Queen: From Rags to Rhapsody

This programme contains strong language

# So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye? #

Here we are now 40 years on,

talking about Bohemian Rhapsody.

# Oh, baby

# Can't do this to me, baby... #

It was just another track, that we thought was great at the time,

but we always thought we were great, you know?

And, erm, you know, we always had this insane belief

that we had something that no-one else had ever ventured to create.

I don't think we would have imagined that 40 years later

people would still be that excited about it.

Whenever you're releasing a record,

you never know how well it's going to do.

You may have a hunch.

You may think this one could be a hit,

but you never know what is going to be massive.

# Oooh, yeah

# Oooh, yeah... #

I think it's a lot of timing, a lot of luck...

We were just writing like crazy. I mean, there was so much hunger.

We just had so much that we wanted to bring out

and so we had all kinds of songs.

Bohemian Rhapsody was basically, like, three songs

that I wanted to put out and I just put the three together.

And then it had a very big risk factor.

# Any way the wind blows.... #

THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

-All right, let's talk about the very early days...

-All right.

..shall we, Rog?

So, what did you do? Put your kit on your back and come up to London?

Well, no. Erm...

Not really, actually. I sort of...

I came up and did dentistry in London.

I did a electronics.

I was going to be a graphics illustrator.

It was going to be astronomy. It was going to be physics.

And I suddenly realised I couldn't stand not being in a group.

I had a group called...

I dread to tell you! No, I won't tell you.

-Oh, go on!

-I think it was called The, er, Mind Boggles.

We needed a drummer,

so we advertised in my college noticeboard.

We need Ginger Baker, Mitch Mitchell-type drummer,

and, erm... Brian wrote me this long involved letter.

He sounded quite intelligent,

because he liked Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix.

I met him, and we got on very well.

That was sort of the beginning.

The singer of that band was a guy called Tim Staffell.

So the line-up at this point was drums, bass...

And guitar, but everybody sang.

And Tim was the lead singer -

had a tremendously powerful voice, he's done a few things since.

I used to follow Smile a lot.

We were like friends.

I used to go to their shows

and they used to come and see mine.

Brian and I were a sort of duo, before.

Well, we were...

We worked together before and we knew we worked together worked well

and we respected each other's musicianship.

Freddie really caught on to that.

Freddie was always so keen.

And he literally sort of taught himself to play...

to understand chords on a guitar, et cetera, et cetera.

And then he joined a couple of bands while we were in Smile.

Had Freddie had any experience at all at this point?

None at all before Smile was formed. Absolutely none.

Apart from Cliff Richard impersonations in front of his mirror.

He didn't suddenly become this rock star, he always was, in a sense.

He always believed he was a star.

And he wandered around as if he was Robert Plant, really.

But, with a sense of humour, you know.

What did you see in what Brian and Rog were doing with Smile?

Nothing!

THEY CHUCKLE

Erm...

I don't know, I think they had the basic ingredients

of what we wanted to do, which was, sort of, couple...

Just very briefly,

couple hard-rock with

an overlay of harmonies.

Do you think the Queen sound is there in Smile, isn't it?

I think a lot of it is. Yes, it is really.

I think the basis of it is when me and Roger start hitting things.

And that's what Freddie saw and in a sense fell in love with, I suppose.

He wanted that for his...

For his uses.

We split up two or three years later

completely disillusioned because although we'd had a lot of successful gigs

and we'd played colleges and pubs,

and small clubs up and down the country,

we just never got anywhere.

We didn't have a good manager.

We didn't really have anything. We were lost in the wilderness.

And that was really the chastening experience

which led to the way we decided to organise Queen.

I think that was perhaps the biggest influence of all -

the failure of that early venture.

Freddie sort of got us.

He said, "Come on! You can't give up.

"I want to sing for you."

And nobody really took him that seriously.

But he really, sort of, fused it together.

And then... Which made a core of the three of us.

So we decided we'd take the plunge.

And it was then that I sort of thought about

the name Queen. I had it in the back of my mind.

I thought one day that could be, erm...

-We could put that to good use.

-Why Queen?

At the time it was, er...

It was outrageous.

It was very grand, very pompous.

The name lent itself to a lot of things - theatre...

The kind of things we wanted to do.

We then spent a couple of years looking for a bass player.

We had several bass players.

Very hard to find the right guy.

They had quite a few bass players, I hear.

I never actually met any of them.

I've heard some stories about them.

I've had some stories about some of them.

And I happened to have got my equipment down in London,

so I got myself introduced to them

and said I'd be interested.

So, basically, I went along for an audition.

I learned some of the songs.

They were doing a lot... Some of the numbers

I remember things like Great King Rat,

and one or two other numbers off the first album.

