'Live Killers' (1979)

I'll spend some time discussing 'Live Killers.' I have a soft spot for the album, it having been the highlight of Christmas 1979 (for me, at least). The album is universally panned, not least by the band members themselves. Roger Taylor publicly disowned it. The album isn't properly 'live,' say the critics, but is full of overdubs. So was every 'live' album of every band, not least Thin Lizzy's much more - and rightly - acclaimed 'Live and Dangerous.' And the double album didn't record the one single concert but offered selections from a number of concerts from 1979. To which I say: 'so what?' A concert is a one-off event for the entertainment of the paying public, and is not, with rare exceptions, intended as a permanent document. It was perfectly legitimate for Queen to select certain performances of certain songs and craft a live document for mass consumption. Problems of sound and selection remain, of course. 

So excuse me as I ignore the narrative which dismisses the album as terrible and move onto more interesting matters - like the actual music itself. Because I enjoyed it very much. Although I understand that better recordings were available, I thought the album exciting and enjoyable and have never changed my view, despite learning of the reasons why I should.

In 1979 Queen fans such as I were thirsting for 'greatest hits' album, gathering all the classic recordings in one spot. It would be another couple of years - and a few more massive hits later - before such a compilation would be issued. In the meantime we learned of the forthcoming issue of a live album which would contain all the best and favourite songs of the band. Being Queen - excess all areas - they went large on the concept and its execution. It turns out that the members of the band were reluctant to record a live album, but that their record company, EMI, insisted in order to stem the demand for the rash of Queen bootlegs that was breaking out. The band went from being unkeen on a live album to releasing a double album containing .. say the critics .. less than their best performances, dull sound, odd selections (and odder non-selections), and lengthy tracks and solos. Many critics concluded that the album was merely a contractual obligation undertaken with little enthusiasm.

Since the view of the critics is one that band members themselves shared, we have no option but to accept its validity. Speaking as a fan rather than as a music critic, I have to say I rather liked 'Live Killers.' Context probably makes a difference. I was now into my fifth year as a Queen fan, and this album was like a coming of age document, gathering many of the Queen songs I loved in the one place as a public celebration. That's how I received the album Christmas 1979. It was also something of a personal landmark in my changing musical tastes. Every year since 1972 I had received an Elvis album and/or annual as my main Christmas present. 1979 was the year that the King gave way to Queen. 

To be honest, I wasn't too bowled over by the album. I was really after a 'greatest hits' package. I noticed that many of the songs were not quite as vital and sparkling as they were on record - 'Don't Stop Me Now,' 'Bicycle Race,' and 'Killer Queen' in particular. In truth, I wasn't really ready for the different sound of a live album. But I played it over and again and acclimatised. Once you get into the swing of things, it's all rather good. And the album did catch fire in a number of places. I loved 'Brighton Rock' and got absorbed in the lengthy guitar solo. That was a 'proggy' indulgence that was being derided in an age of punk. To my credit, then, I was less keen on Roger Taylor's extended drum solo. I never cared for solos in jazz music, and cared much less for them in rock music where musical skill, intelligence, and imagination is much less in evidence. That's not to say that Taylor is a bad drummer - he isn't - but that boring drum solos are not why I listen to rock. The same with respect to long guitar solos. Although I would play May's part here over and over in my head for years after (to this day, actually). I'm glad to read that Taylor never cared for those long solos either. They were expected at the time. By whom and to what end, I have no idea. Music to be impressed by and applaud politely? Like a recital? 

I studied the photos on the album and the sleeve notes and became intrigued by the question of which concerts each of these selections came from. I learned that the material came from European shows recorded between January and March 1979. It would have been good to have had each performance properly located, making the album a "Queen on Tour" document. I also learned that Queen also played shows in USA/Canada in 1978 and Japan 1979, although no material came from these. It all made Queen seem even more exotic, and all the more universal for that.

The members of the band scrutinized some twenty shows during the mixing process. Brian May later declared that the album wasn't as good as it could have been, and admitted that it would have been better done by someone else. Asked in 1981 if he was satisfied with the Live Killers album, Brian declares:

"I am never really satisfied with anything I do. I'm a non-conformist. I think the live album was only a testimony of what we were doing on stage at that time. I am somehow unsatisfied, because we had to work hard in every concert and there were serious sound problems to solve. Sometimes the concerts sound very good, but when you listen to the recording you want to kill yourself because of how awful everything sounds. Out of ten or fifteen concerts we recorded, we could only use the tapes of three or four of them to edit Live Killers. Anyway, the sound of live albums is never good. The main reason is that the audience has to be included and the crowd noise affects the instruments. As you may notice, Live Killers is not my favourite album at all."

