Bohemian Rhapsody

According to Mercury's friend Chris Smith (a keyboard player in Smile), Mercury first started developing "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the late 1960s; Mercury used to play parts of songs he was writing at the time on the piano, and one of his pieces, known simply as "The Cowboy Song", contained lyrics that ended up in the completed version produced years later, in 1975, specifically, "Mama ... just killed a man."[11] Producer Roy Thomas Baker, who began working with Queen in 1972, related how Mercury once played the opening ballad section on the piano for him in Mercury's flat:

He played the beginning on the piano, then stopped and said, "And this is where the opera section comes in!" Then we went out to eat dinner.

Guitarist Brian May said the band thought that Mercury's blueprint for the song was "intriguing and original, and worthy of work".[13] According to May, much of Queen's material was written in the studio, but this song "was all in Freddie's mind" before they started.[14]

Queen spent a month rehearsing at Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey in mid-1975, and drummer Roger Taylor recalled that "Bohemian Rhapsody" was one of the songs the band worked on while they were there.[15] Recording began on 24 August 1975 at Rockfield Studio 1 near Monmouth, South Wales, after a three-week rehearsal at Penrhos Court, near Kington, Herefordshire. During the making of the track, four additional studios – Roundhouse, Sarm Studios, Scorpio Sound, and Wessex Sound Studios – were used.[16] According to some band members, Mercury mentally prepared the song beforehand and directed the band throughout.[14]

Mercury used a C. Bechstein concert grand piano, which he played in the promotional video and the UK tour. Due to the elaborate nature of the song, it was recorded in various sections.[17] The piano was allegedly the same one Paul McCartney had used to record the Beatles' song "Hey Jude",[1] as well as the same one Rick Wakeman used on David Bowie's 1971 album Hunky Dory.[18]

Baker recalled in 1999

"Bohemian Rhapsody" was totally insane, but we enjoyed every minute of it. It was basically a joke, but a successful joke. [laughs] We had to record it in three separate units. We did the whole beginning bit, then the whole middle bit and then the whole end. It was complete madness. The middle part started off being just a couple of seconds, but Freddie kept coming in with more "Galileos" and we kept on adding to the opera section, and it just got bigger and bigger. We never stopped laughing ... It started off as a ballad, but the end was heavy.[19]

Recording track sheet (replica)

May, Mercury, and Taylor reportedly sang their vocal parts continually for 10 to 12 hours a day.[14] The entire piece took three weeks to record, and in some sections featured 180 separate overdubs.[17] Since the studios of the time only offered 24 track analogue tape, it was necessary for the three to overdub themselves many times and "bounce" these down to successive sub-mixes. In the end, eighth-generation tapes were used.[16] The various sections of tape containing the desired sub-mixes had to be spliced (cut and assembled in the correct sequence). May recalled placing a tape in front of the light and being able to see through it, as the tape had been used so many times.[20]

A similar story was told in 1977 by Taylor regarding the elaborate overdubs and sub-mixes for "The March of The Black Queen" for the album Queen II. At that time, the band was using 16 track equipment.[21]

Producer Baker recalls that May's solo was done on only one track, rather than recording multiple tracks. May stated that he wanted to compose "a little tune that would be a counterpart to the main melody; I didn't just want to play the melody". The guitarist said that his better material stems from this way of working, in which he thought of the tune before playing it: "The fingers tend to be predictable unless being led by the brain."[14] According to Baker,

... the end of the song was much heavier because it was one of the first mixes to be done with automation ... If you really listen to it, the ballad starts off clean, and as the opera section gets louder and louder, the vocals get more and more distorted. You can still hear this on the CD. They are clearly distorted.[19]

"Bohemian Rhapsody" has been affiliated to the genres of progressive rock (sometimes called symphonic rock),[3][22][23] hard rock,[24][25] art rock,[26] and progressive pop.[27] The song is highly unusual for a popular single in featuring no chorus, combining disparate musical styles, and containing lyrics which eschew conventional love-based narratives, and instead make allusions to murder and nihilism.[2]

