A bust of "Frank the Robot" used in designing Queen's famous News of the World album cover and subsequent renditions of the iconic figure, including advertisements for the band's 1977-78 "News of the World Tour."
The album cover features a sad-eyed robot clutching the bloody dead bodies of Freddie Mercury and Brian May, while John Deacon and Roger Taylor fall in mid-air from his hand. The melancholy killer AI had a long history before appearing on the album cover, and has subsequently become a pop culture fixture.
News of the World's cover marked a striking departure from Queen's previous album art, which featured portraits of the band or its royal crest. The cover, and the album, were Queen's response to criticism of their streamlined sound and aesthetic by powerful punk bands like the Sex Pistols. The album had harder, rougher songs, exemplified by anthems like "We Will Rock You." The band wanted its cover art to make people stand up and take notice.
Roger Taylor, a science fiction fan, was struck by the image of the robot clutching a dead man on the cover of a 1950's magazine called Astounding Science Fiction. He suggested that they use it on the album cover.
The band approached the magazine cover's artist, Frank Kelly Freas, and asked him to adapt his original illustration. He accepted the commission, even though he was a classical music fan who wasn't familiar with Queen.
Freas was known primarily for his science fiction illustrations and Mad Magazine covers. He originally designed the imagery to reference the story "The Gulf Between" by Tom Godwin, about a future society where robots can be pilots or doctors, but must always serve humans and obey their commands without question. At the story's conclusion, a robot on a spaceship cannot stop a deadly crash because his human, the astronaut, ordered him to keep him under sedation.
According to Martin O'Gorman's RadioX article "The secret history behind Queen's News of the World album cover," Freas had a distinct vision for the robot, later named "Frank" after its artist. He said:
"The mechanical nature of the robot is reduced to the absolute visual minimum; his human, or his emotional, nature is emphasized to the limit. You KNOW this is no threatening automaton: this is a sentient, empathetic entity, his whole being concentrated into the one plea Fix it, Daddy.
At the time of News of the World's release, Frank the Robot became heavily associated with Queen and the album. The record company EMI designed a highly limited number of 54 inch plastic Franks to be used as record displays in premium record stores, and Freas used his image when designing advertisements for the 1977-78 "News of the World Tour."