Sheer Heart Attack

Encyclopedia : S : SH : SHE : Sheer Heart Attack

Sheer Heart Attack is a Queen album from 1974. This was their first commercial success, after the relatively lukewarm response to the first two albums, Queen, and Queen II. It was produced by Queen and Roy Thomas Baker for EMI in the UK, and Elektra in the US.

The first single, "Killer Queen" reached #2 in the British charts. Several songs from this album harken back to the earliest days of Queen and their predecessors Smile and Wreckage. "Brighton Rock" houses a superb guitar solo by Brian May, which began its life in the Smile song "Blag", then floated around in the live and BBC versions of the song "Son And Daughter", before finding its home in on the opening track here. The track begins with someone whistling the short melody "I do like to be beside the seaside", featured on "Seven Seas of Rhye", the last track from their previous album. "Stone Cold Crazy" was the first song credited to all four members of Queen but it had been played by Mercury's early band Wreckage. The original working title for "Tenement Funster" song was "Tin Dreams". "Misfire" is John Deacon's first composition to appear on a Queen album.

During Queen's first North American Tour (as a support band for Mott The Hoople) Brian felt ill and recording the forthcoming album was very difficult for him. He was sick with hepatitis (he had been infected with an unclean needle during a vaccination before the Australian tour), but he still was able to work in hospital. When he was fit, the work continued in studio, but then he fell ill again. When he was recovering after an operation, the next tour had been cancelled. Brian felt guilty, and was a bit nervous that someone would replace him in the band. Much to his relief, no one in the group had even thought about it. All three members were continuing on recording without Brian at the time. Poor production had a left a lot of spaces in the songs for Brian's solos. When he felt well enough, he came back and completed the tracks with guitar solos and backing vocals. "She Makes Me" used night-life recordings from New York. "Now I'm Here", released also as a single, was an idea of Brian in hospital, when he was thinking about touring with Mott The Hoople.

Drummer Roger Taylor was not satisfied with his hair on the original photograph, so the photographer used fake extensions, much to the band's amusement.

Contents

1 Queen about the record
2 Track listing
3 Song Facts
4 Personnel
5 The song
6 Singles
7 Charts

Queen about the record

John: "I have the feeling that the whole thing is getting a bit more professional all round. We are, after all, on our third album." "I've got more confidence in the group now than ever before. I was possibly the one person who could look at it from the outside because I was the fourth person to join the band. I knew there was something there but I wasn't so convinced of it. Till possibly this album."

Brian: "With Sheer Heart Attack, I was able to see the group from the outside, and was pretty excited by what I saw. We'd done a few things before I was ill, but when I came back they'd done a load more, including a couple of backing tracks of songs by Freddie which I hadn't heard like 'Flick Of The Wrist', which excited me and gave me a lot of inspiration to get back in there and do some writing - 'Now I'm Here' was done in that period. That song's about experiences on the American tour, which really blew me away. I was bowled over by the amazing aura rock music has in America. 'Brighton Rock' showed how my style was evolving, particularly with the solo bit in the middle, which I'd been doing on the Mott The Hoople tour and has gradually evolved since. That involved using the repeat device in time with and original guitar phrase, which I don't think had been done before." "We weren't going for hits, because we always thought of ourselves as an album group, but we did think perhaps we'd dished up a bit too much on Queen II."

Freddie: "Not a collection of singles, dear - although we might draw another one off later for a single. I'm not absolutely sure about that, though. No, not all the numbers last for ages. There were just so many songs we wanted to do. And it makes a change to have short numbers. It's so varied that we were able to go to extremes. I only had about two weeks to write my songs so we've been working f..... hard."

Press reviews:

NME : Festive. No garbage, and four songs which you'd like to play on and on: 'Killer Queen', 'Flick Of The Wrist', 'Now I'm Here' and 'In The Lap Of The Gods'. Even the song which I didn't like, 'Brighton Rock', leaves a permanent experience in listeners, whether live or from record.

Track listing

Side One

Brighton Rock (May) - 5:08
Killer Queen (Mercury) - 2:57 *
Tenement Funster (Taylor) - 2:48
Flick of the Wrist (Mercury) - 3:46
Lily of the Valley (Mercury) - 1:43
Now I'm Here (May) - 4:10 *

Side Two

In the Lap of the Gods (Mercury) - 3:20
Stone Cold Crazy (Deacon/May/Mercury/Taylor) - 2:12
Dear Friends (May) - 1:07
Misfire (Deacon) - 1:50
Bring Back That Leroy Brown (Mercury) - 2:13
She Makes Me (Stormtrooper in Stilettos) (May) - 4:08
In the Lap of the Gods...Revisited (Mercury) - 3:42

(* Singles)

1991 Hollywood Records bonus track (US reissue):

"Stone Cold Crazy (1991 Bonus Remix by Michael Wagener)" (Deacon/May/Mercury/Taylor)

Song Facts

Brian wrote "Brighton Rock" in 1973 but they couldn't finish recording it for the second album so they did it in the third. The solo evolved from a Smile song called Blag and then Son And Daughter. Brighton Rock is the name of a Graham Greene novel, but it's unknown if that's the reason behind the name.

