Ladies and gentlemen...
Bohemian RhapsodyWritten by: Freddie Mercury
Musicians:
Freddie Mercury - vocals, piano, operatic vocals
Brian May - guitars, operatic vocals
John Deacon - bass guitar
Roger Taylor - drums, timpani, gong, operatic vocals
- Ok in reality what can be said about this song that hasn't been said?
- In the UK issued as a single in 1975 where it hit #1 for nine weeks. Reissued in December 1991 in the UK where it hit #1 again. In fact it has the honor of being the only single in UK history to hold the #1 slot in four different calendar years. 1975, 1976, 1991, and 1992. In the US it initially hit #9 in 1975 and then when re-released in 1992 it hit #2.
- Worldwide - Issued as a single in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, The Netherlands (where it hit #1), Italy, Japan (where it hit #48), New Zealand, Yugoslavia, Poland, Turkey. Reissued in 1991 in Japan and the Netherlands (where it hit #2)
- Winner of the Best British Single of 25 Years. Often voted the greatest song of all time by radio polls in the UK (too many to name)...often side by side with
Imagine by John Lennon.
- Early titles include:
Real Life and
The Cowboy Song.
- When they began playing it live, they had no idea how to do the overdubbed choir so they tried by opening the concerts with a pre-recorded opera section, and enter during the hard rock section. Then they would later on in the concert play the ballad as part of the medley. Then in 1977 they decided to start playing it the way they play it since. It starts with the piano and then the band leave the stage for a light show and a pre-recorded backing choir and then they come back on stage with fireworks for the ending.
QUOTES:
- “
Bohemian Rhapsody didn’t just come out of thin air. I did a bit of research, although it was tongue-in-cheek and it was a mock opera. Why not? I certainly wasn’t saying I was an opera fanatic and I knew everything about it. We wanted to experiment with sound. Sometimes we used three studios simultaneously.
Bohemian Rhapsody took bloody ages to record but we had all the freedom we wanted and we’ve been able to go to greater extremes. – Freddie Mercury
- "The drums, the bass, and maybe the guide guitar and piano from Freddie have got to be ten or twelve tracks and it only leaves you another twelve to fool around with, which isn’t very much when you look at the amount of vocals that are going on. You had to keep bouncing things down, without losing the quality of everything, and we couldn’t even go back a stage. Once you’d gone down a route then nine times out of ten it would destroy what you’d already done, so you had to
make sure that what you were doing was a hundred percent right, because there was no undo button in those days. – Gary Langan (assistant engineer)
- “I’m really pleased about the operatic thing. I really wanted to be outrageous with vocals because we’re always getting compared with other people, which is very stupid. If you really listen to the operatic bit there are no comparisons, which is what we want.” – Freddie Mercury
- “
Bohemian Rhapsody was really Freddie’s baby from the beginning. He came in and knew exactly what he wanted. The backing track was done with just piano, abss, and drums with a few spaces for other things to go in, like the tic-tic-tic-tic on the hi-hat to keep the time and Freddie sang a guide vocal at the time but he had all his harmonies written out , and it was really just a question of doing it.” –
Brian May
- “Freddie used to come into the studio armed with sheets and sheets of paper with notes scribbled all over them in his own particular fashion. It wasn’t standard musical notation, but As and Bs and Cs and sharps in blocks – like buses zooming all over his bits of paper. He had the song all worked out when he came in. We played a backing track which left the gaps. And he would go,’Bum bum bum bum, that’s what happens here…’” – Brian May
- "A lot of people slammed ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ but who can you compare that to? Name one group that’s done an operatic single. We were adamant that
Bohemian Rhapsody could be a hit in its entirety. We have been forced to make compromises but cutting up a song will never be one of them!” – Freddie Mercury
- "I got a call in 1975 – I was living in a beautiful honey-coloured Cotswold stone pub – from Freddie Mercury, who said ‘Ken, I don’t know what I’ve done. I was in the studio the other day and I finished off this single and it’s about eight minutes long and I don’t know whether it’s going to be a hit.’ And I said, ‘Oh, bring it over. We’ll stick it on one of my tape machines in the studio and give it a listen. I doubt anyone’ll ever play it, that length, because people are frightened of long records. They might thing the DJ’s gone to the loo and forgotton to come back!’ So he brought it over and plonked it on the machine and of course this glorious operatic wonder came out, and I said, ‘Oh, forget about this. It could be