# Gotta make do with a worn-out rock and roll scene

# The old bop is gettin' tired

# Well, you know, you know what I mean

# Fifty-eight that was great

# But it's over now that's all

# Somethin' harder's coming up

# Gonna really knock a hole in the wall

# Gonna grab you, hit you hard

# Make you feel ten feet tall

# Well, I hope that a brand-new baby's gonna come along soon

# I know it could happen any old rainy afternoon

# With the juke box blowin' juke box blowing no fuse

# And the temperature's like, just like a Sunday school cruise

# And you know what everybody in this world could use... #

The group were, in a way, very much well formed.

They had all the material for the first album -

all bar one or two tracks they were already doing...

They had quite a backlog of songs and...

and the ideas for stage production

and how to put the group over were all there, in a way.

As soon as John was in the band it felt complete.

I think we all knew that was the line-up as soon as John was there.

Previously, it'd been bass players came and went,

but John felt like he was part of the family.

And we were a family from that point.

It was only a spare-time thing, even... Really, even with Queen.

I really didn't expect it to take off.

I think John only realised that the whole thing was actually

serious when we actually had an album that came out.

Up until then he thought, "Oh, I'll just tag along with this."

I'm not going to say we were harmonious the whole time,

because we weren't.

We used to have a lot of differences.

-INTERCOM:

-Right, take two.

-I'm trying to slow the thing down!

Well, it doesn't need slowing down! God, it's creaking at the moment.

But we did feel that we shared something that was special.

And so when we got knocks from the outside, we thought,

"Huh, screw you guys. We know better than you.

"We know what we've got and you don't."

So there is great strength in having a good kind of democratic bond

between the band members.

We were still a group of people without any context in the music business.

Without any way in, it seemed.

I used to go and see groups at the Marquee and think,

"How do you get to that situation?"

And the answer was, people want to book you if they've heard of you.

If you've made a record, or something.

How do you get to make a records?

You get to make records if you've played at places like the Marquee

where people notice you.

And it was definitely head up against a brick wall department!

First of all, we decided we were going to be ready when the opportunity came.

So the first job was to rehearse and write

to the point where we thought we had an act

worth presenting to the public.

The second thing we thought was to make a good demonstration tape.

So one day this chap turned up who was a friend of a friend, basically,

working at De Lane Lea studios,

the new De Lane Lea studios in Wembley

which was just being built

and they were testing the acoustics.

And he said to me, we need a group

to come in here and make some noise

so that we can test all our lines, and the soundproofing, and whatever

and in return we will make some tracks.

I remember being on the train, you know, with Fred...

Can you believe it? He did used to travel on the train!

Hated every second of it.

..and we were clutching this one little reel of tape

and that was our entire future in that little tiny reel of tape.

And I remember thinking, "That's our future."

And it was a hard slog round.

Didn't come overnight.

-Basically, they all said no.

-THEY CHUCKLE

Basically they said, "Fuck off and don't come back."

It was tough.

We were all students, so we'd run out of student grant.

I was teaching in a comprehensive school to make ends meet.

I drove the odd van.

Freddie and I had a stall at one...

For quite a while in Kensington Market.

We used to flog old Edwardian scarves and...er...

Russian fox furs.

HE LAUGHS

Erm...

I don't think Brian would've liked that very much!

The first three years were really faith and fumes.

We were very penniless, but we had a lot of faith,

and we had a lot of energy.

The band was first brought to my notice in 1971.

My brother went and saw them at a nurses' dance in Norwood.

He came back and said they were really amazing.

I bought some tapes from De Lane Lea sessions

that had taken place,

and we listened to those.

Test sessions.

And we realised the band had amazing internal drive.

Queen caught my imagination really by just their own ability,

the way they worked together as a four-piece.

It was totally interlocked -

in their thinking and playing.

That was different to what was going on.

# Well, I've loved a million women

# In a belladonic haze

# And I ate a million dinners

# Brought to me on silver trays

# Give me everything I need

# To feed my body and my soul... #

I think it was the first song that we actually wrote ourselves,

ever, as Queen.

There were a couple of things that we tried before

when Roger and I were in Smile.

But I think this is the first sort of Queen song.

# But if I crossed a million rivers

# And I rode a million miles

# Then I'd still be where I started

# Still be where I started

# Keep yourself alive... #

So we finally signed to a production company

who didn't really feel obliged to give us studio time

except when the studio was empty.

We'd get a call at any time of day or night -

usually middle of the night.

You know, it was basically the off-time at the studio.

When the studio had dead time and nobody was in.

But we would grab those hours

and regard them as gold dust.

On the first album we learnt a lot of the ins and outs of a studio.

We started working with Roy Baker,

who's a very technical whiz.

He could actually enable us to do all the ideas that we had,

and could keep it under control.

All the technical things that we wanted to do in the studio

he was able to put those into effect for us.

We had a clear picture of what we wanted to do.

There were certain fixed ideas we had

and were going to bloody do them,

you know, whether people said yes or no.

