So, I’m watching a VH-1 Classic documentary on Queen, a band I like a lot (though not as much as my wife does). And in the documentary, they have a couple New Pornographers on and one of them is talking about Queen’s late-period reign in stadium rock, and says something like “they were right up there with the Beatles.”
Um … no. Just no.
Queen was great, no question about that. I bought “Night At The Opera” when it first came out (or shortly thereafter), and followed through the years. I remember laughing to “Fat Bottomed Girls,” and roller skating (don’t ask) to “Another One Bites The Dust,” and kind of going “hmmm” when Freddie started looking like the leather guy from the Village People (who also made me go “hmmm,” since I was living in the Midwest and not quite able to believe that what I suspected they were all about was actually what they were all about), and then being incredibly sad when he announced he had AIDS just before he died, and without question Queen was one of the great bands of the ’70s.
But if you want to talk about someone being up there with the Beatles, I want to see the Billboard chart where all 5 of the top 5 songs were from that one band. Not to mention the other 7 they had elsewhere in the Top 100.
There’s a whole lot of headroom between “amazingly great band” and “up there with the Beatles.”
(pic via Litman Live)
Dave Williams' Blog 