backups of all my LPs.

I always thought my parents definitively contributed to Queen's bottom line. I had to rebuy so many of their albums and cassettes over the years. This was around 1986 or 1987. They had destroyed all of my Queen stuff twice before in the earlier 80's when all the devil worshiping scare was going around. Don't even get me started on all the KISS stuff they destroyed. And Def Leppard.

What's funny is I never got into the really heavy 80's metal that a parent could have seriously thought was Satanic. I just liked good production and catchy hooks which early KISS and Queen have in spades. If my Dad has known that Mercury was a homosexual at that time, I probably would have been sent away to some type of "camp."

Shit spiderbite, your parents were some hard-core Falwell conservatives. They must have bought that Moral Majority party line Hook, Line & Sinker. That's just seriously nutty.

I find it funny that even now someone wouldn't consider Queen a "real" rock band.