Description

QUEEN: II original UK Gatefold version EMA 767 in very near MINT CONDITION. In a fully laminated gatefold sleeve with lyric inner sleeve.

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Check all 11 songs:

Queen’s sophomore album was loathed by critics, who accuse it of being too “”art-rock””, and loved by many fans. The truth is that, while it is Queen’s most fantasy-oriented and ornate album, Queen II is simply beautiful music. While some of their ’70s contemporaries may have attempted similar forays into fantastic medievalism, Queen went all the way, and came up with music as grand as the subject matter. For example, “”Father To Son”” is filled with the hard rock equivalents of trumpets heralding a new king. Even when the song ventures into more blues-based heavy rock territory, Queen doesn’t let up the intensity. Gentle ballads (“”Nevermore””) and grinding metal (“”Ogre Battle””) coexist without sounding out of place. The epic “”March of the Black Queen”” must have given rock critics fits, with its defiance of pop song structures and its over the top theatrics. This album delivers excess and then some. The stunning guitar harmonies and vocal overdubs are fantastic. The band even completely refurbished “”Seven Seas of Rhye”” from their debut, and made it into an actual song with vocals. For fans of straight- forward bluesy rock, there’s “”See What A Fool I’ve Been”” (which could almost be one of AC/DC’s slow, moody numbers) and the heavy rock of “”The Loser In the End””. Although it may be a bit much for some, I find this album to be simply incredible.

Label: EMI ‎– EMA 767, EMI ‎– OC 064 • 95186
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Gatefold
Country: UK

UK 1st pressing with the text “℗ 1974 Trident Audio Productions Ltd.” at the top of both labels, above “Queen II”.
Issued with  3 die-cut corner inner sleeve.

laminated outside cover.

laminated inside cover.

• Matrix / Runout (Label, side white): YAX. 4735
• Matrix / Runout (Label, side black): YAX. 4736

Queen II = Studio album by Queen
Released 8 March 1974
Recorded August 1973 at Trident Studios, London
Genre Hard rock, progressive rock, heavy metal
Length 40:42
Label Parlophone (Europe), Elektra (US), EMI (UK)
Producer Roy Thomas Baker, Robin Geoffrey Cable, Queen

Track listing:
All songs on the White Side (side one) written by Brian May except “”The Loser in the End”” by Roger Taylor. All songs on the Black Side (side two) written by Freddie Mercury.

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White Side (Side One)
No. Title Length
1. “”Procession”” (Instrumental) 1:12
2. “”Father to Son”” 6:14
3. “”White Queen (As It Began)”” 4:34
4. “”Some Day One Day”” 4:23
5. “”The Loser in the End”” 4:02

Black Side (Side Two)
No. Title Length
1. “”Ogre Battle”” 4:10
2. “”The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke”” 2:40
3. “”Nevermore”” 1:15     This is my number one choice. It literally is my favourite song of all time, my funeral song. It takes me straight back to being 15 years old, sitting in the park with my friends on a sunny afternoon, laid on the grass and listening to this.  It just showed off how brilliant they were – it’s a short, piano based song, but it’s absolutely perfect. They were a band who could rock out, but then they could do all these great ballads and also these intricate musical pieces like this. Every Queen song is a universe within itself.
4. “”The March of the Black Queen”” 6:33     When you’re born on Planet Earth, you’re going to be introduced to Bohemian Rhapsody at some point whether you like it or not. You grow up hearing it, whether it’s on television or on the radio or in a pub. But then to hear a song like March Of The Black Queen, you can hear what they were striving for even early on musically and in the studio. Bohemian Rhapsody was the finish line, but this was how they got there. It takes you to so many amazing places. It’s quite a dark song too. I used to sit in my room with the lights off, with the headphones as loud as I could get them, playing this and just seeing if I could last the whole song without freaking myself out.
5. “”Funny How Love Is”” 2:50
6. “”Seven Seas of Rhye”” 2:50

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Singles from Queen II
“”Seven Seas of Rhye””
Released: 23 February 1974

Queen II is the second studio album by British rock group Queen, released in March 1974. It was recorded at Trident Studios, London in August 1973 with co-producers Roy Thomas Baker and Robin Cable, and engineered by Mike Stone.
The two sides of the original LP were labelled “”Side White”” and “”Side Black”” (instead of the conventional sides “”1″” and “”2″”), with corresponding photos of the band dressed in white or in black on either side of the record’s label face. It is also a concept album, with the white side having songs with a more emotional theme and the black side almost entirely about fantasy, often with quite dark themes. Mick Rock’s album cover photograph was frequently re-used by the band throughout its career, most notably in the music videos for the songs “”Bohemian Rhapsody”” (1975), and “”One Vision”” (1985).
Released to an initially mixed critical reception, Queen II remains one of the band’s lesser-known albums. Nonetheless, the album has retained a cult following since its release, has garnered praise from musicians such as Axl Rose, Steve Vai and Billy Corgan, and is significant in being the first album to contain elements of the band’s signature sound of multi layered overdubs, vocal harmonies, and varied musical styles.

