Flash Gordon

Queen composed, performed and produced the music for Flash Gordon, Mike Hodges's film of the comic strip Alex Raymond began in 1934. The band were first approached in 1979, and having seen about twenty minutes of the finished film, Brian May said they wanted to make a real soundtrack, a first for a rock group, with licence to do whatever they liked as long as it complemented the picture. Work began alongside The Game at Musicland Studios in Munich, continued in early 1980 and, after the American tour that ran from June to October, was finished in London by November. The album is credited as a production by Brian May and Mack. Queen used far more synthesizers than on The Game, and Howard Blake added orchestral arrangements, which he conducted. Each piece is named after the scene it was written for, and the band, on their own initiative, threaded dialogue and sound effects from the film between the music, so that the album tells the story on its own; Roger Taylor said putting dialogue on the record was not the original plan. Only two tracks are sung through: "Flash's Theme", a duet for Freddie Mercury and May with Taylor on the high harmony, and the closing "The Hero". The sleeve concept was Mercury's, the Flash Gordon logo on a vivid yellow ground, with Neal Preston's photographs of the four members from the 1980 American tour on the inner sleeve. EMI released the album in Britain on 8 December 1980, the day John Lennon was shot dead in New York; at Wembley Arena the next night Queen played "Imagine" in tribute. The film had its London premiere on 11 December. The single "Flash", released in Britain on 24 November, reached No. 10 there and No. 42 in the United States, and the album climbed to No. 10 in Britain, where it went gold, and No. 23 on the Billboard chart, issued there by Elektra. It was nominated for a BAFTA and an Ivor Novello award. In Japan it came out in January 1981 and reached No. 12; the current edition is Universal Music's SHM-CD, UICY-15073.