Background
There are two versions of the opening track. The album version (Flash's Theme) is the start to the film, with part of the dialogue from the first scene. The single version (Flash) features parts of the dialogue taken from various parts of the film. This version was also included on the Greatest Hits compilation from 1981. The single reached number one in Austria. The track is noted for its pounding, repetitive bassline and the camp humour of the snippets of dialogue from the film that it contains.
All but two of the tracks on the album (Flash's Theme and The Hero) are instrumentals. The album makes extensive use of synthesisers, which Queen had employed for the first time on their previous album, The Game, although to a much lesser extent.
Side A of the album, except for the opening track and Freddie Mercury's Football Fight (also chosen as a B-side for the Flash single), contains mostly synthesiser, vocal, guitar and drum soundscapes (accompanied by the movie dialogues), written and performed by Mercury, Taylor and Deacon. Side B, while starting with similar compositions by Deacon and Taylor, develops for the most part around the full-band rockier themes, mainly Flash's Theme and Battle Theme, composed and arranged by Brian May. The last track, "The Hero", while an individual song, reprises both motifs. Different takes of the song were used for the end credits in the film and for the album finale.
The album contains mostly the score performed by Queen, and only two short, uncredited fragments of Howard Blake's orchestral score (appearing in The Kiss and The Hero).
Read more about this topic: Flash Gordon (soundtrack)
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)