Background and recording:
“”Led Zeppelin and The Who are probably in Queen II somewhere, because they were among our favourite groups, but what we are trying to do differently from either of those groups [is] this sort of layered sound. The Who had the open chord guitar sound… but our sound is more based on the overdriven guitar sound.. I also wanted to build up textures behind the main melody lines. We were trying to push studio techniques to a new limit for rock groups “ it was fulfilling all our dreams, because we didn’t have much opportunity for that on the first album””.
”Brian May, on Queen II and the band’s sound.

After their debut album Queen was recorded and mixed by the end of November 1972, Queen set about touring and promoting it. Management problems forced the album to be released on the independent Trident label, but only after eight months had gone by since completion. During that time, Queen were writing new material and anxious to record it. Several new songs were written immediately after the first album, and some dated from even earlier. “”See What A Fool I’ve Been”” was left over from the Smile days. “”Ogre Battle”” was written during the debut album sessions, as was “”Father To Son””, but the band decided to wait on recording them until they had more freedom in the studio.
August 1973 found the band back in Trident Studios, now allowed to book proper hours there, with an album under their belts. For what is generally considered a complex album (with layered vocals, harmonies and instruments), it took a very short time ” only one month ” to record Queen II. A full version of “”Seven Seas of Rhye”” was laid down, recorded with the specific intention of being the album’s leading single. After the commercial failure of “”Keep Yourself Alive””, which was taken from the first album, Queen decided it needed a single that did not take “”too long to happen”” (without a lengthy guitar intro). So, Queen and Baker made sure that “”Rhye”” began in a way which would grab people. Mythology and art were passions of Mercury’s, and Richard Dadd’s painting “”The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke”” (which currently hangs in the Tate Gallery) sparked his creativity. This scene from Dadd’s imagination was inspired by characters from fairy myths, which in the painting are gathered around the Feller of Trees to watch him crack a walnut for Queen Mab’s new carriage.
Rock photographer Mick Rock was employed to do the photography for the album’s artwork. This single picture of Queen, used on the Queen II album cover, would become one of the band’s most iconic images, revisited and brought to life for the “”Bohemian Rhapsody”” promotional film.
Robin Cable, with whom Mercury had worked during the “”I Can Hear Music”” session, was recruited to reproduce the Spector production sound for “”Funny How Love Is””.

The “”White”” side is very diverse: four of the five numbers were composed by Brian May, where one is instrumental, one is sung by Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor (with May at the piano), the next is sung by Mercury, and the last by May. The closing track of The “”White”” Side is Taylor’s only composition in the album, which he also sings. John Deacon played acoustic guitar as well as bass on most of the album, except the songs “”White Queen”” and “”Some Day One Day””, which were performed by May”partly on an inexpensive Hairfred guitar that he had owned since his childhood.
Lead vocalist Freddie Mercury composed the entire “”Black”” side, contributing virtuoso piano and harpsichord pieces and a wide range of distinctive vocal performances.

Packaging:
The Queen II album cover features a photograph taken by Mick Rock of, according to VH1, “”Queen standing in diamond formation, heads tilted back like Easter Island statues”” against a black background. The band had hired Rock because they wanted to, in Rock’s words, “”graft some of [the trademark] decadent ‘glam’ sensibility”” of his work with artists such as David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. Subsequently, the brief the photographer received from Queen was to have a black and white theme for the Queen II artwork. According to Rock, the group were looking to grab people’s attention with the cover, especially since their first album had failed to do so; “”They realised that if you could catch people’s eyes you could get them interested in music.”” Describing it as a “”sort of a knockoff of an old Marlene Dietrich shot””, the photographer took inspiration for the cover from a still of the actress from the 1932 film Shanghai Express. “”And of course no one was ever more ‘glam’ than the divine Ms Dietrich””, Rock quipped.
Although the band almost rejected the photograph because they felt it too pretentious, Rock convinced them otherwise; “”It made them look like much bigger a deal than they were at the time, but it was a true reflection of their music.”” The image was reused by Queen for the promotional video of their 1975 single “”Bohemian Rhapsody”” and “”One Vision”” (1986).

