Queen: The Complete Works (11 page)

The main sessions alternated between Rockfield and Sarm East Studios, with most of the backing tracks occurring at the former. The band had started recording there during basic sessions for
Sheer Heart Attack
the year before, but they found Sarm East on a par with Rockfield’s capabilities. Vocal overdubs were held at Scorpio Studios, while further overdubs took place at Olympic Studios, where such luminaries as The Who, The Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix had recorded, and Lansdowne. (Trident, of course, was not used, though a recording from the studio did slip out: ‘God Save The Queen’ had been recorded there by Brian and Roger on 27 October 1974.) Incidentally, the day after the press premiere at Roundhouse Studios, during which Freddie angrily ordered the assembled journalists to stand during the playing of Brian’s arrangment of the national anthem, the band stayed on at the studios to record overdubs; the next day, they went out on tour in support of the album.

It was this meticulous attention to detail that caught the press’ collective eye, as well as the album’s highly expensive cost (reportedly £40,000). Freddie addressed this issue in
Melody Maker
even before the album was released: “It’s really taken the longest to do out of all the four albums. We didn’t really cater for it. We just set upon it and said that we were going to do so many things. It’s taken us about four months and now we’ve really gone over the deadline with the tour approaching. It’s more important to get the album the way we want it, especially after we’ve spent so long on it.”

“We don’t want to be outrageous,” he continued. “It’s in us. There are so many things we want to do which we can’t do all at the same time. It’s impossible. At the moment we’ve made an album which, let’s face it, is too much to take for most people. But it was what we wanted to do. We could have done a few things that are on
A Night At The Opera
on the first album but it would have been too much to take for certain people. Really. It just so happens that you can’t cram everything on one album. It’s a progression. After the third album, we thought, ‘Now we’ve established ourselves and we can do certain things.’ Like, vocally we can outdo any band. We just thought that we would go out, not restrict ourselves with any barriers, and just do exactly what we want to do. It just so happened that I had this operatic thing and I thought, ‘Why don’t we do it?’ We went a bit overboard on every album, actually. But that’s the way Queen is. In certain areas we always feel that we want to go overboard. It’s what keeps us going really. If we were to come up with an album that people would say, ‘It’s just like
Sheer Heart Attack
but there are a few bits on
Sheer Heart Attack
that are better,’ I’d give up. I really would. Wouldn’t you?”

“Apart from ‘Killer Queen’, which was obviously catchy, I don’t think of our singles as being immediately commercial,” Roger had claimed to
Record Mirror
before ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was even conceived. “Quite honestly, I’ve no idea whether the next single will be a melodic thing like ‘Killer Queen’ or an out-and-out rocker, although I’ve got a feeling there will be plenty of rockers on the next album.”

For all the praise ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ received, there are certainly other tracks which garnered similar attention in the studios, most notably ‘The
Prophets Song’. Freddie again noted their work ethic, and singled out the vocal overdubs on this song in particular: “There were a lot of things we needed to do on
Queen II
and
Sheer Heart Attack
but there wasn’t enough space. This time there is. Guitar-wise and on vocals we’ve done things we haven’t done before. To finish the album we will work till we are legless. I’ll sing until my throat is like a vulture’s crotch. We haven’t even reached the halfway stage yet but from the things I can hear we have surpassed everything we’ve done before musically.”

Obviously, the band were eager to extend the boundaries they had previously set for themselves. From the opening piano strains of ‘Death On Two Legs (Dedicated to ......’ to the closing timpani rolls of ‘God Save The Queen’,
A Night At The Opera
stands as Queen’s finest forty-three minutes on vinyl, exploring all sorts of musical styles, many of them experimented with on the previous record but expanded upon here. Staying true to Roger’s reference to the rockers, they are in abundance on
A Night At The Opera
: ‘Death On Two Legs (Dedicated to ......’, ‘I’m In Love With My Car’, ‘Sweet Lady’, ‘The Prophets Song’ and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ all rock with the best of them, though certainly none are as raw or energetic as the earlier ‘Liar’, ‘Great King Rat’, ‘Son And Daughter’, ‘Ogre Battle’ or ‘Stone Cold Crazy’. The band were more interested in creating an array of styles, and some of the more self-indulgent moments (‘Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon’, ‘Seaside Rendezvous’, ‘Good Company’) are reminiscent of many of The Kinks’ mid- to late-1960s records, timeless and classic in their own right but for the most part critically ignored.

