The Works, 40th Anniversary

Hi folks. It has been 40 years exactly since The Works had come out and I am going to mostly approach it from a personal perspective, as to when I had first heard the album in its entirety and when I would hear certain songs off of it. I will also get into purchasing The Works on tape and then CD in 1991 and maybe, a bit on the 2011 remaster and deluxe version.

The reasons for this approach are, that much has been written about The Works recording process on Wikipedia and anywhere else, which happens to have it featured on a music related website. I may get into a bit of what had gone on, but not really. I am also going to avoid discussing the music videos as much as possible, because that is not the point of the post anyway. If I did, it could lead me to talk about how Queen didn’t tour North America in 1984 and 1986, thus the last two Queen albums with supporting tourss didn’t do as well over on the other side of the pond, unlike in Europe and the rest of the world.

Also, because there were multiple projects being put together at the same time, with songs which would end up on future Queen albums, solo albums by Roger and Freddie, along with Brian working on the Star Fleet project in 1983, with Eddie Van Halen. Then there is the case of the soundtrack to the movie The Hotel New Hampshire, which is another project which could have come to fruition, but did not… … at least for Queen. Keep Passing the Open Windows is a reminder (if you will) of that opportunity which fell through. The band had also discovered that time was taken up with soundtrack work, rather than recording the next Queen album. So, I am going to stick to The Works as I had already done Freddie’s debut solo album and I may do Strange Frontier from Roger later on this year. So, let’s get started.

I had heard Radio Ga Ga in 1984 and I was neither here nor there, when it came to the actual song. What I didn’t know, was where the track was placed on The Works until June 1991, when I had purchased it on tape, as The Works had been released on Capital Records in the US and Canada in 1984. If you live in Canada, remember how in the 80s and probably the 90s, record companies put sounds at the end of the leader tape. In some cases, there was no leader tape and you would hear the sounds opening side 1 and ending side 2. It may be a per, or some strange beeping sounds going upward in tone. Either way, every record company had its own distinct marker (if you will) of Side 1 and Side 2. I could get into the physical design of cassette tapes, but that would be another long story and I can’t explain how cassettes were designed that well anyway, besides either the square holes or circular holes surrounding the reels on either side, or what ever it was holding the tape together in the center with or without the indentation. Anyway, I digress.

I had bought The Works on tape at a mall in Brantford Ontario, when I went with my friend and roommate Bob with a residence counsellor in our school van, to get out of the residence for the evening on a Tuesday… probably June 4 or June 11 1991. I had purchased it and listened to the first side when we got back to the school. When Bob and myself heard the first drum beats and power cords of Tear It Up, our reaction was something like “that’s rockin’ Queen”. Although, I was lucky enough to have heard Hammer to Fall in 1984, but I didn’t remember how it went, except for the start/ stop nature of the guitar riff with the spaces left for Roger and the drum hits. I hadn’t heard any of the other 6 tracks off of The Works, except for Machines (Or Back to Humans) in 1984, during the Chum Top 30 Albums on Sundays. I actually listened to Q107, but I would float between the 2 radio stations to hear who would play Led Zeppelin first on the weekends, but I would still go back to the main station. One of the girls I had went to school with had mentioned I Want to Break Free, but I hadn’t heard it until I had bought The Works on tape.

Then during the Christmas holidays in 1991, my mom suddenly came into my bedroom, with three CDs: Queen II, The Miracle and The Works. I forget if I had told her that I wanted them, or if someone else (either a friend or someone at the record store we went to together) had let her know that they were available for purchase, but I got ’em anyway. I was obviously ecstatic to finally have all of the studio albums on CD and I also had all the armaments I would have needed, to try and hook nonbelievers at school into Queen and especially those who liked hard rock and heavy metal… besides myself. Of course, this is when we lost Freddie roughly a month earlier and I hadn’t heard every single song by Queen yet at that time, but I had heard The Works and I Go Crazy (Radio Ga Ga’s B-side) as Bob had put it on tape for me for the time being. Before I got the CD, I first found out from another friend on the phone, that The Works was available on tape on Hollywood Records, with the bonus track being I Go Crazy. When the 1991 CD came into my hands, I realized that it also had the extended mixes of Radio Ga Ga and I Want to Break Free. With iTunes, both of those songs are not available anymore and so, I am hoping for a 40th anniversary super deluxe version of this album, not on like what we got with The Miracle in 2022. Also, unlike the album I just mentioned, none of the songs were changed in the remastering for Hollywood Records and so, no mistakes.

