| A Day At The Races |
 |
| A Day At The Races, 1976 |
| Released |
10 December 1976 (UK),
18 December 1976 (US) |
| Recorded |
July - November 1976 at The Manor, Wessex, and Sarm Studios |
| Length |
44:20 |
| Label |
EMI |
| Producer(s) |
Queen |
| Queen chronology |
|
|
After the release of Queen's fourth album, A Night At The Opera, and the resulting tour that ran from November 1975 until April 1976, the band had a new management (John Reid) and decided to take some time to enjoy everything that being world famous rock stars had to offer; for Brian, this meant marrying his long-standing girlfriend, Chrissy Mullen, on May 29th, over a month after the band's last live date. Clearly, they weren't in any rush to be back on the road or in the studio; in July, they finally began work on the follow-up to A Night At The Opera, recording material at three studios (compared to its predecessor's seven): The Manor, Wessex Studios, and Sarm Studios.
Unlike the sessions for A Night At The Opera, the band weren't under any pressing schedules to quickly record an album and go out on the road to promote it; in fact, apart from four concerts in September, the band wouldn't tour again until January 1977. Three of those four concerts (two at the Playhouse Theatre in Edinburgh on September 1st and 2nd, and one at Cardiff Castle on September 10th) were as part of festivals, while the fourth date, on September 18th (coincidentally, the sixth anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's untimely death), was held at Hyde Park, organized by the band to be a free event to thank their British fans for being so loyal to them, even as Queen's popularity grew exponentially.
Because these live dates came midway through the recording sessions, it only made sense that some of the new songs be incorporated into the set: Tie Your Mother Down and You Take My Breath Away were both played, becoming one of the rare times when new material would be performed live before being officially released; also new to the set was an acoustic interlude, with the latter new song as well as Brian's '39, performed by the band at the front of the stage with Freddie on lead vocals and Roger banging away on a bass drum and tambourine. Apart from a minor snafu that threatened to become a major headache (the band's set overran by half an hour, and because of strict time restrictions, the police were called to make sure the band didn't go back out; the band reluctantly agreed not to, particularly Freddie, who wouldn't have been much pleased being hauled away to jail wearing his white spandex suit!), the night was a success, and the band would speak highly of the gig for years after.
Following the concerts, it was back to work on the new album. For the first time, Queen were unassisted by a producer, evidently feeling that they had done all they could do with Roy Thomas Baker, preferring to work on their own (as ever, Mike Stone helped engineer the album). The sessions finally concluded in November, and the following month, A Day At The Races was released to much acclaim, though some critics were quick to point out that the band were merely rehashing a formula which had worked so well on the previous album, sighing that the formula had become stale and didn't work on the new album. Unlike A Night At The Opera, the material isn't as diverse here, though it's easy to see the parallels between the two similarly-themed albums: You Take My Breath Away is an update of Love Of My Life, while The Millionaire Waltz takes the studio trickery and adventurousness of Bohemian Rhapsody, though critics claimed that Somebody To Love was the new Bohemian Rhapsody. John Deacon gets another lovely pop song in the form of You And I, which could be seen as a superior rewrite of You're My Best Friend, while Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy was written in the same vein as Freddie's previous vaudeville / music hall-inspired material like Seaside Rendezvous, Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon, and Bring Back That Leroy Brown. However, that's where the similarities end; the material on A Day At The Races is heavier and more deliberate, preferring performance and atmosphere over perfection.
The first single from the album, Somebody To Love, reached #2 in the UK and a respectable #13 in the US, while subsequent singles didn't perform as well: Tie Your Mother Down peaked at #31 in the UK and #49 in the US, and Queen's First EP, with Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy being the main track, reached #17 in the UK (the EP wasn't released at all in the US; instead, Long Away was released, but failed to chart due to an absence of a performance video and Freddie's instantly recognizable lead vocals). Like its predecessor, the album sailed into the UK charts at #1 and reached #5 in the US. In 1991, the album was re-released on CD in the US with two remixes of Tie Your Mother Down and Somebody To Love, featuring only minor, subtle differences to the originals.
