Queen 10: Flash Gordon

Most major bands were excited when they were tapped to provide a full soundtrack for a film, and Queen got their chance with the mega-budget cult classic Flash Gordon. They even took time out while making The Game to work on it.

When the soundtrack album came out, fans may have been disappointed to find it was just that: music for the background of the movie, used as counterpoints to the onscreen action, and not meant to swamp the dialogue. And this album has lots and lots of dialogue. While each band member gets credit for the tracks they spearheaded, and worked on individually, the orchestral touches were not provided by any of the band, and don’t sound like them anyway.

The album is bookended by the two closest things to actual songs, being that they have distinct sets of lyrics, sung by Freddie Mercury. “Flash’s Theme” was the basis for the single, and probably the one piece most people have heard from the album. The chorus is fairly obvious, but unfortunately the slower “just a man” section isn’t exploited more throughout the rest. “The Hero” is the closing piece, loaded with guitars and drums, which of course goes back to repeat most of “Flash’s Theme” before ending with, yes, an explosion.

But in between, there is just music that would probably resonate more with those who’ve seen the movie more than once. Timbales and space effects abound, and the band certainly got over their earlier stated disdain for synthesizers. Most of these tracks are fleeting, less than two minutes apiece, and run seamlessly together with few noticeable gaps. There are a few standouts, like the very new-wavey “Football Fight”, which accompanies the scene in which our hero picks off the enemy’s minions with his gridiron skills (not really much of a stretch, as Flash was a polo player in the original comic strip). “Execution Of Flash” is a brief guitar theme, played not by Brian May but John Deacon, yet there’s no mistaking Brian’s touch on his arrangement of Wagner’s well-known “Wedding March”. “The Kiss” is very much a movie theme, with impossibly high vocals from Freddie. “Flash To The Rescue” and “Marriage Of Dale And Ming” recycle the familiar parts of “Flash’s Theme”, as does the reprise, of course, while “Battle Theme” is a precursor to “The Hero”. (Halfway through that, we hear a character intone, “Who wants to live forever?”—which would become another movie song one day.)

The Flash Gordon film failed to launch a franchise, so this relatively short album remains part of that failure. The 1991 CD added just a modern hip-hop dance remix of “Flash’s Theme” that was pretty stupid, but the bonus disc in the expansion twenty years later at least tried to put the emphasis back onto the music. The single version of “Flash” is shorter than the album track but includes dialogue not on the album, yet still manages to encapsulate the whole thing. The “revisited” mix of “The Hero” puts more emphasis on the vocal and instrumental parts, and while there are still some sound effects, it’s a better track overall. The early version of “The Kiss” is simply wordless vocal and piano, followed by a piano-driven “Football Fight”. Live performances of “Flash” and “The Hero” from the following year are good, and should sate anyone who really needs to hear the songs again.

Queen Flash Gordon (1980)—2
1991 Hollywood reissue: same as 1980, plus 1 extra track
2011 remaster: same as 1980, plus 6 extra tracks