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\n<\/p>\n“And now, on with the opera. Let joy be unconfined. Let there be dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons, and necking in the parlour” – Groucho Marx in the 1935 film A Night At The Opera.<\/p>\n
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Prologue<\/p>\n Queen<\/a> are deep into recording their new album at Rockfield Studios in Wales. It\u2019s been a tiring couple of days as they attempt to get their heads around an outrageously operatic new song Freddie Mercury<\/a> has concocted, titled Bohemian Rhapsody. Right now, Mercury and drummer Roger Taylor<\/a> are taking a break.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n They\u2019re watching an old black-and-white Marx Brothers film on a primitive video player owned by the band\u2019s producer Roy Thomas Baker. The film features Groucho Marx in full cigar-brandishing, eyebrow-waggling, wisecracking mode as Otis B Driftwood, an entrepreneur trying to matchmake two singers. The title of the film is A Night At The Opera.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n Mercury and Taylor exchange a look. \u201cThat\u2019s a great title,\u201d one of them says. \u201cWe\u2019ll have it.\u201d<\/p>\n Act I: ‘You suck my blood like a leech\u2026’<\/p>\n At some point in late 1974 or early 1975, Queen bassist John Deacon turned to his bandmate Roger Taylor and broke the bad news.<\/p>\n You know,\u201d Deacon told Taylor, \u201cwe\u2019ve got fifteen hundred quid in the bank.\u201d<\/p>\n Fifteen hundred quid in the mid-70s wasn\u2019t a trivial amount of money, but it wasn\u2019t exactly big bucks either. Especially not for Queen, already three albums into their career.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were supposedly a successful band, an international band,\u201d says Taylor, silver-haired and elegant today, radiating the easy charisma of a man who settled into the job of being a rock star a long time ago. \u201cWe\u2019d generated a lot of money, just not for ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe were in a bad state financially,\u201d says Sir Brian May<\/a>, still as recognisable as ever thanks to that now white thatch of hair. \u201cWe owed everybody money. We knew that if the next album didn\u2019t succeed, the ship would sink. But we were defiant.\u201d<\/p>\n That defiance fuelled Queen to make the most opulent, most joyous, most pivotal album of their career. One that, with the help of an outrageous and freakishly huge hit single, would save their career and give them a future.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n \u201cA Night At The Opera was a hugely important album,\u201d says May. \u201cIt opened up the world for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Creatively, Queen were on fire. They had carved out unique space for themselves with their first three albums: 1973\u2019s self-titled debut<\/a>, 1974\u2019s Queen II<\/a> and the same year\u2019s Sheer Heart Attack<\/a>. They didn\u2019t sound like Led Zeppelin, Genesis or Bowie, but they had a little of the spirit of all three, along with a bit of No\u00ebl Coward, The Who and Aretha Franklin.<\/p>\n \n Brian May, Roger Taylor and Freddie Mercury recording vocals for A Night At The Opera at Scorpio Sound studios in London, September 11, 1975 (Image credit: Watal Asanuma\/Shinko Music\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n Behind the scenes, things were less happy. In 1972, the band had signed a deal with sibling entrepreneurs Norman and Barry Sheffield, owners of Trident Studios in London\u2019s Soho. Under the company name Trident, the Sheffields invested money in the band, funding everything from studio time to stage clothes. But Trident also managed the band, controlling their publishing and music rights. Money was being made, says Brian May, but Queen weren\u2019t seeing much of it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe owed everybody,\u201d the guitarist says. \u201cWe were in a lot of debt. Freddie, in particular, was very upset by the situation. He felt that it was stopping him moving forward and making this a career. He couldn\u2019t even afford a piano. It was hard. By that point, we were serious about what we were doing. It wasn\u2019t \u2018Let\u2019s give this a try\u2019, it was our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n The future wasn\u2019t completely bleak. Even Queen\u2019s perilous finances couldn\u2019t dent their confidence.<\/p>\n \u201cFreddie, Brian and myself had belief in the band,\u201d says Taylor. \u201cI think John was slightly more sceptical. Well, he was quite tight [laughs]. I don\u2019t think he was as far-sighted as we were, but what can you say?\u201d<\/p>\n In the bassist\u2019s defence, he had got married in January 1975, while the band were deep in the hole to Trident. But still, Queen were agitating for a move away from their managers. One of the people on their radar was Led Zeppelin<\/a> manager Peter Grant.