material that ran the gamut. May returned to
basics with Hammer To Fall: a crunching
rocker that could have fallen off
a Queen album from the 70s.
Mercury supplied the reflective
lilt of It’s A Hard Life (a song
tainted by a dressing-up box
video that the band despised).
Meanwhile, Deacon again lived up to
his billing as the band’s secret weapon
with I Want To Break Free, whose wistful
escapism would give the band both another
signature tune and a No.3 single in the UK.
Unlike Hot Space – which had dragged frustrated
fans too far into leftfield – The Works felt like a band
still questing, while also acknowledging their
classic sound.
“I see it as being a lot closer to the middle period
than the last three or four albums,” May told Guitar
Wo r l d at the time. “A lot closer to A Night At The
Opera and News Of The World and a little bit like The
Game. But some of the writing is the next step
beyond, it’s not going back in time. Because we’ve
integrated some of the modern technologies. But
we haven’t gone totally towards machine music
because the fact is we don’t like it.”
On home turf, the upturn was palpable, with
The Works hitting No.2 in the UK and clinging to
the domestic chart for 93 weeks. But the
impression that America had turned away was
cemented by I Want To Break Free’s infamous video,
featuring the band dragged up as servile
housewives, with Mercury pushing a vacuum
cleaner in a padded bra and black leather
miniskirt. Middle America didn’t get the joke, and
the band – in their first incarnation, at least – never
recovered there.
“I know it was received with horror in the
greater part of America,” May told writer Mick
Wall. “To them it was boys dressing up as girls and
it was unthinkable, especially for a rock band.
I was actually in some of those TV stations when
they got the thing and a lot of them refused to play
it. They were visibly embarrassed about having to
deal with it.”
No longer a band prepared to slum it, Queen
decided that trawling a cooling America was no
priority for them.
“And we were not seen for quite a long time in
the States,” May noted. “Freddie didn’t want to go
back smaller than we’d been before. He was like:
‘Let’s just wait, and then soon we’ll go out and
we’ll do stadiums in America as well.’ Only of
course we never did.”T
he international circuit was clamouring,
but the band’s broadening horizons would
lead to the era’s most serious misstep.
Developed by hotel mogul Sol Kerzner and opened
in 1979 in the North West Province of South
Africa, the Sun City resort was a paradise of
twinkling pools and lush gardens – tainted by its
uncomfortable tag as the ‘apartheid Las Vegas’.
With the country still gripped by segregation, the
United Nations’ cultural boycott demanded that
musicians resist the lure of playing there – even in
the face of Kerzner’s generous fees. Queen weren’t
the first marquee name to break the red line – Rod
Stewart and Elton John had both appeared at Sun
City in 1983 – but their residency in October 1984
sparked the fiercest opprobrium.
The band fought their corner, pointing out that
they had insisted on playing to an integrated
audience and staying in a mixed hotel.
“Those criticisms are absolutely and definitely
not justified,” argued Brian May in a fractious
Smash Hits interview. “We’re totally against
apartheid and all it stands for, but I feel that by
going there, we did a lot of bridge building. We
actually met musicians of both colours. They all
welcomed us with open arms. The only criticism
we got was from outside South Africa.”Freddie with Queen during
the tour for their most
divisive album, Hot Space.CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 71