Reception:
After the album’s completion in the end of August 1973, Queen added “”Ogre Battle””, “”Procession”” and “”Father to Son”” to their live setlists immediately and toured extensively. Once again, however, Trident delayed the record since Queen’s first album had only just been released in the UK and had yet to be issued in the USA. Numerous other problems beset the album’s release, as well. Its completion coincided with the 1973 oil crisis and consequently, government-enforced measures for energy conservation delayed its manufacture by several months. Once the long-overdue first pressing arrived in record shops, the band noticed a spelling error on the sleeve, and had to complain persistently to correct it.
“”Considering the abuse we’ve had lately, I™m surprised that the new album has done so well. I suppose it’s basically that audiences like the band… we took so much trouble over that album, possibly too much, but when we finished we felt really proud. Immediately it got really bad reviews so I took it home to listen to again and thought ‘Christ, are they right?’ But after hearing it a few weeks later I still like it. I think it™s great. We™ll stick by it.””
”Roger Taylor on the critical reaction to Queen II.

Queen II entered UK stores on 8 March 1974. The album enjoyed chart success in the UK, peaking at number 5. It peaked at number 49 in the US, improving on their début album Queen, which peaked at number 83. The only single taken from Queen II, “”Seven Seas of Rhye”” (released in February 1974) peaked at number 10 on the UK Singles Chart, giving the band their first chart hit.

Legacy:
As 1974 drew to a close, public reaction to Queen II had been enthusiastic. The album was also ranked by Disc as the 5th best of the year. While the album remains one of the band’s lesser-known works, it has since retained a cult following and has in recent years been cited by a number of music publications, fellow artists and fans as one of Queen’s finest works. In 1987, the Post-Tribune ranked Queen II 9th in an article covering “”albums that should be in everyone’s record collection, but aren’t.”” In the 1994 edition of The Guinness All Time Top 1000 Albums, Queen II was voted number 202 in the all-time greatest rock and pop albums. In 2003, Q magazine included Queen II in a list of fifty little-known albums recommended by the magazine to supplement their “”The 50 Best British Albums Ever”” poll.[17] In 2005, Kerrang! readers voted Queen II the 72nd greatest British rock album ever. In 2006, the album was featured in Classic Rock and Metal Hammer’s “”The 200 Greatest Albums of the 70s,”” being listed alongside Sheer Heart Attack as one of the 20 greatest albums of 1974. In 2008, IGN Music named Queen II as one of their “”10 Classic Glam Rock Albums””, writing, “”Queen gave glam a bigger, more anthemic sound with this glittery opus. Combined with Freddie Mercury’s underrated keyboard work, Brian May’s ringing leads and pristine riffs created a backdrop for songs that were by turns ferocious and elegant.”” In 2010, Mojo ranked Queen II as the 60th greatest album ever released on the Elektra Records label. Along with the Queen albums Sheer Heart Attack and A Night at the Opera, Queen II is featured in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, where it is described as “”a distinctly dark album”” which “”displayed their diversity,”” and contrasted with their later “”expansive, stadium-pleasing anthems.””
Allmusic awarded the record 4/5 stars, and said, “”Queen is coiled, tense, and vicious here, delivering on their inherent sense of drama, and that gives Queen II real power as music, as well as a true cohesion… Queen II is one of the favorites of their hardcore fans.””

Endorsements from younger recording artists have introduced the album to a new generation of fans. In a 1989 Rolling Stone interview, Guns N’ Roses lead singer Axl Rose said of the record, “”With Queen, I have my favorite: Queen II. Whenever their newest record would come out and have all these other kinds of music on it, at first I’d only like this song or that song. But after a period of time listening to it, it would open my mind up to so many different styles. I really appreciate them for that. That’s something I’ve always wanted to be able to achieve””. Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan spoke to Melody Maker in August 1993 about “”the records which changed his life,”” stating, “”I worked at this record store where we had lots of old records, and I found Queen II, probably their least popular album. It’s so over the top, so many vocal and guitar track overdubs “ total Queen overload. I loved it. I loved the cool, weird, ambiguous songs about Freddie™s sexuality and the way it shifts from heavy to beautiful ballads.”