Wine: Killer Queen

Queen: Killer Queen [purchase]

Like many people, A Night At The Opera, and particularly, “Bohemian Rhapsody” was my gateway to Queen. That album came out in 1975, when I was in high school, and it really was not like anything else I (or most people) had heard. My love for that album led me to look at their prior albums, which at that point consisted of their self-titled debut from 1973, and Queen II and Sheer Heart Attack, both (!) released in 1974.

What made Queen so fascinating was that they were one part heavy metal, one part prog, one part vaudeville and music hall, and one part pop, but elevated above the pack by Freddy Mercury’s other worldly voice, Brian May’s distinctive guitars, and a strong rhythm section. Mercury, who has been scientifically proven (!) to have been the world’s greatest singer, would have turned 72 today, had he not died in 1991.

While Queen’s debut may have tilted toward metal, and their second, filled with tales of fairies and black and white queens, might have been more proggy, Sheer Heart Attack, was, as its title hinted, more straightforward hard rock. But not completely.

In fact, the big hit single from the album—their first international hit that made it to No. 2 on the UK charts and No. 12 on the US charts, was “Killer Queen,” a song that Mercury stated was not the hard rock that people expected from Queen, but was more like a song that Noel Coward might have sung. In addition to using a grand piano, Mercury overdubbed it with an upright, to give it a vaudeville feel. And May’s multitracked guitar solo is excellent (and one of his favorites)—he added it late in the recording process because he had been in the hospital with hepatitis and a stomach ulcer.

“Killer Queen” is a song about a high class call girl, and the lyrics set this up by informing us, at the song’s very start:

She keeps Moët et Chandon
In her pretty cabinet.

Moët et Chandon, is, of course, a famous maker of champagne, whose history goes back to 1743, and its prestige made it a perfect signifier for the expensive (if not quite Dom Pérignon-level) tastes of the person who Mercury was describing in the song.

One problem, though—he pronounced it wrong.