Featured Essay: My First Record: Queen's Sheer Heart Attack

by Matthew Schaefer

The first record I bought could have been Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Or maybe The Clash or, even better, Germfree Adolescents. How cool would that have been? A nine-year old in exurban Minnesota, in 1978, with something like that!  For sure I would’ve been the only kid my age in the entire state with a copy of any of those oddities, and probably I’d have been in an elite group of fewer than 100 people, including adults. Maybe Westerburg would’ve had one, or Bob Mould. And me, heading into fourth grade. 

I don’t know if the very unhip Konsum department store in Stockholm, where both my grandparents worked, even carried that stuff. The place was more like Target than anything else, and if it weren’t for the price tag (40 Swedish kronor, and an infinity sign, the store logo) that’s still on the record I did buy there, in 1978, I might have forgotten where I got it.

The record I ended up buying was Sheer Heart Attack by Queen, a band that Lydon and Strummer and Poly Styrene (who I will wish into existence later in this story) would not have liked. They might have liked Queen when they were nine, like I was, but no, in 1978 they would have hated them. My friend Nate back in Minnesota loved Queen though, and when I told him I was listening to the radio and my mom’s Bee Gees’ records, he set me straight and told me to get into Queen. He especially liked the song ‘Sheer Heart Attack,’ so when my grandparents gave me some kronor to spend at their store while I waited for them to finish work, I found that title and put my money down. I don’t remember where my parents were that day.

It turns out Nate’s favorite song, ‘Sheer Heart Attack’, isn’t on the record of that name but on a later one, News of the World, just released in ‘78, which also has the ubiquitous ‘We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions’ on it. So I got the wrong record, but man what a thrill! I was a little embarrassed by the shirtless sweaty guys on the cover and didn’t even unwrap it until I got back to the US; I just tucked it safely into the pocket of my little suitcase. Back in Minnesota, on my parents gigantic wood-accented stereo system, I listened to it all the time. 

I read all the lyrics every time I listened, and read all the credits. And since it was the only music I owned for three years (second record was Back in Black) I memorized all of it: Roger Taylor - screams; Freddie Mercury - jangle piano,vocal extravaganzas; Brian May - genuine George Formby ukelele-banjo (punk rock!). John Deacon plays almost all guitars on ‘Misfire.’ I took it out to listen again before writing this (been awhile) and I had forgotten to remember that it says “no synthesizers” in the credits, which is a pretty funny stance to take considering all the other studio tricks Roy Thomas Clark puts into this thing. Synthesizers! What a weird thing to care about.

I knew which songs were “Mercury” and which ones were “May” and which ones the whole band wrote. There’s even a Deacon one and a Taylor one that aren’t too bad. The language of these songs was something I’d never seen before. I was a good reader at an early age, but check this out:

“Jenny will you stay – tarry with me pray

Nothing ‘ere need come between us tell me love, what do you say”

Or

“O Rock of Ages, do not crumble, love is breathing still

O Lady Moon shine down a little people magic if you will”

What is this stuff? I didn’t know what “Rock of Ages” referred to or what “tarry” and “‘ere” meant. There’s another song that references Richard III.

At home, I knew there was something going on with this record that I should hide from my parents. The cover on this thing! Roger Taylor isn’t wearing a shirt, and you can see his nipples surrounded by little beads of sweat. He’s making dreamy, sexy eyes at the photographer. Freddie Mercury has his shirt open, revealing an improbably thick carpet of black chest hair that extends down, without a break for the stomach, into his unbuttoned pants. He has black fingernail polish on his right hand and rings on three fingers of his left. I don’t think Johnny Rotten himself, snarling and lurching in the middle of our living room, would have been more shocking. The two songs I loved best (and still love out of all the songs on the record) were written by Brian May (sorry Freddie!) – ‘Brighton Rock’ and ‘She Makes Me (stormtrooper in stilettoes)’. They were also very clearly about sex. Frankly, they’re about fucking, but that’s not what I would’ve called it then. Maybe I’d have said the songs were about “doing it”. Jimmy and Jenny are “decorously laid”. May sings “as I lie in your cocoon”. These people were doing it! 

On that same trip to Stockholm I came across a very unusual-looking-to-me teenager with an English accent. I can’t remember what I was doing alone on a city street, but it was Sweden and it was the ‘70s so I was probably fine. Anyway this teenager came up to me and asked if I liked “punk”. It was exciting, that I remember. Looking back, I believe that this teenager looked a lot like Poly Styrene, but I’ve since checked and X-Ray Spex never went to Sweden and this girl was probably around 16, too young to be Poly anyway. But a cool-looking girl asking me cool questions with a cool accent was exciting, as I’ve said. I don’t remember exactly, but I prefer to think I’d already bought Sheer Heart Attack. Otherwise for sure Poly Styrene would have convinced me to buy a much better, much cooler, record than Nate (who got arrested for armed robbery in junior high, long after we’d drifted apart, and disappeared after that) had. And wouldn’t things have turned out differently!

As things did turn out, years later - after Rollins joined Black Flag, after Minor Threat released “Salad Days” and broke up - I finally got around to Never Mind the Bollocks… and a bunch of other great records. A classmate – not British, not Poly Styrene, but that’s Minnesota – took pity on my Motley Crue-loving dork ass and gave me a tape with the Pistols on one side and some Replacements and Violent Femmes on the other. That would become my forever music, but I lost that tape and I still have Sheer Heart Attack. It’s in good shape; I’m listening to it now. 

Born in Stillwater, Minnesota many decades ago, I spent every other childhood summer (and one Christmas) with my grandparents in Sweden. After college, I taught English as a Foreign Language in Thailand and Chile before settling in NYC for culinary school. I worked in New York as a line cook, then chef, for 15 years. Since then, I’ve lived/worked in Bhutan, Singapore, Hawaii, and Texas before moving my entire family (wife; two daughters) to Lyon, France in 2022. The whole family loves living in France, where we cook dinner together and listen to old rock and jazz records. The girls are huge David Bowie fans.