Q What were your feelings about the first album and how
you came across as a guitar player? Had you already sort of
developed that orchestral sense of playing?
I wanted to do that orchestrated stuff but we didn’t have the
time; we were stuck in there at odd hours between other sessions.
So we concentrated on putting out an album that was a reflection
of what we were on stage at that time.
We went on tour and we were lucky enough to get the support
spot to Mott the Hoople. It was an ideal platform for us because
their audience was potentially our audience. We came to America
in ’74 and we already had the second album out [‘Queen II’]. The
second album was much different from the first; then we had the
chance to do with the studio all the things we’d wanted to do:
multi-part guitar stuff. I’d actually done a multi-part guitar song
on the Smile record, very early on, but I really wanted to go to
town and have all this sort of orchestral guitar effect behind the
main guitar.
So the first thing that you hear when the song ‘Father to Son’
gets going, although ‘Procession’ starts it, but when the song comes
in and you expect the crunch of the guitar, you have the wash of
harmony guitars behind. Which I’ve always wanted to do. And
that fulfilled a dream for me; I wanted to get that on record. I
was very upset because I’d heard Mike Oldfield was doing guitar
orchestras like that with ‘Tubular Bells’ and I wouldn’t let myself
listen to it. Because I was afraid that he was doing what I’d always
wanted to do first. But it turned out, it was very different.
And when it came out, it really didn’t connect with a lot of
people; a lot of people at that time thought we’d forsaken rock
music when they first heard it. And they said, ‘Why don’t you play
things like “Liar” and “Keep Yourself Alive”?’ And we said, ‘Give
it another listen, the heaviness is there but it’s very layered. It’s a
new approach.’ And nowadays people say, ‘Why don’t you play like
“Queen II”?’
chris devlin
(Chris Devlin)
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