It took off like a rocket.
Suddenly we were in demand.
Suddenly we were looking like we were not going to be in debt.
And incredible.
*I see a little silhouetto of a man,*
*Scaramouche, Scaramouche,*
*will you do the Fandango*
*Thunderbolt and lightning,*
*very, very fright'ning me*
*(Galileo) Galileo (Galileo)*
*Galileo (Galileo)*
*Galileo figaro*
*Magnifico*
It's four writers that write very different songs.
*I've been with you such a long time*
*You're my sunshine*
*And I want you to know that my feelings are true*
*I really love you*
*Oh, you're my best friend*
They were not individual song done like some solo record,
It was--It was individual songs as part of Queen aesthetic.
*Don't you hear my call though you're many years away*
*Don't you hear me callin' you*
*Write your letters in the sand*
*For the day I take your hand*
*In the land that our grandchildren knew*
I love artists to take big risk,
It's just more fun for the rest of us.
*I'm in love with my car.*
*Gotta feel for my automobile,*
*Get a grip on my boy racer rollbar,*
*Such a thrill when your radials squeal.*
We needed a big turning point,
and so we sort of banked everything
On the album, you know, and
I don't know, maybe that's one of the reasons
we released a rather daring recoard as a single.
*So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye*
*So you think you can love me and leave me to die*
*Oh, baby,*
*Can't do this to me, baby,*
*Just gotta get out,*
*Just gotta get right outta here*
Sometimes a band produces its album
that is just so seminal, I suppose.
then you know that nothing is going to be same again with that band.
There comes a moment we were a band gets so big,
You know, all arrive in people's consciousness to such an extend,
That even people who weren't really into the music
know who they are.
I got a white label through from EMI of the first album.
and I hadn't really heard anything about them.
Put the needle on the vinyl,
and it was "Keep Yourself Alive",
And you know guitar intro...
And within 15 seconds I just thought: "wow"
You know, who is this?
*Keep yourself alive(yeah)*
*Keep yourslef alive*
*It'll take you all your time and money*
*Honey you'll survive*
I heard Queen album and I absolutely loved it.
It was like a beatifully cut jewel,
landing in your lap, ready to go,
It was perfection because
Unlike most first albums,
It had a...It had a proportion, a size to it.
It was always part of what we wanted to achieve,
that's the vision I had in our head
of what a sound shoud be absolutely broad,
absolutely incredibly deep, and incredibly wide,
The one word that
I think in itself, sums it all up, is layered.
It was very layered sound,
you know, layered guitars,
ah, layered voices, you know, lots of them,
big production,
Well, it was '73 there, before us, in England.
We thought they were good because I--
I would come in during the last two song,
Which were "Keep Yourself Alive" and "Liar".
and those were, those were good songs, you know,
I didn't see the rest of the set,
But Freddie said "What do you think?" "What do you think?"
I said "You are alright, you are gonna be fine,
Cause you've got the songs."
*Fear me you lords and lady preachers*
*I descend upon your earth from the skies*
*I command your very souls you unbelievers*
*Bring before me what is mine at the seven seas of Rhye*
They were hugely ambitious
in a fabulously old fashioned British kind of old way.
I mean, these were not,
they were not gonna get slowed down by record companies,
by, you know, by narcotic intake, by any of that.
Whatever the hell was going on,
They, they were going for the big one.
When you start this business, you have to be confident,
A new band has got to have
a real confidence in yourself,
But you have to have a certain amount of arrogance,
and that ego, whatever it is,
because you have to believe what to do.
So we had that sort of confidence,
and actually knowing that we will get through to the public.
*She's a Killer Queen*
*Gunpowder, gelatine*
*Dynamite with a laserbeam*
*Guaranteed to blow your mind(anytime)*
*Recommended at the price*
*Insatiable an appetite*
*Wanna try?*
There were definitely a start of something,
they were headlining acts.
"Killer Queen" had seen to that
Queen always had a momentum,
I have seen artists make wonderful albums,
That they didn't have momentum,
The public didn't give them the time necessary,
Queen had momentum.
Immediately prior to Night of the Opera
We, we were really going through a difficult period.
We had a very successful album,
"Sheer Heart Attack",
we thought it was, you know we thought it was a good album,
It's done very well
We had a major worldwide hit with "Killer Queen",
and we were broke,
And, um, and we wanted to know why.