<\/p>\n \u201cWe loved Zeppelin and we loved Peter,\u201d says Taylor. \u201cHe was a fearsome man. Hell of a manager.\u201d<\/p>\n Grant had a proven track record and the muscle and know-how to extricate Queen from their Trident deal and solve their financial crisis. But there was one caveat: Queen would have to sign to Swan Song. And they weren\u2019t ready to play second fiddle to anyone, not even Led Zeppelin.<\/p>\n \u201cBad Company<\/a> did that and they did very well out of it,\u201d says Taylor. \u201cBut it wasn\u2019t what we wanted. We were far too strong-minded.\u201d<\/p>\n Salvation eventually came in the form of John Reid, a businesslike Scotsman who had been Elton John<\/a>\u2019s manager and lover since the early 1970s.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn had different kinds of plans, a longer-term view,\u201d says May. \u201cThat filled us with optimism.\u201d<\/p>\n Taylor is more blunt. \u201cIt meant we might actually make some money.\u201d<\/p>\n With Reid\u2019s assistance, Queen disentangled themselves from their deal with Trident and signed up with him. \u201cHe promised us he would sort out all the business side,\u201d says May. \u201cHe said: \u2018Don\u2019t you guys worry, you go away and make the best album you\u2019ve ever made.\u2019 And we were in that mood. But no matter how great a manager you\u2019ve got, if the next album doesn\u2019t sell, you\u2019re in the mire.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Queen at Scorpio Sound (one of several studios they used for recording A Night At The Opera) L-R: John Deacon, producer Roy Thomas Baker, Freddie Mercury, Brian May and Roger Taylor (Image credit: Watal Asanuma\/Shinko Music\/Getty Images)Act II: ‘Don\u2019t fool with fools who\u2019ll turn away\u2026’<\/p>\n Queen\u2019s fourth album didn\u2019t arrive out of nowhere, although the musical path that brought them there was a zig-zagging one. Their debut had been an album for people in denim who liked heavy rock, albeit heavy rock with plenty of charisma, flamboyance and musical ambition \u2013 Mercury\u2019s outr\u00e9 My Fairy King, Great King Rat and Liar feel like the seedlings from which later more famous glories would sprout.<\/p>\n Queen II was different. It filleted out the most ambitious moments of its predecessor and spread them out across an entire album. Not for it the traditional Side A and Side B, but rather Side White and Side Black, matching its chess-piece centrepieces: May\u2019s White Queen (As It Began) and Mercury\u2019s The March Of The Black Queen. Their critics, and even some fans, were unconvinced by this air of cultivated grandeur.<\/p>\n \u201cQueen II wasn\u2019t well received by everyone,\u201d says May. \u201cAt the time, a lot of people thought: \u2018Oh, what\u2019s this? This isn\u2019t rock\u2019n\u2019roll any more. What have they done?\u2019 And in a way we made Sheer Heart Attack to lay that ghost to rest: \u2018Let\u2019s make something simple and easy that people can get.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Sheer Heart Attack, released nine months later, was certainly less filigreed and more direct than its predecessor, but it was hardly the sound of a band dumbing down.<\/p>\n \u201cI was very pleased with Sheer Heart Attack,\u201d says Roger Taylor. \u201cI remember driving somewhere or other with Fred and thinking, \u2018We\u2019re going to have to do something even better, and it\u2019s not going to be easy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Still, for May, their next record had to hew closer to the sumptuous spirit of Queen II than Sheer Heart Attack\u2019s rock\u2019n\u2019roll razzle dazzle. \u201cI thought: \u2018We\u2019ve made the sensible rock album, let\u2019s do what we really want to do now.\u2019 I don\u2019t know if you\u2019d call it indulgent, but it was a determination to be ourselves in every possible way we could.\u201d<\/p>\n It helped that Queen had two strong and distinct songwriters in Mercury and May, and a third in Taylor, who was beginning to find his feet. Even at that stage, the singer was a formidable talent.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was quite fearsome,\u201d May acknowledges. \u201cYou never knew what he was going to come in with. Was I intimidated by him? Yes, I think so. In a good way: \u2018This is inspiring. I have to get my shit together.\u2019 We were competitive, all of us. You get spurred on by things like that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The songs they came up with for the next album would match Queen II for opulence, and they also had the stylistic breadth of Sheer Heart Attack. They needed both. This album was make or break for Queen.