Sheer Heart Attack

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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 an with 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. In the song called "She Makes Me" were used authentic records from night-city of 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.

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

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Queen about the record

John: "I have the feeling that the whole things 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 liked, 'Brighton Rock', leaves permanent experience in listeners, whether live or from record.

American music magazine : It's argue of Queen's great talent, and their versatility. Before the fourth album release, Queen will be playing in Madison Square Garden.

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Track listing

Side 1

"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 2

"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 Stilettoes)" (May) - 4:08
"In the Lap of the Gods...Revisited" (Mercury) - 3:42

BONUS (1991 US reissue)

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

(* Singles)

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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

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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.

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