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A Night at the Opera
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The Bohemian Rhapsody Documentary, BBC3, 4 Dec 04 and BBC2, 31 Dec 04
Literary minds from Oxford University discuss the lyrics (transcribed from a recording). (My comments are in italics and are ©2004 Now-Im-Here.com ). Right from the start it says– is this the real life, is this just fantasy? And
finding out what the fantasy is about and what it might mean is one of
the problems in understanding the whole thing… The more you know about the personality of the person who wrote it, a man, I think, between cultures, between, if you like, selves, presiding over several kind of selves, several kinds of sexual identities and proclivities and habits and also, you know.. Africa India, London…
Oh really... Just killed a man? No you haven’t Put a gun against his head No, what you’ve done is taken a another sounding rhyme from a Beatles song: Got up out of bed Dragged a comb across my head… Don’t know what the significance of this would be if it were true but I’ve nevertheless always felt that the musical pattern at ‘put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger now he’s dead’ belies the gravity of the lyric. (Oh no - I think I’m starting to sound like one of them).
Shivers we’ve got aching we’ve got all sorts of more or less sexual sensations going on and indeed, the structure of the lyrics traces a kind of sexual rhythm, I think, and it ends up post-coitally, not in some nihilistic position but simply in a state of careless, indifferent post-coital exhaustion… Now,
at the age of thirteen when the song was released, I’d not experienced
coitus, let alone post-coitus. But all I can say to these male, mostly
middle-aged to oldish academics is that, as a teenager, the sight Roger
with his naked torso covered in baby oil banging that Japanese gong at
the end would have been more than enough to
shake me out of any such state of careless indifference whatsoever… Galileo Galileo, Renaissance scientist, astronomer, there’s no reason for Galileo to be here…
Well I think that there is.
Figaro, Figaro the marriage of Figaro perhaps, Mozart.. Magnifico, it’s there because it sounds like Figaro and Figaro is there because it sounds like Galileo…. How
profound… Here you have then a grab-bag of cultural allusions that may link together, we can make them link together, but if we make them link together that’s saying more about us than it is about the song I think so, it may be just sound… I’ll leave this one to Roger…
'I think it's fairly self-explanatory, there's just a bit of nonsense in the middle...'
Back to the academics...
What would Freddie think about us saying all this stuff about his poem? He wouldn’t mind, would he? He’d be absolutely delighted… Well,
I don’t know what Freddie would say, but
I’d be inclined to say ‘Get a Life’...
Other features of the show… Richard E. Grant narrating the lyrics Richard Burton style in a church crypt
Brian and Roger back in the Rockfield studio and talking about the recording of the song and the album ‘A Night At The Opera’, (and Roger discovering that his room was smaller than Brian's - there would have been 'hell to pay' if he'd known!)
Amateur video (the original is no longer in the BBC archive) of Queen’s first appearance on ‘Top of the Pops’ with ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’ in 1974. Oh
yes, I remember seeing this!!!
The video - 'Stop everything, it's a Queen video!' - Slash
Roy Thomas ‘I’ve lost another Galileo’ Baker playing separate tracks of the original tape.
‘Fred’s thing’ - as Roy Thomas Baker called it – the original recording sessions of the piano part
Freddie’s mother and sister talking.
Bjorn
from Abba talking about Bohemian Rhapsody and their song ‘Mamma Mia’
which knocked it off the top spot. (I
remember being devastated by this at the time as I almost thought that
Bohemian Rhapsody might just stay at number one forever!).
The ‘Wayne’s World’ film.
The Musical. There were some details about how Queen seriously upset America by dressing up as women for the video ‘I Want To Break Free’. This
was by no means the first time they caused controversy in the US; at the
time of the release of the ‘Jazz’ album, they attempted to include a
poster of the Wimbledon stadium nude bike race in the album sleeve and
controversially had six
naked women riding their bikes on stage during their New York concerts. (Source:
Queen: The Definitive Biography by L. Jackson). ‘Greatest
Hits DVD I’ contains a recently-made
video of ‘Bicycle Race’ along the lines that the band
originally intended it – at the time they weren’t happy and the
whole thing was scrapped. The ‘re-make’ came about when lost footage
(or rather 'bottomage') was recovered… I
enjoyed the documentary but it’s an overwhelmingly male-oriented show
– Justin of ‘The Darkness’ says that the song is like a ‘sweet
lady woman – try and fathom it but you’ll never understand I, and
you don’t need to because you love it’ – so that’s the way he
sees it, and it may mean something to him and others
– but not to a heterosexual female like myself. As I’ve said
before, I don’t remember getting strung up over the lyrics at all.
