page_title: Queen II
section_title: Artwork and packaging
hierarchical_section_title: Queen II / Artwork and packaging
caption_attribution_description: English: Publicity photo of Marlene Dietrich for the film Shanghai Express (1932).
context_page_description: Queen II is the second studio album by the British rock band Queen. It was released on 8 March 1974 by EMI Records in the UK and by Elektra Records in the US. It was recorded at Trident Studios and Langham 1 Studios, London, in August 1973 with co-producers Roy Thomas Baker and Robin Geoffrey Cable, and engineered by Mike Stone.
  Described as "arguably the heaviest Queen album", Queen II marked the end of the first phase of the band's career. The album combines a heavy rock sound with art rock and progressive rock elements, and has been called "a pillar of grandiose, assaultive hard rock" by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Queen II is not a concept album but a collection of songs with a loose theme running throughout. The two sides of the original LP were labelled "Side White" and "Side Black", with corresponding photos of the band dressed in white or in black on either side of the record's label face. The white side has songs with a more emotional theme and the black side is almost entirely about fantasy, often with quite dark themes.
context_section_description: Rock photographer Mick Rock was engaged to create the album's artwork. In Rock's words, the band wanted to "graft some of [the trademark] decadent 'glam' sensibility" of his previous work with artists such as David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. According to Rock, Queen were looking to grab people's attention with the cover, especially since their first album had failed to do so. "They realised that if you could catch people's eyes you could get them interested in the music."
  The brief he received from the band conceived a black and white theme for the album. The cover features a photograph described by VH1 as "Queen standing in diamond formation, heads tilted back like Easter Island statues" against a black background. The iconic chiaroscuro image of Queen was inspired by a similar photograph of Marlene Dietrich from the 1932 film Shanghai Express. "And of course no one was ever more 'glam' than the divine Ms Dietrich," Rock quipped. "It was just one of those flashes of inspiration that happens sometimes," Rock explained. "There was a feeling that [echoing the Dietrich pose] might be pretentious," but Rock convinced the band otherwise. "It made them look like much bigger a deal than they were at the time, but it was a true reflection of their music." Rock stated Mercury loved to quote Oscar Wilde. "Often, that which today is considered pretentious is tomorrow considered state of the art. The important thing is to be considered." Rock added, "To Freddie, that word [pretentious] was meaningless – 'But is it fabulous?' was all that mattered. Those were the days of androgyny, and Freddie was prepared to push it quite a way.” Freddie added, “It doesn't have any special meaning, but we were fascinated with this type of thing, and the wardrobe we used at the time described it perfectly well.”  The image would later be brought to life for the "Bohemian Rhapsody" music video.
  To expand on the black and white theme, Rock made a second image of the band, dressed in white against a white background, that was used in the album's gatefold, advertising, and the "Seven Seas of Rhye" single sleeve.
caption: Inspiration was drawn from this image of Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express
exif: {}