Music scholar Sheila Whiteley suggests that "the title draws strongly on contemporary rock ideology, the individualism of the bohemian artists' world, with rhapsody affirming the romantic ideals of art rock".[28] Commenting on bohemianism, Judith Peraino said,

Mercury intended ... [this song] to be a 'mock opera', something outside the norm of rock songs, and it does follow a certain operatic logic: Choruses of multi-tracked voices alternate with aria-like solos, the emotions are excessive, the plot confusing.[29]

"Bohemian Rhapsody" begins with an introduction, then goes into a piano ballad, before a guitar solo leads to an operatic interlude. A hard rock part follows this and it concludes with a coda. The song is in the keys of B♭ major, E♭ major, A major and F major, and is predominantly in ⁴
₄ meter. This musical format of writing a song as a suite with changes in style, tone, and tempo throughout was uncommon in most mainstream pop and rock music, but common in progressive rock, a genre which had reached its artistic and commercial zenith between 1970 and 1975 in the music of British bands such as Jethro Tull, Yes, Genesis, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Gentle Giant, Van der Graaf Generator, and Curved Air.[30] The music of progressive rock was characterised by dramatic contrasts, frequent shifts in tempo and in rhythmic character from one section of a composition to the next.[31] Bands from the genre blended rock with classical music, including its structural features, compositional practices, and instrumentation.[32] Queen had embraced progressive rock as one of their many diverse influences.[33]

"Bohemian Rhapsody" parodies many different elements of opera by using bombastic choruses, sarcastic recitative, and distorted Italian operatic phrases.[34] An embryonic version of this style had already been used in Mercury's earlier compositions for the band's "My Fairy King" (1973) and "The March of the Black Queen" (1974).

The New York Times commented that "the song's most distinct feature is the fatalistic lyrics". Mercury refused to explain his composition other than to say it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song's secret.[13] Brian May supports suggestions that the song contained veiled references to Mercury's personal traumas. He recalls "Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song."[36] May, though, says the band had agreed that the core of a lyric was a private issue for the composer.[13] In a BBC Three documentary about the making of "Bohemian Rhapsody", Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is "fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle".[14]

Despite this, critics, both journalistic and academic, have speculated over the meaning behind the song's lyrics. Some believe the lyrics describe a suicidal murderer haunted by demons or depict events just preceding an execution. The latter explanation points to Albert Camus's novel The Stranger, in which a young man confesses to an impulsive murder and has an epiphany before he is executed, as probable inspiration. When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations.[38] In the explanation, Queen states that "Bohemian Rhapsody" is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, "Bismillah" ("In the name of God" in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (the devil in Arabic).[39]

Other critics interpreted the lyrics as Mercury's way of dealing with personal issues.[13] Music scholar Sheila Whiteley observes that Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody".[28] He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. She suggests that the song provides an insight into Mercury's emotional state at the time, "living with Mary ('Mamma', as in Mother Mary) and wanting to break away ('Mamma mia let me go')".[35] Others suggest it as a veiled reference to coming out, and dealing with the repercussions of the sodomy laws of the time.[40]

Still others believe the lyrics were only written to fit with the music, and had no intended meaning; the D.J., television entertainer, and comedian Kenny Everett, who played an influential role in popularising the single on his radio show on Capital Radio, quoted Mercury as claiming the lyrics were simply "random rhyming nonsense".[36]

One of Side-A labels of the US single release

When the band wanted to release the single in 1975, various executives suggested to them that due to its length of 5 minutes and 55 seconds, it was too long and would never be a hit.[41] The song was played to other musicians who commented the band had no hope of it ever being played on radio.[14] According to producer Roy Thomas Baker, he and the band bypassed this corporate assessment by playing the song for Capital Radio D.J. Kenny Everett:

"we had a reel-to-reel copy but we told him he could only have it if he promised not to play it. 'I won't play it,' he said, winking ..."[16]