May's criticism here pertains to all live albums - and to 'anything' he does - and not to 'Live Killers' in particular.

Roger Taylor expressed similar sentiments: "I don't think it turned out anywhere near as well as it could have done." In a 1979 interview, Taylor also stated that "the only thing live about Live Killers is the bass drum." All that can be said about that is that the same comment applies to most live albums - bands cannot resist touching up the tapes here and there, covering up errors, adding and embellishing. And I don't see anything wrong in that. If you want the pure, unadulterated concerts, then buy a ticket and go to the live show. When you are putting the show into the form of a recorded document, intended as a permanent record, it makes sense to make it as good as possible, without losing too much authenticity in the process. A lot of post-production work went into 'Live Killers,' making it almost as much a studio album as a live one. 

All that said, to my young ears, it sounded like a proper concert, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, with showstoppers, standouts, quiet bits, interludes, singalongs, solos, and grand endings. We are transported from one show to another seamlessly. Those who wanted a precise replica of a typical show of the time are doomed to disappointment and complaint. Selection, editing, and overdubbing is the rule with respect to live albums, not the exception, and the critics who labour the point that such albums are less than 'live' are yearning for a fantasy world that exists nowhere, not in Led Zeppelin's "The Song Remains The Same," Deep Purple's "Made in Japan," nor Thin Lizzy's "Live And Dangerous", nor anywhere. The real criticism, then, is that "Live Killers" was not made to anything like those high standards. Which, for a band like Queen, is a curious misstep - they normally got it right, and righter than most nearly all others.

As to the music ...

First off, I was really impressed with the album/concert opener, the fast hard rocking version of "We Will Rock You," which became the definitive version of the song for me, much more than the slow stomp and thump version. From then on, the Queen show is quite an experience, full of thrills, shocks, surprises, and sing-a-longs. Sometimes they take their hit records and play them as miniatures in a medley - they astounded the world doing this at Live Aid, but were adept in the art having done it from the start of their career. Other times they take certain numbers and expand them in length and scope ("Now I'm Here" and "Brighton Rock.") There's an acoustic section and room for a little audience participation. And I can't have been the only one whose eyebrows were raised upon hearing "Bohemian Rhapsody" being opened with the line "Allah Allah Allah Allaaah, we'll pray for you" from "Mustapha." It says something that I found it quite normal for an audience to be singing along at the same time; in the Queen world, bizarreness is normalized. And I never quite understood why critics persisted in criticizing the band for playing the backing tapes to the operatic section in "Bohemian Rhapsody." It is for those critics to suggest what the band could have done. Leave the song out? Sing as a choir? Their biggest hit and the song the audience would want to hear? In concerts past they broke up the parts of the song and blended them with other songs, merging it in a medley. I think it works fine with the backing tapes, building anticipation for the band's rip-roaring return to the stage.

"Live Killers" is something of an historical document. It's something of an intermission, a summing up before new ventures. Changes were underway in the Queen world. 1978's 'Jazz' had marked a change in sound and direction, and there would be no studio album until 1980's 'The Game,' which represented an even more radical departure in style. 'Live Killers' in retrospect was an attempt to deliver a representative document of the Queen of the '70s, at the moment the band was evolving rapidly into something different. It was the only live recording available for a long while, before video, so it looms large in the memory of older Queen fans. The album captures Queen at the crossroads, moving beyond their past sound before embracing a different sound. The album has since been surpassed by more comprehensive and representative documents deriving from earlier and later shows, with the band delivering much better performances. 

Predictably, the album was badly mauled by the music press, but that was par for the course. More fool anyone who pays attention to that source of misapplied time and energy.

It was a period of rapid evolution for the band. Indeed, in swimming against the punk tide, with the music press degenerating from the disdainful to the plain nasty, it could appear that this was the final document of a band now about to pass into history. In retrospect, 'Live Killers' was a pause and a breather in the release schedule, allowing the members of the band time and space to ponder future directions. A live release made sense. Most other bands had released a live album, including bands which had fewer hits, great songs, and albums to their name. And the fact is that Queen had been a superb live act since their beginning, acclaimed as one of the best live acts around. It made sense to issue an album which showed that the band were a live as well as a studio phenomenon. And it gave them a year to re-evaluate their musical identity and contemplate new creative directions.

In many respects, though, 'Live Killers' confirmed the worst doubts of the critics rather than rebutted them. Issuing a live album is precisely the thing that the rock dinosaurs now being set up for slaughter had done. It is remarkable that only now, at the end of the decade, Queen finally got round to issuing a live album. Genesis had had one out as early as 1973, barely three albums into their career. 