<\/p>\n \n Freddie Mercury at the grand piano at Ridge Farm Studios, July 14, 1975 (Image credit: Watal Asanuma\/Shinko Music\/Getty Images)Act III: ‘I feel like dancing in the rain\u2026’<\/p>\n Queen had prepped well. They spent most of July and some of August at Ridge Farm Studios in Sussex. There they rehearsed the songs they\u2019d written so far and relaxed by playing pool and tennis (Mercury was reputedly a demon on the court). Mercury had rented a white Bechstein piano for the sessions, hence his credit for \u201cBechstein debauchery\u201d on the album.<\/p>\n In mid-August, they decamped to Rockfield Sudios, a converted farm in bucolic Monmouthshire, where much of A Night At The Opera was recorded, and recording began in earnest. The task of co-producing the album once again fell to Roy Thomas Baker, who had worked with the band on their first three albums, first as a glorified engineer on the debut and then as a fully fledged producer on Queen II and Sheer Heart Attack. Baker, who died in April 2025, was a larger-than-life character who could match any musician for ego and stubbornness. He needed it \u2013 producing Queen wasn\u2019t an easy job.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were very precocious boys,\u201d May concedes. \u201cI imagine we must have been quite difficult to deal with. We were quite insistent. We knew what we were trying to do at that point. We were doing a lot of our own production in a way.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t just outsiders who butted heads with Queen. They often butted heads with each other, not least May and Taylor. Mercury may have increasingly relished the role of diva, but it was often he who poured oil on troubled waters.<\/p>\n \u201cWe needed someone who would be the diplomat. And, strangely enough, Freddie was that guy,\u201d says May. \u201cOne of Freddie\u2019s great catchphrases was: \u2018We don\u2019t compromise.\u2019 But within the band, we did. And that\u2019s why we survived.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFred was fantastic,\u201d says Taylor. \u201cHe was so enthused about everything, and so creative. When someone had an idea, he\u2019d chase it down. He\u2019d spend countless hours at the desk with the engineer, balancing the harmonies. He normally knew what he wanted. Mind you, we all thought we did.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Down time playing pool at Ridge Farm (Image credit: Watal Asanuma\/Shinko Music\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n Mercury certainly knew what he wanted from the song that would open the album. Death On Two Legs was a forceful rocker that opened with Mercury\u2019s piano and May\u2019s wailing guitar, then exploded in a storm of wailing guitars and vituperative lyrics. \u2018You suck my blood like a leech, you break the law and you breach,\u2019 snarled Freddie, going on to describe the object of his ire as \u2018a dog with disease\u2026 king of the sleaze\u2019. Although the song appeared on the album\u2019s track-listing with the ambiguous addendum \u201cDedicated to\u2026\u201d, the villain of the piece wasn\u2019t difficult to work out: the band\u2019s hated former managers Norman and Barry Sheffield.<\/p>\n \u201cFred was so angry, there was pure bile coming out,\u201d says Taylor. \u201cDid we try to rein him in? Oh no. It was very vitriolic, but I think it was deserved. We were all for it. It was rather well put, I thought.\u201d<\/p>\n Norman Sheffield didn\u2019t agree. He sued the band and EMI for defamation. The case was settled out of court, although that didn\u2019t stop Mercury from describing his b\u00eate noire as \u201ca real motherfucker of a gentleman\u201d at live shows.<\/p>\n While Death On Two Legs was the singer at his most caustic, Love Of My Life showed him at his most delicate. A delicate ballad, it featured May playing harp.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went and rented one from some dusty old place,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was hugely out of tune. And then once you\u2019d tuned up, whenever somebody opened the door and a draft came through, it would go out of tune again. I\u2019m pretty certain I never played the harp again after that.\u201d<\/p>\n The song\u2019s subject has been debated over the years. Mary Austin, Mercury\u2019s then-girlfriend and lifelong confidante, seemed to be the obvious inspiration, but John Reid later revealed that the singer told him it was about David Minns, the EMI executive with whom Mercury had his first serious male relationship. Typically, Freddie denied it was about anybody in particular, saying he\u2019d made the lyrics up.<\/p>\n \n Queen in the live room at\u00a0 Ridge Farm (Image credit: Watal Asanuma\/Shinko Music\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n By this point, Queen considered musical boundaries a distraction to be swatted away rather than an obstacle to be surmounted. Like Sheer Heart Attack before it, A Night At The Opera was a musical universe in itself. Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon and Seaside Rendezvous had Mercury channelling his inner No\u00ebl Coward, Deacon\u2019s You\u2019re My Best Friend was a sweet love letter to his wife, Veronica, that featured the bassist playing electric piano, the first time the instrument had appeared on a Queen track. May\u2019s similarly nostalgic Good Company found him recreating the sound of an entire trad jazz band on guitar. \u201cWhich took forever,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019d do it like that today.\u201d<\/p>\n Less arduous to write and record was \u201939, a breezy skiffle-style shanty with a sing-song melody and yearning lyrics that put a sci-fi spin on the frontier tales of the Old West, with a group of astronauts exploring space to find a new home for humanity. But ever the astronomy student, May rooted it in hard science.<\/p>\n \u201cI had this thought in my head that if you go close to the speed of light in a circle, Einstein\u2019s theory of general relativity tells you that your clock goes at a different speed,\u201d he says. \u201cIt could be that you come back after what you think is a year as an astronaut but it\u2019s a hundred years later back on Earth. You would come back to find your children or even grandchildren grown up. It\u2019s not the physics that got me, it\u2019s the emotional content. It still sends shivers up my spine.\u201d<\/p>\n At the other end of the musical spectrum were the guitarist\u2019s Sweet Lady and Taylor\u2019s I\u2019m In Love With My Car. The former was a roaring rocker with a throaty riff, written in unconventional waltz time. Like many of May\u2019s songs, Sweet Lady was about a conflicted love affair, although the brilliantly baffling line \u2018You call me sweet like I\u2019m some kind of cheese\u2019 undercut any seriousness. \u201cIt was quite spiky to play,\u201d May says. \u201cI don\u2019t think Roger liked it.\u201d (\u201cI don\u2019t hate it,\u201d Taylor protests.)<\/p>\n I\u2019m In Love With My Car was no less revved-up. The song itself was inspired by petrolhead roadie Jonathan Harris, and the Alfa Romeo-driving drummer rasped his way through it like the louche boy racer they both were. The song featured an absolute zinger in the line: \u2018Told my girl I\u2019d have to forget her, while I buy me a new carburettor\u2019. \u201cI was quite proud of that one,\u201d he says of that line. \u201cBrian thought it was some kind of joke. But he was writing flimsy Victorian melodramas.\u201d<\/p>\n Act IV: ‘Listen to the madman\u2026’<\/p>\n Legend has it that the first time Freddie Mercury played an early version of Bohemian Rhapsody to Roy Thomas Baker, he stopped halfway through and said: \u201cAnd this is where the opera bit comes in.\u201d The producer later said he laughed at the outrageousness of it all.<\/p>\n Brian May and Roger Taylor had no such reaction.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople have a hard time understanding how unsurprising Bohemian Rhapsody was to us,\u201d May says. \u201c\u2018If you look at the first album, you\u2019ve got My Fairy King, which is very complex and goes all over the place. And then you\u2019ve got March Of The Black Queen on the second album, which is enormously complicated. It\u2019s way more complicated than Bohemian Rhapsody. So it wasn\u2019t that much of a surprise to us. It was just: \u2018We\u2019ll do another one of these things.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnother one of these things\u201d turned into Queen\u2019s most famous song, and one that best embodied A Night At The Opera\u2019s title. Bohemian Rhapsody can be broken up into three sections, bookended by an a capella intro and a brief outro. The first section set the scene: Mercury at the piano, confessing murder to his mother and aware that he must face the consequences. The third section, dramatic and heavy, has the singer furiously raging against his own impending death. The middle section is Mercury\u2019s \u201copera bit\u201d – a cavalcade of tumbling \u2018Bismillah\u2019s and \u2018Gallileo\u2019s, written by a man who admitted he knew nothing about opera. But what it lacked in formality and meaning it made up for in audacity. And it wasn\u2019t just Mercury who was all-in on it.<\/p>\n \u201cAs we were constructing the opera bit,\u201d Taylor recalls, \u201cwe were getting more and more wild: \u2018Stick a bit more on, stick another bit in, it\u2019ll all be fine when it gets to the heavy section.\u2019 And it was. We were planting our flag in the ground: \u2018This is really us \u2013 it\u2019s a bit mad but it\u2019s got everything in it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In subsequent decades, the deeper meaning of Bohemian Rhapsody has been dissected, analysed, parsed and re-parsed. It\u2019s been interpreted as everything from Mercury\u2019s exploration of his Zoroastrian roots to a coded message about his sexuality. Mercury never explained what his songs were about, and May and Taylor can\u2019t shed much light on it today.