Queen
Queen, 1973
Released	6 July 1973 (UK), 4 September 1973 (US)
Recorded	September 1971 at De Lane Lea Studios and January 1972 - January 1973 at Trident Studios
Length	38:36
Label	EMI (UK), Elektra (US)
Producer(s)	Queen, Roy Thomas Baker, John Anthony, and Louis Austin
Queen chronology
Queen 1973 Queen II 1974

History of this album

Tracklists

Credits

• Musicians:

Freddie Mercury - vocals, piano

Brian May - guitars, vocals, piano on Doing All Right

Deacon John - bass guitar

Roger Meddows-Taylor - drums, percussion, vocals

John Anthony - additional vocals on Modern Times Rock'n'Roll

• Produced by: Queen, Roy Thomas Baker, and John Anthony. The Night Comes Down produced by Louis Austin.

• Recorded: January 1972 - January 1973 at Trident Studios, London. The Night Comes Down recorded September 1971 at De Lane Lea Studios, London.

Charts

Information supplied by Fedepeti, 24 August 2004

• Japan: #52, 14 weeks in the chart.
• Holland: did not chart.
• Italy: did not chart.

Liner notes

Representing at last something of what Queen music has been over the last three years, this album was produced by John Anthony, Roy Baker, and Queen at Trident Studios, London, for Neptune Productions, and engineered by Roy Baker, Mike Stone, Ted Sharpe, David Hentschel. (The Night Comes Down recorded by Louis Austin at De Lane Lea Studios.) Our warmest thanks to Mary Lewis, Terry Yeadon, Dave Siddell, Louis Austin, Ken Testi, Peter Edmonds, Micky Russell, John Anthony, Ronnie Beck, Jack Nelson, Maureen Scully, Norman and Barry Sheffield, and all the Trident people. Queen's equipment supervised by John Harris. Queen's photographer: Douglas Puddifoot; Cover design: Douglas, Freddie, and Brian... and nobody played synthesizer.

Singles

• Keep Yourself Alive / Son And Daughter

• Liar (single edit) / Doing All Right

Queen Talks

Brian May - 1973, Guitar Magazine

"We like some of the stuff on it, but we sometimes fell into the trap of over-arrangement. You know, the songs changed over the years and some of them probably evolved too much. You can get so far into something that you forget what the song originally was. On a personal level, it was frustrating for me to take so long to get to this point. I wanted to record things with, for instance, tape echoes and multiple guitars five years ago. Now I've finally done it, but in the meantime so have other people! Which is a bit disappointing. But you have to get away from the idea that playing music is a competition. You should just keep on doing what you think is an interesting thing to do."

Roger Taylor - 1974, Sounds

"There are a lot of things on the first album I don't like, though, for example the drum sound. There are parts of it which may sound contrived but it is very varied and it has lots of energy ... but then I think one of the best albums last year was the "Mott" album and that had loads of inconsistencies and rough bits..."

John Deacon - 1974, Innerview

"And quite a lot of the songs on that first album were songs that we had had for a long while, and songs that we just used to play together, songs like Keep Yourself Alive, Liar Great King Rat, and other numbers. They're songs that we just used to play. And we just went in and recorded them. And there were one or two numbers on that first album which were more sort of that first sort of sign of getting interested in doing things in the studio. My Fairy King was a number Freddie wrote which we only wrote when we were in the studio and it was built up in the studio. Whereas, you know as I said, there's other numbers where essentially live songs, basically just the track and then just a few .......backing vocals and guitar solos over the top and that was it."

Reviews

Winnipeg Free Press, 1974

Queen is England's latest candidate for superstardom, and don't be surprised if these guys do make it in a big way. Sure, the material is so derivitive it hurts (listen to guitarist Brian May cop riffs from Jimmy Page, Black Sabbath's Tony lomi, Jimi Hendrix and Mick Box and you'll see what I mean), but the group manages to inject such a fresh, energetic touch to most of it that I don't mind a bit. Modern Times Rock 'n' Roll is a direct cop from Led Zeppelin's Communication Break-down, right down to vocalist Freddie Mercury's ability to ape Robert Plant. With its first album, Queen has produced a driving, high energy set which in time may be looked upon with the same reverence Led Zep 1 now receives.

Additional Reviews

• Rolling Stone - Issue 149
• The Chicago Herald

Sleeves

USA white label promo gold embossed sleeve LP, 1973	USA LP, 1973	Argentina Promo LP, 1973	Argentina Promo LP (back), 1973
Taiwan LP, 1973	Zimbabwe LP, 1973	Korea LP, 1973	Korea LP (back), 1973
Czech purple LP (bootleg?), 1992	Japan Remaster CD, 1998	Japan Remaster CD, 2004	USA Cassette, 1991
France Cassette, 19xx	Poland Cassette, 19xx	Poland Cassette, 19xx

Releases