In 2011 when every Queen album was rereleased, I was very happy to find out that Thank God It’s Christmas was included as a bonus track, but disappointed that the instrumental version of Machines (Or Back to Humans) was not, on the deluxe version. Again, hopefully we get something else coming down the pipe this year, or very soon related to this album, giving us the works (pun intended) like we got with The Miracle boxed set.

When I had finally heard the single version of I Want To Break Free, I wish that it was the album version, as I found the album version itself rather boring, unless it had been put together as it was on the Bohemian Rhapsody soundtrack. If the album version as we know it wasn’t included and it was the BohRhap soundtrack version, it would have been more interesting coming after Machines and it is more suited to Queen and the title of the album anyway. Don’t You think? After all, Queen are better known for bombast and show, so the album version is the antithesis of that, with a boring beginning before Freddie starts to sing and the ending just fading away. How the song ends is fine, but the beginning is not like Queen at all.

Radio Ga Ga as an album opening track is kinda strange, given the context of who Queen are and where they had been, on Hot Space. After all, this is a song which is heavy on the 1980s techno sound, but with real bass and piano under it, with a slide guitar solo from Bryan. The latter is not what listeners are going to focus on when hearing it for the first time and I had heard such silly comments as the song having 70s elements for Queen. That is absurd, when you hear how it starts it is obvious as to when it had come out and the latest technology is being used. Granted, not every Queen fan will bristle at the sound, but those who had grown up hearing Freddie and the guys on rock radio were more than a little disappointed. After all, Queen were another classic band who had taken hold of 1980s technology and had used it, in order to cross over to a pop audience and like I said, I didn’t care either way, but the person who grew up on album oriented radio had to be very unhappy, to hear a machine instead of real drums, guitar, bass and piano with Freddie, Brian and Roger harmonizing. As for the music video for Ga Ga, maybe that makes things a bit more clearer, but when Queen played it live, you get the full affect of why it had opened The Works, even though it seems like a lullaby, compared to the next song in the running order. After all, Tear It Up would have been a great opening track, especially with Freddie barking “ARE YOU READY”? Plus, there is the call back to We Will Rock You, in a sense so, it wakes you up and gets your attention and makes you listen. Then again, with each side sequenced as it is, it actually does kinda work. Altho, if Ga Ga and Machines were switched as side openers, it would have been interesting to try, with both songs having either a hard rocker or a similarly midtempo number after it, like we hear anyway.

If you think about it, the second side is actually higher energy than side 1, when it comes to the songs and their tempos, along with how they are sequenced in the running order. The first side starts with a techno leaning song, a hard rocker, a ballad and a rockabilly song to close it out. The second side starts with a hard rock song with electronic elements, a mid tempo pop song, a slightly faster driven song from Freddie, Brian’s heavy single and the acoustic ballad Is This the World We Created… ? to end the second side and the album.