When we were planning to put this record out,
"A Night At The Opera"
The first track of the record,
《Death On Two Legs》 "Death On Two Legs"
was a pretty obvious statement from Freddie's point of view,
as to, eh, the kind of people he'd been in business with.
There's a sense of humor to it,
with Freddie, there was a lot of anger there,
He was very aggrieved at our management, at that time,
who, he felt, didn't respect him, hadn't paid him,
had stolen from him, you know, whatever...
and he wanted to put it down on record,
*You suck my blood like a leech*
*You break the law and you preach*
*Screw my brain till it hurts*
*You've taken all my money*
*And you want more*
Musically it was great, too. The riff is great.
Of couse I didn't invent the riff,
this is Freddie's riff,
'Cause it was done on piano first.
But it's a, it works great on guitar, this..
*Death on two legs*
*You've never had a heart *
*Of your own*
*Kill joy bad guy big talking small fry*
*You're just an old barrow boy*
*Have you found a new toy to replace me? *
*Can you face me? *
*But now you can kiss my ass goodbye*
I think even we were a bit taken aback with the...
with how vicious Freddie wanted to be,
I remember thinking: "Oh..."
But it was what Frieddie wanted,
you know, and the kind of unwritten law was that
the author of the song got his own way.
Sometimes, we just disagreed,
and in the end, What just happened is the writer is...the boss of...
'cause he can say: "Yeah, look,
this is the way I want the song,
and this is the way I'm gonna have it."
*A dog with disease*
*You're the king of the sleaze*
*Put your money where your mouth is *
*Mister know-all*
*Was the fin on your back part of the deal*
*Shark*
*Death on two legs*
*You're tearing me apart*
*Death on two legs*
*You've never had a heart of your own*
*Insane you should be put inside*
*You're a sewer rat decaying in a cesspool of pride *
*Should be made unemployed*
*Then make yourself null and void*
*Make me feel good I feel good*
To cut a very long story short,
We...we agreed that we would go with John Reid as our manager.
And John Reid's plan, you know,
'cause we said how do we get out of this?
His plan was: "Okay, boys,
I will deal with the financial situation,
you guys go back in the studion
and make the best album you've ever made"
I think maybe we were subconsciously influenced by the fact,
by the Beatles albums, I think, really.
Um, especially the later ones like, you know,
like "Rubber Soul", "Revolver", "Abbey Road".
They were, they were very eclectic albums.
*I go out to work on Monday morning*
*Tuesday I go off to honeymoon*
*I'll be back again before it's time for sunnydown*
*I'll be lazing on a Sunday afternoon*
In those days, a lot of effects that we used
were natural effects as opposed to digitals we use today.
The things that we did on the lead vocals were this,
is that we needed the megaphone effect,
you know, the old megaphone, from the old salad days.
He was singing in the studio,
it was being fed into the console.
The console was then sending it out to a pair of headphones,
which were in a metal can,
and then a microphone was in the metal can,
recording the voice coming out of the can.
And that is waht went to the tape.
*Bicycling on every Wednesday evening*
*Thursday I go waltzing to the Zoo*
We had background vocals bits as well,
where the whole band's saying...
and they should be coming in about now.
*Fridays I go painting in the Louvre*
*I'm bound to be proposing on a Saturday night*
*There he goes again*
*I'll be lazing on a Sunday lazing on a Sunday*
We also ran out of tracks,
so when we need two guitars,
we also did those on the vocal tracks.
What they did with, you know, this album, "Night At The Opera",
is just take, sorta, recording techniques
to an, to an area that they'd never gone before.
They pushed the technology to its very limits.
We had a fabulous engineer in Mike Stone, you know,
I've...I've said this more than once, I'm sure,
but Mike Stone is really the unsung hero of this whole thing.
Right the way through, from the first 3 albums
to "A Night At The Opera", to "A Day At The Races"
Which he, he really just produced with us,
'cause we had already had gone somewhere else by then.
And the guy was really a phenomenon.
I remember it has been a very good time, very creative time.
We were a great team. It was a great team.
You know, between us and Roy and Mike.
Stupendous team in the studio.
It sounded to me like
Queen was on this path, and when they hit "A Night At The Opera"
it was, it was their wings had spread,
they took everything they had learned from,
from touring all over the place, and having recorded before,
They finally found their voice,
and that's what makes that record so magic.
We love the studio.
We always did, and I still do,
because it's an open canvas,
and you can do anything you want.