The plan worked — Everett teased his listeners by playing only parts of the song. Audience demand intensified when Everett played the full song on his show 14 times in 2 days.[13] Hordes of fans attempted to buy the single the following Monday, only to be told by record stores that it had not yet been released.[16] The same weekend, Paul Drew, who ran the RKO General stations in the U.S, heard the track on Everett's show in London. Drew managed to get a copy of the tape and started to play it in the U.S, which forced the hand of Queen's US label, Elektra. In an interview with Sound on Sound, Baker reflects that "it was a strange situation where radio on both sides of the Atlantic was breaking a record that the record companies said would never get airplay!"[16]

Eventually the unedited single was released, with "I'm in Love with My Car" as the B-side. Following Everett's escapade in October 1975, Eric Hall, a record plugger, gave a copy to David "Diddy" Hamilton to play on his weekday Radio One show. Hall stated "Monster, Monster! This could be a hit!"[42]

The song became the 1975 UK Christmas number one, holding the top position for nine weeks.[35] "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the first song ever to get to number one in the UK twice with the same version,[43] and is also the only single to have been Christmas number one twice with the same version. The second was upon its re-release (as a double A-side single with "These Are the Days of Our Lives") in 1991, following Mercury's death, staying at number 1 for 5 weeks.[44] The re-released version sold 673,000 copies in 1991 in the UK.[45]

In the US, the single was also a success, although initially to a lesser extent than in the UK. The single, released in December 1975, reached number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for sales of one million copies.[46]

In a retrospective article, Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone explained why the song performed less strongly in the US charts by saying that it is "the quintessential example of the kind of thing that doesn't exactly go over well in America".[14] Its chart run of 24 weeks, however, placed it at number 18 on Billboard's year-end chart, higher than some number 1s of the year.[47] With the Canadian record-buying public, the single fared better, reaching number one in the RPM national singles chart for the week ending 1 May 1976.[48]

"Bohemian Rhapsody" was re-released as a double A-side cassette single with "The Show Must Go On" in January 1992, following the death of Freddie Mercury, with proceeds going to the Magic Johnson Foundation for AIDS research. The song re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart after 16 years, reaching number 2, and spending 17 weeks on the chart.[49] After the release of the Queen biopic named after the song, it re-entered the charts for a third time at number 33, marking 26 years since it last charted.[50]

In March 2021 it was certified Diamond (10× platinum) in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units.[51] It had sold 4.4 million digital copies in the US as of September 2017.[52]

Though some artists had made video clips to accompany songs (including Queen themselves; for example, their earlier singles "Keep Yourself Alive", "Liar", "Seven Seas of Rhye" and "Killer Queen" already had "pop promos", as they were known at the time), it was only after the success of "Bohemian Rhapsody" that it became a regular practice for record companies to produce promotional videos for artists' single releases.[53] The Guardian stated it "ensured videos would henceforth be a mandatory tool in the marketing of music".[5] These videos could then be shown on television shows around the world, such as the BBC's Top of the Pops, without the need for the artist to appear in person. A promo video also allowed the artist to have their music broadcast and accompanied by their own choice of visuals, rather than dancers such as Pan's People. According to May, the video was produced so that the band could avoid miming on Top of the Pops since they would have looked off miming to such a complex song.[36] He also said that the band knew they would be set to appear at Dundee's Caird Hall on tour, a date which clashed with the programme, thus a promo would solve the issue.[14] The video has been hailed as launching the MTV age.[14][54]

The "Bohemian Rhapsody" music video was shot at Elstree Studios in November 1975

The band used Trillion, a subsidiary of Trident Studios, their former management company and recording studio. They hired one of their trucks and got it to Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, where the band were rehearsing for their tour. The video was directed by Bruce Gowers, who had directed a video of the band's 1974 performance at the Rainbow Theatre in London, and was recorded by cameraman Barry Dodd and assistant director/floor manager Jim McCutcheon. The video was recorded in just four hours on 10 November 1975, at a cost of £4,500.[17] Gowers reported that the band was involved in the discussion of the video and the result, and "was a co-operative to that extent, but there was only one leader."[14]