So, at that point, was Freddie already established with Brian

as the major writer for the band?

Yes, I suppose so.

Because they were the ones that did most of the writing.

Freddie, by this time, was sort of remembering all his piano lessons.

I remember lifting a dreadful old piano up to his top-floor flat.

We nearly killed ourselves in the process.

And Freddie sort of hammered out the songs which he wrote

on the first album.

Hard rock in those days was always done in a sort of blues way.

There were 12 bars,

lots of heavy crashing chords.

And then there was the other side,

where it was a lot of melodic ballad type things.

And I just thought why can't the two come together.

Why can't you have a good melodic song

with a lot of heavy content,

and we just thought that would be interesting.

I mean, subsequently songs like Liar...

# I have sinned, dear Father

# Father, I have sinned

# Try and help me, Father

# Won't you let me in?

# LIAR!

# No... Nobody believes me

# LIAR!

# Ohh...

# Why don't they leave me alone?... #

So how long before the album came out was it recorded and finished?

I'd say a good year.

A good year.

And that year was spent doing what?

Uh...

Giving free concerts for our friends.

Playing the odd gig that we could scratch.

We turned up at Bedford College once in London,

and there was nobody.

So we treated it as a rehearsal.

And played to an empty room.

I think about three people turned up in the end.

You know, this is character building.

We went to this college in...

Somewhere in the Midlands,

and we played the first set.

We were booked - I think, £20 we were paid to play a night.

We played the first half and then there was an interval

where they played the disco.

And we were due to go back on for the second half

and the lady - bless her - who was the chair of events,

came up to us in the interval and said, "Um...

"Really good, boys. We've had a request."

And we went, "Yeah, what is the request?"

"Well, the request is, the people would kind of like

"to have the disco in the second half instead of you guys."

So we went,

"Fine. Give us the money. Bye."

You know, but that's kind of...

That's a blow to your confidence.

# All day long

# All day long

# All day long. #

I remember Freddie and I used to get on the number nine bus,

go up to Trident Studios in Wardour Street

to try and talk to our managers, day after day

and say, "Why is nothing happening?

"What are we doing here?"

We got very angry and said to him,

"We just need this record out, because it's getting old

"and things are happening and leaving us behind."

So, it was a very, very frustrating time.

The album came out and sort of resoundingly crashed.

It didn't really do much.

When you're recording an album, you tend to think

when you first mix it, et cetera,

you tend to think it's the eighth wonder of the world,

which it invariably isn't.

But we were always perhaps overconfident -

even arrogant.

We were fairly arrogant, yeah.

-I don't quite know why.

-LAUGHTER

# All right

# Now didn't you feel surprised to find

# The cap just didn't fit?

# A woman expects a man

# To buckle down and to shovel it

# What will you do for heaven

# If it's back from where you came?

# I want you

# To be a woman

# A woman, I said. #

Thank you. APPLAUSE

MUSIC: Procession by Queen

-So, Queen II was the next major stepping stone, wasn't it?

-Yes.

By this time, we had actually managed to attract some attention.

The moment we came out with the first album,

it put us in an immediate "heavy" category.

And to a lot of other bands,

that would have meant, "Oh, great.

"Let's do what the media expects us to do."

But we didn't. I mean, we knew we wanted to do a particular thing,

like branch out into actual songwriting.

In Queen II, we had very big ideas of writing things

which had a very heavy substructure, if you like -

but lots of melody and lots of harmony on top.

So...

we gave ourselves the go-ahead to get complex.

How long did that album take then, altogether?

Well, it took about three and a half months,

which in those days, was an epic.

That album was the first aesthetic nervous breakdown producer we'd had.

Because we worked all hours for months.

It was the first mammoth job we did.

We went about triple the budget that we were originally allowed,

but because the record company and the production company

were pretty sympathetic, artistically, at that time.

They kept hearing bits and saying, "It's great. Go on!"

Anyway, once you're halfway through,

they can't really get you to stop. They want an album!

# 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

# The seven seas of Rhye... #

We realised that the easiest way of getting a hit album

is to have a hit single that has some musical validity.

That's what we thought, and that's what we set about doing.

And it happened very smoothly there and Queen II came out.

It had Seven Seas Of Rhye on it.

Almost within two weeks, I think, the single was a hit.

And the album went straight in as it was released,

which was great for us

because we were in the middle of our own first headlining tour.

We'd done our support tour and then, Mel Bush came to us -

he was a pretty top promoter at the time -

and he said, "I think you guys can headline the next tour."

And we were surprised.

I remember thinking, "Wow, that's very quick",

because normally, you would support a few acts

and build a following, and then you would go on your headline tour.

But he said, "No, I feel you can do it.

"You can sell out all these places."

