by Georg Purvis
For Queen fans, the album marked the first in a series of unparalleled releases that were true to the band’s experimental nature while providing chart-friendly singles, a streak that would end with News Of The World three albums later. While most fans prefer Queen II or A Day At The Races, citing those albums as Queen’s finest, others consider Sheer Heart Attack to be the first time the band produced a completely flawless yet charming album from start to finish. It was a track record that would follow through to their next release as the band perfected the balance of pomp, circumstance and rock. And maybe a little opera for good measure...
A NIGHT AT THE OPERA
EMI EMTC 103, November 1975 [1]
Elektra 7E-1053, December 1975 [4]
EMI CDP 7 46207 2, December 1986
Hollywood HR 61065 2, September 1991
Parlophone CDPCSD 130, 1994
Hollywood 6 9286-01091-9, April 2002
Parlophone 7 24353 98309 3, August 2002
Parlophone 0 0946 3 38457 2 5, November 2005
Island Remasters 276 442 4, March 2011 [96]
‘Death On Two Legs (Dedicated to ......’ (3’43), ‘Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon’ (1’07), ‘I’m In Love With My Car’ (3’04), ‘You’re My Best Friend’ (2’51), ‘’39’ (3’30), ‘Sweet Lady’ (4’02), ‘Seaside Rendezvous’ (2’16), ‘The Prophets Song’ (8’19), ‘Love Of My Life’ (3’38), ‘Good Company’ (3’23), ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (5’53), ‘God Save The Queen’ (1’13)
Bonus tracks on 1991 Hollywood Records reissue: ‘I’m In Love With My Car’ (remix by Mike Shipley) (3’26), ‘You’re My Best Friend’ (remix by Matt Wallace) (2’50)
Bonus tracks on 2011 Universal Records deluxe reissue: ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ (long-lost retake, July 1975) (4’05), ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (operatic section a cappella mix) (1’04), ‘You’re My Best Friend’ (isolated backing track mix) (2’58), ‘I’m In Love With My Car’ (guitar and vocal mix) (3’20), ‘’39’ (live version, Earl’s Court, June 1977) (3’47), ‘Love Of My Life’ (live single edit, 1979) (3’43)
Bonus videos, 2011 iTunes-only editions: ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (“no flames” promotional video), ‘Seaside Rendezvous’ (thirtieth anniversary collage), ‘Love Of My Life’ (live version, Milton Keynes Bowl, June 1982)
Musicians: John Deacon (bass guitar, electric piano on ‘You’re My Best Friend’, upright bass on ‘’39’), Brian May (guitars, orchestral backdrops, vocals, lead vocals on ‘’39’ and ‘Good Company’, toy koto on ‘The Prophets Song’, orchestral harp on ‘Love Of My Life’, genuine ‘aloha’ ukulele (made in Japan) and guitar jazz band on ‘Good Company’, operatic vocals on ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’), Freddie Mercury (vocals, vocals, Bechstein Debauchery, and more vocals, vocal orchestration of woodwinds on ‘Seaside Rendezvous’, operatic vocals on ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’), Roger Taylor (drums, percussion, vocals, lead vocals on ‘I’m In Love With My Car’, bass drum and tambourine on ‘’39’, vocal orchestration of brass on ‘Seaside Rendezvous’, operatic vocals on ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, timpani on ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘God Save The Queen’)
Recorded: Sarm East Studios, Aldgate; Olympic Studios, Barnes; Rockfield Studios, Monmouth; Scorpio, Lansdowne and Roundhouse Studios, London, August– November 1975
Producers: Queen and Roy Thomas Baker
“I think we knew we had something special. We said, ‘This can be our Sgt. Pepper.’ Or whatever.” A characteristically understated description of A Night At The Opera courtesy of Brian, from a 1991 interview with Q, yet still applicable to the album eventually released in November 1975. The success of Sheer Heart Attack hadn’t been a fluke; Queen were content to stick to their guns and continue putting out the high calibre of material that comprised their first three albums.
