Queen hardly needs an introduction, but it does need a reason to be on a prog site. The reason is in the early records: before the stadium anthems, the Queen band line-up of Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon made albums steeped in progressive rock, and the long view of that catalogue is what this page is about.

The short version

Queen formed in London in 1970, when Mercury joined guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor; bassist John Deacon completed the line-up in February 1971. The band’s earliest work drew on progressive rock, hard rock and heavy metal, and over the years it moved towards more radio-friendly arena rock and pop rock. Between 1973 and 1995 Queen released fifteen studio albums. Seven of them reached number one on the UK Official Albums Chart, starting with “A Night at the Opera” in 1975, the album that contains “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Mercury died in 1991; “Made in Heaven”, completed by the other three and released in November 1995, is the last album in the studio discography.

From Smile to Queen

The roots go back to Smile, the band May formed in 1968 with bassist and singer Tim Staffell and keyboard player Chris Smith; Taylor joined after answering May’s advert for a drummer. When Staffell left in 1970, the others took on a new singer, Farrokh Bulsara, who suggested the name Queen and soon became Freddie Mercury. The band played its first gig on 27 June 1970 in Truro, and the classic four-piece first played together on 2 July 1971.

The debut, “Queen” (1973), has been described as a mix of heavy metal and progressive rock, and Rolling Stone’s Gordon Fletcher called it superb. It sold slowly at first: it only entered the UK chart in March 1974, a week after its successor. That successor, “Queen II”, is the record prog listeners come back to. Released in March 1974, it replaced side A and side B with “Side White”, mostly written by May, and “Side Black”, written entirely by Mercury, with long, layered pieces such as “The March of the Black Queen” and “The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke”. Jerry Ewing heard a proggy art rock tendency in it, and the Houston Press found the music more progressive than on the debut. It was the first Queen album to chart in the UK, peaking at number five, and its single “Seven Seas of Rhye” was the band’s first hit.

The opera and after

“Sheer Heart Attack” reached number two in late 1974 and brought the band its first real international success. Then came “A Night at the Opera”, released on 28 November 1975: reported at the time to be the most expensive album ever made, it was recorded across three studios. It holds “Bohemian Rhapsody”, which EMI at first refused to release as a single because of its length; Queen refused to cut it, and it spent nine weeks at number one on the Official Singles Chart, while its promotional video is credited with helping popularise the music video. The same album holds “The Prophet’s Song”, at 8:21 the band’s longest studio song, and “’39”, a space-travel tale sung by May.

From “News of the World” (1977), whose “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions” became sporting anthems. In 1980 Queen released two albums: “The Game”, a UK number one, and “Flash Gordon”, the soundtrack to the science-fiction film of the same name, which is mostly wordless and counts as the band’s ninth studio album. Queen’s set at Live Aid at Wembley on 13 July 1985 was voted the greatest rock performance of all time in a 2005 industry poll.

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Album by album

Fifteen studio albums, from “Queen” in 1973 to “Made in Heaven” in 1995, every one with a guide on this site. Tap any title for its guide.

The players

The classic line-up never changed in the studio years: Freddie Mercury on lead vocals and piano, Brian May on guitar and vocals, Roger Taylor on drums and vocals, and John Deacon on bass from February 1971. Mercury’s last concert with the band was at Knebworth in August 1986, and he died in 1991. Deacon retired in 1997. May and Taylor went on to tour as Queen + Paul Rodgers from 2004 to 2009, and as Queen + Adam Lambert since 2011.

Where to start

For a prog listener I would start with “Queen II” (1974), the White and Black album that critics single out for its progressive side. Next comes “Sheer Heart Attack” (1974), the number-two album that took the band abroad. Then “A Night at the Opera” (1975), which AllMusic’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine described as prog rock with “a sense of humour as well as dynamics”; it entered the UK chart in December 1975 and spent four weeks at number one.

Why they matter

Queen sits in my Crossover section because it shows how far progressive ideas could travel into the mainstream. The prog historian Stephen Lambe, in his book “Citizens of Hope and Glory”, did not count “A Night at the Opera” as a progressive rock album as such, but he saw it as marking the outer limit of the movement’s reach. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, and “A Night at the Opera” entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2018. If you want to follow that thread back into prog, I made a list of prog albums for Queen listeners. Elsewhere in this Crossover guide you will find two other British bands who mixed art rock with pop, 10cc and Be-Bop Deluxe, and the wider story of the era lives on my British Progressive Rock page.

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