The video opens with a shot of the four band members standing in diamond formation with their heads tilted back in near darkness as they sing the a cappella part.[56] The lights fade up, and the shots cross-fade into close-ups of Mercury. The composition of the shot is the same as Mick Rock's cover photograph for their second album Queen II. The photo, inspired by a photograph of actress Marlene Dietrich, was the band's favourite image of themselves.[14] The video then fades into them playing their instruments. In the opera section of the video, the scene reverts to the Queen II standing positions, after which they perform once again on stage during the hard rock segment. In the closing seconds of the video Roger Taylor is depicted stripped to the waist, striking the tam tam in the manner of the trademark of the Rank Organisation's Gongman, familiar in the UK as the opening of all Rank film productions.[57]

All of the special effects were achieved during the recording, rather than editing. The visual effect of Mercury's face cascading away (during the echoed lines "Magnifico" and "Let me go") was accomplished by pointing the camera at a monitor, giving visual feedback, a glare analogous to audio feedback. The honeycomb illusion was created using a shaped lens. The video was edited within five hours because it was due to be broadcast the same week in which it was taped. The video was sent to the BBC as soon as it was completed and aired for the first time on Top of the Pops in November 1975.[14]

Although the song has become one of the most revered in popular music history,[58] the initial critical reaction was mixed. The UK music papers reacted with bemusement, recognising that the song was original and technically accomplished, but they mostly remained indifferent. Pete Erskine of NME observed that, "It'll be interesting to see whether it'll be played in its entirety on the radio. It's performed extremely well, but more in terms of production than anything else... Someone somewhere has decided that the boys' next release must sound 'epic'. And it does. They sound extremely self-important."[59]

Allan Jones of Melody Maker was unimpressed, describing the song as "a superficially impressive pastiche of incongruous musical styles" and that Queen "contrived to approximate the demented fury of the Balham Amateur Operatic Society performing The Pirates of Penzance... 'Bohemian Rhapsody' is full of drama, passion and romance and sounds rather like one of those mini-opera affairs that Pete Townsend [sic] used to tack on to the end of Who albums", before concluding, "The significance of the composition eludes me totally, though I must admit to finding it horrifically fascinating. It's likely to be a hit of enormous proportions despite its length."[60] Ray Fox-Cumming of Record Mirror was also left unmoved, saying, "It has no immediate selling point whatsoever: among its many parts. there's scarcely a shred of a tune and certainly no one line to latch onto. There's no denying that it's devilishly clever, encompassing everything from bits of operatic harmonies to snatches that sound like Sparks and David Cassidy, but, in the end the whole adds up to less than the sum of its parts." He did, however, say that it was "unthinkable" that it wouldn't be a hit.[61] The most positive review came from Sounds, which called it "impossibly disjointed and complex, but a dazzlingly clever epic from the fevered mind of Freddie Mercury".[62] Cash Box called it "a softly sung ode to the prospect of moving on from staid ways" with "good singing" and "good production."[63]

The a cappella opening was too complex to perform live, so Mercury tried various ways of introducing the song. When "Mustapha" became a live favourite, Mercury would often sub in that song's a cappella opening, which was easier to reproduce live as it was only one voice—this combination features in their 1979 live album Live Killers.[101] During their 1982 Hot Space Tour, and occasionally at other times, Mercury would do a piano improvisation (generally the introduction to "Death on Two Legs") that ended with the first notes of the song. Often, the preceding song would end, and Mercury would sit at the piano, say a quick word, and start playing the ballad section. At Live Aid where "Bohemian Rhapsody" was their opening song, Mercury commenced with the ballad section.[102]

From left to right: Deacon, Taylor and May in concert in Hanover in 1979. Behind the drum kit is the tam-tam used at the end of "Bohemian Rhapsody".

