Queen The Greatest Special
Brand new series of The Greatest celebrates 50th Anniversary of Bohemian Rhapsody
Having already achieved over 29 million views since its arrival on YouTube, Queen’s weekly series The Greatest returns for a special 5-part
mini-series to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the phenomenal
Bohemian Rhapsody
Queen The Greatest Special: Episode 1
The Path to Bohemian Rhapsody
On October the 31st, 1975, Queen’s masterpiece was released and began the journey to becoming one of the greatest songs of all time. Brilliant and completely unique, its creative and technical complexity sent shockwaves throughout the music industry, taking everyone by surprise. Everyone, that is, except the band, who by this point had become well used to Freddie’s extraordinary flights of fantasy. In exclusive interviews, Brian May and Roger Taylor highlight the songs that paved the road to Bohemian Rhapsody.
“It’s interesting. Bohemian Rhapsody is viewed as a giant step for Queen creatively, but from the inside, it didn’t feel that way. It’s one of the threads of Queen in our development. You’ve only got to look at the first album, with My Fairy King.” Brian May.
“On the second album, Queen II, there’s a monumentally long and complicated track called March of the Black Queen. It’s a lot more complicated in many ways than Bohemian Rhapsody.” Roger Taylor
While to the outside world Bohemian Rhapsody is regarded as Queen’s masterstroke, for Brian May and Roger Taylor, talking in this first episode of a new series of Queen The Greatest, this was very much a typical day’s work with Freddie.
“You didn’t know where Freddie was coming from,” says Brian. “He comes in and goes ‘there’s this bit, and there’s another bit we’ll do, and there’s the operatic and then there’s another bit we will do’. ‘Oh yeah, OK Freddie’. And basically, you have two choices, either going ‘well we’re really not feeling it’, which we sometimes would do, or we all dive in, and the whole Queen machine swings into action.”
Clearly for Freddie, Brian, Roger and John, Bohemian Rhapsody was part of the natural evolution of Queen, and in these interviews Brian and Roger explain where from a songwriting point of view this evolution began.
Brian May points to the band’s first album, Queen and its track My Fairy King: “Piano based, quite complex, lots of mood changes and a fantasy lyric.”
Roger Taylor concurs, “I think it was certainly part of Freddie’s journey. Obviously when we did Bohemian Rhapsody we didn’t know we were going to end up with that. Part of our thing was really experimentation, and it’s very much on our first album, the track My Fairy King, which I think is one of the more interesting tracks, it was complicated, had a lot of difficult vocals, and it had fantastic elements.”
Taylor continues: “On the second album, Queen II, there’s a monumentally long and complicated track, March of the Black Queen, which involved a lot of rehearsal, a lot of singing and so many different little sections. It’s a lot more complicated in many ways than Bohemian Rhapsody. It had all the different ingredients Bohemian Rhapsody had. It’s a track I like to listen to because of the complexity of it. I can’t believe we learned it all; it was so bloody long and laborious but satisfying.”
May points to a further example of Freddie’s evolution as a songwriter: “Now The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke is incredibly complex, and ought to be just as shocking to people as Bohemian Rhapsody, because it’s unique. No one’s ever done anything like that, and all these little pieces that come in and go out and tings and contrapuntal things, and he’s doing something over here, I’m doing something over here. We just remixed it all, and it’s fascinating to make it all work.”
Roger Taylor agrees: “It’s incredibly complicated. There are swooping, counter six-part harmonies here, there, coming in and crossing. It’s very bloody complicated that song – and rather wonderful in its eccentricity, I think. Yeah. It’s a nice, interesting track. It didn’t come across as big as we thought it would, but it’s an interesting exercise in eccentric over-elaboration.”
“But this is Freddie and this is Queen,” adds Brian May, “because this is the kind of music we’re evolving as we go along quite gradually.”
While neither “March of the Black Queen” or “The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke” enjoys the same profile as Bohemian Rhapsody, they undoubtably laid the path to Queen’s most famous song.
This new series of Queen The Greatest will continue weekly throughout November.
A Night At The Opera reissued on crystal clear vinyl with gold labels is available now.
Bohemian Rhapsody is released on heavyweight blue 7” and 12” single, 12” picture disc and blue cassette single October 31.
Queen The Greatest Special Episode 1
The Path to Bohemian Rhapsody
Viewing link:
Queen The Greatest YouTube Playlist Link:
https://Queen.lnk.to/
Next week, November 7 – Queen The Greatest Special Episode 2: The Path to A Night At The Opera – Part 1