Tracklists
Credits
-
- Freddie Mercury - vocals, piano, choir meister, tantrums, choir vocals on Somebody To Love
- Brian May - guitars, vocals, leader of the orchestra, introduction on Tie Your Mother Down, lead vocals on Long Away, guitar orchestrations on The Millionaire Waltz, choir vocals on Somebody To Love, slide guitar on Drowse, harmonium, piano and plastic piano on Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together)
- Roger Taylor - drums, vocals, percussion, pandemonium, choir vocals on Somebody To Love, rhythm guitar and lead vocals on Drowse
- John Deacon - Fender bass, acoustic guitar on You And I
- Mike Stone - additional vocals on Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy
-
-
Charts
| Country
| Release date
| First appearance in charts
| Peak position
| Chart run
| Weeks in chart
| Additional comments
|
| UK
| -
| 25 December 1976
| 1
| 8-8-1-3-3-6-11-15-22-30-31-27-32-34-27-39-44-39-41-43
| 20
| 6 weeks in Top 10, 1 week at #1
|
| UK
| -
| 9 July 1977 (1st re-entry)
| 56
| 56-0-57-0-56-58
| 4
| 24 weeks to date
|
| USA
| -
| 15 January 1977
| 5
| 36-21-8-6-5-9-23-27-53-62-59-58-81-113-113-119-119-150-170
| 19
| 4 weeks in Top 10
|
| Japan
| -
| -
| 1
| -
| 11
| -
|
| Italy
| -
| -
| 15
| -
| 11
| -
|
| Netherlands
| -
| -
| 1
| -
| -
| -
|
- Information supplied by Fedepeti, 24 August 2004
Singles
Reviews
- Winnipeg Free Press, 1977
- It's important in rock to know when to move to new musical ground and when to stick with what you've got. By staying close to the perimeters of last year's hugely successful A Night at the Opera, Queen has another massive bestseller in A Day at the Races. David Bowie could benefit from Queen's counsel. Low, Bowie's latest change of direction, adds to the Englishman's colorful, elusive persona, but the album's icy disorienting Kraftwerk Meets Eno experimentals rock leaves me wanting less persona and more music. Bowie's popularity will push Low.into the Top 10 alongside A Day at the Races, but its stay there should be brief.
- Queen's A Day at the Races (Elektra 6E 101) — from the start, Queen has aimed high. "You have to have a lot of confidence in this business." said the group's lead singer Freddie Mercury after the band's first hit in 1973.
- "It's useless saying to yourself, 'Maybe I'm not good enough, maybe I'd better settle for second place'. "The whole group aimed for the top spot. We're not going to be content with anything else."
- Last year's A Night at the Opera album — the group's fourth — finally gave Queen its shot at superstardom. Opera spent 47 weeks on the national sales charts, spawned two hit singles and showed the band capable of both the high energy of Led Zeppelin and its own wonderfully eccentric pieces such as Bohemian Rhapsody. Realizing the impact of the album, the stylish English quartet has reprogrammed much of the variety and charm of Opera in its new collection. The cover art work is similar, the title again is from a Marx Brothers film and the music even begins with the gong sound that closed Bohemian Rhapsody.
- There are similarities, too, in the songs. The Millionaire Waltz recalls the ambition and pose of Bohemian Rhapsody; White Man has much of the guitar bravado of The Prophet's Song: You and I suggests the diarming romantic charm of You're My Best Friend.
- While this reliance on familiar strains puts Races in the shadow of Opera, the band has approached the individual tracks with a care and skill that gives them their own personality and punch. More than-simply a repeat, of its last work. Races is a reconfirmation of Queen's position as the best of the third wave of English rock groups.
