"If I'd been a solo artist, I think I'd have laid on the floor and cried": In 1973, faced with bad reviews of their debut album, Queen turned to bad reviews of Led Zeppelin for comfort

31 Oct 2024, 13:00 · louder

By Fraser Lewry
( Classic Rock )
published 31 October 2024

Brian May and Roger Taylor go behind the scenes of the making of their debut album

(Image credit: © Queen Productions Ltd)

Queen guitarist Brian May has revealed that the band comforted themselves after reading bad reviews of their first album by reading similarly damning critiques of Led Zeppelin albums.

Not all reports were unfavourable. In the US, Rolling Stone wrote that Queen had "all the tools they’ll need to lay claim to the Zep’s abdicated heavy-metal throne, and beyond that to become a truly influential force in the rock world," before going on to describe the album as "superb" and "a monster."

Back home it was a different matter, as the NMEʼs unfailingly pompous Nick Kent referred to the album as "a bucket of urine".

May reveals how the band coped with such damning reviews in the second part of Queen The Greatest Special: The Story of Queen 1, in which May and drummer Roger Taylor look back at the making of the first album, which was reissued last month as an expanded, 50th anniversary edition.

"We looked at some of the reviews for the Led Zeppelin albums that had been out at that time, some of which were appallingly bad," says May. "And we thought, well, if they can run these people down, we shouldn't be too worried about being run down ourselves.

"Being a band is a great help. I think if I'd been a solo artist, I think I'd have laid on the floor and cried. It was bad, but we had the four of us and it's like, ‘screw these guys, we know what we're doing’. That saved us."

Elsewhere in the new episode of Queen The Greatest Special: The Story of Queen 1, Taylor and May look back on Queen's first visit to a recording studio and reveal how, 50 years on, they revisited the recordings to improve the sound.

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"We've made the actual album sound the way we wanted it to sound," says Taylor. "Using the techniques that we have now, we've just made the drums sound like they should sound, and the overall sound of it is better. The mixes are better. We've reworked it and I think we've greatly improved it."

The Collectors' Edition of Queen 1 is out now.

Queen The Greatest Special: The Story of Queen 1 - Part 2 (Episode 2) - YouTube

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Fraser Lewry

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 38 years in music industry, online for 25. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.

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