Hot Space: Эксперименты Queen и тень менеджера Пре нтера

Hot Space is the tenth studio album by the British rock band Queen. It was released on 4 May 1982 by EMI Records in the United Kingdom and by Elektra Records in the United States. Marking a notable shift in direction from their earlier work, they employed many elements of disco, funk, R&B, dance, pop and new wave music on the album. This made the album less popular with fans who preferred the traditional rock style they had come to associate with the band. Although included on Hot Space, the song was a separate project and was recorded ahead of the album, before the controversy over Queen's new disco influenced rock sound. The album's second single, "Body Language", peaked at number 11 on the US charts.

Before 1979, Queen had never used synthesisers on their albums. Beginning with The Game, Queen began using Oberheim OB X synthesisers on their songs, including "Play the Game" and "Save Me". On Hot Space, the band went even further, introducing the drum machine for the first time. A departure from their trademark seventies sound, most of Hot Space is a mixture of rhythm and blues, funk, dance and disco, while the rock songs continued in a pop rock direction similar to their previous album (an exception is the song "Put Out the Fire"). Disliking the new sound, Brian May and Taylor were critical of the influence that Paul Prenter, Freddie Mercury's personal manager between 1977 and 1984, had on the singer. Recalling the recording process in 2011, Taylor openly criticized the direction in which Prenter was taking Mercury (and thus the rest of the band), stating that "[Prenter] wanted our music to sound like you'd just walked in a gay club and I didn't". May also noted that the making of the album in Munich took much longer than usual and that all of the band got into "deep emotional trouble" in the city, blaming a mixture of drink, drugs and partying as the reason for the relatively lengthy recording sessions. According to Mack, Queen's producer, Prenter loathed rock music and was in Mercury’s ear throughout the Hot Space sessions. Prenter also refused all requests from US radio stations to speak to Mercury. May states, "this guy, in the course of one tour, told every record station to fuck off. But not just "fuck off", but "Freddie says, ‘fuck off’". Queen roadie Peter Hince wrote "None of the band cared for him [Prenter], apart from Freddie", with Hince regarding Mercury's favouring of Prenter as an act of "misguided loyalty".

The horn arrangement for Mercury's "Staying Power" was added by Arif Mardin (who also produced Chaka Khan and added horn sections to Bee Gees and Aretha Franklin records). "Staying Power" would be performed on the band's accompanying Hot Space Tour, albeit much faster and heavier, with real drums replacing the drum machine and guitars and keyboards replacing the horns. (This arrangement contained no actual bass guitar, as John Deacon played guitar in addition to May.) It was also played on Queen's The Works Tour, until it was dropped from the setlist halfway through the European leg of the tour. In Japan, the band released "Staying Power" as a single in July 1982. Mardin's contributions were recorded at Record Plant Studios in New York. The original demo of the track featured a guitar instead of horns.

The bassline of May's "Dancer" was played on an Oberheim OB Xa synthesiser by him. The song itself – a fusion of rock and disco – is something of a follow up to "Dragon Attack" from the band's 1980 album The Game in that it fuses heavy elements of music with danceable ones, as Led Zeppelin did.

"Back Chat", written by John Deacon, is the track most influenced by black music. In addition to normal bass duties, Deacon also plays rhythm guitar and synthesiser on the song. As the album's final single, it stalled at number 40 on the UK charts and failed to chart in the US.

"Body Language" is atypical among Queen songs, as there is very little guitar on the track, with the song being driven by a rhythmic bassline. Mercury, who composed the song on synth bass, had previously explored the instrument's potential with his contributions to the Flash Gordon soundtrack. The song's lyrics describe the gay cruising culture which Mercury was immersed in at the time. The "Body Language" video, featuring scantily clad models writhing around each other in a bathlike setting, proved somewhat controversial and was banned in a few territories. The song also appeared in the 1984 documentary film Stripper, being performed to by one of the dancers. Whilst the video was restricted to late night showings on MTV, it nonetheless helped the song become the album's biggest hit in America, reaching number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1982.

