Legendary Bands - Queen Posters

Even in a decade that celebrated excess, Queen reigned supreme. The British quartet's music soared from quasi-mythological themes to campy vaudevillian interludes to unrestrained raunch. Frontman Freddie Mercury flaunted his sexuality, brazenly translating some astonishingly homoerotic expressions into the traditionally heteromanic context of hard rock.

Mercury was well-versed in the history of British popular music from music-hall to art rock and wasn't shy about it. In addition to the brute force of Queen's rock attack, their repertoire fearlessly incorporated styles ranging from classic blues a la "My Melancholy Blues" from News Of The World to the rockabilly swivel of "Crazy Little Thing Called Love."

Queen's first hit single "Killer Queen" was an irresistibly spunky melody charged with brash guitar and a quirky, catchy lyric. "Bohemian Rhapsody" was a Queenly tour de force--a tongue-in-cheek take on the Rock Epic a la "Stairway To Heaven" that was equal parts light opera, heavy metal and melodramatic pop. Throughout the '70s Queen maintained its standing as one of the top rock acts in the world, but the '80s found them facing a stylistic crisis. Their 1980 album, The Game, combined a strange array of songs from rockabilly to proto-funk. Then, after years of boasting about the absence of synthesizers on their recordings, they suddenly went disco with the perplexing Hot Space.

Queen maintained much of its international standing--especially in their native Britain--right up to Freddie Mercury's untimely death at the age of 45 of AIDS in 1991. But the abrupt about-face flummoxed American audiences, and with the exception of "Under Pressure"--a duet with David Bowie featured on Hot Space--they didn't really have any presence in the U.S. market during the '90s. Except, of course, for the memorable scene from Wayne's World that featured Wayne and Garth and their fellow suburbanite buds exuberantly singing along with "Bohemian Rhapsody" while cruising through the heart of Middle America in an AMC Pacer--surely as fitting a tribute as the all-star memorial concert held at Wembley Stadium in the April following Mercury's death.