And we were kind of deciples of Hendrix and The Beatles,
particularly the way they used studios as,
almost like an instrument.
But obviously we, we had more technology than they had had,
so we pusched things a lot further.
Being in a studio with Queen was facinating,
but very long winded,
because they were such perfectionists.
One day I spent with them, I don't think they did
more than about 30 seconds of what actually ended up on a record.
so it wasn't perhaps my favorite,
not being a musical technician, my favorite way of seeing them.
I liked to see them live.
*Car*
*The machine of a dream*
*Such a clean machine*
*With the pistons a pumpin'*
*And the hub caps all gleam*
I had never really heard a band in its entirety quite like that.
You know, you heard bands of different cuts for different people.
but not as varied as this,
and it probably reflected the fact they all did right,
and all did have something to do with the producing of the record,
the production of the record.
It reminds me a lot of the Beatles,
that you had this kind of four equal people
at the same time, they had the influences that extended way beyond
that kind of blues background
that was, sort of the usual influence of bands at that time.
It was slightly different from your average rock song,
it's basically in 6/8 time,
which is basically Waltz time.
It was sorta...it was very sort of...
It's a great time signature to play in,
it rolls, it has a certain unstoppable rolling quality.
*When my hand's on your grease gun*
*Oh it's like a disease son*
*I'm in love with my car.*
I made up a very rough demo of it, and I remember
turning around to Brian: " So, what do you think of that?"
He looked at me, he said:
" you are joking, aren't you?
you are joking?"
and I said: "No, no, Brian, dealy serious.
You know, it's about a car,
and you know, and you know, someday who's in love with it."
He'll tell it's written about someone else,
you know, but we know the truth, don't we Rog?
And, I mean, Roger was always into fast things,
you know, fast cars,
etc. etc...
It's very tuneful,
but of course the vocal is the theme,
yeah, the vocal is the song,
and that's a very memorable peice of writing there.
*When I'm cruisin' in overdrive*
*Don't have to listen to no run of the mill talk jive*
*I'm in love with my car*
*Gotta feel for my automobile*
*I'm in love with my car*
*String back gloves in my automolove*
It's just so excessive, the way the vocals are all treated
and things going off backwards,
and god knows how much overdubbing and multi-tracking are...
I've always been in love with producers
who don't know when to stop,
and I think Roy Thomas Baker was very very good at knowing how,
how to go too far,
but just enough too far.
And I think he at this point,
is coming into his own just the way the band did,
They were very much in tune with each other at that point.
There was no one writer,
yet there was one Queen sound.
And you could hear all the differences in the song,
but you could hear, with the vocal sounds,
and the guitar sounds and the drum sounds, etc.
Which is one of the things
which is important to me is to make sure that
when people hear a song for the first time,
even if they don't know how it is, on the radio,
they could hear instantly it was Queen.
*Ooh you make me live*
*Whatever this world can give to me*
*It's you you're all I see*
*Ooo you make me live now honey*
*Ooo you make me live*
*Oh you're my best friend that I ever had*
Normally, I think any other band that's saying that lyric:
"You're my best friend",
then people would throw things at them,
they would go...they would burn their records,
You know, live on the radio.
but what a beautiful song.
Just the conviction of doing a simple pop song,
well crafted...
All of a sudden, John Deacon emerged from his vows of silence.
to, to speak up that he wanted his song out as a single.
He didn't write that many,
but, you know, if you think about it:
《Another One Bites The Dust》 《You're My Best Friend》
《I Want To Break Free》
Big, big hits.
And "You're My Best Friend"
is still one of the most played tracks in American radio.
"You're My Best Friend" was a significant song
as far as radio is concerned in the United States.
I mean, I think that it was a kind of friendlier,
more accessible song, to some of the stuff Queen was doing.
John was awlays a dark horse.
He always was, you know, he's the guy who doesnt' say very much.
Up to a certain point,
I mean, he would go nuts sometimes and say a lot,
but generally he was the quiet guy,
and he would come in and we'd say: "Have you got anything?",
John'd go: "Oh, I've got this. I don't know",
you know, "Don't know if it's any good,
but we could try this. "
You know, very self effacing.
I think they encouraged him,
the other guys wanted
ah, the more-- to have more of a staking,
'Cause after all, the songwriting...
you know, there's all those extra royalties,
and that's often an issue with rock&roll bands,
and quite often, a reason why some of them break up.