I am going on about album sequencing here, because I strongly believe that an album by a rock or metal band should be like a live show. They should come on strong, with songs which get your attention (in a good way) then after track 2 or 3, you can do what ever you want. To put it in Queen terms, the opening tracks on side 1 should deafen and blind you, much like the live show and not lull you to sleep, then wake you up with a knock on the head. However, if the idea is to disarm the listener, I understand. After all, Slipknot did something similar with Adderall off their 2022 album The End, So Far while the closing track off of their 2019 album We Are Not Your Kind is as heavy as hell and it is called Solway Firth, beginning with a weird twangy vocal from Corey Taylor and ending with a banger. With Adderall, some fans had a problem with the tune and I understand why, but I also understand why it opens the latest Slipknot album. They have always opened their albums with something weird and sometimes cacophonous, to serve as an intro to their albums and live shows. Adderall is no different, except that it is a complete song and it had served as an EP, as of June 2023. The other difference is that it wasn’t the first single, unlike Ga Ga.

Another example of what I refer to as disarming the listener with an opening track is Terria by Canadian singer and guitarist Devin Townsend. It opens with a song called Olives, which starts quietly and with some spoken word and it builds to a crescendo and ends with some Cantonese music being sampled before the next song pummels you into submission. I guess that Ga Ga kinda disarms the listener, but in context with what had come before, I’m not so sure. Unfortunately, this was the best they could do with the best of what they had, after all the arguments over everything. I’m sure that Freddie, Brian, John and Roger all had different ideas as to what the running order should have been, but we have what we have and that’s that. Altho, Radio Ga Ga isn’t an unbearable noise, unless you hate techno. Before I leave this subject and move on to something else, there is an alternative running order, which sounds interesting and to my mind, if the single version of the second track on the first side was included, it would flow better. The alternate track listing is: Tear It Up, I Want To Break Free, Machines (Or “Back to Humans”), It’s a Hard Life, Man On the Prowl, Keep Passing the Open Windows, Radio Ga Ga, Hammer To Fall and Is This the World We Created…? to end it off. Either way, Side 1 would start off with an electronic leaning track and not every first single has to be track 1, Side 1. Case in point, Boh Rhap and Somebody To Love.

Queen aren’t the only band who had gone in a similar direction from their core sound, in order to experiment and expand, to possibly shock and annoy, but also to explore different musical territory. Radiohead have obviously left their older sound behind, but another band who had done something similar to Queen is LINKIN PARK. They have done a supporting tours for all 7 studio albums and a number of live albums were out, even before the death of singer Chester Bennington in July 2017. What I am getting at is the 7 studio albums having a similar career arc to Queen, during a run of 3 albums from Minutes To Midnight, A Thousand Suns and Living Things. After releasing Hybrid Theory and Meteora being mainly nü metal albums, they decided to go in another direction with Minutes To Midnight and to me, this is similar to Queen. They had given us a wide range throughout the first 7 albums before The Game and that was when they had tried to do something different, with the inclusion of a synthesizer and writing songs differently. We all know how The Game turned out and if you are a LINKEN PARK fan and a Queen fan, you how Minutes to Midnight turned out. Both LP’s 3rd album and The Game had a different focus with The Game focusing more on rhythm and Minutes to Midnight focused on more melody and texture. Sure, the first two LINKIN PARK albums had melodic songs, but this was their first real dip into those waters and combine it with different music, you could tell that this was a band who would not sit still. Then in 2010 LP released A Thousand Suns and it may not have been the same as Hot Space, but most fans didn’t understand what was going on, with the concept album approach and inclusion of Oppenheimer and other spoken samples in songs. Then in 2012, Living Things was a return to a more conventional LINKIN PARK album, much like The Works and yet, both albums have a lot of electronic elements sprinkled throughout. Altho, Living Things has even more without real drums and plenty of synthesizer and studio trickery with Rick Rubin. Then The Hunting Party in 2014, which was a real return to making a hard rock album with real drums and it did okay. Queen didn’t exactly ditch technology altogether, when they recorded The Miracle and Innuendo, but the idea was similar to me with The Hunting Party. Both LINKIN PARK and Queen’s final studio albums are focused on pop and in Queen’s case, more ballads than not. One More Light was an experiment with pop and Made In Heaven was what it was, for obvious reasons to us. Either way, both singers are no longer sharing oxygen with us and LINKEN PARK is set to release its first Greatest Hits album in April, with a new song called Friendly Fire. Anyway, spoiler alert: I will be doing a post each on both Radiohead and LINKEN PARK in the future, with the latter band coming soon.

