1975 was a good year for Queen. It started with the four band members feeling broke and somewhat desperate – but ended with their single Bohemian Rhapsody at No.1 on the UK chart as part of a nine-week reign at the top.
In a new interview with Classic Rock, guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor tell the story of Queen’s landmark year and their celebrated album A Night At The Opera.
The album is widely regarded as Queen’s masterpiece, featuring not only Bohemian Rhapsody but other key songs in the band’s catalogue such as Love Of My Life, Death On Two Legs, You’re My Best Friend, May’s epic The Prophet’s Song and Taylor’s tongue-in-cheek I’m In Love With My Car.
But before the success of A Night At The Opera, money was tight for the four musicians in the band – May, Taylor, singer Freddie Mercury and bassist John Deacon.
By the start of 1975, Queen had made three albums and had three hit singles with Seven Seas of Rhye (UK No.10), Killer Queen (UK No.2) and Now I’m Here (UK No.11).
But according to Deacon, there was just £1500 in the band’s coffers.
“We were in a bad state financially,” May tells Classic Rock. “We owed everybody money. We knew that if the next album didn’t succeed, the ship would sink.”
Salvation arrived in the form of a new manager, John Reid, who extricated Queen from their previous management contract before the band headed to Rockfield studios in Wales to record A Night At The Opera with their trusted producer Roy Thomas Baker.
In Classic Rock’s covert story, May and Taylor discuss the various tracks on the album, most notably the two epic numbers.
May suggests that the six-minute suite Bohemian Rhapsody, Mercury’s magnum opus, was simply an extension of what the band had created on previous albums.
“People have a hard time understanding how unsurprising Bohemian Rhapsody was to us,” he says. “If you look at the first album you’ve got My Fairy King, which is very complex and goes all over the place.
“And then you’ve got March Of The Black Queen on the second album, which is enormnlousky complicated. It’s way more complicated than Bohemian Rhapsody.”
May says of his own grandiose composition, The Prophet’s Song: “Even now, I can see this strange man, this prophet, that I dreamed about. But I had a hell of a job translating it all into music.”
By the time the recording of A Night At The Opera was completed in October 1975, it was rumoured to be the most expensive album ever made to that point – the total budget approximately £40,000.
But at the end of the following month, Bohemian Rhapsody was the biggest selling record in Britain, and it held that position all the way into 1976.
As Roger Taylor recalls: “You’d get the chart positions. ‘Oh, were Number One again!’ It almost got boring after a while.”
And after that, they never had to worry about money ever again.
The new issue of Classic Rock is on sale now
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.