Initially following the song's release, the operatic middle section proved a problem for the band. Because of extensive multi-tracking, it could not be performed on stage.[103] The band did not have enough of a break between the Sheer Heart Attack and A Night at the Opera tours to find a way to make it work live, so they split the song into three sections that were played throughout the night. The opening and closing ballads were played as part of a medley, with "Killer Queen" and "March of the Black Queen" taking the place of the operatic and hard rock sections. In 1976 concerts where the same medley was played, the operatic section from the album would be played from tape as the introduction to the setlist. During this playback, Mercury would appear briefly to sing live for the line, "I see a little sillhouetto of a man".[104] As the song segued into the hard rock section, the band would emerge on the smoke-filled stage—the playback would end at this point, and the hard rock section would be performed live (without the final ballad section, which appeared later in the set).

Footage of Mercury singing "Magnifico" in the operatic section of the "Bohemian Rhapsody" music video during a Queen + Adam Lambert concert at the United Center, Chicago, June 2014.

Starting with the A Day at the Races Tour in 1977, the band adopted their lasting way of playing the song live. The opening ballad would be played on stage, and after May's guitar solo, the lights would go down, the band would leave the stage, and the operatic section would be played from tape, while coloured stage lights provided a light show based around the voices of the opera section.[103] Most playings of the opera section from the tape would often be accompanied by a portion of the song's music video containing the footage used for the operatic portion of the song. Other playings would be played over montages of footage filmed from the band members' other experiences throughout their daily lives. A blast of pyrotechnics after Taylor's high note on the final "for me" would announce the band's return for the hard rock section and closing ballad. Queen played the song in this form all through the Magic Tour of 1986. This style was also used for the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, with Elton John singing the opening ballad and then after the taped operatic section, Axl Rose singing the hard rock section. John and Rose sang the closing ballad part together in a duet.[105]

"Bohemian Rhapsody" was performed by Queen + Paul Rodgers throughout their tours, accompanied by a video of Mercury.[106] Footage from the Live at Wembley '86 was used for the 2005–06 tour, and the 1981 Montreal performance used for the Rock the Cosmos Tour. As with the Queen tours, the band went backstage for the operatic section, which was accompanied by a video tribute to Freddie Mercury. When the hard rock section began, the lights came back up to the full band on stage, including Rodgers, who took over lead vocals. Rodgers duetted with the recording of Mercury for the "outro" section, allowing the audience to sing the final "Nothing really matters to me", while the taped Mercury took a bow for the crowd. Rodgers would then repeat the line, and the final line ("Any way the wind blows") was delivered with one last shot of Mercury smiling at the audience. Commenting upon this staging, Brian May says that they "had to rise to the challenge of getting Freddie in there in a way which gave him his rightful place, but without demeaning Paul in any way. It also kept us live and 'present', although conscious and proud of our past, as we logically should be."[13]

Since 2012, May and Taylor have toured with former American Idol contestant Adam Lambert under the name Queen + Adam Lambert (following two one-off performances together in 2009 and 2011), with "Bohemian Rhapsody" regularly included at the end of their set.[107][108]

I always wanted to do something operatic. I wanted something with a mood setter at the start, going into a rock type of thing which completely breaks off into an opera section, a vicious twist and then returns to the theme. I don't really know anything about opera myself. Just certain pieces. I wanted to create what I thought Queen could do. It's not authentic... certainly not. It's no sort of pinch out of Magic Flute. It was as far as my limited capacity could take me.[216]

— Freddie Mercury, 1976

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 Prophet's 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.[217]

— Freddie Mercury, 1976

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 the UK first. And when we released it in Britain 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 the UK, 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.[218]

— John Deacon, 1977

The vocal harmonies was something we wanted to do from the beginning, as we are always keen to do that kind of thing. 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. The guitar solo 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.[219]

— Brian May, 1982

Source:[14]

• Freddie Mercury – lead and backing vocals, piano, operatic vocals (middle register)
• Brian May – electric guitar, operatic vocals (low register)
• Roger Taylor – drums, timpani, gong, operatic vocals (high register)
• John Deacon – bass guitar

• List of Bohemian Rhapsody cover versions
• List of best-selling singles in the United Kingdom
• List of best-selling singles in the United States

• Video on YouTube