And he gave us a big list -

Newcastle City Hall, Manchester's Free Trade Hall -

all the sort of classic gigs that rock bands do -

and he said, "You can fill all these.

"And at the end, we're going to do the Rainbow."

Well, they're just about to build up their momentum again now,

with their new album, Sheer Heart Attack,

released at the beginning of November -

and a British tour, which starts on October 31st

and which takes them through to November 19th

and a concert at the Rainbow.

The Rainbow was almost like the pinnacle.

Not long before, we'd seen David Bowie rise from obscurity

to being able to play the Rainbow, and it seemed like such a big deal.

And I remember thinking at the time,

"How amazing would it be if we could do this?"

And I think it was only a year later that we actually did that gig.

And live, of course,

we very quickly became aware of the fact that you get one shot.

So, you've got to deliver. You've got to really capture people.

You've got to move them, you've got to engage them, and we used to say,

"Deafen them and blind them and leave them wanting more."

# I have sinned, dear Father

# Father, I have sinned

# Try and help me, Father

# Won't you let me in?

-# Liar!

-Oh

# Everybody believes me. #

INSTRUMENTS CUT OUT

We had so many mishaps on stage.

Power cuts were quite normal.

Tell you what, we'll just pose and you just look at us.

DRUM SOLO

Anybody who'd like to pose with us is cordially invited onto the stage.

Come on.

It was nice, really, because the audiences were so friendly to us

that it really didn't matter. They were very patient.

It's a great feeling when you realise that,

because I think when you're starting off, you think...

"What's going to happen if something goes wrong? It's all going to go pear-shaped!"

But actually, you've got a great audience

and you've got a band who knows what it's doing

and no matter what happens, you can normally deal with it in some way.

# A word in your ear

# From father to son

# Funny, you don't hear a single word I've said

# But my letter to you

# Will stay by your side through the years

# Till the loneliness has gone

# Sing if you will

# But the air you breathe

# I live to give you

# Father to son

-# Father to

-Father to

-Father to son. #

-Then we almost immediately went on tour with Mott The Hoople.

-Yes.

Which was, for us, very successful. It brought us to so many new people.

And a lot of them have stuck with us ever since. It's quite amazing.

From being a support act on a major tour - just a support act -

people have actually stuck with us right through.

It was the first time we'd really got into the big halls -

you know, Madison Square Gardens, The Forum in Los Angeles

and the Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto - those sort of big things.

We had some bad luck on that tour,

because Brian got hepatitis then and we had to cut the tour in half

and come home halfway through, because Brian was very ill.

So, after the anxiety attack came Sheer Heart Attack?

Yeah, that was made in even more trying conditions, really,

because Brian had just recovered - supposedly recovered -

from his hepatitis when we made that album.

We started off in Wales

and Brian started collapsing all over the place.

We found out eventually, he had an ulcer

and he'd had it for six years and it was just getting really bad.

So, Brian had to go into hospital

and the three of us carried on

and did a tremendous amount of work on the album,

leaving all Brian's bits out.

And when he was well again, he came back and did them

and slotted them in.

And strangely enough, I think it's my favourite album.

My particular favourite, obviously, is Now I'm Here.

# Look around around around around... #

Which also was written about America, presumably.

It was - and with Mott. It was a bit of a nod to Mott.

# You won't see me

# Now I'm here Now I'm here

# Now I'm there Now I'm there

# I'm just a...

# Just a new man

# Yes, you made me live again

# A baby I was when you took my hand

# And the light of the night burned bright

# The people all stared didn't understand

# But you knew my name on sight

# Whatever came of you and me

# America's new bride to be

# Ooh, don't worry, babe I'm safe and sound

# Down in the dungeon Just Peaches and me

# Don't I love her so

# Yes, she made me live again

# Yeah

# Yeah

# A thin moon me in a smokescreen sky

# Where the beams of your love-light chased

# Don't move don't speak Don't feel no pain

# With the rain running down my face

# Your matches still light up the sky

# And many a tear lives on in my eye. #

Yeah, it was a very enjoyable track.

It was done very quickly, at the end of the album.

Most of the album...

Actually, it was a hit. We never seemed to have as big a hit...

It's very hard to get a rock and roll hit single anywhere -

America or here, or Japan.

People will always go for the more melodic things.

# She's a Killer Queen

# Gunpowder, gelatine Dynamite with a laser beam

# Guaranteed to blow your mind

# Anytime. #

Our first album had done very well in Japan.

The old cliche - "big in Japan".

So, we were booked to do a tour of there and we arrived in Japan

and it was into what we'd known as Beatlemania.

There really were thousands of kids and it was bedlam from then on.

They were all hanging out in the hotels,

hiding behind curtains in the corridors

and everywhere we went, we got followed.

I understand that in Japan, you couldn't even leave your hotels.

-It was very difficult.

-Very hectic.

It was. This time round, we had to have bodyguards all-round.

