Queen Album: “Flash Gordon”

As a pre-teen fan of Queen in the late 70's with vigilant parents, acquiring their music was difficult. While Queen's lyric text is largely harmless, their generally adult-themed and possibly homoerotic subtext (i.e. "Don't Try Suicide", "Killer Queen") was not deemed appropriate for my nine year old ears. I yearned to own "The Game," but in the end my parents and I compromised on the largely instrumental "Flash Gordon" soundtrack. Strangely, this fit quite well into youthful musical conception. I had been exposed to musical storytelling by way of Rick Wakeman's "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" as well as becoming healthily obsessed with the "Star Wars" soundtrack. "Flash Gordon" seemed to fit neatly somewhere between these two. Ultimately, it was cool to be nine in 1980 and own a Queen album, despite the fact that my friends thought it was totally lame.

Nostalgia aside, the average listener would definitely consider "Flash Gordon" a "fan-only" release by todays standards (although genuinely I like it more than "The Works"). As a soundtrack to a movie from the late 70s/early 80s camp fantasy movement (think "Krull" and "Conan"), "Flash Gordon" features an effectual if basic use of leitmotif. Queen gets a respectable amount of instrumental mileage from a small reservoir of melodic material, but more importantly they create an ambience that immediately references the movie. Outside of its instrumental aspect, the album also features the party-stoppin' vocal track "Flash" and the end credit anthem "Hero". These are both fun listens, but they do not represent the best of Queen's radio-friendly repertoire.

However, Queen was a band with a highly complex and multifaceted identity. The theatrical style that they were so effectively developing on "Night at the Opera" was falling out of favor during the late 70s punk movement. As a result, their radio-friendly side was becoming increasingly streamlined with (great) songs like "Another One Bites the Dust" and "Crazy Little Thing Called Love". Indulging in their symphonic and experimental side on the "Flash Gordon" soundtrack must have been a welcome release from the worries of the next big single. One cannot help but think that Mercury and crew got a good laugh at indulging in this more experimental component of their work, which would later result in songs like "Who Wants to Live Forever" and "Bijou".

I also find the presentation of "Flash Gordon's" text interesting. Outside of the aforementioned vocal tracks, the instrumental portions of this release feature quotes from the movie that (in a very general and effective fashion) sum up its loose plot. Today, I see this text as inextricably bound to the more ambient and theme-driven portions of the "Flash Gordon" soundtrack. This most assuredly led to my easy acceptance of the X-Files "Truth and the Light" recording many years later. However, without reference to the original text of the movie, the nostalgic value of this text is probably lost.

The lowdown: Many of the subtleties of "Flash Gordon" were lost on me in my youth. Besides the vocal tracks, I only ever remember energetically thrashing about in my nine year old room to "Football Fight". However, new and old fans of the "Flash Gordon" movie may gain a greater understanding of Queen's self realization of themselves as rock musicians with high aesthetic aspirations as the `80s came to pass.

In the grand tradition of Nelson Riddle's BATMAN TV score, SMOKEY & THE BANDIT, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN and AIRPLANE! comes Queen's FLASH GORDON score, an overblown, pompous, mind-boggling piece of magnificence interspersed with off-kilter dialogue from a film that, with just a BIT of tinkering, could have taken itself a LOT more seriously. While at least 10 times better than the 1979 update of BUCK ROGERS, the 1980 FLASH GORDON nevertheless hardly compares to the source material, or the 1935 & 1940 serials it spawned (don't even MENTION the '38 botch-job...). There are, however, at least 3 incredibly impressive things about the film: it was made (from idea to release) in UNDER a YEAR (Dino got the idea when his company distributed the '79 Filmation cartoon feature-film); it has a STELLAR cast including Melody Anderson, Topol, Max Von Sydow, Timothy Dalton, Peter Wynegarde, Brian Blessed & Ornella Muti (hubba hubba!), all of whom can be heard on the soundtrack; and a QUEEN score that just won't quit. Among my faves: "Flash's Theme" (but WHY didn't they include the really loony single version as a bonus?), "Battle Theme" (I used to tune in on HBO over and over just to see & hear this bit) and "The Hero". (Incredibly, the 1st time I heard the finale was when I bought the LP; some halfwit theatre manager CUT the film off just before it in a rush to get the crowd for the next show in!!).

The only other thing missing, and many Queen fans may be unaware of it, are the portions of the soundtrack actually composed by someone else-- namely, HOWARD BLAKE. Fortunately, after all these years, HIS part of the score (and it was considerable) has finally been issued on CD, coupled with his score for AMITYVILLE 3D-- although I believe it's a limited-edition affair, so be prepared to search! (Perhaps someday both "halves" of the soundtrack might appear together? Right now that might be like hoping to someday see a truly "accurate" adaptation of Alex Raymond's original 9-YEAR-LONG epic storyline...!!!)

What can you say about the

soundtrack? It certainly is an oddity in the Queen catalogue. It consists of a lot of synth heavy instrumentals, with only two actual songs with lyrics. The album also has a lot of dialogue snippets from the movie inserted at various points. While this is not one of the more important Queen albums, it is campy fun. A useless remix of "Flash's Theme" has been added to the CD as a bonus track. It would have been better if the single version of "Flash's Theme aka Flash" had been included as a bonus track, instead.

Queen's Flash Gordon Soundtrack is quite possibly the most perfect film score ever recorded. It is not a soundtrack; it is a score. And it rules. That is all that needs to be said.

That, and it rocks.

And as of 2006, Brian May (Queen's lead guitarist) got his PhD in Astrophysics... how cool is that?!?

For God's sake, strap yourselves down!

Leonard Maltin calls this "amusing". The All Music Guide calls it "underrated".Why Avoid it?