Josh Kelley's Crazy Little Thing called Roy Thomas Baker
While we're on the subject of Queen (and since I promised that there will be no more Queen after I finish with the Concert for Life bs) I wanted to take a second to talk about Josh Kelley's version of the Queen hit, "Crazy Little Thing Called Love". It's featured on all-too-mediocre "Killer Queen" tribute album. (I've already gone on record about how I feel about Tribute albums, the first of which I ever purchased was The Royal Philharmonic plays the Queen collection which I bought on cassette at a little record store on Main St in Bar Harbor, ME, in the early 80's.)
I don't know if Josh did this on purpose, but I am seriously hoping that he did, but his recording of Crazy little thing sounds like it was done by The Cars. Complete with herky-jerky Ocasek-like vocals. It's spectacular. By that, I mean, it totally holds up on its own as a cover but the real treat for someone like me (by that I mean, minutiae oriented, hidden meaning seeking loon) is that Queen's biggest albums were produced by uber-producer Roy Thomas Baker in the 70's. He is famously flamboyant, with his all glass piano that Motley Crue wrote about in their tell all autobiography, The Dirt. Baker also was the early producer on the Cars' first few albums. Now, their biggest hits were produced by Robert "Mutt" Lange, notably responsible for some of the biggest hits in the 80's including Def Leppard (he was played by Anthony Michael Hall in the VH1 TV movie about them and he is married to Shania Twain) but the early sounds of The Cars, that over produced minimalism was created by Baker.
Kelley's version, ergo, sounds like it was how Crazy Little Thing would have sounded if The Cars, produced by RTB, recorded it. Fantastic. It's also interesting to note that Queen's version was produced by the band and Mack and would have sounded infintely better had they worked with RTB.
So, Kudos to Josh Kelley.
If you get a chance and/or you are a Queen fan, this track is a must.
Just got an email response from Josh and he confirmed what I thought. So, there ya go. Eventually you gotta be right at least once. This makes 1 out of 1000.
I don't know if Josh did this on purpose, but I am seriously hoping that he did, but his recording of Crazy little thing sounds like it was done by The Cars. Complete with herky-jerky Ocasek-like vocals. It's spectacular. By that, I mean, it totally holds up on its own as a cover but the real treat for someone like me (by that I mean, minutiae oriented, hidden meaning seeking loon) is that Queen's biggest albums were produced by uber-producer Roy Thomas Baker in the 70's. He is famously flamboyant, with his all glass piano that Motley Crue wrote about in their tell all autobiography, The Dirt. Baker also was the early producer on the Cars' first few albums. Now, their biggest hits were produced by Robert "Mutt" Lange, notably responsible for some of the biggest hits in the 80's including Def Leppard (he was played by Anthony Michael Hall in the VH1 TV movie about them and he is married to Shania Twain) but the early sounds of The Cars, that over produced minimalism was created by Baker.
Kelley's version, ergo, sounds like it was how Crazy Little Thing would have sounded if The Cars, produced by RTB, recorded it. Fantastic. It's also interesting to note that Queen's version was produced by the band and Mack and would have sounded infintely better had they worked with RTB.
So, Kudos to Josh Kelley.
If you get a chance and/or you are a Queen fan, this track is a must.
Just got an email response from Josh and he confirmed what I thought. So, there ya go. Eventually you gotta be right at least once. This makes 1 out of 1000.
posted by Allen Lulu | 1:19 PM
1 Comments:
I ran into this article just now (almost 3 yrs later) b/c I was searching Josh Kelley, the song, and The Cars and this came up. I'm glad it's confirmed that not only did someone else thought that the cover sounded like The Cars but the actual artist himself confirmed that he was trying to sound like The Cars. Awesome.
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