We did see a lot of the kitchens, though.

Yes, and we were reduced to travelling in laundry lifts

and things like that.

The price of fame, they tell me.

We're completely overwhelmed by what's happened since we came here.

It's never happened to us in any other country,

in this kind of style.

I just want to say thanks to everybody for being so great.

We feel really at home. Thanks for the presents

and thanks for making such a noise at the concert.

Hello, boys and girls. It's very nice to be in Japan.

Thank you very much for the reception and the amazing welcome.

And from me and the boys, from Queen,

thank you very much. Sayonara.

'It was odd, because in a way, we were stars outside England

'before we were very well known at home.'

I'll just tell you about this one, it's called Death On Two Legs.

'We were still very poor.

'Nothing had changed from that point of view.'

This is about a nasty old man that I used to know.

'The first three years, we were with a company called Trident, right?'

And we were very badly handled... Well, not badly handled. No...

We were badly handled. LAUGHTER

There we were, we'd had three albums

and we were still on a basic wage, you know?

I think we were on 20 quid a week at that point,

from our management company. I'm not exaggerating.

It was that point where the managers were all building swimming pools

and driving their Rolls-Royces and you're thinking, "Hmm...

"Where did it all go?" So, there was a crunch coming.

What we decided to do was go with a production company,

rather than with a record company.

The deal was that we made the album for the production company,

which is something like a middleman.

It's between the artist and the record company.

We make the album for the production company,

they sell it to a record company afterwards.

And in retrospect, it's probably the worst thing we ever did.

# You suck my blood like a leech

# You break the law and you preach

# Screw my brain till it hurts

# All my money and you want more

# Misguided old mule With your pig-headed rules

# With your narrow-minded cronies Who are fools of the first division

# Death on two legs

# You're tearing me apart

# Death on two legs

# You 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. #

So basically, we got out of that one

by re-signing with a guy called John Reid,

who also manages Elton.

There was a moment where John said,

"OK, you can now do this,

"you're going to be free of your old commitments to Trident.

"And you go away and make the best record you've ever made

"and I will sort out the money side."

So, I think he put us on 30 quid a week, instead of 20 quid a week -

and we were made!

It was do or die, really.

I think if we hadn't made A Night At The Opera, it's questionable

whether we would have been able to carry on.

# Talk like a big business tycoon

# You're just a hot-air balloon

# No-one gives you a damn

# Overgrown school boy

# Let me tan your hide

# You're a dog with disease You're the king of the sleaze

# Put your money where your mouth is Mr Know-all

# Was the fin on your back part of the deal... shark!

# Death on two legs

# Tearing me apart

# Death on two legs

# You never had a heart of your own

# Insane should be put inside

# You're a sewer rat Decaying in a cesspool of pride

# Should be made unemployed Make yourself null and void

# Make me feel good I feel good. #

There was this kind of feeling of abandon, I think,

about A Night At The Opera.

We thought, no holds barred, no barriers.

We'll do exactly what we think we can do, push ourselves to the limit,

make the finest tapestry that we possibly can.

And that will be us, there'll be no apologies,

there's no pandering to commerciality.

We just make something wonderful that's always been in our heads.

Can you tell us what Queen is all about?

It's basically a rock and roll band with lots of harmonies,

lots of everything.

-Can you stay in one bag today and be safe?

-No, no.

That's one of the things that I think people can't put us into -

is one category.

There's a lot of ingredients that make up Queen

and you can't put your finger on it, really.

# Don't you hear my call Though you're many years away

# Don't you hear me calling you

# Write your letters in the sand For the day I take your hand

# In the land that our grandchildren knew. #

Altogether!

# Don't you hear my call Though you're many years away

# Don't you hear me calling you

# All your letters in the sand Cannot heal me like your hand

# All my life still ahead Pity me.

# Oh oh oh. #

All right!

It was Night At The Opera time and we were just writing like crazy.

I mean, there was so much hunger there.

We just had so much that we wanted to bring out.

It was all kept in and so, we had all kinds of stuff.

# Ooh, you make me live

# I've been wandering round

# Still come back to you... #

This was John's first hit and this was quite a big hit.

# I'm happy at home

# You're my best friend... #

That line, "happy at home" - I can remember Roger going,

"I don't want that fucking line on here!

"We're not singing "happy at home", for fuck's sake! It's rock and roll!

"What is this? The Women's Institute?"

# Happy at home

# You're my best friend

# Oh, you're my best friend

# Ooh, you're my best friend

# Ooh, you make me live... #

We would really go in the studio and say, "What have you got?"

You know, "I've got this."

And we would sort of hammer it out there

and stuff happened very much in the studio.

By the fourth album,

it was much more flying by the seat of your pants.

It was kind of more interesting, in a way.

More natural growth from the band of developing a song.

We don't look upon singles the same as other people look upon singles -

like, commerciality...