So they wanted to make sure.
I know Freddie, I mean, even as early as Queen too,
he's been encouraging John to contribute,
and I think John was just a little reticent.
He was the last to join,
and he was certainly the most shy.
He just write in that on area, which he likes,
which is almost like a motown, sort of...
and I love that, 'cause I love to sing on songs like that.
So he's very different,
I mean you can never call his songs heavy.
It was written on a fender Rhodes...
John played it. John played his own keyboards.
And John, as far as I know,
wrote the song about his lovely lady wife.
Further than that, you would have to ask John.
And I don't think he's probably in the mood to answer, at that point.
And it's a shame that, you know, he he really feels
that he doesn't want to be part of the music business, these days.
I see his point, in some ways,
but, um,
you know, He just sort of doesn't really want to,
he doesn't like meeting people a lot,
and he has opted for the quiet life,
although, he approves of what we do,
and has said so.
*And I really love you.*
*Oh, you are my best friend.*
The vocal harmonies, you know, on a Queen record,
are gonna provided with untiy,
regardless of what the kind of,
you know, individual style of a particular song is.
You know, there's something that's,
you know, instantly indentifiable about what they do.
The three voices that we had blended instantly,
and sounded very big.
They interacted quite magically,
and we all had qualities in our voices,
and I had a sort of high serin quality,
Freddie had an incredibly powerful quality in most ranges,
and Brian had a very nice quality in the lower range,
and so that three made a very good combination,
but what we would do is we would not take a single part each,
we would all together sing every part.
So, as soon as the three of us sang a line,
it alreayd sounded quite big.
You double track that, it sounds quite big.
And then we would sing the next line, and the next line...
So, you really were looking after both ends of the sort of spectrum,
there, in fact all ends,
and you were covering everything,
So it came out particularly strong,
and...and that was really part of the queen sound,
I think, the fact that the three of us sang every part.
It's the backing vocals there.
*Ooo still come back to you*
*I'm happy at home*
The skill that they could just build
those layers and layers and layers of harmony,
and, and make the whole thing work
rather than you focus one elements of it,
and then, you know, forget the rest,
that I think, is what always was the thing
that made them stand out from anybody else.
Well, there was never any question of writing a single,
you just...we just wrote albums and then...
you know, so they would really by consensus it would be:
"Ah, that sounds like the first single"
you know, and then...and then maybe there might be some argument.
Obviously, you have certain...of your own babies,
if you wrote the song, and you want them to be, um
heard in a wide area.
Usually the writer of that particular, right song
would be arguing that he should have the single.
And if you miss that opportunity,
it's kind of gone forever,
and in my case I think we all had things like that,
that we felt sad about.
In my case there's things like "Long Away",
"'39" off this album,
you know, which...which could have been a single,
and part of me wishes they had been,
because they had been much more in the public consciousness,
um, you knw, songs become hooked into people's lives
in a very wondeful way, you know,
you hear a song that reminds you of being on a beach somewhere,
in a particular time, with a particular person,
and if... generally if the song hasn't become a single,
it doesn't have that opportunity to, to become part of, of life.
*In the year of thirty-nine*
*Assembled here the volunteers*
*In the days when lands were few*
*Here the ship sailed out into the blue and sunny morn*
*The sweetest sight ever seen*
*And the night followed day*
*And the story tellers say*
*That the score brave souls inside*
*For many a lonely day*
*Sailed across the milky seas*
*Ne'er looked back never feared never cried*
It was meant to be sort of, um
science fiction space folk.
I remember waking up with the idea, thinking:
"A lot of people do folk songs with acoustic guitars
with sailors that went off on a long trip,
and nobody ever did anything about spaceship.
and spacemen who go off,
and the whole story seemed to be very appealing to me,
of the guy going off, to search for new lands,
um, in a spaceship, um,
but because of the relativeistic, General Relativity.
time dialection effect,
he's going at speeds near to, to light speed,
so his perception of time
is completely different from the people back home.
He comes back after what he thinks is a year,
but to the people back on earth it's been a hundred years.
The middle part is of course the, the journey itself
and it goes through very strange chords,
It's a tour de force for Roger,
who does this very high ethereal vocal.
It's very much like science fiction movies where...
when we were kids,
that's kind of the effect I was looking for.
