Pros: Great Rock and Roll Soundtrack of Incidental Music
Cons: The Bonus song
The Bottom Line: Queen's 10th album, is it a must? That's hard to determine from a non-fanatical POV. I believe you should enjoy the movie and appreciate Queen music to love it.
Queen is one of those bands whose music will be found in many Hollywood movies. They officially handled two films entirely themselves, Flash Gordon (1980) and Highlander (1986). The more often than not incomplete IMDB.com database lists over forty other movies that Queen music had appeared in as well.
In 1980, Queen were debatably the biggest band on the planet. They had two number one hits, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, and Another One Bites The Dust from their number one album The Game, released in June of 1980. That album remained in the top position for five weeks in a row, and remained in the top 200 for the rest of the year, and half of 1981.
Flash Gordon was released on December 8th, 1980 in the UK and two months later in February of 1981 in the USA. The band were approached by film director Dino DeLaurentis, he thought that their approach would compliment the film effectively, and at the same time turn out an instant cult classic rock and roll movie. There's a rumor that Pink Floyd were also considered, that would have been just as interesting, I think.
The first song, Flash's Theme is one of only two songs with lyrics on this soundtrack. The song is written by Brian May, and it's instantly likeable. The song is very heavy rock, and it rivals such superhero classic theme songs as say Batman from the classic 60s show.
Flash! Ahhhhh
Savior of the universe
It's typical Queen music, but not so typical of their output from the last two years. It's nice to hear Queen rock this hard again, and it will be a few years more before the band escapes the British 80s music scene and re-emerge on 1991's Innuendo album.
Roger Taylor's In The Space Capsule (The Love Theme) is a great instrumental. It features lots of clean electric guitar, some spacey synths and Roger wailing on the drums a tympani-like beat.
In between the songs, there is some dialogue here and there lifted from the movie. Freddie's vicious Ming's Theme serves more as synthesizer incidental music, and Freddie didn't fail to add his own voice as a quiet choir. This song segues into his The Ring which is essentially the same melody as Ming's Theme but in a higher octave.
The Ring perfectly segues into Freddie's Football Fight. This is one of the best songs on the soundtrack. It especially works well with the chatter from the movie thrown in. It's one of the heavier songs on the album, and it's so appealing. The bass guitar and the synthesizer play the same memorable riff, and when Brian's guitar chimes in, it stands out from most of the other songs.
Roger's Love Theme is reprised here with In the Death Cell. It's the same music but with different dialogue between Flash and Dale Arden. Execution of Flash is one of the two songs written by John Deacon. It's only a minute long, and it's unusual in the way that it's different than any song John wrote with Queen. It is a great guitar riff, with lots of reverb and it has an emotional element, and it lasts too short.
Another awesome song by Freddie is The Kiss (Aura Resurrects Flash) It has some eerie vocalizations by Freddie and Roger. I looked at the info about this album on Wikipedia, and it read that Freddie is heard singing with a female opera singer. It's just Roger doing what he does best, hitting those really high notes. I had corrected the website by the way. The best part for me about this song is that after the vocal part of the song, an orchestra breaks in and performs the same melody, lots of strings, flutes and stuff, it's really beautiful.
Arboria is the last contribution from John Deacon. It sounds sort of spacey and haunted. You hear ghost like sounds and a flute-sounding synthesizer, alone playing a single scale melody.
Roger's Escape from the Swamp has those tympani like drums again against some mean sounding bass synthesizers. Just more incidental music really.
Flash To The Rescue brings back that steady A note bass that is present in Flash's Theme. There's lots more sound effects and dialogue in this song. An occasional "Flash!" is heard throughout the song as well.
Freddie wrote the next song, Vultan's Theme (Attack of the Hawkmen. It's the same exact song that an old Nintendo game had stolen. Does anyone remember Rygar? Well, the song makes a great backdrop for when you’re walking around and killing those large centipedes and other insect like creatures with your grappling hook, but it sounds even better when zipping through space as Flash does. Roger's tympani-like drumming reappears here as the backbeat of just a lot of synths.