<\/p>\n \u201cWe never really asked each other about our lyrics,\u201d the guitarist offers. \u201cIt\u2019s an emotional song, one something everyone can relate to,\u201d says the drummer.<\/p>\n \n (Image credit: Queen Productions Ltd)<\/p>\n If there\u2019s a secret meaning behind the song, then Mercury took it with him to his grave. In the end, Bohemian Rhapsody might just be a song about a man with a gun and his mum.<\/p>\n For most bands, one towering epic per album would be enough, but A Night At The Opera had two. If Bohemian Rhapsody was Mercury\u2019s magnum opus, then The Prophet\u2019s Song was May\u2019s. At eight minutes, this portentous, quasi-biblical epic is two minutes longer than Bohemian Rhapsody and, with its cascading choral mid-section, just as ambitious. The finished track sounds like a mystical hard rock fever-dream \u2013 unsurprising given that\u2019s how the beginnings of the song came to May.<\/p>\n \u201cEven now, I can kind see this strange man, this prophet, that I dreamed about,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I had a hell of a job translating it all into music. I remember Freddie banging out bits of Bohemian Rhapsody in the courtyard out in Rockfield while I was wrestling with what I was trying to do with the various versions of the verses and choruses in The Prophet\u2019s Song.<\/p>\n \u201cYou get this moment of doubt where you think: \u2018Maybe this is going to fall apart, maybe this isn\u2019t going to work at all.\u2019 A lot of people would have gone: \u2018What the hell are you up to?\u2019 But Freddie was so supportive, especially when it came to the [vocal] delays in the middle. And it all worked in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n The Prophet\u2019s Song opened Side Two of A Night At The Opera. On any other album it would have been the crowning glory, but here it was ultimately overshadowed by the record\u2019s other attention-grabbing number.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Prophet\u2019s Song is built into certain people\u2019s lives, but it\u2019s not like Bohemian Rhapsody, which everybody knows,\u201d says May. \u201cIt didn\u2019t become a worldwide instant classic.\u201d<\/p>\n \n (Image credit: Queen Productions Ltd)<\/p>\n The intricacy involved in creating Bohemian Rhapsody, The Prophet\u2019s Song and even the breezy Good Company meant Queen were forced to work in multiple studios simultaneously to meet their deadline.<\/p>\n \u201cThe album was getting more and more complex,\u201d says May. \u201cFreddie would be working on his vocal harmonies here, and I\u2019d be working on my guitar orchestra<\/a> over there for Good Company.\u201d<\/p>\n That necessary excess goes some way to explaining why A Night At The Opera was reputedly the most expensive album ever made to that point, costing somewhere between \u00a330,000 and \u00a340,000 \u2013 more than \u00a3320,000 today. Neither Taylor nor May can confirm that figure, but both agree that nobody was keeping an eye on the meter as it ticked upwards.<\/p>\n \u201cWas it the most expensive album ever made?\u201d Taylor says. \u201cI\u2019m not sure it was. But we didn\u2019t think about that sort of thing anyway. That stuff would all get ironed out.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was way too late to worry about money,\u201d says May. \u201cWe were already up to our necks in it. We were just going to grab this moment and make the best thing ever. We just knew it had to be right. That\u2019s all we cared about.\u201d<\/p>\n Budget buster or not, A Night At The Opera was finally finished in October 1975, and released at the end of the following month. Queen\u2019s sink-or-swim moment was here.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember we had a little party for friends to play back the whole album,\u201d Taylor recalls. \u201cWe played side one, which ended with Seaside Rendezvous and \u2018Give us a kiss\u2019, which made everybody laugh. Then we put on side two, with The Prophet\u2019s Song and Bohemian Rhapsody and everything, and I think everybody was pretty stunned \u2013 in a good way. I remember thinking: \u2018This will be alright.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n (Image credit: Queen Productions Ltd)Act V: ‘Don’t have to listen to no run-of-the-mill talk jive\u2026’<\/p>\n There was no doubt within Queen that Bohemian Rhapsody would be the first single from the new album. \u201cWe believed in the song,\u201d says Taylor. \u201cWe always thought it should be the single.\u201d<\/p>\n The problem wasn\u2019t Queen, it was everybody else. Manager John Reid was sceptical. Their label EMI thought You\u2019re My Best Friend would be more palatable to a public not ready for opera in the pop charts.