At present, there are few if any critics who will pan Queen, and the respect shown to the band is justified. At a time in history when rock was very interested in bombast (see Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd and Alice Cooper – to name only the absolute top of the rock food chain at the time), Queen exemplified the word; it wasn't because of their enormous stage show (they never had one), it was because they had the singer with the most incredible voice, a guitarist who literally built his sound majestically from household components and sweat career-defining hooks, and a rhythm section which was absolutely second-to-none. Queen is revered for their achievements in the musical form now and their songbook is a lauded one – but it wasn't always that way. At one time, Queen was tepidly and suspiciously received by rock fans and unjustly massacred by critics; eventually, all of the critics and naysayers would have to eat their words, but it wasn't from the moment Queen smashed listeners over the head with “Bohemian Rhapsody” – even at that release the band was still paying a lot of dues – they were still very much in a dark period at that point. It is in that darkness where Days Of Our Lives begins, in hopes of telling Queen's story how it was – not how everyone wishes it had been.
Born when the members were still in college, Queen grew out of nearly nothing other than raw talent and ambition but ended up taking over the world in spite of the world's best efforts at resistance. Because of that, the success was grand and satisfying for a while from a musical standpoint – until the band realized it was really being ripped off by their production company. That's where a lot of the darkness, ugliness and animosity (justifiably) lies in Days Of Our Lives: with the production company that pretty much ate Queen's first three albums whole. By the time the band entered the studio to record A Night At The Opera, they weren't just broke – they were in debt and that's where the real trepidation and complaining really starts in the context of the DVD's run-time. It's dramatic certainly, but the problem is that much of the antagonism is also blind and vague. What viewers are made to understand is that A Night At The Opera – Queen's first blockuster success – was borne out of chaos and was both successful and troublesome; according to the film, it was apparently being recorded in something like six studios simultaneously, but happily ended up making the band both financially solvent again as well as legendary in one fell swoop.
Shortly after the success of A Night At The Opera is accounted for in Days Of Our Lives, everything begins to get both happy and glossy for a while in the film's run-time, and that proves to be a little problematic. Triumphs including Day At The Races and News Of The World get sort of glossed over (other than the obligatory discussion of “We Are The Champions” and “We Will Rock You” in the face of punk, and the smear-fest that NME issued to Day At The Races in review)in favor of an increased focus on what the band was “overcoming” in vague and various quadrants of its career (trying to “conquer America” took eight years, and too much focus falls on the finer points of that fact here) over the importance of the difference in the stylistic turns that the band was making musically (how did they gloss over Jazz?!) – which were all pretty phenomenal and noteworthy in their own right. It just doesn't make sense and will undoubtedly be a significant quibbling point with many fans.
As the film progresses, the reoccurring theme becomes how diminished the return is going to be because the filmmakers are just trying to cram too much into the picture to let any point breathe and connect with viewers. For example, viewers get a couple of inchoate minutes around “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and “Another One Bites The Dust” (which could be viewed as surprisingly inflammatory) but little else from The Game before pulling off completely and moving toward the inevitable crumbling and dissolution of the band before the death of Freddie Mercury. Compared to the remarkable delicacy with which the first half of the film was treated this is a true letdown; the promises of something truly definitive are there, but somehow Days Of Our Lives just doesn't work out as well as anyone would expect in the end. Without meaning to sound coy, another documentary filmmaker bites the dust in Days Of Our Lives; but the upside is that the field has been left open for someone else to handle Queen properly.
Artist:
www.queenonline.com/
www.myspace.com/queen
www.facebook.com/Queen
www.twitter.com/queenwillrock
DVD:
Days Of Our Lives is out now. Buy it here on Amazon .
