At A Musical Crossroads
Jazz by Queen
Struggling to jump from glam rock to become a more Top 40 accessible band in 1978, Queen was in danger of missing the mark and releasing an inconsistent album. News of the World, the band's previous release had won millions of fans with the anthemic dual cut of We Are The Champions/We Will Rock You, but the band was musically lost. As a unit, the band members weren't squabbling, but their diverse musical tastes caused the album to lack cohesion.
Jazz forever broke Queen of its progressive rock roots and moved the band to a more commercially appealing pop and softer rock sound that went platinum almost immediately. Critics were not initially impressed with Jazz, which included virtually none of that style. Rolling Stone critic Dave Marsh, never one to shirk from an attack, called the album "just more of the same dull pastiche that's dominated all of this British supergroup's work" and sniffed that "Queen hasn't the imagination to play jazz-Queen hasn't the imagination, for that matter, to play rock & roll."
Whether Marsh, one of the genre's most opinionated critics, was right became irrelevant. Fans brought to the group's fold by the group's monster hit found little of the same here while early Queen fans derided the group's new pop orientation. The critical stance has softened during the ensuing two decades, with All Music Guide notably finding more to appreciate when taken in context of the group's later releases. Such is the lot of the critic reviewing a discography rather than a new release. Guide critic Steve Huey wrote "given half a chance, Jazz emerges as one of Queen's most playful, manically entertaining records."
Eclectic Pop
Veteran producer Roy Thomas Baker worked with the band to deliver an album that was half pop-rock, a quarter ballad and a quarter novelty. Make no mistake: Jazz is not Abbey Road. But the songs are pleasant enough, and Bicycle Race did become a novelty hit while Fat Bottom Girls generated more controversy than the clone of Honky Tonk Women deserved.
Jazz became the most balanced of Queen's albums. The subsequent studio release of The Game went on to become a monster hit, spawning Another One Bites The Dust and several smaller hits, but with the exception of that album's heavy synthesizer work, most of the elements on The Game began surfacing in Jazz.
Front man Freddy Mercury, a repressed vaudevillian, struts through his novelty cuts and Broadway wannabes, but also shows that disco and dance music were beginning to influence his own creative efforts. Critics often deride Mercury for including out-of-place filler on Queen albums, and while the same claim can be made for Jazz, the issue may have been lessened with shorter song lengths rather than different songs.
The band remains typically tight, playing in a pocket framed by Roger Taylor's drums and John Deacon on bass. Their work has always allowed Mercury the space to render ear shattering vocals and Brian May to explore his guitar. Mercury and May never directly competed for attention, but both craved plenty of leads and the quieter duo's rock-solid rhythm allowed that flexibility.
During the summer of 1978, guitar was once again stepping into the limelight as the instrument of choice, led by a newly minted triumvirate of Boston's Tom Scholz, Peter Frampton and Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham. But with the exception of Buckingham, the others were commercial one-trick ponies. May, already a well regarded guitarist joined their ranks as someone whose chops were being emulated by air guitarists and teenagers the world over. All except Frampton were known as fussbudget technicians who used prodigious amounts of studio time to create the perfect sound. Later that year, a new player, twenty-three year old whiz Eddie Van Halen would release Eruption on his band's first album and quickly steal the Guitar God mantle.
This explosion of talent did not stop May from rendering the fuzzy Dreamer's Ball waltz, a song his melodic guitar steals outright despite Mercury's constant vamping. May also crafted a cute, but overproduced ballad and the aforementioned Fat Bottom Girls, with unfortunate lyrics that pushed the band's stance from satirical to mean. The share the wealth communal songwriting contributions were the most consistent element of this album - leading to its mix of sounds. Each of the quartet contributed at least two compositions and not always what one might expect. Deacon, for example, penned the sweet ballad In Only Seven Days while Mustapha remains uncredited as a group composition, but is clearly Mercury's doing.
Sex and Showstoppers
Jazz contained a now famous poster featuring what purportedly was the beginning of a women's nude bicycle race. That poster, carefully folded and put away for later inspection by countless teen males, is reproduced across two interior panels on the CD. Queen was not selling sex in the same manner as 1980s hair bands, but still managed to always ooze some gratuitous mentions in every release. Jazz was no different, and perhaps even more tame and sophomoric in the attempt.
Where Queen really shines is by using its showstopping multi-tracked vocals and engaging two leads to wow audiences. The frenetic Don't Stop Me Now is an example of how the band managed to coalesce in a single song to create an unheralded pop masterpiece. The same holds true for Bicycle Race, a song often overlooked because it was simply so different from the popular norms. But for every cut like these Queen produced, the band also would run overlong on Fun It, which like a bad teen movie relies overly long on a single lyrical joke and More Of That Jazz, in which the members engage in musical indulgence usually saved for the worst Yes album.
The Bottom Line, Skips and All
The release of Jazz on CD in 1991 brought two bonus cuts, dance remixes of Bicycle Race and Fat Bottom Girls that do nothing to enhance the original songs and instead seem a cheap way of cashing in on Freddy Mercury's impending death later that year. But the original cuts are noteworthy beyond what is mentioned here for showing the band's evolution from hard rock and a growing awareness of how to achieve commercial success. Jazz missed on that score, but taught the quartet all it needed to know to achieve sales and chart dominance with its next release.