I’ve always felt secure with them and never recall even thinking about
them, or questioning what Freddie might have meant because it was easy
enough to work out for myself. I’ll
have to ask Susan* if she
remembers if we ever discussed it – I
certainly don’t remember doing so. I remember the first time I saw
a woman sing a section of Bohemian Rhapsody – that is, the Killer
Queen at the Party at the Palace – and how great it was…. There
are Freddie’s mother and sister and the director of Wayne’s World
–Penelope Spheeris –
( I saw the results of her work for the first time earlier this year and
thought it was brilliant – it certainly brought on a lot of
smiles!!!), a few women from the ‘We Will Rock You’ audience making
brief comments at the end. Apart from this there is no female presence
on the programme at all. It was even suggested by a journalist from
''Rolling Stone' magazine that the Wayne’s World excerpt
‘masculinised’ the song – ‘made it okay’ for people so it
became a much bigger deal…’ (This is talking about the song’s
greater success in the US the second time as a result of the film).
What??? Was it meant by this that it was too camp to enjoy before
then??? Of
course, Brian’s right when he talks about the context of the album
‘A Night At The Opera’ itself, and listening to it all the way
through, as it was meant to be heard. I did this quite a bit as a
teenager, and as loud as possible!!! I think that the ‘Prophet’s
Song’ might have wound my gran up a bit though, especially at high
volume… It’s an
extraordinary album and, for me, the only one that might rank with it is
‘Innuendo’. Both albums were made when Queen had their backs against
the wall. For the first one – fighting for their survival into the
future, and in the other using all they had left of their time
together…. (Click here to read more…) My
suggestion for a follow-up documentary: Just as Roger and Brian had
their ‘poignant’ trip back to Rockfield, Susan and I return to
Wanstead tube station - to
the place where my journey to making a small contribution to rock
history began…. Roger Taylor
See also: Ga Ga on Radio
Pictures: www.bbc.co.uk
A Night At the Opera: Thirty Years and Counting (August 2005) This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the release of the album ‘A Night At The Opera’. This section is being built to contain commentaries and links relating to it. In the summer of 1975 Queen left London for Rockfield studios in Monmouth, S. Wales: " I think there was a lot of stress, we were very worried about the management situation – we’d just signed up with John Reid and John had said ’okay boys, I’ll take care of the business, you just make the best album you’ve ever made’ – so there was that feeling – it was like - we have to go in there and kill’. We had to make the album which was going to – I guess – save us…" Brian
May, Bohemian Rhapsody Documentary "I actually remember driving here and playing ‘Sheer Heart Attack’ - that’s the last one we did and thinking ’that’s good, it’s going to be hard to make a better one than that’. It really was a job of work and I remember we just sort of utilised the various rooms around what was basically an old farmyard…we were all sitting up one Saturday night with nothing better to do than watch ‘A Night At The Opera’ by the Marx Brothers, and we were big Marx Brothers fans. We’d been thinking about things to call the album…suddenly there is was right in front of us, ‘A Night At The Opera’." Roger
Taylor, Bohemian Rhapsody Documentary
My own commentary (Started Dec 05):
Despite the inexcusable omission of ‘The Prophet’s Song’, the 'Classic Albums' programme on BBC2 on December 17, 2005 made some interesting points about the techniques used – a metal can to achieve the vocal effect on ‘Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon’, and fingers wearing thimbles hitting a metal surface to achieve the ‘tap dancing’ effect on ‘Seaside Rendezvous’. As for the eight-minute epic itself, Michael Simons has some interesting words to say: "There have definitely been enough critics writing about 'A Night at the Opera'. I just want to to something about 'The Prophet's Song'. It is really regrettable, that it's on the same album as 'Bohemian Rhapsody', because it will still stand in the shadow of this monumental song in another 30 years' time. The Prophets Song is fit to be a live version of a mini-opera. The harmonies are breathtaking, the quiet parts fit for a ballad, and, what's more, the song rocks umpteen times more than the end of 'Bo Rhap' - so...!" The B side of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, the songs brings a whole new meaning to the idea of ‘auto-suggestion’ (ha ha). In the ‘Classic Albums’ programme, Roger states that Freddie felt that the vocal was much more suited to Roger’s voice than his. Standing in contrast both lyrically and stylistically, comes the gentler ‘You’re My Best Friend’, a reflection of Deaky’s newly-wed bliss. In the ‘Classic Albums’ programme, it is stated that the song is still frequently played on American radio. (Indeed, it was included in the Las Vegas ‘We Will Rock You’ show). The programme goes on to feature photographer Mick Rock talking about ‘Love