I suppose that's one of the ingredients.

But I think it's just our way of saying,

this is what we're doing at the time

and we felt that Bohemian Rhapsody summed it up at that time,

when we were doing a lot of diverse things, complex harmonies...

It was full of extremes and we thought, "Why not?"

Bohemian Rhapsody happened to be...

It was basically like, three songs that I wanted to put out

and I just put the three together.

-ENGINEER:

-Take one of mark two version of Fred's thing.

It's one of those songs I had a lot of fun in, because I thought,

I'm going to do exactly as I please,

do as many multilayer harmonies as possible -

go well over the top.

And you know, I didn't give a shit about anyone else.

Fuck!

We did a lot of things with piano-bass-drums, actually, yeah -

as the spine, as a core.

Freddie had a fantastic sense of time,

so he was great to play with.

He had a very attacking piano style and very definite -

and it was very concise and precise

and so, it was really great to play, to make backing tracks with,

so you had everything, really.

You had the whole range -

the piano, the melodic range, the bass and drums.

-It's still too slow.

-No, that's nice, that's nice.

I'll tell you, that is slower on there.

It was a very strange song to record in a way,

because we actually did it in sections.

DRUM LOOPS I like that first bit.

I'll come in from here, now. Carry on.

I remember doing one recording session in Rockfield.

PIANO CUE Oh, fuck, I missed. Fuck it.

Freddie was saying, these are the notes. It goes, dum-dum-dum-dum...

And it seemed to have no connection with anything.

But he had all the ideas of what he wanted to go on top.

FREDDIE LAUGHS Did you hear that?

Plomb-plomb-plomb! It's too much!

It was the three of us - we all came in a beat late!

You didn't shout "one" or anything!

I know, I shouted "one" and came in myself late!

It's so fucking hot in here, I'm not kidding.

I did kind of request the piece for the solo.

I said, "I would like to be soloing over a verse,

"and I can hear something in my head which is not

"the melody of the song, but some sort of counterpoint to that."

And so, Freddy built that into his plan of the backing track.

Let's talk about writing for a second, Freddie.

How prolific a writer are you?

Oh, I write a dozen a day!

Usually, the way I write it, I get the melody first,

because that's the most important. It comes easier to me, anyway.

I work out the melody, the song structure.

And then somehow, the words fit in afterwards.

Lyrically, I'm very bad, actually.

I really have to work.

Fred's lyrics came from the left, from the right, from the...

You never knew where they were coming from.

# I see a little silhouetto of a man

# Scaramouche, Scaramouche Will you do the fandango

Thunderbolt and lightning Very very frightening me

-# Galileo

-Galileo

-Galileo

-Figaro. #

-I never saw him reading a lot.

I never saw him with a book, actually.

No, I didn't see him with one.

I saw him with a Sotheby's catalogue...

# He's just a poor boy from a poor family

# Spare him his life from this monstrosity. #

That is one aspect of Queen that people seem to like.

They love the big choral,

the big harmony thing, which we are capable of doing,

linked with a strong melody.

And perhaps a little touch of bizarre-ness. Not too much.

# Bismillah No, we will not let you go

# Let him go... #

We sort of came up in the end with everybody sings -

the three of us all sing each line

and Brian was quite strong in the low register,

Freddie was stronger over the whole register

and I was very strong on the higher register,

in full voice and falsetto as well.

So, we devised this sort of way of getting that sound.

It does encapsulate a lot of the different things which were Queen -

our essential style, which was still evolving at that time.

So, it's got the heavy stuff, it's got the melodic stuff,

it's got lots of harmonies, it's got guitar harmonies

and orchestrations in the guitars and the voices.

And again, it was just the four of us

and it does sound like a huge symphony ensemble

with a choir and whatever, but it's just the four of us.

-# No no no

-No no no no no no no. #

So, we were consciously experimenting with

how far you could push that studio technique,

to make something massive and grand and...

..and stupendous. It did come out quite stupendous.

# Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me... #

Somebody wrote me a letter about that and said,

"I study demonology and Satanic things. Why did they use Beelzebub?"

I suppose that's a legitimate question.

-Why do we use it?

-Yeah.

-Why do we use anything?

I mean, it doesn't actually mean I study demonology and things.

I just love the word "Beelzebub".

LAUGHTER

Great word, isn't it?

Well, it was a great vision from Freddie.

That was something very unusual, I think.

It's only in retrospect I think, we realise how unusual it was.

But in a sense, it was part of the flow.

It didn't seem that abnormal to us at the time.

It was a very big risk.

I mean, I remember Roger saying that it's one of those things...

We said, OK, it's either going to be a huge flop, or...

As it was a song of extremes.

That was the way we were going to approach it.

We had this kind of perverse belief that our vision

would be something that people would understand, so we didn't...

We consciously didn't go the commercial route.