a half an hour, it’s still gonna be number one for centuries.’ So I remember him being so unsure about this piece of genius. It was very odd, when you look at it in retrospect, because it was so great. I mean it’s like Mozart saying ‘Ohhh, I don’t know whether my clarinet concerto’s going to take off.’ Silly, really. I mean, it’s got Number One written all over it from the first note.” – Kenny Everett (DJ and friend of Freddie’s)
- “It’s not a stage number. A lot of people don’t like us leaving the stage but to be honest, I’d rather leave than have us playing to a backing tape. If you’re out there and you’ve got backing tapes, it’s a totally false situation. So we’d rather be up front about it and say, ‘Look this is not something you can play on stage. It was multi-layered in the studio. We’ll play it because we think you want to hear it.” – Brian May
- "I'm going to shatter some illusions, it was just one of those pieces I wrote for the album: just writing my batch of songs. In its early stages I almost rejected it, but then it grew. We started deciding on a single about halfway through. There were a few contenders - we were thinking of
The Prophets Song at one point - but then
Bohemian Rhapsody seemed the one. There was a time when the others wanted to chop it around a bit, but I refused. If it was going to be released, it would be in its entirety. We knew it was very risky, but we had so much confidence in that song - I did anyway. I felt, underneath it all, that if it was successful it would earn a lot of respect. People were all going, You're joking, they'll never play it, you'll only hear the first few bars and then they'll fade it out. We had numerous rows. EMI were shocked - A six-minute single? You must be joking! The same in America - Oh, you just got away with it in Britain." - Freddie Mercury - January 1976, Sounds
- "When we finished the album, the Night at the Opera album, that was the track on it that we thought we were gonna release as a single in England first. And when we released it in England we didn't necessarily think it'd be released in America, cause we know even over here, you know, the AM tastes are even more (hesitates) stricter. Anyway we did have thoughts about even in England, perhaps editing it down at all, but we listened to it over and over again and there was no way we could edit it. We tried a few ideas, but if you edited it, you always lost some part of the song, so we had to leave it all in. And luckily it took off anyway." John Deacon - 1977, Innerview
- Interviewer: Who came up with the idea for the vocal harmonies used in 'Bohemian Rhapsody'?
"We always were keen on that kind of thing. That was something which we wanted to do from the beginning. We wanted to be a group that could do the heaviness of hard rock, but also have harmonies swooping around all over the place. We thought there was some real power and emotion in that combination."
Interviewer: Was the first solo in that song very difficult for you?
"No, that was pretty much off the cuff, except I think I had plenty of time to think about that one. I remember playing along with it in the studio for a while when other things were being done. I knew what kind of melody I wanted to play." - Brian May - 1982, On The Record
ALTERNATE RELEASED VERSIONS:
OPERATIC SECTION A CAPELLA- NOT essential but nice. On the Bonus EP of the 2011 Island Remaster of
A Night At The Opera. It's an interesting listen.
FRENCH PROMO EDIT- There is no YT video and it's disappeared. It would be a rare find indeed to find this track. Despite all the talk of not editing, in 1978 France issued a vinyl promo of the song with an edited version which took the song down to 3:30. Supposedly it cut the opera section out entirely. I have to believe this was done without the consent of the band.
UNRELEASED VERSIONS:
DEMO EXTRACTSNO YT VID
- NOT essential but nice - a quick snippet.
UNRELEASED AND UNHEARD:
EXTENDED DEMO- Rumors have it that there is a demo that is over a minute longer than the final version - supposedly extra parts in the opera section. This is unconcernd.
ANTHONY ACID REMIX NY'S DEEPEST HARDEST HOUSE MIX 1991-1992- It is unknown if this ever saw the light of day and what it was even for. But a famous Queen scholar has confirmed it's existence.
OTHER VERSIONS:
QUEEN + BAD NEWS- Bad News is the heavy metal "band" of the comedy troupe The Young Ones. Brian produced the album and supposedly John Deacon sang backing vocals". Yes it's supposed to be bad. Supposed to be ear splitting bad. Funny thing was Brian was quoted as saying the band had started to get good by the end of their time together so they had to actually try to play bad!
