WHY QUEEN IS THE GREATEST BAND EVER

iiiibrahiiim wrote:

In my mind Pink Floyd (after Barrett) is greater.

One reason is that they never had weak moments like Hot Space...and certain cooperations...
Other reason is their music...songs like Echoes...albums like The Wall...
Also their live shows (The Wall)

Well,
Roger Taylor is probably the better drummer than Mason
Brian May is probably the better guitarist than Gilmour
Freddie of course the better singer than Waters/Gilmour
John probably better bassist than Waters

But it's Waters lyrics and Gilmour/Wrights/Waters music that make the difference

Led Zeppelin? OverOverrated.

I don't consider Hot Space a weak moment, just different.  I love Hot Space.

dragon-fly wrote:

QueenPaulo wrote:



in your opinion Queen is the greatest band ever, in my opinion Queen is the greatest band ever too, but have people who prefer Johnas Brothers....Do you understand what it  means?????

Yes (I guess), no escape from reality..

yeah.... no scape from reality



[/QUOTE]

QueenPaulo wrote:

dragon-fly wrote:

QueenPaulo wrote:







in your opinion Queen is the greatest band ever, in my opinion Queen is the greatest band ever too, but have people who prefer Johnas Brothers....Do you understand what it  means?????

Yes (I guess), no escape from reality..

yeah.... no scape from reality

[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]Queen are the best band - i.e. music and that's what it's about. plus so diverse. the good thing is that they dont need people like us to say their music is good, people listen to Queen and know that they were a shit hot band. they masterd SOUND.



[/QUOTE]

Sir GH wrote:

 



 



 



 



 



 



 



itsmeskc wrote:



 



 



 



BUT MUSICIANSHIP SPEAKING- THAT IS THE SKILL IN WHICH THE MEMBERS PLAY THEIR RESPECTIVE INSTRUMENTS- NO BAND TOUCHES QUEEN



 



 



 

You're saying the members of Queen are better instrumentalists than all of the following?

The Mothers
Chicago
Genesis
Yes
Rush
Dream Theater

Does this include funk and r&b ?  How about jazz trios?

I really don't want to get into this, but I'll give you some of these bands are better musically than queen.  my honest opinion is queen were better writers than all those groups, and that's what makes the difference for me.  In the end it's all opinions.  I'm a big rush guy for years, but I always considered Queen the better writers.  Rush had the better musicians?....maybe.  Brian is IMO better than as lifson as a guitarist, while perts better than roger.  Geddy is better than deacon.  Freddie is a better singer and piano player than geddy.  Looks like tie to me.

How about we just say that QUEEN is a really amazing band and that there are a lot of other really good bands too. Can we agree on that?

QUEENexpert wrote:

How about we just say that QUEEN is a really amazing band and that there are a lot of other really good bands too. Can we agree on that?

Agreed

mike hunt wrote:

QUEENexpert wrote:



How about we just say that QUEEN is a really amazing band and that there are a lot of other really good bands too. Can we agree on that?

Agreed

I third this.

lalaalalaa wrote:

Saif wrote:

 







lalaalalaa wrote:







One reason Queen is my favorite is that they've played around 40 different genres of music.

Here's a video of it.  Please rate and leave comments (both good and bad)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3vwlfyzvX4

Good video, but some of the genres just seem randomly assigned and inaccurate. Prophet's Song is progressive rock, not power metal. Power Metal didn't exist in 1975, there was only Heavy Metal(and Proto-Doom Metal). The closest you'll get to Power Metal from then is Rainbow's Stargazer. Innuendo isn't Progressive Metal either. What's metal about it? It's just Hard Rock with progressive influences. Killer Queen is Music Hall, not glam. "Tie Your Mother Down", however is a precursor to Glam Metal, even though the song itself is true heavy metal; whereas most glam metal bands were really hard rock(with exceptions: WASP, early/late Motley Crue, later Skid Row, Twisted Sister, later Steelheart).
Other than that, it's spot on. Good job.