- NME, 18.12.76
- Funny really. The office outside has been a-buzzing of late with the latest report concerning the whole punk conspiracy - the to-ings and fro-ings, of the Sex Pistols' current situation versus the general British Public and their phoney morality - suddenly everyone feeling as if something at last is going to happen, that the frazzled rock hierarchy might just be toppled and me in here - the reviewing room that is - listening to an album that the Great British Public will in a matter of days be clutching cherishingly to the old communal breast, an album that is destined to go gold-platinum - what's the limit - an album that is so vacuously effete, such a grotesque parody of all the musical forms it relentlessly preens over, that listening to it throughout thie entire day has left me totally depressed.
- I hate this album. Adamantly so. If it wasn't going to be so obviously gargantuan. I would merely despise it, finding most of its contents daring to ply this sort of grand ultra-narcissistic self-indulgence.
- Maybe a large portion of my hostility goes back to my childhood and my parents who were undying worshippers at the shrine of Gilbert and Sullivan and their horrible pickaninny witty operatics, The Mikado being the proverbial cat's whiskers.
- Almost everything bearing the composing moniker of one F. Mercury on this record seems to drip with that some cutesy-pie mirror preening essence or ultra-preciousness.
- All these songs with their precious pseudo-classical piano obligato bearings, their precious impotent Valentino kitsch mouthings on romance, their spotlight on a vocalist so giddily enamoured with his own precious image - they literally make my flesh creep.
- Yeah, and of course I loathed "Bohemian Rhapsody" too, but nothing here courtesy of Mercury's guilded quill even provides the...uh...attempted expansive drama of the latter.
- Instead, it's all languorous posturings, all "Look into my eyes and you'll see/I'm the only one...You can reduce me to tears/With a single sigh".
- "Camp" just isn't the word when Mercury with his cohorts around cooing and trilling with those sterile precise harmonies of theirs, sings "Bring on the charge of the love brigade/There is spring in the air" Uuggh!
- The single "Somebody To Love" is a relatively mild example of this, by the way. And ye-eah, it's awfully well produced, and is pumped out with a certain gusto. In the context of some of what else is present here, in fact, it's all pretty acceptable.
- The rest though is grotesquery of the first order.
- At this point it should be noted the not inconsiderable output of Mercury's composing rival Brian May is a deal more palatable than Fred's own - though as you must have by now, gathered, I wouldn't conceive of that particular task as being too testing an operation.
- "Tie Your Mother Down", the opener is pretty feisty, giving Mercury a sharp break from kitsch which in fact allows him to prove himself not a bad rock vocalist.
- There's even some Ian hunter enunciations and the song - a straightforward rocker with dim-wit '70's "Don' mess wid me" lyrics - almost reminds me of how much I was forced to admit "Now I'm Here" was great, against all prior-constructed prejudices.
- "Long Away", another May Tune, is fairly decent folk-rock - a jingle jangling guitar nod of the plectrum to The Byrds and a pleasant "pop" melody, even if May's classic strangled Ostrich guitar tone (which he uses for all solos performed in the upper register of the fretboard) doesn't add anything.
- The piece de resistance though is hilarious. Called "White Man", it's an absurdly ham-brained attack on...well you guessed it, out fair-skinned predecessors' predilection for carnage and rip-offis against Ethnic Folks of other inscrutable tints.
- 'Ere but, wait a sec, Bri, that riff - I've heard that before somewheres. Led Zeppelin's "When The Levee Breaks", to be exact, which Jimmy Page took from (and co-credited to) one Memphis Minnie, a wonderful black person.
- Roll dem' bones, boys - white man sings with forked tongue.
- Well, that's it. I'd mention the other two contributions (one by bassist John Deacon: facile, over-cute, over-cooked and another by drummer Taylor: not a bad effort actually. Soft strumming: decent lyrics) but oh see, I just have. (Nick Kent)
- Additional Reviews
Sleeves
|
|
|
|
|
 Japan LP (different OBI), 1976 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|  UK 'EMI Millennium' LP, 1999 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Promotional Material
|
