Queensryche’s ‘Empire’ Strikes Back, Thanks to MTV

Does MTV still sell records? Ask EMI Records, which has the most unlikely band to score a smash single in ages--Queensryche, the new hot-shots of progressive metal. The label is so jubilant about Queensryche’s “Empire” album, which is back in the Top 10 again, that EMI marketing chief Jim Cawley is saying “we could end up with the biggest young rock band since Guns N’ Roses.”

That’s a big change from a couple of months ago, when “Empire” was selling a respectable 1250 or so albums a day, but languishing at No. 50 on the Billboard charts after a brief stay in the Top 10 last fall.

Then, on President’s Day weekend, all hell broke loose. “It was like someone turned the tap on,” says Queensryche co-manager Cliff Burnstein. “Suddenly we started selling 8,000 albums a day. The album jumped from No. 50 to No. 25 on the Billboard charts. And it’s been going strong ever since.”

What happened? On President’s Weekend, MTV, which has a soft spot for hard-rock bands who appeal to headbanger video fanatics, started playing the band’s new “Silent Lucidity” video--and played it . . . and played it. EMI execs say MTV aired the clip 44 times last week alone--the kind of monster rotation record labels would kill for. “They’ve just pounded it,” says Burnstein. “It’s probably been the most played video on MTV for the past two months.”

What makes the Queensryche saga especially intriguing is that the band’s “Silent Lucidity” single--a syrupy, string-laden ballad that clocks in at nearly six minutes--didn’t take anyone by surprise. In fact, EMI and the band’s management purposefully held back the song for six months after “Empire’s” release last August so they could work two earlier AOR (album-oriented rock) tracks from the album.

“The song was such a departure from the band’s previous material that if we had made it the first single, some of the band’s fans might’ve wondered if the band had compromised what they were about,” says Cawley. “So we wanted to build up to it.”

Still, it wasn’t easy keeping AOR stations, which had supported Queensryche in the past, from jumping on “Silent Lucidity” before it was released. “As far back as November they were calling us, trying to get us to put it out,” says Cawley. “But we wanted to cross the song over to CHR (Top 40) radio, and November is too late in the year to do that--people are winding down for the holidays already.”

On the other hand, it wasn’t easy selling CHR programmers, who prefer pop fluff like Roxette’s “Joyride” or Cathy Dennis’ “Touch Me All Night Long,” on a metal band best known for a concept album (“Operation: Mindcrime”) about a “Manchurian Candidate”-style brainwashed assassin.

“The initial feedback was ‘Queensryche? You’ve got to be kidding!’ ” says Cawley. “But when we got programmers to test ‘Lucidity,’ the song went over immediately. WPXY-FM in Rochester played it once one night and it instantly became their most requested song.”

Queensryche’s success couldn’t have come at a better time for EMI, which suffered an embarrassing black eye when its label chief, Sal Licata, got embroiled in a nasty feud last month with Allen Kovac, an influential manager with a host of acts signed to EMI. Licata boasted that he’d dropped all of Kovac’s acts, including platinum seller Richard Marx, only to be rebuffed when EMI parent company chief Joe Smith quickly responded that he would find homes for all the artists on EMI-affiliated labels.

But you won’t hear Queensryche’s managers complaining. “EMI has backed us 1,000%,” says Burnstein. “It took a lot of preparation to make this all work--and now it’s all paying off.”