According to Wikipedia, The Prophet's Song is considered the first Power Metal song.  That's also where I got Innuendo as Progressive Metal, which I can sort of see after relistining to it[/QUOTE] I checked, and what you say is right. But you do realize that ANYONE can edit Wikipedia, right? You can scroll to the top and click "edit this page" and change the text as you see fit. I can easily edit the ANATO article to say that "The Prophet's Song" is the shittiest song ever. So you shouldn't believe everything you read on Wikipedia. Hell, sometimes I vandalize Wikipedia myself. I recently changed Lamb Of God's page to say their genre is "Queercore" instead of metalcore.

Anyway, there's hardly anything "metal" about Prophet's Song. Queen HAVE done Pre-Power Metal/Power Metallic stuff but The Prophet's song is not one of those. The Seven Seas of Rhye definitely has that Power Metal vibe, and if covered by a metal band, could probably pass off as one. Not to mention My Fairy King, perhaps even The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke.

And I also believe Queen have done songs you can consider Progressive Metal(Father to Son, et al) but Innuendo is definitely not Prog Metal. It's Progressive Hard Rock if anything(that is, if you also consider Led Zep's Kashmir or Rainbow's Stargazer to be Prog Rock).

Sorry for being pedantic, I hope I'm not coming off as an asshole.
Queen WERE definitely one of the most eclectic and versatile bands of all time. Why am I saying "one of the"? Because there's a criminally underrated band out there who've mixed more styles and genres than Queen, and in some case, more effectively. That band is Mr. Bungle, the original band of Faith No More's Mike Patton. They've done everything from Death Metal to jazz, blues, gospel, bossa nova, anything Queen's done, whatever. I recommend them to anyone who likes Queen for their diversity.

Perhaps we could slightly change the course of this  thread considering that we are (including me) agreed that while Queen are a wonderful band, they my not be THE greatest, there are other amazingly talented diverse artists...

So, why are we on a Queen forum then?  I actually have a life, I love many other bands, but yet I come and write here, and so do you guys.  I bet you cannot devote time to a Zep, Yes and Beatles forum as well.

The interesting question for me is what makes Queen the kind of band that fans are doggedly devotional to, even when they can see (somewhat) clearly about their weaknesses etc?

I should have made this a new thread ...

[QUOTE]





























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































[b]itsmeskc wrote: [/b]































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































Sir GH- YES! EMPHATICALLY YES!!!! QUEEN are more talented than the bands u mentioned  CHICAGO? No where within the same league of musicianship..





























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































[/QUOTE]
Really?  Have you listened to Chicago VII ? Can you honestly say, with musical evidence to back it up, that Queen could pull off something like Close To The Edge, Dance On A Volcano, or Octavarium live?  Or anything in Frank Zappa's vast catalog?

[QUOTE]granted Neil Peart is probably a more powerful and technically more solid rock drummer than roger, but does he sing, write, play keyboards, bass guitar, rythym guitar like Roger does?[/QUOTE]
Neil Peart absolutely does write, as he has written the lyrics to every Rush song since 1975.  The fact that Roger played several instruments at an intermediate level on his solo albums doesn't make him a better musician than Neil Peart, or anyone in Rush for that matter.  Roger once said he can't even name half of the chords in Radio Ga Ga after the other band members took over the song.  But you can bet Neil Peart could take you through every bit of every song in Rush's catalog in full detail.

Interesting that you omitted Geddy Lee.  No knowledgeable musician would ever consider John Deacon to be a more proficient bassist than Lee.  Case in point, Deacon rarely played the intro to The Millionaire Waltz live properly (he often skipped notes), but you can bet your life that Lee could reproduce any bass part from a Rush album live with his eyes closed.  Deacon's subtle qualities on the other hand... that's an entirely different matter.  While they have very different approaches to the instrument leading you to prefer one's approach over the other, Lee is by far the stronger musician.  Deacon, nor any of the members of Queen, were the type to practice for hours a day simply because they didn't value that aspect of music like the guys in Rush do.  Queen's talents lied elsewhere.

As for the band as a whole, the arrangements of the progressive Rush material (and the fact that they play them live to this day) are far beyond what Queen could pull off live in their heyday.  The level of Queen's instrumental prowess wasn't their best attribute.  In fact, I wouldn't even say it's in their top 5 attributes (behind writing, pop sensibility, arrangement, diversity of genres, and concert presentation, at least).  They could craft things in the studio, but there they had all the time in the world to slowly put things together piece by piece.  There's a good reason why Queen never attempted their most complicated music live.  A band like Yes, on the other hand, often went beyond the already complicated arrangements of their compositions when they played live at their peak.

