Roger's Insulting"Opinion" of Hot Space in Q/Mojo Queen Special Edition

I always knew that Roger hated Hot Space, but many times, in retrospect, with the passage of time, many artists gain a different new feeling/insight to their past work..and say "hey that actually wasn't so bad after all, it actually was good" in hindsight.

Well...for your reading pleasure..Page 54 of the NEW Q/Mojo Queen Classic Edition here's Roger's opinion...still...23 years later of his not so finest hour (by the way this is Roger's viewpoint, not mine..I like Hot Space)...and Roger in classic form...had me laughing out loud. Also see what he says about Michael Jackson...I'm laughing as I'm typing this. He's such a trip!

Question Mark Blake Quote: "Of course Bowie turned up much later in the Queen story for Under Pressure on the 1982's Hot Space album. Is there any truth to the story that you never liked Another One Bites The Dust and the funky musical direction on the Hot Space album?"

Answer Roger Taylor Quote: " Well I actually helped John (Deacon) put Another One Bites The Dust together. But, no, that style of music wasn't my kind of thing. As I remember, it was Michael Jackson, in our dressing room, who first said we should release it as a single. I thought he was mad--turns out I was right--but I really couldn't see it as a single. But then the urban stations in the U.S. picked it up, and so it had to be a single--and it sold about four million copies in America. How delightfully wrong can you be? But it wasn't where I was at, no. I always thought Hot Space was the worst album we ever did. Freddie and I thought it was going to be great, and it was absolute shit."

Love his comment on Michael Jackson though...I mean MJ is Bonkers now isn't he. And don't mince words Rog. about Hot Space...don't beat around the bush..."absolute shit"!....guess time didn't place this record in a better light for Roger. (chuckle)

Hm, an artist not liking an album they once did. Who'd've thunk it?

Of course, Roger is a grumpy old man, and while I don't think that album is absolute shit, if you replace the drum machines and synth basses with real instruments, you'd have a corker of an album. Oh yeah, and get rid of 'Staying Power' and 'Body Language' while you're at it.

Lester Burnham wrote:

Hm, an artist not liking an album they once did. Who'd've thunk it?

Of course, Roger is a grumpy old man, and while I don't think that album is absolute shit, if you replace the drum machines and synth basses with real instruments, you'd have a corker of an album. Oh yeah, and get rid of 'Staying Power' and 'Body Language' while you're at it.

It would have been a nice ep. Especially with the changes you suggested.

Roger does complain a lot, but usually he's right - and never more so than about Hot Space. Rock on, Rog!

At least he's honest. Brian would never admit any of his music is "shit". Not even when talking about "funny old life ain't it".

And still I'd love to hear them play several songs of Hot Space this year... I still can hardly believe how great Back Chat sounds in Milton Keynes.

I LOVE Las Palabras De Amor, one of Brian's most beautiful and meaningful songs, also which he & Queen have used as their "song of peace",

I love Under Pressure, Calling All Girls, I mean the album has some fine memorable Queen career highlights actually.

Geez, any artist's album can have a few filler or clunker songs..so Staying Power, Back Chat, & Body Language didn't re-write the history of music...I still like Hot Space...While I would say it's my least favorite Queen album...in NO way do I think it is a bad album AT All or "Absolute Shit"...but I respect Roger for at least being truthful. At least he didn't put a spin on his creative opinion, which he is entitled to. But personally, I think he is WAY to hard on this album. If you throw out the filler songs...it's actually quite a decent record or as Lester and The Fonz said, it would have made a nice EP of less..but the better songs on Hot Space that showed real quality.

At least Roger has some distance to his music and his job (which you can't say about Mr. May). However, I think "Hot Space" is not that bad. It's poor, but not bad. "A Kind Of Magic" is a lot worse IMO. I mean, at HS at least they tried to do something new. For the most of the album it didn't work, but some of the songs still sound good. "Staying Power" is good, and played live at MK it is damn good. "Put Out The Fire", "Las Palabras..." - also great songs. And "Under Pressure" is a classic.

I think all the Hot Space tracks are really quite good except for Body Language and Cool Cat, and neither one of those totally sucks. Maybe Roger's trying to avoid the blame, as it was he who really got Queen into using synths?

There was not one single Queen album that I could consider "bad" in all terms.

I do agree that 'Hot Space' was their weakest one, but it also has great songs like 'Action This Day, 'Cool Cat', 'Las Palabras De Amor', 'Back Chat', and obviously 'Under Pressure' which is undoubtely a classic.

So Roger saying that 'Hot Space' is absolute shit takes things a bit too far.

arlene wrote:

I always thought Hot Space was the worst album we ever did. Freddie and I thought it was going to be great, and it was absolute shit.

Roger is a jerk.

"Hot space" is great.

Funny he would dislike Hot Space (which is a very good album), but have no problems with The Miracle, an album which is, in my mind, mostly garbage.

Apparently, Brian and Freddie weren't thrilled with Hot Space either and avoided discussing it like the plague.

In the same Q/Mojo, Page 135, review of Queen On Fire Live At The Bowl, the DVD, the review discusses how there is the interview footage of Freddie, Brian & Roger done by an Austrian reporter and...

Quote:

"Filmed for Austrian TV at a time when it would be fascinating to grill Mercury's change of (musical) direction or his new image, instead he's (Freddie) asked about the lighting for the new show. May and Taylor appear, and-blow me down-we're off on the lights again."

I never thought about this until Mojo's reviewer brought this up. I know that Queen and other artists often screen journalist's interview questions ahead of time or instruct what questions not to ask and whats "Off limits", so this makes sense. On the DVD, I always enjoyed everyone discussing the lights and Freddie discussing the introduction of their 1st live keyboard player...but it never ocurred to me until now...good point Mojo...No..Queen did NOT discuss Hot Space even though the album was their NEW record at that time and Milton Keynes was part of the Hot Space promotional tour.

jcrawford79 wrote:

Funny he would dislike Hot Space (which is a very good album), but have no problems with The Miracle, an album which is, in my mind, mostly garbage.

Q/Mojo more read the entire article pages 38-43 entitled "Under Pressure", you will see that even though alot of us queenzoners like Hot Space, I think that Roger...and the band, it's not so much that Hot Space is..or is not their worst album, it's that Hot Space dramatically DAMAGED Queen's career and that has made them bitter towards it.

The Miracle in my opinion is their worst record, trite, weak, treackly, but it sold well and fans across Europe had a very positive reaction to both it..and to Queen.

But Hot Space caused International ill will towards Queen and so NOW I understand Roger's view in terms more of anger and hurt.

While I think Hot Space is utter garbage, there's no doubting that AKOM too is awful, probably even more so than The Miracle.

Hot Space still takes the biscuit, though.

get real people, it's funny that roger says HS wasn't his thing, but it was his idea to go in that direction. it was roger who wrote songs like 'radio ga ga' and 'magic' both are the same type of thing than on hot space.