That said, there are moments on the album which where it repeats the familiar rock tropes of the era, such as solos so long that punk may never have happened. I'm willing to bet that I wasn't the only person to have routinely skipped Roger Taylor's interminable drum solo. For drummers only. Also, while I enjoyed the expanded 'Brighton Rock,' I either played it as a stand-alone, or reserved its playing for the odd 'special event' listen. In the main, I picked my way through rather than listen to the full double album. 

One track I tended to skip, and which could have been left off the album on account of being plain incongruous, is "Get Down, Make Love." I don't mind the song for what it is, I just don't quite know what it is or where it belongs. It let to awkward moments at home when I had to persuade my mum that she really didn't want to hear the album at all. She was sad, thinking I didn't like my Christmas present. I knew what was coming. It was one moment when "Fat Bottomed Girls" - strangely omitted - would have been acceptable in polite company. "Somebody to Love" was another strange omission. One seamless album based on a succession of tracks, and the inclusion of these omitted tracks instead of the longer passages, would have kept it lively and sustained the momentum. On the omission of "Somebody", my guess is that the band were seeking to showcase their current 'Jazz' sound.

There is also a problem of timing. The recording documents the Queen of the 'Jazz' tour, promoting an album of new sounds that were not quite. or not yet, classic Queen, indicating a band in transition. The promotion even extends to a brief one line from 'Mustapha' to introduce 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' which may be considered a cultural abomination in all manner of respects (I liked it; such surprises serve to keep you interested and intrigued).

In the end, these critical objections are mere nit-picking. Freddie Mercury sings well, thrills the crowd, connects, and Brian May's guitar is loud and powerful. The songs are great, too. I'm still not keen on the drum solo.

Putting the criticisms to one side, as either misplaced or hugely overstated, the album is lively and entertaining and nowhere near as bad as critics (including band members) state. The album opens with the storming fast rocking version of "We Will Rock You," which is incendiary and really sets the mood. This is followed by a song which was from the 'Jazz' album, and hence new to the set, "Let Me Entertain You," and which works as an extended opener. "Death on Two Legs" follows, and is powerful. (I remember being shocked by the bleeps, wondering what scandalous words were being bleeped out - my imagination ran away with me. I thought it best not to play the album for the family, not until I had the apologetics worked out). We get a medley of "Killer Queen", "Bicycle Race" and "I'm in Love with My Car," flowing together seamlessly. This would be a feature of all Queen shows, and is the very thing that stole the show at Live Aid. "Get Down, Make Love" breaks things up, and makes for a very incongruous interlude before the light and breezy feel is restored with "You're My Best Friend." "Now I'm Here" is a rock showcase and show-stopper. We then get an acoustic interlude of "Love of My Life," "'39" and the overlooked gem which is "Dreamer's Ball" (also from 'Jazz'). "Keep Yourself Alive", "Don't Stop Me Now" and "Spread Your Wings" make a strong trio on the third side of the album, then the album ends with anthems and celebrations, "Bohemian Rhapsody," "Tie Your Mother Down," "Sheer Heart Attack," "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions." And that, at the end of the day, is where attention should focus, on the music rather than the vagaries of mastering and mixing. The sheer quality and power of the songs in this set list are overwhelming, offering compelling evidence of a band in confident form.

Live Killers (1979)

We Will Rock You 3:16

Let Me Entertain You 3:17

Death on Two Legs 3:33

Killer Queen 1:58

Bicycle Race 1:29

I'm in Love With My Car 2:01

Get Down, Make Love 4:31

You're My Best Friend 2:08

Now I'm Here 8:40

Dreamers Ball 3:41

Love of My Life 4:59

39  2:26

Keep Yourself Alive 3:58

Don't Stop Me Now 4:27

Spread Your Wings 5:15

Brighton Rock 12:13

Bohemian Rhapsody 6:00

Tie Your Mother Down 3:41

Sheer Heart Attack 3:33

We Will Rock You 2:48

We Are the Champions 3:27

God Save the Queen 1:31

Omitted tracks

The discovery of these omitted tracks invites us to play the endless game of song selection.

"Somebody to Love"

"Fat Bottomed Girls" (Version from Pavillon de Paris, 27 February 1979, was released on the Bohemian Rhapsody: The Original Soundtrack)

"If You Can't Beat Them"

"It's Late"

The inclusion of all of these tracks, at the expense of 'problematic' material, would have strengthened the album. As to which tracks should be omitted, it depends on personal choice, and everyone's tastes are different.