Underappreciated Album: Queen’s Sheer Heart Attack

Lest the listener forget what year it is, “Now I’m Here” serves up a healthy dose of early-70s hard rock. Sounding like a blend of Kiss and Cheap Trick, the song delivers bluesy rock riffs to perfection, and even the production itself has that typical 70s rock album sound. The band play with delay effects on the vocals, but not to the annoying effect that they would on “The Prophet’s Song” the following year, which was also written by Brian May at the same time as “Now I’m Here.” To drive home the classic rock nature of the song, the outro jam throws in “Go go go, Little Queenie” from Chuck Berry’s “Little Queenie,” a song which also brought us the “Meanwhile, I’m still thinking” bit in T. Rex’s “Bang A Gong (Get It On)” from 1970.

The band starts to experiment with epic studio technology with “In The Lap Of The Gods,” which is split into two tracks on the album. The first, titled “In The Lap Of The Gods,” begins with a shrieking vocal and dramatic chords, setting the stage for piano arpeggios and more thundering chords. The now-familiar Queen mass vocals sing the title, which is faded out and then back in, followed by the main vocal, which is Mercury’s voice played at a lower pitch, much like the band Ween would do twenty years later. Lyrically, there’s not much substance, as the singer spends a few lines proclaiming his love to the listener before the chorus chimes in with the title for the rest of the track. It’s a lush production, and definitely leaves one wanting more, which will come at the end of the album.

Before we reach that end, though, we pass immediately into “Stone Cold Crazy,” which is Queen’s proto-metal contribution. I can only imagine what listeners in 1974 thought as they heard the fast, loud onslaught explode from their speakers. Also released at this time was Sweet’s “Set Me Free,” which echoed the rapid staccato guitar at roughly the same speed, helping to set the stage for the New Wave of British Heavy Metal to come. It’s a two-minute-and-seventeen-second bullet train that didn’t sound a bit out of place when Metallica covered it in 1990. Perhaps to provide a unicorn chaser for the damaging nature of the previous song, we are offered a one-minute ballad, “Dear Friends,” which sounds like an early version of “Love Of My Life,” which would appear on the next album.

Bassist John Deacon provides his first song with “Misfire,” which makes me want to rent a convertible so that I can ride with the top down and this song playing loudly. It’s light-hearted and happy, and although it’s not even two minutes long, it has cowbell and timbales in it, which remind me of other summer songs from Sweet like “Co-Co” and “Poppa Joe,” both released in 1971. I’d say that it was out of place on the album, but Sheer Heart Attack is so delightfully patchwork that I can’t.

Roger Taylor, 1974
Photo from Queen Concerts.com

Following another startling butt-cut edit is the banjo-barrelhouse anthem “Bring Back That Leroy Brown,” showcasing Mercury’s love of both dancehall tunes and his own voice, as he provides all the vocals on the song. It’s another short-short one, but that’s fine, as I don’t think this style of song can support a longer format. I love these throwback numbers, appearing randomly in Queen’s albums like an old ad for nerve tonic in a magazine.

The last new track on the album is Brian May’s “She Makes Me (Stormtrooper In Stilettoes),” which is a languorous acoustic song layered with May’s signature electric sounds. The acoustic guitars, played by bassist John Deacon, sound like strokes on an autoharp, and May’s vocals are mellow, creating a lazy atmosphere which lasts until the arrival of sirens and heavy breathing. I’m not sure what these dark noises are intended to portray, but since I associate the title with Gary Numan’s “Stormtrooper In Drag,” it all fits into a semi-submissive musical underworld, and that’s OK.

The epic drama of “In The Lap Of The Gods” concludes the album with “In The Lap Of The Gods. . . Revisited,” which really only has the title in common with its predecessor on the album. “Revisited” features Mercury and piano in a slow 6/8 time, slowly building in intensity and adding guitar. At about the halfway mark, the focus becomes the group singalong vocal, which jumps out from the speakers as if sung by all your neighbors in the arena. Finally, a tape explosion brings everything crashing to a close. The group vocal and time signature give us a preview of “We Are The Champions,” which would take three more years to appear.

On most other Queen albums, there are at least one or two songs that I can’t stand, songs that are not pleasing to me in any part. As a result, I tend to stick with greatest hits collections and avoid delving into the darker reaches of Queen’s catalog. Sheer Heart Attack, on the other hand, is something I can listen to from start to finish and enjoy thoroughly. It’s indulgent but restrained at the same time, I guess. They never go too far into their experimentation, or in their need to placate their less-frequent songwriters, and the result is an album with variety and style. If you haven’t gone further into the album than “Killer Queen” or “Stone Cold Crazy,” do yourself a favor and take a listen.

Oh, and you won’t find the song “Sheer Heart Attack” here: it was begun in 1974 for this album, but not finished until News Of The World in 1977. Blame the drummer.

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