News of the World: What Actually Happened During That Era
Queen released News of the World in October 1977. It was their sixth studio album, recorded at Wessex Sound Studios and mixed at Mountain Studios in Montreux. The album came out between Sheer Heart Attack and The Game, and it sits somewhere in the middle of their classic period both sonically and commercially. A recent documentary covering this era has surfaced under the title Queen A News Of The World The Untold Story Behind The Legends Final Bow, and people are asking about it because the band's history gets recycled into new packaging every few years. The documentary uses footage from the 1977 North American and European tours, combined with interviews and studio outtakes. What makes it worth watching isn't any secret revelation. It's the rawness of the performances captured on film. By late 1977, Queen were exhausted. They had been touring and recording almost continuously since 1973. The News of the World tour was their last before they took a deliberate break, which is probably why the framing calls it a "final bow" for that particular chapter. I watched the full release a few months ago. One thing the documentary handles better than most Queen retellings is the actual sound of those shows. The multitrack recordings from the Hammersmith Odeon gigs in July 1977 exist, and they use them. The audience noise, the amp hum, the way Brian May's solo on 'Sheer Heart Attack' drags just slightly behind the beat because Freddie Mercury was moving around the stage too much. These are the details that make it feel like you're actually there.
There is a practical issue people run into when trying to access this content. The documentary has been released through a few different channels over time, including a DVD companion to the News of the World Super Deluxe reissue box set and various streaming versions. The quality varies significantly between them. The DVD rip from the 2011 reissue tends to be the most widely available and is acceptable for most purposes. The Blu-ray version, which came out later, has noticeably better color grading and the audio is in 5.1 surround. If you're going to watch it, use the Blu-ray source if you can find one. Here's something most summaries of this era miss. The News of the World album sessions were not the chaotic affair people often describe them as. Queen and producer Roy Thomas Baker had a very tight workflow by 1977. They tracked most of the album in about three weeks at Wessex. The exception was 'Spread Your Wings' and 'Far Beyond the Sun,' which were worked on during breaks in the tour schedule. The band would come into the studio after a show, sometimes at midnight, and lay down parts. This is why some tracks on the album have a slightly looser feel than others. It's not artistic choice. It's fatigue. Another detail that doesn't get enough attention. Brian May was dealing with a serious vocal issue during these sessions. His voice was strained from touring, and he had to use a lot of double-tracking on his own vocal parts to make them sound consistent. You can hear this on 'Sheer Heart Attack' and 'All Dead, All Dead.' If you listen to the original multitracks, which have been circulated among engineers over the years, you can hear the difference between the first pass and the comp. It's subtle but noticeable if you know what to look for.
The documentary also covers the songwriting split during this period, which is where things get interesting. 'We Will Rock You' and 'We Are the Champions' were written almost entirely by Mercury. 'Fight from the Inside' was entirely May. 'My Melancholy Blues' was entirely Mercury. 'Sleeping on the Sidewalk' was entirely Deacon. The remaining tracks were collaborative. This level of individual authorship within a single album is unusual for Queen and it shows in the musical styles. Each song sounds like it came from a different head. If you are looking to obtain the documentary, the most straightforward route is through the Queen official store or Amazon, where the Super Deluxe edition box set is occasionally available. The standalone documentary has also appeared on YouTube and Vimeo for rent. The quality on YouTube varies because there are multiple upload sources. Look for the one labeled as coming from the official Blu-ray transfer. Anything older than that is usually a camrip or a low-bitrate encode. One edge case I encountered. There is a version of the documentary that includes additional footage not in the standard release. This version appears on some of the Japanese pressings of the box set and runs about twelve minutes longer. The extra material covers the recording of 'Is This the World We Created?,' which was actually a B-side from the Somebody to Love era but got included in the documentary's narrative about the band's social consciousness during this period. If you can find the Japanese edition, it's worth it for those extra minutes alone.
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The album itself charted at number one in the UK and number two in the US. It sold approximately three million copies worldwide during its initial release window. That might sound modest compared to what they did next with The Game, but considering the band was essentially self-funded at this point and had no major label marketing budget behind it in most territories, the numbers were solid. The singles 'We Will Rock You' and 'We Are the Champions' became stadium anthems precisely because of how they were performed live during this tour, not because of radio play. The documentary makes this clear by showing the crowd interaction footage from the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco in September 1977. What I found most useful about the documentary was not the interviews. It was the stage plots and the setlist evolution between the July Hammersmith dates and the September North American dates. The band changed their approach significantly between those two points. They shortened some songs, extended others, and added 'Stone Cold Crazy' to the setlist for the first time. The documentary shows rehearsal footage of this transition, and it's the only publicly available visual record of them working through those arrangements. The audio restoration on the newer releases is adequate but not perfect. There is still some hiss on the quieter studio passages, particularly in 'Who Needs You,' which was recorded on older equipment at Mountain Studios. If you're an engineer or someone who works with audio, you might notice the noise floor is higher than the rest of the album. It's not a mistake in the remaster. It's the original tape.
For most people, the takeaway from watching this is that the News of the World period was not a high point creatively for the band. It was a transitional phase. They were figuring out what came after the heavy progressive rock of their early albums and before the more polished pop sound of The Game. The documentary captures that uncertainty well, even if it doesn't always name it directly.