The radios didn't like it initially, because it was too long

and the record company said, "You can't market it that way."

And after me having virtually put the three songs together,

they wanted me to slice it up again.

The record company all, as a mass, came to us and said,

"Don't do this.

"This thing is too long, nobody's going to play it.

"Please don't make us put out this record as a single -

"this Bohemian Rhapsody - or else, please, let's edit it."

And John actually delivered an edit.

I don't know if this is a fact that's known.

John Deacon went away and made a cut

which cut out all the operatic stuff.

It did sound odd and everybody else said it was odd

and you can't do it, and all that sort of thing.

And yeah, I was wrong.

I just said, it either goes out in its entirety, or not at all.

We just thought, no, that's what you're getting

and we're not going to give you another one, so it was done that way.

And it was given a lot of help from people like Kenny Everett,

who was a sort of visionary genius DJ.

So, ladies and gentlemen,

for the first time anywhere in this universe of ours,

we present at this moment of time the new Queen single.

He got right behind it, played it 14 times in the weekend on his show,

which really didn't hurt, you know?

# I see a little silhouetto of a man

# Scaramouche, Scaramouche Will you do the fandango

# Thunderbolt and lightning Very very frightening me... #

We made a video for Bohemian Rhapsody,

simply because we were on tour

and we weren't able to go on Top Of The Pops.

To be honest, we weren't too keen on going on Top Of The Pops

and standing on those little podiums and miming premium Rhapsody.

It would have been really crap.

We used an outside broadcast sports unit

to bring their cameras into Elstree, where we were rehearsing.

And we could go on the road and that could be on Top Of The Pops

and on television throughout the world, then.

# Easy come, easy go Will you let me go?

# Bismillah No, we will not let you go! #

And we realised,

wow, you don't even have to be here to promote your record now.

You just make one of these little video films

and that's got to be the way in the future.

And we were the first to do that.

-# Let him go!

-Bismillah

-# We will not let you go

-Let me go! #

I think it's the first video

that actually took any kind of effect into actually making sales.

A lot of videos were probably made before, but they didn't sell records.

I think that's the first one that actually...

There was this chemistry

that actually linked visuals with the music and it worked.

# O Mamma mia, mamma mia

# Mamma mia, let me go

# Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me

# For me

# For me! #

A Night At The Opera changed the financial outlook of things.

After that, it wasn't so much,

"Where's the next fiver coming from?"

It was very, very successful. It had a very successful single, obviously.

We were just checking into one of the hotels

and we realised that Bohemian Rhapsody had gone to number one

and the four of us were in a lift -

probably the first time it had happened,

because normally, we'd have bodyguards and everything -

and we were jumping up and down and the fucking lift stopped.

So there we are, I thought, my God,

here's the number one group in England,

going to suffocate in this damn lift!

-Ladies and gentlemen, this is Queen!

-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And then, we got a call saying,

"Would you like to play live on Christmas Eve, on BBC One?"

We went, "Whoa!"

Thank you! Thank you and good evening, everybody!

It was a big honour and a big thrill and scary.

You know, we'd never done anything live like that on TV.

We'd better be bloody good at this.

We normally did a big, dramatic entrance

and everything was dark and there was lots of noise and smoke

and dry ice and explosions and stuff.

It gave you great confidence, coming on the stage.

On this occasion, they had the audience lit for TV,

so we went on stage and looked around

and there were all the people's faces.

It was quite nerve-racking.

MUSIC: Now I'm Here

As soon as we were on, we were on.

Everything changed and the audience got up

and did a load of waving, a lot of noise,

which was great and we were into it.

# Yes, you made me live again

# A baby I was when you took my hand

# And the light of the night burned bright... #

We'd finished the tour,

we'd already done four nights at the Hammersmith Odeon

and so, this was a fifth night

and I think there was about a five-day period

in between the end of the tour.

So, it was quite difficult.

We were just starting to wind down and actually,

then you've got to go back and do this one, all-important show.

It was a big deal, in the fact that

it was going out live on Christmas Eve.

Obviously, there'd be a really good audience.

I remember thinking, "Will we have lost our momentum?"

That sort of kick-arse stuff that you developed on a tour.

I do remember being quite worried about it.

And I had a kind of flu at the time

and I remember feeling like absolute death.

But the power of adrenaline is amazing.

You start to sweat and work a bit and you kind of forget about it.

Hammersmith Odeon was sort of our local, I suppose.

In Japan, we were expected to be rock stars, pop stars, whatever.

In England, you can't strut around as if you're a star.

We really felt we had to work very hard in England

to prove that we were the real deal.

Thank you and good evening everybody! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Now then, we're going to do a nice, tasty little medley for you -

just like the one we did the other day, yes.

And we're going to start off with a little segment

from a number called Bohemian Rhapsody.