*In the year of thirty-nine*
*Came a ship in from the blue*
*The volunteers came home that day*
*And they bring good news*
*Of a world so newly born*
*Though their hearts so heavily weigh*
*For the earth is old and grey*
*Little darlin' well away*
*But my love this cannot be*
*Oh so many years have gone*
*Though I'm older but a year*
*Your mother's eyes from your eyes cry to me*
The only thing to add to that is, perhaps that, um,
all song have more layers in than,
very often, the writer even realises,
and I'm sure there's a lot of, this feeling of what to be on tour
and come back and...
and find life very changed when you get back, um,
it was a pretty difficult thing to adjust to,
and I think we all, we all suffered from it.
Well, Brian did work his ass off on this album, actually.
Brian is one of the great rock guitarist, I mean, you know,
there's no argument here.
He's a wonderfull guitar player.
He's a brilliant musican,
we make a very good noise together on stage,
and it's quite a magical thing,
and it's a big wow.
*Oh, you are my*
*Sweet lady *
*You are my*
*Sweet lady*
I mean, there are certain points about Freddie Mercury
that are so obivous, that it's easy to miss them,
you know, and in a sense, the kind of theatricality,
running through a variety of different styles,
is what drew him to you know, music hall,
is what drew him to glam rock, you know.
it's what he liked about metal,
it's what he liked about the rock&roll that he liked,
I mean, running through all that
was just this element of performance,
and inventing a character, theatricality.
He could take a broad range of emotions in his psyche,
and that did include a little nostalgia.
but not nostalgia in the corny, looking back sense,
but calling some of that emotion
and bring it into the dynamic present.
And that's obviously what he did with "Seaside Rendezvous".
*Seaside whenever you stroll along with me*
*I'm merely contemplating what you feel inside*
*Meanwhile I ask you to be my Clementine*
*You say you will if you could but you can't*
*I love you madly*
*Let my imagination run away with you gladly*
*A brand new angle highly commendable*
*Seaside rendezvous*
I like to capture a song very quickly,
so that it's fresh.
and then you can work on it afterwards.
but, I mean, I hate, sort of...
trying to wrtie a song, and if it's not coming,
"Oh, come on, let's try this..."
It either comes quickly, and then you have it,
you know, like the basic skeleton,
and then I say "Yes, we have a song, and now..."
then we can start putting in all the clever bits.
One sweaty afternoon I was with Freddie,
just two of us there,
I think, we did a lot of those things,
we would ta... we did the tap dancing,
was...thimbles on the fingers on the metal bit on the top of the desk,
and, I think I did a little brass section
and Fred was doing the woodwind with his mouth, you know...
It was like experimentation,
but we were sort of laughing at the same time, and...
but, I think it turned out rather well,
it was meant to be cod, and...cod it was.
*I feel like dancing in the rain*
*Can I have a volunteer (Just keep right on dancing)*
*What a damn jolly good idea*
You never got a sense that this band was taking itself too seriously,
there was a kind of wit, and a compiness, a...
a self irony, ah, that was, that was really a pleasure,
This is a George Formby,
genuine George Formby ukulele,
it has even... there you can see his picture,
and this is, this is the instrument my dad carried with him,
all through the war, the second world war...
It's a ukulele banjo,
it's not a ukulele or a banjo,
It's a ukulele banjo.
And, um, makes this particular sound,
which was part of my upbringing.
My dad used to sit and put this on his knee and get a...
This is how I learned the guitar.
The chord shapes that my dad taught me, to play things like that,
transfered quite easily to the guitar,
and I remember I got, I got the guitar for my 7th birthday,
and started working out the chords for the guitar.
So the idea of "Good Company", obviously comes from here,
*Take good care of what you've got*
*My father said to me*
*As he puffed his pipe and baby B*
*He dandled on his knee*
*Take care of those you call your own *
*And keep good company*
It's been twenty years, you know...
*Take care of those you call your own*
*And keep good company*
*Soon I grew and happy too*
*My very good friends and me*
*We'd play all day with Sally J*
*The girl from number four*
*And very soon I begged her*
*Won't you keep me company*
It also developed to another place,
which is the place of the jazz band,
and that's pretty much part of my childhood too,
the Dexieland jazz band,
was kind of revived when I was a kid,
and there was a wonderful group called The Temperant Seven,
who played a mixture of Dixieland
and very arranged pseudo '20s music.
And I learned a lot of my arrangement from, from those guys.
So when it came to doing the, the solo part for "Good Company"
I wanted it to sound like a jazz band,
and of course, I wanted the guitar to be the jazz band.
