It’s a bittersweet week for Queen fans this week. There’s something to celebrate with their pinnacle song Bohemian Rhapsody reached number one on the 23rd November and then the next day almost 16 years to the day of that feat we lost the maestro of that song Freddie Mercury.
As there has been a lot of death in these pandemic times let’s concentrate on the celebration of the song that broke all the boundaries. A song that not only became a national hit for the band but launched the band onto the world stage. Today the Beat Marches On to 23rd November 1975.
Back in 1975, Queen wasn’t the band we know today. They were at a make-or-break point in their career. There wasn’t any biopic about their lead singer Freddie Mercury’s life. No stage show based on the band’s music; Live Aid was still a decade away. The band had some success with a couple of tracks on their early singles The Seven Seas of Rhye and Killer Queen, the latter reaching number two in the UK.
Although some moderate success with the two singles the band were struggling to make a profit from the hits due to the rock and roll tale of bad management taking advantage of young bands. Queen decided to change managers at this time to help the financial situation and hired John Reid as their manager. Reid happened to also manage one of the world’s biggest pop stars at the time Elton John. Reid told the band to concentrate on making good music and he would take of the rest.
The band went to Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, South Wales. A converted farm with state-of-the-art equipment would become a legendary recording studio thanks to the songs and artists recording during this period. The band stayed there from August to September 1975 and recorded the majority of what would become their next album; A Night at the Opera which would become the world’s most expensive album produced at that time.
Bohemian Rhapsody was the song that took the longest to record, for obvious reasons. The complexity of the structure of the song took the band days to get all the different parts of the song right.
The song started as three individual songs written by lead singer Freddie Mercury over the years. Different parts jotted down on various scraps of paper that were close to hand at the time. Some parts were on the back of a telephone directory. (For younger readers that’s where people looked up phone numbers before Google)
After many, many overdubs on the single and taking a week to record the operatic bridge in the middle of the song was finished. The band heard it and they thought it was going to be something special, maybe not how big it would be, but special.
The record label managers however couldn’t see it. They thought it was too long at six minutes (the average song was normally half that) They asked to cut it down. That’s great but which part do you cut out? The way the song is structured you can’t cut out anything. It would just sound weird. The band stood their ground and told the managers no. Eventually, the label reluctantly said okay to release it as the lead single from the forthcoming album.
The song was sent to the lead music critics in the industry and they hated it. Every major music magazine thought the band had lost the momentum from their last single and thought it was the end of their career. Well, it’s not the first time the critics have been wrong.
Undeterred by what the critics thought the band gave an early copy to their friend and radio disc jockey Kenny Everett. He was told strictly by the band not to play the song on his show on Capital FM. He ignored them and played the song around 14 times in one weekend. The public loved the song.
After the song was driving up the charts, the band knew that the biggest music TV show would come calling. The show, called Top of the Pops was great for exposure because it was a primetime show but a lot of the artists and bands didn’t like appearing on the show. After all, you have to mime your song.
Queen didn’t want to appear on the show either plus they had a big tour to help promote the new release of the new album, so they did something unique. They decided to do a promotional video of the song.
The Promotional video wasn’t a new thing in music. A lot of the American bands who couldn’t get over to the UK to perform on the show used to send over videos to get airplay. These were normally done with the artist or band just singing in front of the camera or a live performance recorded from another show.
This is where Queen differs with their video compared to others. They brought in special effects which looked impressive but were mostly just the camera pointing at a monitor which gives the shadowing effect at the start. In just four short hours the product was finished, and they could be on TV without breaking their touring schedule.
By late November the song had reached the top of the charts. It would stay there for the next nine weeks. Not only did Queen get their first number one it had achieved the prestigious Christmas number one too. It wasn’t until 31st January 1976 when ABBA knocked off the song with “Mama Mia”. It went to number one again in the UK when the song was released after Mercury’s untimely death in 1991. It again topped the charts over Christmas and became the first and only song by the same artist to do this twice.
From Its release in 1975, the song went to the top of the charts in six different countries. It also reached the top ten in a further three countries including the USA where it went to number nine. It would reach the top of the American charts, but it would take 17 years to get there after the song was featured in the film Wayne’s World. The film released in 1992 features a scene where the main characters are in a car playing the song and they all start headbanging to the heavy guitar part. It’s one of those things you can’t resist but join in. See for yourself below:
Bohemian Rhapsody Wayne’s World HD – YouTube
Bohemian Rhapsody propelled the career of Queen to dizzying heights. A band that dared to produce and release a mini rock opera as a single in the three-minute single era knew they had to have something special. Sure, there were longer number-one singles, Hey Jude by The Beatles and Bat out of Hell by Meat Loaf but they were structured like a pop song should. Nothing was like Rhapsody.
Forty-five years on and nobody knows what the song means, or what’s it about. People assumed it was Freddie admitting his sexuality, others think it’s what he’s literally singing about a man who killed and trying to come to terms with it. Some people want to find meaning to the song but Freddie himself has been quoted as saying it was random rhyming nonsense. With using words like Scaramouche and Beelzebub it could be just that. The mystery is what helps the aura of the song’s greatness. One thing we do know it turned four English University graduates from rock stars into rock Gods.
The Beat Marches On is a music blog written by Jimmy Whitehead. Jimmy has been blogging for six years specialising in Sports (especially American Football). If you want to follow Jimmy on Twitter: @Jimmy_W1987
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If anyone reading this would like to read more about this story, there are a couple of YouTube videos used for research. These are:
The Story of Bohemian Rhapsody – YouTube
Inside The Rhapsody – Queen (Full Documentary) – YouTube
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