Queen Continue The Path To A Night At The Opera Video Series
(Hollywood Records) Continuing 50th anniversary celebrations of "Bohemian Rhapsody" and A Night At The Opera the Queen The Greatest series continues with Brian May and Roger Taylor's memories of the band's musical evolution over their first three albums that were a pathway to A Night At The Opera and how Queen's six-minute opus silenced its doubters to become the band's next single and an anthem for the ages.
If the walls of the UK's now famous Rockfield Studios could talk, they'd tell of the fabled sessions of late-1975, when Queen arrived in South Wales to record the album that would explode the possibilities of rock 'n' roll.
A half-century later, as A Night At The Opera marks its 50th anniversary with a new special anniversary vinyl reissue, this week's episode of Queen The Greatest sees Brian May and Roger Taylor reflect on a trailblazing recording process that tested the band's creativity - and resolve - to the limit.
Now, as then, A Night At The Opera remains an album that marches to the beat of its own drum, with Brian, Roger, Freddie Mercury and John Deacon rejecting the constraints placed on most rock bands - genre, runtime, radio hooks - to follow their muse without compromise.
"We wanted it to be eclectic," says Roger Taylor. "We wanted different styles. We had things like "Seaside Rendezvous," which was a lot of fun. But we also had this monumentally long song, "The Prophet's Song." Brian had a field day on that one."
As Brian admits, he initially struggled to tame that eight-minute opus, whose endless twists include a vocal canon treated with tape delay. "I have a massive insecurity about myself as a songwriter," remembers the guitarist. "And with 'The Prophet's Song,' it was right on the edge. I could hear something in my head, but I couldn't quite grasp it. I remember wrestling with all the different pieces - how each chorus ends in a different way, and where does it go - but it was a wonderful challenge to get Freddie to do that canon stuff, which he does in the middle. Freddie was very supportive in getting into those experiments."
Having bent to the will of their studio bosses while recording 1973's self-titled debut, Queen had fought hard to achieve total creative control over their output. Now, with A Night At The Opera complete, the band stuck to their guns as talk turned to the release schedule. "We never thought of ourselves as a singles band," says Roger. "Remember, this is the '70s, and in the '70s, particularly the BBC with Top Of The Pops, they thought everything was about singles. Well, it wasn't. Everything was really about albums. Dark Side of the Moon, The Beatles White album, a wonderful album of different, eclectic material. That's what we wanted to do.
"We never thought about making singles, or 'This one's a single.' We'd just make an album then think, 'Oh, let's try that one as a single,' because a single was like a flag, like "Killer Queen" was the flag for Sheer Heart Attack, and the album was consequentially very successful."
When it came to the A Night At The Opera campaign, picks up Brian, everyone around the band insisted "Bohemian Rhapsody" would sink if released as a single. "But we love it. And we have great confidence in it and we really feel we can put ourselves behind this," May says, "You notice that "My Fairy King" and "Black Queen" were great album tracks, but we never put them forward as singles. "Bohemian Rhapsody," we did think it was a single, and it was hard to persuade the record company, hard to persuade our manager at the time, but eventually they all got behind it and it was put out in its entirety. It's quite a brave thing to do when everybody's telling you it's going to fail."
Looking back now, as Roger succinctly puts it: "We were right." Topping the UK chart in 1975 for an unprecedented nine weeks, "Bohemian Rhapsody" never left popular culture, and 50 years later, this spellbinding anthem remains a vital strand of rock 'n' roll DNA.
"The song, without a doubt, continues to resonate," says Brian. "We go on stage and play it at the Albert Hall, with a full orchestra and 150-piece choir, and it's fresh as a daisy. It's new and exciting, and the reaction you get from people is just amazing. And that's a classical audience. They just went berserk. It will always be there, I think, "Bohemian Rhapsody." It's truly immortal and that's a good feeling."
The new series of Queen The Greatest continues weekly throughout November. The limited-edition crystal-clear vinyl reissue of A Night At The Opera is available now.
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