It was very work intensive , every...every note was done seperately
to get teh actual proper trumpet sounds,
and the trombone sounds, etc.
Very painstaking, but a lot of fun,
'cause it had never been done before.
I don't think I would do it these days, really,
unless this was a very good reason.
Just love this stuff,
it was wonderful to be able to take the time
to do this stuff in the studio,
which I'd always dreamed of doing, I guess.
That's the great thing about "Night At the Opera",
we had the time...that we were given the opportunity
to explore all those avenues,
rather than be rushing in and out.
It's hard to believe that it's a guitar,
and that somebody had actually created that.
I mean, am I a Queen fan? Is that a Queen fan, I don't know...
I mean, you know, even if I wasn't a fan,
you'd have to just go: "What is that?
How did that happen? Who was responsible for that?"
This is roughly what they sound like, without anything else...
And the bells....
When you hear any other vocalist trying to sing a queen song
it's not until you hear them trying,
that you realise what an incredible vocalist Freddie was,
what a range he had,
what great expression he had,
and how idiosyncratic some of the songs were,
in terms of being written for him,
and his way of expressing lyrics in a song.
Basically, I... I think if you sort of put them all in one bag,
I think my songs are all under the label: "Emotion",
you know, it's emotion and feeling,
so, I mean, I write songs that a lot of people have written before,
it's always to do with love and emotion,
you know, I'm just a true romantic.
And I think everybody's written songs in that field,
I just write it in my own way,
so that they carry a different, sort of...
It's a different texture or whatever.
Some of them were obviously about Mary, who he was very fond of,
um, and was his best friend I think all his life.
That's fascinating in itself,
that she...it really was,
ironically, the love of his...not withstanding, whatever,
his sexual life, was that...actually she was the love of his life.
But that was fabulous,
I was, I mean, I have these wonderful pictures, they are all pretty,
and you can see that Freddie loves her.
*Love of my life*
*You hurt me*
*You broken my heart*
*And now you leave me*
*Love of my life, can't you see*
*Bring it back*
*Don't take it away from me*
*Because you don't know what you mean to me*
It's some lovely backing harmonics from Freddie on this as well.
Freddie has the ability to sing multi-tracked so accurately
that it would actually phase...
one take would phase with another,
because he would sing it so singualarly each time.
It's beautiful backing harmonies.
*Love of my life*
*Don't leave me*
*You've taken my love*
*You now desert me*
It's the background vocals.
*Love of my life, can't you see*
And they blossom there
*Please bring it back, back*
*Don't take it away from me*
*Oh, know *
*Means to me*
I just remember him doing it in the studio, um...
He had a wonderful touch of the piano, Freddie.
Really didn't think he did, you know,
he was deprecating about his piano playing,
and in later years, really didn't do any of it.
Um, he played less and less piano on stage,
because he wanted to run around and deliver to the audience,
which he did so magnificantly.
He didn't have the classical range,
but he could play what came from him, inside him,
like nobody else,
with incredible rythem,
incredible passion and feeling.
*To remind you how I still love you*
*I still love you*
But I love this song,
and pretty much every concert we play,
I sing this song for Freddie.
And I find it much more satisfying than singing one of my own songs.
It's because it seems to bring back so much of Freddie,
with me and with the audience.
*When I grew older*
*I will be there at your side*
*To remind you how I still love you*
*I still love you*
*Hurry back*
*Don't take it away from me*
*Because you don't know what it means to me*
*Love of my life*
We didn't really realise, for years,
Brian and myself, I'm really speaking for him now...
and probably John,
um, we didn't realise how great he was, actually.
People forget he's actually a great musician,
and...and that sort of pisses me off sometimes,
'cause, I mean, they say: "He's a great showman", you know,
it wasn't just showman,
it was, actually he was a brilliant musican,
and...and quite an inspirational one, and um...
So, you know, I think there should be a bit more balance there,
I mean, you know, it wasn't just all about
getting people to go:"Hey, hey,
you know, it was...He was a great musician."
*Is this the real life*
*Is this just fantasy*
*Caught in a landslide*
*No escape from reality*
So much has been said about"Bohemian Rhapsody", of course,
and it's Freddie's baby, it always will be,
it's Freddie's dream.
Of course we all contributed pieces to it,
but really he, he's the mastermind.
It is an amazing conception, in my opinion.