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone told us: \u2018It\u2019s too long, it\u2019s too complex, nobody\u2019s ever going to play it,\u2019\u201d says May. \u201cI think John [Deacon] wanted to cave in: \u2018Give them what they want, edit it down and give them the single.\u2019 But we went: \u201cNo, either we go with the whole thing or we don\u2019t.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere were huge discussions,\u201d says Taylor. \u201cI do remember John Reid sitting there and going: [grudgingly] \u2018Actually, I think you\u2019re right.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The band\u2019s cause was helped enormously by Kenny Everett, a DJ on London\u2019s Capital Radio whose anarchic, over-the-top personality was reflected in his shows. Everett and Mercury were friends, and the singer invited him to the studio to hear Queen\u2019s new music. When Everett left, he\u2019d taken with him a work-in-progress tape of Bohemian Rhapsody. Whether he had pilfered the tape without the band\u2019s knowledge or taken it with their tacit blessing has been lost to time. Likewise the seriousness of Mercury\u2019s instruction that he couldn\u2019t play the song on air.<\/p>\n Either way, Everett spun snippets of the song directly from the reel-to-reel tape he\u2019d taken. The switchboards lit up: what on earth was this, and can we please hear more of it? Over the next two days, Everett played the full song 14 times. His enthusiasm was matched by that of his listeners. Any doubt as to whether it should be a single was dispelled.<\/p>\n Bohemian Rhapsody was released on October 31, 1975, with Taylor\u2019s I\u2019m In Love With My Car on the B-side. The latter would cause much friction in subsequent years, due to the writer of a single\u2019s B-side earning the same royalties as whoever wrote the A-side. One juicy rumour suggests that Taylor locked himself in a cupboard and refused to come out until his bandmates agreed to include his song on the single. \u201cInternet bullshit,\u201d he says emphatically today.<\/p>\n \n (Image credit: Queen Productions Ltd)<\/p>\n Bohemian Rhapsody entered the UK chart at a lowly No.47. It rose to No.17 the following week and No.9 the week after. There was a chance that it might reach No.1, which presented a problem.<\/p>\n Top Of The Pops was the UK\u2019s biggest music show, and its policy was that the No.1 single had to be played on the programme each week, either mimed in the studio or to a pre-recorded film. Given that Queen were about to go out on tour, this could be tricky. And how the hell could a band play \u2013 or even mime \u2013 an operatic section anyway?<\/p>\n The solution was to film a promo video for the song. It wasn\u2019t a radical idea \u2013 everyone from The Beatles<\/a> to Queen themselves had done it before. But it would be a revolutionary one.<\/p>\n And so, on the afternoon on November 10, Queen and director Bruce Gowers met at Elstree Studios, where the band were rehearsing for their tour. Over the next four hours, Gowers filmed the band playing the song\u2019s piano-led opening section and heavied-up climax live.<\/p>\n But it was the a capella intro and operatic part of the song that had the most impact. Gowers took photographer Mick Rock\u2019s dramatic cover of Queen II \u2013 itself inspired by an image of Marlene Dietrich in the 1932 film Shanghai Express<\/a> \u2013 as his jumping-off point.<\/p>\n Filming the band both in silhouette and lit starkly from beneath, Gowers turned Queen into an unearthly choir. The camera moved in time with the voices, shifting from side to side, kaleidoscoping the band, using video feedback to draw their faces across the screen.<\/p>\n The whole thing took four hours and cost a reported \u00a34,500. When it was finished, everyone went to the pub for last orders to celebrate.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember watching the thing we did with Bruce Gowers for the first time in a hotel room,\u201d says May. \u201cWe just laughed. We thought: \u2018Are we going to get away with this?\u2019 Because to us, it was funny and cheeky.\u201d<\/p>\n They did get away with it \u2013 and then some. Bohemian Rhapsody premiered on Top Of The Pops on Thursday, November 20, when the single was at No.9. Queen had a night off and could feasibly have made it back to London for the live show, but why should they? That\u2019s why they made the video in the first place.<\/p>\n That Top Of The Pops transmission was the accelerant that set the fire raging, turning an already exotic song into something glamorous, otherworldly and new. When the latest singles chart was announced on the following Sunday, November 23, Bohemian Rhapsody was at No.1. It would stay there for a record-breaking nine weeks in total, including over Christmas.