"The Story Of Queen I The Album Cover" sees the UK rockers not only push the musical envelope, but also test their visual ingenuity with the DIY sleeve art for the debut release.
Freddie Mercury would be immortalized in a thousand images over the course of his career; however, Brian May cast his then-unknown singer as the star of Queen's first sleeve.
"I had this premonition that Freddie was special and he was going to be our icon,” says May. “So, I thought it would be nice just to have Freddie as a symbol, like the figurehead on a Viking ship. I found this picture of him onstage, which Doug Puddifoot had taken standing in a spotlight, and I liked the way the spotlight looked because it looked like a comet in the sky. In an age before Photoshop, "he had no option but to physically slice the Freddie figure from Puddifoot's original photograph with a scalpel. And that was basically the cover and everyone liked it. Freddie had designed this lovely special font for Queen. So, we said, 'okay, we'll go with that.'"
Fifty years is a lifetime in design technology, and as Brian reminds us, the new Queen I boxset offers the best possible rendering of this famous artwork.
"When we were recreating this for the new boxset, we went back to the original files, digitized them and recreated this whole back cover,” the guitarist explains. “Also, the front sleeve: I had great fun doing that because I went back to the original negative. Found Freddie, found the spotlight, aligned it all in the same way, and recreated it and it's slightly higher quality with a slightly different texture. I thought, we've recreated the whole album sound-wise, so let's recreate it visually as well..."
Queen recorded the album with producer Roy Thomas Baker at Trident Studios; the project went on to reach the top 25 in the band’s native UK as the group introduced themselves to music fans around the world.
“Queen 1” is available in multiple packages, including a Collector’s Edition box set, a Vinyl LP Queen 2024 Mix plus 1 CD, 2CD Deluxe Edition, 1LP Picture Disc and Cassette formats.
Pick up some Queen for your collection here.
See also:
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