QUEEN + THE MUPPETSAn amazing cult hit. The Muppets covered the song with Queen's blessing - Queen gave them the real backing track and so it makes it a real Queen + The Muppets collaboration. The band loved it.
ORCHESTRAL MIX- A Fan Mix but this guy is good. I think it must be his job. He does nothing but remix Queen songs....and what he does with them? Wow. I won't put fan mixes up much but this one is REALLY REALLY worth listening to.
OFFICIALLY RELEASED LIVE PERFORMANCES
LIVE KILLERS VERSION- AUDIO only.
- The song begins with a short vocal rendition of
Mustapha from the
Jazz album....We'll get there.
ROCK MONTREAL VERSION- One of the best versions of the track.
ON FIRE AT THE BOWL VERSIONNO YT VID
- Milton Keynes 1982 with a short piano improv to open it.
LIVE MAGIC VERSION- AUDIO only, which is a shame considering it's taken from Knebworth Park, the last time Freddie performed the song.
- Of course what's worse is that it's edited. The
Live Magic album is terrible as in order to fit a 2CD concert onto 1 CD they edited almost every song in someways, cutting verses, etc. Bo Rap loses the opera section.
LIVE AT WEMBLEY VERSION- Great versions from both Day 1 and Day 2 of these famous gigs.
HUNGARIAN RHAPSODY- This was the version they used for Q+AL
QUEEN + ELTON JOHN + AXL ROSE - THE FREDDIE MERCURY TRIBUTE 1992- A review I once read made a very interesting point. When Elton and Axl end the song together it seems to be a dichotomy - Freddie at his glitziest and Freddie at his most dangerous...yet Freddie was both
QUEEN + WE WILL ROCK YOU CAST - GOLDEN JUBILEE 2002- With the cast, they were actually able to finally pull off the multi-vocaled middle section!
QPR - RETURN OF THE CHAMPIONS VERSIONNO YT VID
- Slightly different from QAL. Here Freddie takes the whole song except the hard rock section and duets with Paul at the end. I have to think they had Adam sing the first verse as a way to shake up how they performed it with Paul.
QPR - LIVE IN UKRAINEUNRELEASED LIVE PERFORMANCES:
OPENING AT HYDE PARK 1976- Also goes into
Ogre Battle Unfortunately all the video connections had a flutter to Freddie's mic which really effected how it came across. The band have a good copy I know though as they have released one or two very good versions of songs.
MEDLEY AT HAMMERSMITH 1975- The medley began and ended with
Bohemian Rhapsody and had
Killer Queen and
The March Of The Black Queen as well.
WE WILL ROCK YOU 2006 - FREDDIE'S BIRTHDAY- Quite often during
We Will Rock You's run at the Dominion Theater, Brian would pop on stage during
Bohemian Rhapsody as a ghost to do the guitar solo. This is one of those times, but Roger joins in the fun as well during the hard rock section. This was in celebration of Freddie's birthday in 2006.
QUEEN + X-FACTOR FINALISTS 2009- The night after a Queen night on X-Factor.
QAL - HAMMERSMITH - 2012- Adam handles it very well and I loved him introducing Freddie to the crowd - made for a wonderful moment. He rocked it out well at the end and overall Queen's greatest song lived on and I'm sure it was quite a moment for him to have auditioned for AI with this song and then to do it with Queen. Wow. Good for him
GREATEST VIDEO HITS MAKING OF BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY- This is a full on 27 minute look. Brian sits at a mixing desk with an engineer and takes you through the different parts of the song, stripping elements so you can hear things and see the brilliance bit by bit. THIS is AMAZING.
THE MAKING OF BOHEMIAN RHAPSODYTHE INSIGHT ON BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY- More like the other makings of - but all very interesting!
PERSONAL NOTES:
- Not much I can add. It is the song that first made me notice them that's for sure. It deserves all the accolades it gets for playing with many genres in one song.
Next up...
God Save The Queen
, I want to hear FM and this crowd is singing his song! I want to hear FM sing so I was frustrated. Yeah, especially that TY from South America (Rio) ;D 