Queen are and probably forever will be my favourite band, generally because of their songwriting and arrangement abilities that led to the creation of some of my most treasured pieces of music.  But Queen weren't the greatest in every single possible way.  And they certainly weren't the best instrumentalists ever.  There's a reason why Brian asked Steve Howe to play the flamenco solo in Innuendo.  Furthermore, look up any Tommy Emmanuel piece on youtube and picture any rock guitarist playing it.  Steve Howe could come relatively close, but Tommy is out of even his league.

In the end, this all ultimately doesn't matter to me.  I'm only posting in this thread because I felt the need to respond to something that was falsely stated.  In the end, to me it's all about what a musician can do with what he or she has, however much or little it is.  Shawn Lane was technically one of the greatest guitarists who ever lived, but he never wrote a decent song, so to me he did nothing to contribute to the evolution of music.  Johnny Cash, on the other hand, could play about ten chords and he wrote countless pieces of music cherished by millions.

Music isn't a contest of who's better than whom.  But the level of one's musicianship most definitely can be measured, as musical theory is a language expressed by musicians in their work that can demonstrate the vastness of their musical vocabulary.  When you yourself are a musician and you can play pieces of music more complicated than what Queen played live, only then can you understand that Queen weren't the best rock musicians ever, nor were Yes, nor were the members of Frank Zappa's band at any given time.  The best musician ever (should such a classification even exist) is probably someone nobody except an elite few has heard of, as their musical vocabulary far exceeds what the average person can understand or even deem to be musical.

Weird. My original reply didn't show. SO once again...

Fantastic post Sir GH. Absolutely spot on.

Why?  Because they wrote songs that moved me.  I don't care who played faster, or was more proficient live than Queen.  My experience was Queen, and whether other groups were "better" is irrelevant.  As Sir GH points out, Queen probably couldn't have done stuff live that Yes, Chicago, Genesis etc. could.  But is exceptional live or studio playing the point?  Can Les Claypool of Primus, or Geddy Lee "outplay" James Jamerson?  Technically, certainly.  Are either going to make a mark like James Jamerson in the world of bass playing?  Never in a million years.  Why I like Queen is obscure.  To use an example, Sir GH cites Rush (an amazing band which doesn't move me) for their musicianship.  Subdivisions is one of their most well known songs, about the struggles of being young in suburbia.  I'd say not dissimilar to Drowse, a little known, much unloved Queen track known to die hard fans mostly.  For me though, when Roger sings the "never wanted to be the boy next door" segment, there is a sadness and defeatism that is incredibly touching, and moves me more than the vocal of Geddy Lee, which doesn;t do a thing for me.  Subdivisions may be a "better" piece of music, "played" more skillfully than Drowse, but to me Geddy's voice doesn't deliver.  That doesn't make Queen the greatest band ever, it makes them my favourite.  Dear Friends is incredibly simple, but that shouldn't dismiss it form the category of great music.  Much of Rush, Chicago, Zappa, Yes, Dream Theater is wildly complicated and not easily accessible for the mainstream.  That shouldn't dismiss it from the category of great music.  Like what you like and enjoy it as music isn't sport and there doesn't need to be a winner.  

 



Saif wrote:



 

 



 



 



lalaalalaa wrote:



 



 



 

 



 



 



 



 



 



 



Saif wrote:



 



 



 



 



 



 



 

 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



lalaalalaa wrote:



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



One reason Queen is my favorite is that they've played around 40 different genres of music.

Here's a video of it.  Please rate and leave comments (both good and bad)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3vwlfyzvX4

Good video, but some of the genres just seem randomly assigned and inaccurate. Prophet's Song is progressive rock, not power metal. Power Metal didn't exist in 1975, there was only Heavy Metal(and Proto-Doom Metal). The closest you'll get to Power Metal from then is Rainbow's Stargazer. Innuendo isn't Progressive Metal either. What's metal about it? It's just Hard Rock with progressive influences. Killer Queen is Music Hall, not glam. "Tie Your Mother Down", however is a precursor to Glam Metal, even though the song itself is true heavy metal; whereas most glam metal bands were really hard rock(with exceptions: WASP, early/late Motley Crue, later Skid Row, Twisted Sister, later Steelheart).
Other than that, it's spot on. Good job.



