By Royal Appointment

For the rock galacticos of the 70s, the transition into a new decade proved a difficult gearshift. By the end of 1980, Led Zeppelin had been sunk by the death of talismanic drummer John Bonham. Unravelling alongside them were The Who, and while the Stones and Pink Floyd continued to play to packed stadia, the crowds increasingly called out for the old songs. In this age of stumbling giants, Queen hit the 80s like a train. Already, the band had kissed off the 70s with their biggest US hit to date, in the form of rockabilly pastiche Crazy Little Thing Called Love. Dreamt up by Mercury in a Munich bathtub and captured by incoming producer Reinhold Mack at that city’s Musicland Studios, the single seemed the launchpad to an imperious decade – even if Brian May told Guitar World that the lineup operated less through design as dumb luck: “Everyone thought we had this huge monster plan, the Queen Machine, but it’s an illusion.”

Happy accident or otherwise, by February 1980, the band were keen to capitalise, returning to the same Bavarian studio for a four-month hot-streak, where the four members’ prolific output was underlined by the 40-odd songs pitched for inclusion on that year’s The Game. “For me, the band was functioning well at this point,” noted Roger Taylor in Mark Blake’s definitive biography of the band, Is This The Real Life? “The Game was much more of a piece than Jazz. Our songwriting was much better.”

May would recall putting in long shifts at the Musicland console “at three o’clock, trying to make something work”. But the lineup played hard too, albeit separately, with Mercury holding court at the Old Mrs Henderson gay club while the other band members repaired to Sugar Shack, a local disco that would prove hugely