I have to say, it was definitely my choice for a single,
'cause I love the original melody of the, you know,
"Mama, just killed a man..." that, that was very strong,
I love the beginning of it.
But it wasn't, wasn't obvious.
In those days, you know singles would,
they had to be no longer than 3 minutes,
and, you know, had to grab you.
*Mama, just killed a man*
*Put a gun against his head*
*Pulled my trigger, now he's dead*
*Mama, life had just begun*
*But now I've gone and thrown it all away*
*Mama, ooo*
*Didn't mean to make you cry*
*If I'm not back again this time tomorrow*
*Carry on, carry on*
*As if nothing really matters*
There was some concern on the part of Elektra,
I just happened to walk into the presidential office one day,
and he said: "Look what your band sent us."
and it was this single,
and he...he sort of, he said that sort of half jokingly,
and he played all 5 minutes and 55 seconds of it
and said: "What do you think?",
I said: "You got a high class problem, release it."
It's a monster, isn't it?
It's one of those...'cause it's not gonna go away,
it's just gonna go where it supposed to go.
It's a piece of art,
Let's be honest about it.
I don't...it was great rock&roll.
it's fair enough if it's great rock&roll,
it doesn't have to all be art,
but that is art.
There was no record company invention going on here,
there wasn't any...
we weren't smarter than anybody else,
Ur, we just had a tiger by the tail,
and the only place we were smart,
was we said yes more often than we said no.
It was one of the most expensive records ever made,
and it took them over 3 weeks to cut this one single.
But the, the layers of guitars, the overdubs of the vocals
and then when I got to see the video,
and you realised that Freddie Mercury was so charismatic
and so unique.
*It's too late*
*My time has come*
*Sends shivers down my spine*
*Body's aching all the time*
*Goodbye everybody *
*I've got to go*
*Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth*
My favorite solo is in...again,
what I liked about Queen was...uh,
and, and Brian's playing, is that
it is...you try and make a little statement,
you try to have, like, a beginning, a middle and an end,
and some kind of dynamic change in a solo.
I find it easier to, um...
to get into it with other people's songs than my own,
I think, because the inspiration comes from a separate place,
and perhaps you feel more free.
So with Freddie's stuff,
I always could hear the solo long before I played it, on his tracks,
because they just invited something.
For this I use these two pickups out of phase again,
which is a favorite, because it makes it scream.
It really makes the harmonics come out.
It'll be different every time I play it,
but basically it, it has that screaming kind of quality to it.
*I don't want to die*
*I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all*
*I see a little silhouetto of a man*
*Scaramouche, scaramouche, will you do the fandango*
It is the crossing-the-threshold album, ah, for Queen,
I think, from, from popularity into, sort of, you know,
superstardom.
It took them to a completely different level,
both in terms of their sales,
and in terms of the perception of the band,
and in terms of their life shows.
The opportunity to play Hyde Park came up,
and they said: you're gonna have this new site,
which had never been played before,
you can play it for free,
and there's no limit to the amount of people you can get there, "
which was amazing for us.
The thought of being able to put that show on,
and be able to get it across
to more than a 100, 000 people,
was really beyond our imagining.
It was a major step in Queen realising what they could do.
And, and of course they went on to do it.
Freddie could play in front of a 100 people and act like a total star,
and here he had, you know all of London at his feet,
and clearly in his element.
You know, he's...he had the kind of charisma that I think,
the world was just about small enough a stage for him
to feel comfortable on.
*So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye*
*So you think you can love me and leave me to die*
*Oh baby*
*Can't do this to me baby*
*Just gotta get out *
*Just gotta get right outta here*
I think, what happens when a band hits that stride,
it's so true that the fans can't help but feel it.
And that's why it translates to a record that just resonates.
And then it becomes almost iconic for that band and their fans.
*Doesn't really matter to me*
I think it just started off as a band with a singer,
and then they found all this great stuff hidden away
in everybody...in everyone of them, you know.
The size of it, the perfection of it,
the willingness to go everywhere, from music hall to jazz,
and to have them wear those different musical costumes
close to their skin and part of who they were,
it was not fake,
it was always genuine,
and you can always tell the difference.
In England and Europe and Austalia,
I think it defined us,
it defined us as, as something big, something exciting,
something significant.
It was the...it was our sort of epiphany,
it was our turning point,
and I would say, ah...so in that sense
with the single that came from it and, and the album,
it was really probably the most important album ever made. �