Given they’re one of the most seismic bands the UK ever produced, Queen had quite the peppered relationship when it came to the US.
Their fame in the country was an incredibly complex thing to define, marked often by the highest of highs but similarly the lowest of lows. While their success on home shores could be seen as a steady line that only continued to rise until they were megastars, their reception in the American landscape seemed to chop and change with the wind.
The fleeting period of the late 1970s and early ‘80s was, to all intents and purposes, the only real shot at acclaim that Queen ever experienced while Statside, with 1980’s The Game hands-down becoming their peak of popularity, being their only album that would ever top the charts in the US.
But thereafter, what would otherwise be considered a huge boost of momentum transpired into becoming much more of a mixed picture. As the ‘80s wore on, the prospect of decisively conquering the States became increasingly harder to grasp, and by the time it reached 1984, it was all but impossible.
However, the slightly ironic thing was that as they were watching their US popularity implode somewhat, Queen weren’t watching the battle losses from the comfort blanket of their own native homes. They were right in the heart of the war. Indeed, that was the year they recorded their only album that would ever be committed to tape on American shores.
Yet just because The Works had US origins from the Record Plant studios in Los Angeles, that may have been the making of its demise. It also wasn’t helped by the video for ‘I Want to Break Free’– a clear parodial take on British comedy and female characters to the rest of the world, but a humour that didn’t translate in the States at all.
As such, having been flung into exile to a certain extent, the band backed out of plans to tour The Works in the US, and consequently sacrificed any hopes of success they might have had there. It transpired that recording in LA was not the making of four transatlantic icons, but an omen for them of the decline that was to come.
In that sense, even though it was a pretty enormous cutting of losses on a geographical scale, Queen were more than happy to return, if a little battered and bruised in the process, to their home shores and be lapped up as the regal giants they always set out to be. America just proved to be 50 states too far – but the battle wasn’t conceded without a bloody good fight.
From then on, Queen never particularly came back to the US, nor, to be fair, would they probably want to. In a lot of ways, they already had enough on their plates, between band tensions and questions about the future. But with a behemoth monster in the form of Live Aid just on the horizon, there wasn’t time to mourn their losses for long.
