How Queen classic came to reign
Tristram Fane Saunders traces the creation of Bohemian Rhapsody, the most successful British rock song
Record producer Gary Langan was just 19 years old — a little silhouetto of a man — when he helped create the most successful British rock song of all time. It was in 1975, while an assistant at London’s Sarm Studios, making tea for musicians, preparing equipment and working on threeminute singles by teeny-bopper bands, that he met Freddie Mercury.
“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’,” says Langan.
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 made at the time — £40,000, the equivalent of about £320,000 ($629,300) today. It followed a difficult time for the group. Despite sell-out shows and three albums in the Top 20 chart at the same time, they had been on a salary of just £60 a week, thanks to manager Norman Sheffield, head of the Trident label, whose grasp they had just escaped.
“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 to get them out of the contract, in a deal negotiated by John Reid, Elton John’s manager and lover, who took them under his wing.
The band wouldn’t have captured the Bohemian Rhapsody sound but for Roy Thomas Baker’s perfectionism.
“Roy was the most flamboyant producer I’ve ever come across,” says Langan. “He was fabulous, but he’d
drive you nuts . . . 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 and other bands looking to expand their horizons. They rehearsed there for three weeks, mainly focusing on Bohemian Rhapsody.
Mercury was usually a fast writer, but Chris Smith, briefly keyboardist in Mercury’s first band, Smile, has said the singer was toying with the line “Mama, just killed a man” as early as 1968.
After laying down the piano, bass and drums backing track, they headed to London to create the countless vocals and May’s searing guitar solo, mostly at Sarm, the Brick Lane studio.
“They worked 24-track recording way beyond its limits,” Langan said.
Queen’s EMI label was sceptical about Bohemian Rhapsody, but the band forced their hand by slipping an advance copy to DJ Kenny Everett, who played it 14 times in two days.
Released on October 31, 1975, it topped the charts through to December, becoming a Christmas No 1. It became the UK’s third bestselling single ever, beaten only by Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? Candle in the Wind. — Telegraph Media Group