The musicianship here is tight and more focused than on the previous three albums. “It’s more extreme,” Brian told Jonh (
sic
) Ingham in
Sounds
. “It’s varied, but it goes further in its various directions. It has a couple of the heaviest things we’ve ever done and probably some of the lightest things as well. It’s probably closer to
Sheer Heart Attack
than the others in that it does dart around and create lots of different moods, but we worked on it in the same way we worked on
Queen II
. A lot of it is very intense and very layered ... On
A Night At The Opera
we got into the real big production; that was actually mapped out on the second album on which we did a couple of things that were more complex and operatic.
A Night At The Opera
and
A Day At The Races
were really the most-arranged period.” Freddie summed it up rather succinctly in
Circus
in 1977, stating, “
A Night At The Opera
featured every sound from a tuba to a comb. Nothing is out of bounds.”

As with
Sheer Heart Attack
, the band experimented with many new instruments that hadn’t been attempted before. The biggest change introduced a third keyboardist into the fold: John, who had started his songwriting career with ‘Misfire’ in 1974, brought to the sessions a new song titled ‘You’re My Best Friend’. Because he had finally started learning how to play the piano, he wanted to experiment with more creative sounds instead of simply playing a traditional piano. The instrumentation called for an electric piano with significant distortion, though Freddie didn’t care for the sound and insisted that John play it on the standard piano instead; ultimately, however, John got his way. Brian also joked during a session that John should play double bass on ‘’39’, an acoustic busker’s song; the next day, John amazed everyone by performing the part wonderfully. Admittedly, he had previously played the instrument on Freddie’s ‘Bring Back That Leroy Brown’, but that was merely a few seconds as opposed to three and a half minutes.

Roger’s role was restricted more to percussion, although he got a chance to perform vocalizations of the woodwinds on Freddie’s music hall number ‘Seaside Rendezvous’. Brian seemed the most interested in experimenting instrumentally: apart from arranging most of the complex guitar parts (as well as the guitar jazz band for ‘Good Company’), he also contributed the ukulele, harp and toy koto, an instrument he picked up in Japan.

In fact, the band’s recent touring schedule influenced their drive to return to the studios. “What really helped was the last tour,” Freddie told
Melody Maker
at the album’s press premiere. “We’ve done a really successful worldwide tour which we’ve never done before. It taught us a lot. It taught us how to behave on stage and come to grips with the music. We started off in Britain and by the time we took that same stage act across to America and then to Japan, we were a different band. All that experience was accumulating, and when we came to do this album there were certain things which we had done in the past which we can do much better now. Our playing ability was better. Backing tracks on this album are far superior ... I think Queen has really got its own identity now. I don’t care what the journalists say, we got that identity after
Queen II
... Of course, if we do something that’s harmonized, we’ll be The Beach Boys, and if we do something that’s heavy, we’ll be Led Zeppelin, or whatever. But the thing
is that we have an identity of our own because we combine all those things which mean Queen.”

The first signs of a new Queen product, their first since the re-release of ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ in the US in July 1975 (there hadn’t been a UK single since ‘Now I’m Here’ in January), came in October 1975 in the form of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. Freddie stated, quite casually, in
Melody Maker
that “We look upon our product as songs. We don’t worry about singles or albums. All we do is pick the cream of the crop, then we look upon it as a whole to make sure the whole album works.” The resulting collection is best listened to as a complete process, even though Queen were loath to record concept albums (the closest they got was with
Queen II
): each song complements its predecessor nicely, and most act as a kind of introduction or segue to the next song, as in the lengthy ‘Tenement Funster’, ‘Flick Of The Wrist’ and ‘Lily Of The Valley’ triptych on
Sheer Heart Attack
.