Queen have always made a point, from their 1973 debut to their live album in 1979 to state on their LPS, No Synths so that Brain's Guitar effect pedals, I mean guitar playing would get the recognition for the emanating sounds from their records. Well, in 1980, The Game was laden with them, and this Flash Gordon soundtrack was swimming in them. I guess they were looking to create a more spacey sound as Flash Gordon and co-stars hurdled into the mystic.
This song, Vultan's Theme, along with Battle Theme, The Wedding March and Crash Dive on Mingo City are segued together, and really work as one song. They are all written by Brian May, which means there's more heavy guitar than anything else.
The Hero is the only other song with lyrics, besides Flash's Theme. Brian wrote this song as well, and he reprises his guitar riff from Battle Theme, and pastes some heroic lyrics to it. Freddie's voice is in the top of its game. He is singing in his highest registers with full power and he just sounds magnificent. This used to be a great way to close out the album, until those Hollywood Records execs had gotten their fingers all sticky with it and decided to add on a bonus track.
The bonus track is a remix dance track of the opening song Flash's Theme, and they even named it Flash's Theme. Wycliff Jean of Fugees fame is the mastermind behind this addition. I like the fact that it is totally different from the original, while still using the same-recorded content from the original, but I don't get the gist of what's going on this remix. The song now has a hip-hop beat, and some people saying this over and over:
♫Flash - One Time! - one
Flash - Two Time - one, two
Flash - One Time - one
Flash - Two Time - one, two♫
The song is filled with some scratching, and a lot of the original content repeating itself over and over instead of the usual flow. It's kind of hard to listen to, so I don't.
I don't think the film was appreciated upon release by sci-fi film fans, and/or Queen fans alike. It has needed some time for the acceptance it now has, film-wise anyway. The arrival on DVD a few years back has certainly helped the movie's cult following, but I'm still afraid that Queen fans still do not appreciate the soundtrack for the most part. That being said, as a Queen fan, I love this album. It's underrated obviously, 26 years have passed since its release so I suppose I couldn't guess that with time it will grow on the fans.
I love it for the reason that, while Queen were pursuing the R&B/funk regions with the two albums surrounding this soundtrack, they really ventured back into hard rock for this album. This is what Queen could of sounded as a rock band in the very early eighties. This album is the only glimpse we have of that alternate reality. I'm guessing that the director, Dino DeLaurentis, may have suggested that the album was to be of the hard rock persuasion. The reason could also be that Brian May is listed as producer and had penned the majority of the songs here. It's no secret that Freddie Mercury and John Deacon have pushed the band into the different genre of disco or whatever, but when there was an outsider present, the boys straightened up and flew right. Look at their collaboration with David Bowie in 1981, and the song Under Pressure, maybe it's not hard rock, but it still rocks. Anyway, in short, the reason I love this soundtrack is because Queen rocked it out, 1980 style. It still doesn't harken back to the glory days of the 70s by any stretch of the imagination, yet it does offer a small peek through a window of an alternate realty of what Queen should have been doing, not Hot Space.
Songs
1. Flash's Theme
2. In the Space Capsule (Love Theme)
3. Ming's Theme
4. Ring (Hypnotic Seduction of Dale), The
5. Football Fight
6. In the Death Cell (Love Theme Reprise)
7. Execution of Flash
8. Kiss, The
9. Arboria
10. Escape from the Swamp
11. Flash to the Rescue
12. Vultan's Theme
13. Battle Theme
14. The Wedding March
15. Marriage of Dale and Ming
16. Crash Dive on Mingo City
17. Flash's Theme (Reprise)
18. Hero, The
19. Flash's Theme - (bonus track)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~A few of Scapp70's Other Queen CD Epinions~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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