Queen in the video for Bohemian Rhapsody in 1975. Photo / File
Tristram Fane Saunders traces the creation of Bohemian Rhapsody, the most successful British rock song ever.
Record producer Gary Langan was just 19 years old – a little silhouetto of a man – when he helped to create the most successful British rock song of all time. It was in 1975, while working as an assistant at London's Sarm Studios, making tea for musicians, preparing equipment and working on three-minute singles by teeny-bopper bands such as the Bay City Rollers, that he met Freddie Mercury.
"I'm a public school-educated boy from Wimbledon," says Langan. "This person walks into the room with his black painted nails, and he sits on a stool and undoes the top button on his tight satin pants. I'm sat there thinking, 'Ooh, this is a bit different to a David Cassidy session'."
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The making of Queen's hit Bohemian Rhapsody, dramatised in a new film out this week, was a monumental undertaking. The operatic vocals alone – with more than 100 overdubs – took three weeks to record. "I don't think I'd ever spent that long on an album – let alone a single song," Langan recalls.
Bohemian Rhapsody was the lead single of Queen's fourth record, A Night at the Opera, the most expensive album ever made at the time (£40,000, the equivalent of around £320,000 (NZ$630,000) today). It followed a difficult period for the group, hinted at in the album's opening song Death on Two Legs (Dedicated to...).
"You suck my blood like a leech," Mercury sang, "You've taken all my money and you want more." It was a none-too-subtle portrait of the band's former manager, Norman Sheffield, the head of the Trident label, whose grasp they had just escaped. Even though they were playing sell-out shows, with all three of their previous albums in the Top 20 chart at the same time, they were living on a salary of just £60 a week.
"They were tied into this rather unfair recording contract," says Lesley-Ann Jones, Mercury's biographer. "They were living in bedsits, dossing on other people's floors. They were massively successful but still skint."
It took £100,000 (NZ$197,000) to get them out of the contract, in a deal negotiated by John Reid, Elton John's manager and lover, who took the band under his wing.
A Night at the Opera is the sound of a band making the most of their newfound freedom – and the break from Trident can even be heard in small details, such as the ambient sound of Roger Taylor's drums. As guitarist Brian May explained in 2002: "The Trident studios drum sound was something legendary… Everything was so tight and small, it was the absolute antithesis of what we wanted."
Instead, added May, "precocious boys that we were, we forced everybody to record the drums the way we wanted, in a big studio with mics everywhere at a certain distance – but not too many close to the kit."
The band wanted the listener to feel they were there in the room, and the results – such as the first cymbal-crash two minutes into Bohemian Rhapsody – proved spine-tingling. They wouldn't have been able to capture that sound if it weren't for the perfectionism of Roy Thomas Baker, who had also jumped ship from Trident.
"Roy was the most flamboyant producer I've ever come across," says Langan. "He was fabulous, but he'd drive you nuts as an assistant. I remember thinking, 'Why are you bothering with this? It's 1am – can't we go home?' But when it came to the final mix, I realised why we stayed there for those extra hours. It all paid off."
To begin work on the album, Queen retreated to Rockfield, in Wales – the rural residential studio that had attracted Black Sabbath, MotÖrhead and many other bands looking to expand their horizons. "It was a really hallowed place – ghosts in the walls," says Jones. They rehearsed there for three weeks, mainly focusing on Bohemian Rhapsody.
Mercury was usually a fast writer, but the seeds of the song seem to have been in his mind for a long time. Chris Smith, briefly the keyboardist in May and Taylor's first band, Smile, has said the singer was toying with the line "Mama, just killed a man" as early as 1968. According to Taylor, Mercury wrote out all the harmonies "in little blocks on the back of a telephone directory," and carried the rest of the music in his head.
After laying down the song's piano, bass and drums backing track at Rockfield, they decamped to London to create the countless vocals and May's searing guitar solo, mostly working at Sarm, the quirky Brick Lane studio best known for recording the original Rocky Horror soundtrack.
It was necessary to deal with the sheer complexity of the material. "They worked 24-track recording way beyond its limits," Langan continues. "What I learnt, working with Queen and Roy, was that boundaries could be moved and rules could be twisted."
Not all of the band were sure about it. "You can't deliver an epic and not expect epic discussions," says Langan. "Some band members weren't entirely happy about it. They thought they could be in jeopardy." But Mercury, who Langan says had a knack for "throwing tantrums", won them over.
Others had their doubts. Elton John reportedly said he thought they would be "f---ing mad" to release it as a single. And Queen's record company EMI were just as sceptical, but the band forced their hand by slipping an advance copy of Bohemian Rhapsody to Capital Radio DJ Kenny Everett.
"I gave Kenny the copy," says Langan, "and Roy and Freddie were going, 'Now, Kenny, you mustn't play it this weekend, that would be very naughty of you.'"
Everett took the hint, and played it no fewer than 14 times in two days. When asked how it happened, he said his finger must have slipped.
On the Monday, EMI executives were baffled by demand for the record. Released on October 31 1975, it topped the charts through to December, becoming a Christmas Number One. It was propelled by the popularity of its accompanying film, one of the first modern music videos, largely created, the band have said, so that they could appear on Top of the Pops without actually having to turn up.
Unlike the song's lengthy recording, the video was shot in just four hours, using an outside broadcast truck of the kind usually used for cricket matches.
Bohemian Rhapsody went on to become the UK's third bestselling single of all time, beaten only by Band Aid's charity pop anthem, Do They Know It's Christmas? and Elton John's ballad for Princess Diana, Candle in the Wind. Its enduring appeal is partly down to its enigmatic lyrics. Jones thinks the mock-opera characters correspond to the band members ("Beelzebub was clearly Roger"). Tim Rice has called it Mercury's "coming-out song", a veiled reference to his sexuality. Langan, who worked with Queen on two further albums, felt it would be inappropriate to ask.
"Does it mean this, does it mean that, is all anybody wants to know," Mercury once said. "F--- them, darling. I will say no more than what any decent poet would tell you if you dared ask him to analyse his work: if you see it, dear, then it's there."
Bohemian Rhapsody is in NZ cinemas next Thursday.
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