How would I rate The Works? I honestly don’t know because I have never actually rated albums by Queen, or any band because where I put them could change depending on my mood or other things. For example: if we do get a new 40th anniversary of The Works, it will certainly be up there, behind my top 8 Queen albums and they are in fact, the first 8 studio albums with News Of The World and A Night At The Opera being my top 2, with the other 6 behind it. Even they are interchangeable, depending on the same factors as the bottom half of their studio discography. I like to look at and hear other lists on Youtube and on music websites, to see what others have written and it’s fun, to go through a ratings list like that, especially with bands I love. Anyway, I do like The Works for what it is and all Queen albums for what they are, including Hot Space and with The Works, it should have been obvious that we would get a sound like what we got from Freddie and the guys in 1984 anyway, given where music was at that point.

What about the extra tracks besides Let Me Live and Let Me In Your Heart Again? I wonder where the Queen versions of all of the future solo songs from Freddie and Roger are, besides Love Kills. By the way, this was not the only song entitled Love Kills to be used in a movie, with a Joe Strummer track of the same name from the movie soundtrack to Sid and Nancy, while Freddie’s Love Kills appeared in the 1984 movie Metropolis and on it’s soundtrack. I have heard the Joe Strummer song and it’s not bad, if you like The Clash.

Getting back to what we hear on The Works, we heard Volkoder for the first time, but Queen weren’t the first rock band or artist to use it on an album. Remember Neil Young and his 1982 album Trans? There was more Volkoder on that album, but he brought it into the rock world years after Kraftwerk first used it on Autobahn and all those great albums they had put out in the 70s and 80s. The best examples from both Kraftwerk and Neil Young are The Robots from The Man-Machine album in 1978 and We R In Control from Trans. Both songs are composed entirely of vocoder and no human vocals on them at all, unlike Machines with Roger on Volkoder and Freddie harmonizing with himself.

Recently, there have been teasers on Queen’s website, social media and on YouTube that there could be something coming down acknowledging the 40th anniversary of The Works, like merchandise including T-shirts. Could there be something else in the works? Yes, there is a pun intended this time too and I hope there is. As I have said above, I hope we get something similar to what we got in 2022, with The Miracle and we will get to hear not just the extended versions of 8 of the 9 tracks, but also Thank God It’s Christmas and songs written during the sessions, which didn’t make it onto the final product. For example: Man On Fire from Roger and Love Kills from Freddie should be interesting. The latter because on the single, Brian, John and Roger play on it. However, I wonder if the version we know as Freddie’s first solo single is the same song recorded during these sessions. Also, will we get to hear how Let Me Live and Let Me In Your Heart Again sounded from 1983, as appost to 1995 and 2014 respectively?

Something else I hope will finally be available are a couple of remixes of Hammer to Fall by Brian Malouf, who had done remixes for Queen and Freddie. An example of another song he did was I Can’t Live With You, which was not the same one on Queen Rocks. With Hammer To Fall, the drums sound punchy and Freddie’s lead vocals have a drier mix. The drums remind me of the album The Wild Life by hair metal band Slaughter. It’s not exactly the same, but both snare sounds are quite hard even if the remix could be all electronic drums with real symbols and high hats. It may be a long shot, but I really hope that after all these years I and others will finally get them on not just streaming and digital platforms, but also on CD and maybe even vinyl or cassette.

Anyway, let’s see what happens this year in regards to the 40th anniversary of this important Queen album. They are all important, but The Works was a return to form of sorts, but you know that something had happened which resulted in the album sounding the way it did. Technology had progressed and other bands were using it so, Queen wanted to see what worked or them and the result wasn’t bad. There are no bad Queen songs, but for me I can’t listen to some of them by themselves. There are countless examples of such tunes, but I may leave that for another post some day.