A Life in Lyrics: The Official Creative Legacy of Freddie Mercury<\/a>,\u201d (Dey Street Books, out now), by Mercury and Mary Austin, the singer\u2019s former fianc\u00e9e.<\/p>\nPublished ahead of what would\u2019ve been Mercury\u2019s 80th birthday on September 5, the book draws on notebooks and musical sketches found at the singer\u2019s London home after his 1991 death \u2014 papers that show how even Queen\u2019s most familiar songs passed through some strange early versions.<\/p>\n
Freddie Mercury of the rock band Queen performs in concert on May 29, 1982, at Leeds Football Club in the UK. Getty Images<\/p>\n
That includes even the band\u2019s name. Austin recalls being present at an early meeting as the members debated what to call themselves. Mercury suggested Queen, while guitarist Brian May offered the curious alternative Build Your Own Boat. When Mercury asked her opinion, Austin sided with May.<\/p>\n
\u201cFreddie smiled but said nothing,\u201d Austin writes. \u201cI have since wondered whether it was some sort of test; if so, I suspect I did not fare particularly well!\u201d<\/p>\n
Mercury won the argument. But the book shows how much revising took place before another of his inspired names became permanent.<\/p>\n
\u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d began with a single line, \u201cMama, just killed a man,\u201d which Mercury is thought to have written in 1968 while studying graphic design at Ealing Art College. The line suggested an Old West story to him, and he informally called the unfinished fragment \u201cThe Cowboy Song.\u201d<\/p>\n
The book \u201cA Life in Lyrics: The Official Creative Legacy of Freddie Mercury\u201d by Freddie Mercury and Mary Austin, features a creative archive spanning almost two decades left by Mercury to Austin after his death in 1991.<\/p>\n
The song took a dramatic turn after Mercury bought the Yamaha grand piano on which he\u2019d compose much of it. Austin wonders whether shopping for the instrument helped steer him toward its grander sound.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you visit a piano showroom, you\u2019re surrounded by sound,\u201d she writes. \u201cYou\u2019re hearing instruments played, perhaps classical music in the shop. I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s where some of the operatic thinking came from, but it\u2019s possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other music \u2014 by Chopin, Mozart and Joni Mitchell \u2014 was swirling around Mercury as the song took shape.<\/p>\n
\u201cFreddie was playing Joni Mitchell constantly, her album \u2018Court and Spark,\u2019 or possibly \u2018For the Roses,\u2019\u201d Austin writes. \u201cI remember feeling almost jealous, which sounds ridiculous now, but true, nonetheless. Joni Mitchell was the only woman I was ever jealous of!\u201d<\/p>\n
Years later, Mercury briefly considered a different title. At the top of one handwritten page, \u201cMongolian Rhapsody\u201d is crossed out and replaced with \u201cBohemian Rhapsody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Austin and Mercury were engaged at one point. Images courtesy of Mary Austin<\/p>\n
Another unused opening read, \u201cTime for goodbyes now\/ Is this reality?\u201d The familiar \u201cNothing really matters to me\u201d appeared in Mercury\u2019s notes early, before he decided where it belonged. Whole pages were devoted to the dense vocal harmonies of the operatic section, with \u201cGalileo,\u201d \u201cBismillah,\u201d \u201cFandango\u201d and \u201cthunderbolt and lightning\u201d serving almost as guideposts for the voices.<\/p>\n
Parts of the song may have come to him in his sleep.<\/p>\n
Austin remembers Mercury waking with half-remembered lyrics from a dream, frustrated he couldn\u2019t recall exactly what they were. So he got into the habit of \u201cdeliberately waking himself in the middle of the night and writing things down,\u201d Austin writes. \u201cHe was so preoccupied with \u2018Bohemian Rhapsody\u2019 that even his sleep seemed to be involved.\u201d<\/p>\n
The obsession consumed his waking hours as well. For most of their relationship, Austin could interrupt Mercury while he was writing at the piano, and he\u2019d happily take a break for tea and conversation. But while composing \u201cBohemian Rhapsody,\u201d he \u201cdidn\u2019t even stir when I came in,\u201d Austin writes. \u201cHe was so focused his whole posture even seemed altered.\u201d<\/p>\n
That intensity carried into the studio, where the band spent three weeks making what was then the most expensive recording in history. The operatic section alone required nearly 200 vocal overdubs from Mercury, May and drummer Roger Taylor. By the end, some sections existed on eighth-generation tape that was so worn light could pass through it.<\/p>\n
British rock group Queen members, from left, Brian May, John Deacon, Roger Taylor and Freddie Mercury pose at Les Ambassadeurs in September 1976. Getty Images<\/p>\n
The finished song, at nearly six minutes, was far too long for a conventional single, and executives at EMI, their record company, requested heavy edits. Mercury refused and walked out of the meeting.<\/p>\n
The confidence didn\u2019t last long. Back home, he became \u201cworried that he\u2019d torpedoed his own career and that of the band,\u201d Austin writes. <\/p>\n
He found an ally in Kenny Everett, a DJ at London\u2019s Capital Radio who was given an advance copy of \u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d with the apparent understanding that he might play it once or twice. Instead, he spent a weekend repeatedly airing the full song.<\/p>\n
Capital\u2019s switchboard was flooded with listeners asking where they could buy a single that had not yet been released. \u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d was released uncut in 1975 and spent nine weeks at No. 1 in Britain and became Queen\u2019s first Top Ten hit in America.<\/p>\n
Freddie Mercury is pictured in an undated archive photo. By 1980, Mercury had transformed his appearance, replacing the shoulder-length hair that defined his 1970s image with the mustache and shorter hairstyle that would become his most recognizable look. Images courtesy of Mary Austin<\/p>\n
The song also had a chart resurgence after being memorably featured in the movie \u201cWayne\u2019s World\u201d in 1992 \u2014 sending it to No. 2 on Billboard\u2019s Hot 100 \u2014\u00a0and again for the Mercury biopic \u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d in 2018.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to imagine Wayne and Garth head-banging in a battered AMC Pacer to \u201cMongolian Rhapsody.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before Freddie Mercury put a gun against a man\u2019s head and pulled the trigger, he considered sending him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[2878,157,671,2538,15241,9,24,63,11831,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-339959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-freddie-mercury","tag-music","tag-musicians","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-postscript","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}