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Trident Studios' ad and equipment list
Billboard, 10th June 1972

Trident Studios' main recording room
Billboard, 12th August 1972

Trident Studios' main recording room
Billboard, 12th August 1972

Roger Taylor at a Ludwig drum-kit
Queen Mary College, Basingstoke
Hampshire, South East England
Friday the 13th July 1973
Photo by Michael Putland

John Deacon on Fender bass
Imperial College, South Kensington
Friday 26th October 1973
Photo by Mick Rock

The legendary pic taken by Mick Rock

Brian May playing Liar on a Stratocaster
Rainbow Theatre, Finsbury Park, London
Sunday 31st March 1974

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21 concerts in 34 days
1 gig each day and 16 hours

John Deacon

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22 concerts in 33 days
1 gig each day and twelve hours

John Deacon

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19 concerts in 25 days
1 gig each day and 7:34:44.21

John Deacon

Take vocals, because they're my forté - especially harmonies and those kind of things. On Queen II we've gone berserk.

Freddie Mercury
Sounds
January 1976

I remember what the critics said about Queen II. It would seem that everybody is beginning to like us ... very much. Queen II is still my favourite of the Queen albums, certainly the most daring. Especially for the time.

Brian May
Circus
April 1976
page 59

Queen II is both my and Gary's favorite record ever. We met because of that record: We were in a club; both of us were in shiny bands. Nobody I'd ever met before liked Queen II as much as I did. I never met anybody in my age group who would even mention it. So Gary and I hit it off - our love for Queen hooked us together. We even mentioned on the record that Queen still are the champions to us. Queen II was ahead of its time - your guitar sound in particular. Even players that were considered heavy metal had nothing close to the warmth of your tone. It's a very tubular sound, not like a fuzz thing.

Nuno Bettencourt
Guitar World
August 1991,

A few people thought we weren't playing rock and roll any more. Since Queen II was very layered, I think it was difficult for people to understand. So much so, that when we were making the follow-up, Sheer Heart Attack, we thought we'd better take it a bit easy and spell out what we were doing, one thing at a time, so that it would be a bit more accessible. But I love Queen II. I think it's still my favorite Queen album. As soon as we were let loose in the studio, we just went crazy. It was a dream. I always wanted to do all those guitar harmonies, all those orchestral bits and pieces, and the vocal harmonies. And finally we got the chance.

Brian May
Guitar World
August 1991,

Most of the tracks on that album I think are - quality-wise in the writing and arrangement - equal to anything we did. Generally that's the album that has sold less than almost anything else we ever did. I suppose if it was done to quality I would want you to listen to Queen II. That was a great moment for us when we were just bursting into that position of having real control over what we were doing. I would probably go for that.

Brian May
Guitar for the Practicing Musician
September 1993

One of my personal favourites will always be Queen II, because it was such a giant leap at the time… it was the biggest single leap we ever made. Suddenly we were able to wield all the power and skills which we’d learned, and we had the indulgence of a little bit of money and bit more time to put them into operation.

All the guitar and vocal harmonies and the orchestration started to take shape on Queen II. It didn’t make a great thud in terms of sales, because it was so complex, and difficult to put across, which is why we made Sheer Heart Attack very simple. A lot of people regard that album as a sort of rock upon which things are built, because I think it distilled the rock and roll feeling quite neatly.

A Night At The Opera has a very perfect feel about it, I have to say. It all dovetails together so well, and the colours all set each other off so well, and musically, there was an enormous jump in complexity. All the things which we’d started on Queen II we brought to fruition on A Night At The Opera.

Brian May
Record Collector
January 2009
page 66

Outside the Queen fandom, Queen II is barely known except perhaps for its hit single, Seven Seas of Rhye, top 10 in the UK. Amongst die-hards and some celebrities, however, it enjoys a cult following paralleled only by A Night at the Opera. Not bad for a record that only sold 2,5 millions of copies. As a sophomore project, it features a more mature songwriting and more professional performance than the debut, where the notable evolution Freddie Mercury had on piano is worth a praise; also, this is the first album featuring John Deacon playing guitar as well as bass. The tracklist was arranged in blocks of songwriters, featuring Maylor on the A (or white) Side and Mercury on B (or black).

Variety is the main course: there are hard-rock tunes, ballads, folk, mediaeval-influenced, pop, baroque and glam, not to mention a slightly progressive latent nature influenced by the massively successful Dark Side of the Moon album by Pink Floyd. This was the last record entirely done on sixteen-track tapes, and is definitely a masterpiece in spite of (or partly thanks to) having been relatively low-budget and rushed (less than a month, compared with Hot Space taking over half a year).

Fifteen days after the first Queen record was released, Melody Maker published an article featuring an interview with Brian and Freddie, where they already commented that the second album would have a good vs evil theme (). On Friday 3rd August the band played a gig in Newcastle supporting Vinegar Joe and earning £60, and at some point after that they returned to London and began working on their sophomore release, which would be finished by the end of the month but remained unpublished until much later.

It was thoroughly influenced by recent releases by other artists including Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy and Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells. It's also worth mentioning that David Bowie had just retired his Ziggy persona, which may have had a deep impact on Queen and especially Freddie and Roger.

1973 was a tough year for Trident, as they lost some of their 1971-1972 clients: Bowie, Elton and Hammill only went there to mix, having recorded in France and Wales respectively; McCartney flew to Nigeria; Genesis had installed themselves at Island Studios and T-Rex at AIR. Amongst the few acts that recorded at Trident in '73 were Al Stewart and Mick Ronson, although the former would move to Abbey Road the following year.

All of that allowed Queen to suddenly become one of Neptune Productions' most valuable clients, and they finally had full access to the facilities and recording equipment. Recordings took between two and three weeks (the usual for the era - Bowie's Pin Ups took more or less the same amount of time).

They were also allowed to customise their production/engineering team: they were no longer involved with John Anthony, David Hentschel and Ted Sharpe and kept Roy under the condition that he'd only be an overseer, as they only trusted Mike Stone with hands-on labours. Another producer, Robin Cable, who'd previously worked with Elton John, was summoned for three of Freddie's compositions as he could provide a much-needed 'wall of sound'.

Roger turned 24 during the album recording sessions. At the time, he lived in Richmond with Ziggy - his cat - and six kittens.