Sheer Heart Attack

Barely four months after Queen II, Queen began recording their third album. Between July and September 1974 they worked at four studios, Trident, George Martin's AIR, Rockfield in Wales and Wessex Sound, again producing with Roy Thomas Baker, with Mike Stone engineering. Brian May was ill for much of it. An unclean needle used for a vaccination before the Australian dates in January 1974 had given him hepatitis, and he fell ill midway through the band's first North American tour, supporting Mott the Hoople from April, which was cut short. When a duodenal ulcer laid him low again, the other three recorded with gaps left for his solos, and May added his solos and backing vocals once he returned. The opening "Brighton Rock" starts with the whistled "I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside" that had closed Queen II and gives May a long solo. Freddie Mercury's "Killer Queen", recorded at Trident with his jangle piano and a three-part guitar solo, tells of a high-class call girl; May called it the turning point, and it brought Mercury his first Ivor Novello Award. Mercury described "In the Lap of the Gods" as a prelude to "Bohemian Rhapsody". "Stone Cold Crazy" was the first Queen song credited to all four members and was later covered by Metallica, and "Misfire" was John Deacon's first song for the band. Roger Taylor's "Sheer Heart Attack" was not finished in time and waited for News of the World in 1977. Mick Rock again shot the cover, the four of them smeared with Vaseline and sprayed with water. The album came out in Britain on 8 November 1974, the day the band played the Apollo in Glasgow on their autumn tour. "Killer Queen" reached No. 2, and the album climbed to No. 2 by the end of November. In America "Killer Queen" reached No. 12, and the album, also No. 12, became their first Top 20 album there and went gold; in Britain it later went platinum. The band headlined their own North American tour from February 1975, then played Japan for the first time, opening at the Budokan on 19 April and closing there on 1 May. The album had been released in Japan on 21 December 1974 and reached No. 23 there.