Queen: Album by Album

3,5 stars I’m not really a Queen fan, but I’ve watched “Bohemian Rhapsody” recently (and liked it!) and have also seen the Queen musical “We will rock you” (and liked that one as well!). There are really a lot of great song this band produced. And I vividly remember the early 90s, the beginning of my disco-going days, when “The show must go on” and “Living on my own” were constantly played by the DJ. And when he put “We will rock you” on, everybody was joining the clapping and stomping, that I now know (thanks to the movie) to be Queens own ‘invention’ because they wanted to make a song where the audience can have a part for themselves to perform. So when I saw this book just a couple of days after watching the movie in the cinema, I was really curious what else I could learn about Queen. But actually you don't learn so much about the band itself, about the 4 guys, about their history, their quarrels, about their private lives. This book really focusses only on the albums and on the songs, like it says in the title. For every album the author lists the songs (including credits), writes a general text which puts the album in the correct timeframe of their success and then he interviews a couple of ppl who voice their opinion about the songs, what they like about the songs, what they (might?) mean and how they first came across this album/song/band. I didn't know any of those interview partners, so I had to google the names. (I only found out much later that they each get a small biographical introduction at the end of the book!) The only one I did know was Paul McCartney, and his comments were rather redundant: „I didn’t know Queen in the 70s, but then the son of my cousin made me listen to them. Yeah, Freddie was a great singer and a great songwriter. They were a great band. Bohemian Rhapsody is an all-time classic. And when I eventually met Freddie, he was smaller than I thought. He seemed taller in the pictures.” The others do make meaningful comments, but it's a pity that the author couldn't get Brian May and/or Roger Taylor for an interview, or at least somebody else from the inner circle. Because in the end they are the only ones who can tell us what a song meant, why they composed/recorded/played it the way they did, or shared little anecdotes from their tours or recording sessions. But I did learn that Queen was very experimental (which is also shown in the recent movie). They had a large variety of styles they all wanted to share with their fans, so they created songs in vaudeville style, with jazz elements, classical music, in the style of the 1920s and 1930s, rock songs, pop songs, folk songs. Brian May built his own guitar and 'invented' his own way of playing. So distinguished that the experts in the book claim they could recognize May after only one note. The book also features a lot of photos from Queen performing on stage, or from press shootings. And of course every album cover is represented as well, sometimes even the covers of some single releases. But no 'private' photos from a jamming session or a party or any other event is in there. It sticks to the main purpose of this book: its about the songs, not the band. For Queen fans this book is probably great. It totally holds up to its promise and delivers info on all their albums. It could have been even better and more insightful if this information would have come 'first hand' from people that really were there when these songs came to life. People like me, who know only one song of their first three albums combined ("Killer Queen") and thus don't know what these 'experts' in the book are talking about half the time, should rather look for something more biographical, or just watch "Bohemian Rhapsody" again.