America turned away because of Prenter?

9kat5 wrote:

Queen could have filled Reunion Arena or the Convention Center in Dallas throughout the 80's. I didn't hear that Queen supposedly "lost" America until this new movie came out.

The band (particularly Brian) has spoken about it at great length over the years. It's mentioned in the Days Of Our Lives documentary.

We never heard Radio Ga Ga or I Want to Break Free on our American radio when those songs were released. I don't know why they were not played on Amerucan radio stations.

Largely because of a payola scandal involving Capitol Records, and Radio Ga Ga got caught in the middle of it. But it did get some airplay.

Also - Queen's contacts with radio stations were severed around that time by Paul Prenter. It took a decade to build up those relationships, and Prenter sabotaged them in a matter of weeks while he was simultaneously trying to influence Mercury to leave Queen.

1980 saw them playing 3 nights at MSG and 4 at the LA Forum. In 1982 it was 2 nights at each. By 1984, without the guarantee of radio to promote them, they would've had to do theatres while they were doing stadiums elsewhere. As someone said above, ticket sales were dwindling and promoters didn't want to lose their shirts. So the band cut their losses and moved on.

Prenter may have had some influence but the fact was Queen lost their Heavy Rock sound from the Game and Hot Space. The States saw them as a Hard Rock band and the 80's releases saw mainly 'pop' and 'dance' tracks on albums. IWTBF video drag so what? Hair Metal was built on MTV most of those bands look liked transvestites but they rocked unlike Hot Space, Radio Ga Ga which are pure pop, so I don't but the image as the problem it was the sound! Rob Halford was always in your face gay but the metal and hard rock fans overlooked his obvious camp leather look because Judas Priest still rocked, Queen did not on most of their 80's albums.

Indeed, that didn't help. But we almost certainly can blame their label for that, as bands even as big as Queen usually weren't the ones picking which songs were put out as singles by the 80s. Had Hammer To Fall been the lead single off The Works in the US, things may have been a lot different.

Whoever made the choices, they aligned with the BBC radio sound over American FM radio sound, and their fortunes for the decades to follow rippled from that. As ever, hindsight is 20/20.

But we can't discount the other things that went down. Even on the strength of their first eight albums they still could've done the North American arenas in 84 if it wasn't for Prenter sabotaging their contacts in one fowl swoop. It was career suicide, and it drove a massive wedge between Mercury and the rest of the band since Prenter was his guy. If it wasn't for Spike Edney working for Bob Geldof, you can bet your left nut that Queen would've been done by 85.

Evidently, Prenter was involved with Live Aid, and allegedly, Prenter was employed by Queen into (early?) 1986. Obviously, Live Aid gave Queen new life, but apparently Prenter himself was not enough to prevent Queen recording One Vision in September or subsequently when Queen worked on the Highlander movie and the A Kind of Magic album. It seems unlikely that Freddie was given an ultimatum until sometime in 1986.

I suspect that Prenter's continued employment did not reemerge as a overwheming irritant until Queen began seriously discussing the Magic Tour in early 1986. I wonder if the rest of the band refused to tour if Prenter was not sacked.