 



 



 



 



 



 



 

According to Wikipedia, The Prophet's Song is considered the first Power Metal song.  That's also where I got Innuendo as Progressive Metal, which I can sort of see after relistining to it

I checked, and what you say is right. But you do realize that ANYONE can edit Wikipedia, right? You can scroll to the top and click "edit this page" and change the text as you see fit. I can easily edit the ANATO article to say that "The Prophet's Song" is the shittiest song ever. So you shouldn't believe everything you read on Wikipedia. Hell, sometimes I vandalize Wikipedia myself. I recently changed Lamb Of God's page to say their genre is "Queercore" instead of metalcore.

Anyway, there's hardly anything "metal" about Prophet's Song. Queen HAVE done Pre-Power Metal/Power Metallic stuff but The Prophet's song is not one of those. The Seven Seas of Rhye definitely has that Power Metal vibe, and if covered by a metal band, could probably pass off as one. Not to mention My Fairy King, perhaps even The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke.

And I also believe Queen have done songs you can consider Progressive Metal(Father to Son, et al) but Innuendo is definitely not Prog Metal. It's Progressive Hard Rock if anything(that is, if you also consider Led Zep's Kashmir or Rainbow's Stargazer to be Prog Rock).

Sorry for being pedantic, I hope I'm not coming off as an asshole.
Queen WERE definitely one of the most eclectic and versatile bands of all time. Why am I saying "one of the"? Because there's a criminally underrated band out there who've mixed more styles and genres than Queen, and in some case, more effectively. That band is Mr. Bungle, the original band of Faith No More's Mike Patton. They've done everything from Death Metal to jazz, blues, gospel, bossa nova, anything Queen's done, whatever. I recommend them to anyone who likes Queen for their diversity.
[/QUOTE]
I know you can edit Wikipedia, but usually when someone does it, it usually only lasts for about less than 24 hours, then it changes back.


Innuendo is heavier than you give it credit for.  I could see a lot of metal bands playing this song (although they'd probably remove the synths.) 

I'll disagree over and over again about The Prophet's song.  It Power Metal in my ears. 

This discussion on genres is completely debatable, like saying Stone Cold Crazy is the first thrash song.  I think this, but not everyone agrees.  Some say it isn't thrash.

I love these discussions :D

lalaalalaa wrote:

I know you can edit Wikipedia, but usually when someone does it, it usually only lasts for about less than 24 hours, then it changes back.

Innuendo is heavier than you give it credit for.  I could see a lot of metal bands playing this song (although they'd probably remove the synths.) 

I'll disagree over and over again about The Prophet's song.  It Power Metal in my ears. 

This discussion on genres is completely debatable, like saying Stone Cold Crazy is the first thrash song.  I think this, but not everyone agrees.  Some say it isn't thrash.

I love these discussions :D

Me too. About Stone Cold Crazy - it has all the elements of thrash metal. It's a "goofy", happy kind of thrash metal if you will. And the vocals are clean rather than gruff. Only dumbasses disqualify the song on that basis. Real thrash purists would rule it out as Thrash Metal because true Thrash Metal evolved over a period of time incorporating NWOBHM and punk/hardcore influences(mainly the tempo/energy) into standard heavy metal. Stone Cold Crazy just came out of the blue which makes it all the more intriguing. They would however agree that it's Thrash Metal avant la lettre('before the coinage of the term'). It's not speed metal because it's a lot heavier and faster than actual Speed Metal(Motorhead, Judas Priest's Painkiller, Venom, some Megadeth songs). I would say it's Thrash Metal. It's more convincingly Thrash than Cro-Magnon's "Caledonia" is Folk Black Metal, another metal fluke.

Sheer Brass Neck wrote:

Much of Rush, Chicago, Zappa, Yes, Dream Theater is wildly complicated and not easily accessible for the mainstream.  That shouldn't dismiss it from the category of great music.  Like what you like and enjoy it as music isn't sport and there doesn't need to be a winner.  

Very well put.