successful happening to us. We were penniless, you know. Just like
another struggling rock ‘n’ roll band. All sitting around in London
bedsits, just like the rest.’
As a whole, the album was a big success all over Europe, and
even managed to go gold in the United States – a sure sign that
this was a band to be watched. Speaking about the album, John
Deacon would say, ‘I have the feeling that the whole thing 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.’
Mercury would expand on this after harsher critics would
describe the album as nothing more than a collection of singles, in
spite of it generally being seen as a cohesive long-player with a wide
variety of musical genres, including ballads, ragtime and heavy
metal. ‘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
fucking hard.’
The band would also start making a name for themselves thanks
to their onstage theatrics, especially front man Freddie Mercury,
who had fast become quite the entertainer – dressing in satin,
sequins and gesticulating all over the place.
‘Sheer Heart Attack’’s follow-up a year later, ‘A Night at the
Opera’, would see the band under new management following
the dismissal of Norman Sheffield in the same year. The album’s
opening track, ‘Death on Two Legs’, would prove to be a reference
to the whole sordid affair, with Mercury later stating, ‘As far as
chris devlin
(Chris Devlin)
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