CHEERING

# Mama

# Just killed a man

# Put a gun against his head

# Pulled my trigger now he's dead... #

I guess every major act has a certain song,

which becomes their anthem,

becomes their big hook on people's consciousness.

# But now I've gone and thrown it all away... #

We could feel the sort of whirlwind picking up.

So, '75 really was a great year for us.

It put us from Championship into the Premier League,

if you know what I mean.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Yeah, the Live Aid thing was unusual,

because it wasn't a Queen audience.

All those tickets were sold before we were announced.

# Mama

# Ooh

# I don't want to die... #

The big shock was how well that audience knew us,

as opposed to the Queen audience, because they'd all seen the video.

In a sense, that's the great signal that the video age had taken over -

had become the major force in promoting rock music.

Queen, with Bohemian Rhapsody - an incredible song,

written and performed by the matchless Freddie Mercury,

who died on Monday.

It's being rereleased on 9th December

and all the proceeds will be going to the Terrence Higgins trust.

Yeah, we rereleased Bohemian Rhapsody

and it sold a million.

Which is a lot, you know, for single.

It would never happen now to anyone, but a million was a lot

and we donated all the profits to AIDS - every penny.

Magnificent performer, magnificent single and a magnificent song.

Sadly missed, Freddie Mercury, who I think will be very pleased to know

that he's almost certainly got the Christmas number one.

At least this is the chance for something positive to come out of it.

-So much positive can come out of it, yeah.

-You can do so much.

That's exactly what Freddie wanted and we intend to carry that through

and we're thinking of doing something next year -

some kind of event, probably in his name,

that will be something positive and we'll raise a lot of money, we hope.

# Too late

# My time has come

# Sends shivers down my spine

# Body's aching all the time

# Goodbye, everybody... #

Elton and Axl...

Yeah. I mean, that's a moment to treasure.

# Got to leave you all behind and fade away... #

My dearest wish was to get those two together.

It wasn't easy. There was a bit of controversy at the time.

I think Axl had said some fairly unwise things.

Elton was very broad-minded, terrific about it.

# I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all. #

Axl, of course, never turned up to any of the rehearsals,

so they came on and of course,

Elton and he had never performed together before.

I don't know if they'd even met before they stepped on stage

to do Bohemian Rhapsody in front of a billion people, or whatever...

I thought it was amazing.

It's one of the moments I will never forget in my life.

-# O Mamma mia Mamma mia

-Mamma mia let me go

# Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me... #

Axl comes on like this whirling dervish

and canes the middle bit.

I mean, just rocketed to the sky.

# So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye

# So you think you can love me and leave me to die

# Whoa, baby

# Can't do this to me, baby

# Just gotta get out

# Just gotta get right out of here. #

And then, they come together at the end - "Nothing really matters."

And they end up holding hands, going to the front of the stage

and we're looking at this from the back, thinking...

"Hmm. Who would have known that this would happen?"

# Nothing really matters

# Anyone can see... #

And that was a really good joining together, I thought.

# Nothing really matters

# Nothing really matters

# To me... #

It was an amazing night.

So yeah, Bohemian Rhapsody came through again

as a great moment of that show.

# Any way the wind blows. #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

There have been so many great songs over the years,

those standout songs.

It's just nice to have one of them -

maybe the most popular one.

# If I'm not back again this time tomorrow... #

You turn up someplace and you do a whole show

and you haven't done Bohemian Rhapsody, people look at you funny.

You know that's going to be a sort of pivotal moment of the set.

Adam is well capable of singing it all,

but everybody wants to see Freddie sing a piece of it.

# Too late

# My time has come

# Sends shivers down my spine

# Body's aching all the time... #

It was just nice to design a way where Adam could do a verse,

Freddie could do a verse...

# Got to leave you all behind and fade away

# Mama

# Ooh... #

What is Bohemian Rhapsody about?

Well, I'm thankful that none of us know, really.

We all guess, we all have our own ideas.

But Freddie never talked about it, to my knowledge -

and didn't want to.

I think that's the way it should be.

I get asked that all the time.

I have no answer.

Freddie would laugh. Freddie's probably laughing at this moment,

at me trying to talk about it.

But you know, he had something in his mind and...

..what he loved was to spin these little pieces of magic.

He was a songwriter and that's what songwriters do -

a little bit of reality, a little bit of fantasy,

a little bit of something that expresses your emotions.

And if anyone really tries to unravel it,

they're never going to quite do it,

because they're never going to quite know what went into those lyrics.

# Nothing really matters... #

One of the great things about it is that nobody can really say...

They can say it's monstrous, or whatever,

but they can't say it's not good.

We're lucky that we have a lot of hooks in people.

So many of these songs became part of people's lives,

which is a great privilege,

but Bohemian Rhapsody is a big one

and there is no getting away from that.

# Any way the wind blows. #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

MUSIC: God Save The Queen by Queen