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was nice because it meant we didn\u2019t have to do it,\u201d says May. \u201cAnd it was amusing for us, because I think they felt uncomfortable having to do that week after week.\u201d<\/p>\n A Night At The Opera was released on November 21, 1975, and reached No.1 in the UK three weeks later. Queen\u2019s regal gamble had paid off.<\/p>\n Act VI: ‘Any way the wind blows\u2026’<\/p>\n A sixty-inch gong stands in Roger Taylor\u2019s back garden. It\u2019s the same one the drummer took on Queen\u2019s A Night At The Opera tour 50 years ago, striking it with force every night at the end of Bohemian Rhapsody.<\/p>\n \u201cLed Zeppelin had a gong but we had a bigger one,\u201d Taylor says proudly. \u201cSixty inches. It\u2019s a fucking big gong.\u201d<\/p>\n The tour in support of the album had begun at Liverpool Empire on November 15, 1975, two weeks before the album was released. They may still have been up to their eyeballs in debt at that point, but Queen weren\u2019t about to let something as trivial as money stand in their way.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019d always spent more than we could on touring,\u201d May says. \u201cWe were big spenders. We ploughed everything back into the shows. We wanted to give people everything we could. We wanted it to be the greatest thing they\u2019d ever seen in their lives. Our motto was: \u2018We\u2019ve got two hours to deafen and blind them and let them go away happy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n During the early part of the tour, they would get reports on how Bohemian Rhapsody was performing.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019d get the chart positions: \u2018Oh, we\u2019re Number One again\u2026\u2019\u201d says Taylor. \u201cIt almost got boring after a while.\u201d<\/p>\n Such was that song\u2019s all-encompassing success that follow-up single You\u2019re My Best Friend wasn\u2019t released until the following June.<\/p>\n \u201cSuddenly, everybody knew who we were because of Bohemian Rhapsody,\u201d says May. \u201cIt made us recognised in every country we visited.\u201d<\/p>\n In September 1976, the band took a break from recording A Night At The Opera\u2019s follow-up, A Day At The Races (another Marx Brothers film title) to play four UK shows. The biggest of these was a free concert in London\u2019s Hyde Park on September 18, promoted by Virgin Records co-founder Richard Branson and attended by an estimated 350,000 people.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was odd,\u201d says May, \u201cbecause we\u2019d been around the world and we weren\u2019t sure whether people had forgotten us back home. We were quite shocked at the reaction. It seemed like there were a million people there. The only problem was that the police got very iffy because they thought there would be some kind of riot, and they wouldn\u2019t let us back on stage for an encore.\u201d<\/p>\n Unfortunate ending aside, the Hyde Park show felt like Queen\u2019s official coronation, and not just because it took place a stone\u2019s throw from Buckingham Palace. They\u2019d made the album of their career and had a record-breaking hit single. And they finally had more than \u00a31,500 in the bank.<\/p>\n \u201cSuddenly we were in the black,\u201d says May. \u201cThe money\u2018s coming in. We\u2019re able to pay off all our old debtors \u2013 lighting companies, sound companies.\u201d<\/p>\n \n (Image credit: Queen Productions Ltd)Epilogue<\/p>\n![\"Brian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/5amMRsNWGaJ69VFdmhRnY8.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\n![\"Queen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/8kugwipSikZSz6UncuaGuM.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\n![\"Freddie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/kDAabxRhesc8efXeGBKnQn.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\n![\"Queen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/vqHVRjsSEefFksCwmrttuE.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\n![\"Queen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/a8iVrdcpYAHZaSKXba27ES.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\n![\"John](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/5ctHAsrPeK9NFaTh4VJWS4.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\n![\"Freddie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/V5fQ8ruYDpuhrWRmibkaVC.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\n![\"Brian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/gEJpU6JPkuX7SFJd4QP2JM.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\n![\"Roger](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/VBcHHkC93u9X228QdKCXKW.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\n![\"Queen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/EQgu9XsL94o3vvCRVwzTHe.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\n