"Action This Day", one of two Taylor songs that appear on the album, was clearly influenced by the new wave movement/style current at the time; the track is driven by a pounding electronic drum machine in 2/4 time and features a saxophone solo, played by Italian session musician Dino Solera. "Action This Day" takes its title from a Winston Churchill catchphrase that the statesman would attach to urgent documents, and recapitulates the theme of social awareness that Taylor espoused in many of his songs. The band performed "Action This Day" at every show on the Hot Space Tour with a more conventional arrangement, replacing the drum machine and bass synth with a rock rhythm section and replacing the saxophone solo with an actual synthesizer. The verses are duets between Taylor and Mercury, while the chorus is sung by both.

"Put Out the Fire" is an anti firearm song written by May, featuring lead vocals and falsetto by Mercury, and backing vocals by Mercury, May and Taylor. May recorded its guitar solo under the influence of alcohol (after many unsuccessful attempts). With the exception of the electric piano (which was played by Mercury), all the instruments are played by Deacon, including guitars, synths and a drum machine. On the album version, Mercury sings the entire song in falsetto. The alternate take with Bowie's vocals still intact is widely available on various bootleg recordings and surfaces from an early 1982 vinyl Hot Space test pressing from the US. Deacon can be heard using the slap bass technique throughout the track. The song was used in 2023 in an Amazon Prime commercial featuring a young woman who, among other things, has a bobblehead of Mercury and buys a jacket on Prime similar to the one the bobblehead is wearing.

A duet with Bowie, "Under Pressure" was the result of an impromptu jam session in the band's studio in Montreux. When it was released in 1981, "Under Pressure" reached number one in the UK singles chart. Although it was credited to the entire band and Bowie, Mercury was the primary director of this track, with him and Bowie being the main lyricists (each writing the lines they sang). John Deacon came up with the bass riff. Part of the chord progression is based on a rough demo of an unreleased song, "Feel Like". The songwriting is credited to all five participants.

The 1982 Hot Space Tour was Queen's last tour of North America until the Queen + Paul Rodgers Tour in 2005. The band did not tour North America for The Works tour in 1984, nor The Magic tour in 1986, after which they ceased touring, due to Mercury's ill health with AIDS.

Due to its dance pop sound, Hot Space is widely considered by both fans and critics to be one of Queen's most artistically disappointing albums. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic said of the album that "the band that once proudly proclaimed not to use synthesizers on their albums has suddenly, dramatically reversed course, devoting the entire first side of the album to robotic, new wave dance pop, all driven by drum machines and colored by keyboards, with Brian May's guitar coming in as flavor only on occasion." Alex Petridis of The Guardian gave the album two stars and said: "Like Queen, disco was melodramatic, unrepentantly camp, extravagantly arranged and omnivorous in its influences. Or at least it had been. By the time of 1982's Hot Space, disco had mutated into the weird, skeletal, dubby electronic sound pioneered by DJ Larry Levan, which really didn't suit Queen at all." Despite this, "Under Pressure" remains one of the band's staple songs. Sandy Robertson of Sounds gave the album four stars, describing it as "fairly lickable funkpop" featuring "'Put Out The Fire' with, plenty screaming Brian May axe histrionics a ballad in the old boy's mode called 'Life Is Real' a candymix of phasers, acoustics and electrics in 'Calling All Girls' sleazy keyboard/vocal pomp sobs in 'Las Palabras De Amor' a languid summer streak and slow slide through 'Cool Cat' and the cornerstone 'Under Pressure' itself." In a 2015 interview with Greg Prato of Songfacts, Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt described how Hot Space had been an important album for him as a musician. "I think it's interesting because that album taught me two things. It taught me that even if you're in a band as a guitar player, music doesn't have to be driven by guitar it's about the song, first. But I think the main thing is that Queen actually did an album like that it was the fans' least favorite, but it was one of my favorites because it took a risk and branched out. All those synth parts they did and horns, I could always hear them with guitar in my head somehow. But quite oddly enough, or coincidentally enough, the title Hot Space is exactly what it meant: it's all the space between the music. That's what makes it funky and that's what makes it have a pocket." In the 2011 documentary Queen: Days of our Lives, Queen's former manager Jim Beach described Hot Space as "a disaster really [ ] it didn't appeal to the hardcore Queen fans who would turn up to concerts with 'Disco Sucks' banners." After the conclusion of the Hot Space tour in late 1982, the band would rarely include songs from the album in their later live set lists with only "Under Pressure" remaining as a staple until their final concerts in 1986.

All lead vocals by Freddie Mercury unless noted.