As Brian explained to BBC’s Radio Two in 1999, “For
A Night At The Opera
, we sort of returned to the
Queen II
philosophy. We had our confidence, because we’d had a hit. We had a kind of almost desperation about us too, because we were totally bankrupt at that point. You know, we had made hit records but we hadn’t had any of the money back and if
A Night At The Opera
hadn’t been the huge success it was I think we would have just disappeared under the ocean someplace. So we were making this album knowing that it’s live or die. A bit of a competitive edge as well, I think – we wanted it to be our
Sgt. Pepper
and we each individually wanted to realize our potential as writers and producers and everything.”

The very title of the album suggests a more polished and refined Queen, as if they had honed their skills to become a more regal and adventurous unit than the underground rock outfit they had established themselves as on their first three releases. By contrast to
Sheer Heart Attack
, the title of which indicates a more balls-to-the-wall kind of rock album than the stadium rock Queen would perfect over the next few years, the albums’ covers are almost night and day. Whereas on
Sheer Heart Attack
the band are represented as sweaty, exhausted rock stars, on
A Night At The Opera
the patriotic redesign of Queen’s official insignia adorns an otherwise plain white sleeve, with the band’s name and the album title regally splashed in a cursive font. The back sleeve reads almost like a programme or playbill, while the inside features full lyrics (for the first time on a Queen album) and four black and white photos of the band members.

“The title of the album came at the very end of recording,” Freddie told
Melody Maker
in 1975. “We thought, ‘Oh God, we’ve got all these songs, what are we going to call the album?’ It was going to be called all sorts of things, and then I said, ‘Look, it’s got this sort of operatic content. Let’s look upon it that way.’ Then Roger and I thought of the title. It fitted, not only because of the high singing. It seemed that Queen were putting their necks on the line; we’ve always done that. We go through so many traumas, and we’re so meticulous. There are literally tens and twenties of songs that have been rejected for this album – some of them nice ones. If people don’t like the songs we’re doing at the moment, we couldn’t give a fuck. We’re probably the fussiest band in the world, to be honest. We take so much care with what we do because we feel so much about what we put across. And if we do an amazing album we make sure that album is packaged right, because we’ve put so much loving into it.”

The critics were almost universal in their praise:
Melody Maker
wrote, “The overall impression is of musical range, power and consistently incisive lyrics. My hair is still standing on end – so if you like good music and don’t mind looking silly, play this album.”
Sounds
argued that “Queen have the ability to actualise and encompass the outer limits of their sense of self-importance,” while American magazine
Grooves
opined, “Sharp operatic interludes, abrupt rhythmic changes,
A Night At The Opera
defies convention and places Queen in that rarefied circle of genuine superstars.” “Don’t get the idea that
A Night At The Opera
constitutes Queen’s attempt at light opera,” the
Winnipeg Free Press
wrote. “There’s still plenty of the familiar firepower which fans have come to expect from the group, although the overall emphasis is on the quieter, more subdued side of the group’s diverse musical framework.” Tony Stewart in
NME
opined that “Already there’s been a suggestion that this, Queen’s fourth album, has cost more to make than any other recorded in British studios ... More than anything else,
A Night At The Opera
is a consolidation of the previous album’s success, skillfully balancing artistry and effectology. Throughout the album, they display their individual songwriting abilities and musicianship to devastating effect – though there is one track, ‘Sweet Lady’, which is probably the most awful rock number they’ve ever recorded; it mars an otherwise excellent set ... If it’s the most expensive album ever made in a British studio, it’s also arguably the best. God save ’em.”

In 1991, the album was reissued on CD, throwing in two bonus tracks – superfluous remixes of ‘I’m In Love With My Car’ and ‘You’re My Best Friend’ – but the real excitement came in 2002, when the album became Queen’s first DVD-Audio release. It was originally supposed to be released on 20 November 2001 but was withdrawn due to a poor remix that caused Brian to take a more hands-on approach in order to create the ultimate sonic scope so deserving of their masterpiece. When the thirtieth anniversary of the album came in November 2005, Brian teased the fans on his website by promising something very special, yet the end result was disappointing. A two-disc package appeared: the first disc was the expected album, remastered for CD (yet again), while the second disc was ... the album yet again, but this time presented in DVD-A (yet again).