"Killer Queen" was written by Freddie and it was the band's first international hit. It's one of the few songs by Mercury where he wrote the lyrics first. They did the song without Brian at first, leaving spaces for whenever he felt better. Fred played jangle piano instead of a grand one.

"Tenement Funster" is Roger's song in the album. He sung all of the vocals. Backing track consisted of Freddie's piano, John's bass and Brian's guitar. Typical Roger track about youth and rebellion.

"Flick Of The Wrist" was the double A-side of "Killer Queen" but it was much less promoted and therefore it's not very popular outside the fandom. Fred did some outstanding octave vocals there. Brian hadn't heard the song when he got to record his guitars and backing voices.

"Lily Of The Valley" is one of Brian's favourite songs by Freddie. Mercury played piano and did all of the vocals.

"Now I'm Here" is the band's second single in the album. Written by Brian while at the hospital, it was recorded during the last week of the sessions, with Brian playing piano and Freddie playing organ. The song relies a lot on delay machines, foreshadowing "The Prophet's Song".

"In the Lap of the Gods" is, according to Freddie himself, the direct prelude to "Bohemian Rhapsody" and the 'A Night At The Opera' album in general. There are fast piano arpeggios as in "Death On Two Legs" and some multi-tracked harmonies. Roger provided the screams, which he proved weren't artificially created when he did them every night during their world tour.

"Stone Cold Crazy" had been written by Freddie before he co-founded Queen. For some unknown reason, they released it in their third album (five years after the song had been composed) and the credit is shared.

"Dear Friends" was Brian's song featuring him on the piano, and Freddie doing all of the vocals. Quite a short ballad demonstrating May's versatility.

"Misfire" was John's first composition. He played most of the guitars including the solo, and Freddie sang all the vocals.

"Bring Back That Leroy Brown" was written by Freddie and features him doing all the vocals (with production techniques using tape speed to make it sound really low in the harmonies) as well as grand piano and jangle piano. Brian played ukelele-banjo and John did a line with a double-bass.

"She Makes Me" is one of Brian's least known tracks. He sang all the vocals there. John Deacon played acoustic guitars.

"In the Lap of the Gods...Revisited" is in many ways a forerunner to "We Are The Champions". It ends with an explosion achieved through tape-saturation.

Along with 'Sheer Heart Attack', several further songs were recorded during these sessions: 'Psycho Legs', an early version of 'Death On Two Legs', was recorded, along with a track by John Deacon called 'Young And Crazy' (not related to 'Tenement Funster'). Other titles of songs include 'Rollin' On', 'Between The Punches', 'Several Saturday Nights', 'The Man In The Mirror', and a lengthy jam called 'Brian's Boogie'.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}

Personnel

Freddie Mercury - Piano, Vocals, Jangle Piano
Brian May - Electric Guitar, Piano (Dear Friends, Now I'm Here), Ukulele-Banjo, Vocals
John Deacon - Acoustic Guitar, Bass, Electric Guitar, Double Bass
Roger Taylor - Percussion, Drums, Vocals, Screams
Roy Thomas Baker - Producer
Mike "Clay" Stone - Engineer

The song

"Sheer Heart Attack" is also the name of a song written by Roger Taylor featuring on the Queen album News of the World. The song was originally written for the album of the same name but was not completed for three years.

During this time, the punk rock movement went into full effect, and this song was viewed as something of a jab at the musicians who felt bands like Queen were too self-indulgent. Of note is the lyric "I feel so inarticulate", and the fact that Taylor stated in interviews that he thought many of the 1970s punk bands had very little talent.

Singles

"Killer Queen"/"Flick of the Wrist" - released October, 1974
"Now I'm Here"/"Lily of the Valley" - released January, 1975

Charts

Album - Billboard (North America)

Year	Chart	Position
1975	Pop Albums	12

Singles - Billboard (North America)
Year Single Chart Position
1975 "Killer Queen" Pop Singles 12

Year	Single	Chart	Position
1975	"Killer Queen"	Pop Singles	12

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.