of My Life’ in the context of Freddie’s life-long relationship with Mary Austin, who remained his close friend and confidante to the end. Mick Rock took many pictures in of Queen the early days, and, in a book preview of such a collection, Mary Austin is quoted as saying that Freddie had a ‘third eye’ and that she wished to protect him from harm. (During Freddie’s commentary played during ‘Seaside Rendezvous’, he talks about the ‘Vaudeville’ tracks on the album – (this one presented with black and white seaside footage from the appropriate era), with its vocal improvisation of woodwind and brass (wonderful!), ‘Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon’ ‘Good Company’ (for which old film footage, including that of George Formby, is also used). In writing the latter track, Brian states that he was very much influenced by the music of a group called ‘The Temperance Seven’.* I like the DVD footage to ’39 because I think it’s apt in the way it alternates between Brian’s recent performance of the song at Sheffield and earlier film of the group playing it. The idea behind the song may appear to belong to the realms of science fiction, but an ancient Chinese folk tale I remember reading about also contained similar ideas of a parallel universe where time runs differently. This song, is indeed, written in a folk style. It's followed by Brian's raunchy rocker 'Sweet Lady', with Freddie's raucous repine (during the instrumental). The DVD has the final track - 'God Save the Queen' with the sight of Brian playing on the palace roof in 2002 – who else spotted ‘All Right Now’ written high on the left sleeve of his coat? Was this prophetic? In general, some of the quotes from the Radio 2 broadcast of late last year about Bohemian Rhapsody, ‘I Will Not Let You Go’ – can be applied to other tracks on the album, some of them being repeats from last years TV documentary. For example, Roger said that they asked themselves: ‘How big can we make those harmonies, and let’s make a wall of sound that really is a wall and it starts down there and it goes right up, you know, so really we were sort of quite interested in seeing how far you could actually go before it became totally ridiculous or the limits of the technology stopped you’. (Of Freddie): ‘He just cared about the music – nothing else – not egos, legends or whatever – he just wanted the music to be right’… Brian May, ‘Guitarist’ magazine, Oct 05 I feel that this could also be said of ‘The Prophet’s Song’. Roger also said that they were aiming to combine the sound influence of Led Zeppelin with the vocal influence of Yes. In the same way that the ‘Classic Albums’ programme mentions the self-parody of Queen, and Roger said that the album contained humorous elements. The producer of the album, Roy Thomas Baker, in fact, has been quoted as saying that they regarded ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ as a joke. (It’s clear that he worked very closely with Queen in the making of the album, although Brian states that the engineer, the late Mike Stone, is very much its ‘unsung hero’). In terms of what the song became to me, of course, it was anything but a joke. I tend to think that we treated it with an undue reverence when it was first released. But I look back now and think ‘Was it an undue reverence, bearing in mind the phenomenon the song has become?’ As Freddie’s sister, Kashmira, stated in the Radio 2 broadcast, you can have a different understanding every time you hear the song. His mother Jer said that people can make up their own minds. Even my daughter commented on how ‘different songs’ had been so seamlessly put together to make this one whole song. There is an indication though, that from the outset, Queen were making themselves out to be serious when they were really being tongue-in-cheek. I agree that, although the group always came over as perfectionists, there has always been this element of 'vulnerability' in their presentation. Certainly, the music press of the time didn’t take them seriously and contemporary artists who had the benefit of hearing a demo, such as Elton John and Noddy Holder of Slade clearly thought it was quite mad. But then, we all now know better…and all I can say now is ‘they had a nerve!’ The cover versions keep coming – of course - the catty offering by Ricky, Kitty and the Claws, a Japanese version, the Royal Philharmonic, R&B, disco, and the recent one from G4, who in 2005 marketed theirs, curtailed from the original, for Mothers’ Day. That would just be right for me, I suppose… It’s often stated that punk
arrived in the late seventies as a reaction to glam rock and the
grandiosity of such songs as ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. The truth,
however, is that the roots of punk were already there – it was
recently stated that ‘The Who’ were the original punk rockers, and
dare I say it, the head banging part of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ could
easily have had much to offer the punk movement. *I’m hoping to have more on them another time. See also ‘The Sunflower’ Our 'Sergeant Pepper' Brian May Our epiphany - our turning point Roger Taylor
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