“I do enjoy the studio, yes,” Freddie told Sounds in 1976. “It’s the most strenuous part of my career. It’s so exhausting, mentally and physically. It drains you dry. I sometimes ask myself why I do it. After Sheer Heart Attack we were insane and said never again. And then look what happens! I think that is the basis of Queen actually. We were very, very meticulous. That has now become an obsession in a funny way, for want of a better word. It’s subconscious now, but we feel that we have to better that past standard we’ve created. Otherwise they’ll say, ‘God, look at what they did on Sheer Heart Attack and look at what they’re churning out now.’ And you have to supersede it for your own satisfaction.”
The album was born out of difficult situations, as most classics are: the band were hard up, despite their successes (“people thought we were driving around in limos,” Brian lamented in the late 1970s), and at the mercy of their managers, Barry and Norman Sheffield. With the worldwide success of ‘Killer Queen’, the band felt they weren’t being paid enough. When they first signed with Trident in 1972, they had each been given £20 a week, even though the Sheffields had originally insisted on only £15. It had increased a bit to £60 weekly by the time Sheer Heart Attack was released, but the band still wanted more of what they felt was rightfully theirs. The matter reached a head when John demanded a cash advance of £4000 so that he and his heavily pregnant wife Veronica (whom he had married in January 1975) could put a down-payment on a house. When he was coldly refused, the band started legal proceedings to sever all ties with Sheffield and Trident.
The first step was to abandon all recording at Trident. (While tensions had been building throughout the summer, relations were still decent enough on 2 July, when they entered Trident to rerecord an ultimately unreleased version of ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ for the American market.) They also hired a lawyer, Jim Beach, in December 1974, who initiated negotiations with Trident in an attempt to void Queen’s contractual obligations. Finally, after nearly nine months of lengthy parleys and arguments, deals were signed to free them from Trident absolutely. The band gained control of their back catalogue and their former publishing company, Feldman, was taken over by EMI. They were now signed up directly with EMI and Elektra, effectively removing Trident from the position of liaison, and were given free rein to acquire new management.
The two drawbacks were that Queen had to pay £100,000 to buy out their contracts and give Trident one per cent of their royalties on the next six albums; unfortunately, these included A Night At The Opera through to The Game, certainly the band’s most successful run. Additionally, a tour of America originally scheduled for September 1975 had to be cancelled because it had been organized by Jack Nelson (their US tour manager who was associated with Trident), despite the already booked venues and previously sold tickets. This was a major blow, given Roger’s claim in Record Mirror some months before that “we spent an awful lot of money on the last American tour and now we’ve been offered a good deal to go back and tour for about a month in August. We really must do it to replenish our funds. We simply can’t afford not to, so the album won’t be completed until after we get back.”
With funds running low, the band immediately started looking for new management, and three names were shortlisted: Led Zeppelin’s manager Peter Grant, who was very interested in having Queen under his wing but wanted them to be signed to his own Swan Song record label, which the band weren’t keen on; Peter Rudge, who was on tour with The Rolling Stones and couldn’t be contacted in time; and John Reid, who was managing Elton John and initially didn’t want to take on another band, but reconsidered when he learned it was Queen.
Don Arden, manager of Electric Light Orchestra, had met with the band during their early 1975 tour of America and offered them a very lucrative deal. They reluctantly declined because they were still in the process of negotiating their way out of Trident, but Arden spoke directly to Norman Sheffield and presented his offer to him. Trident agreed to his suggestions and the negotiations sped up, but by the time the band returned from Japan in May, these deals were scrapped by mutual agreement. Queen instead hired Reid.
Luckily, they managed to hold on to Roy Thomas Baker, and initial recording sessions took place at Rockf
ield Studios in August 1975, with the backing tracks for most of the songs recorded then. Unlike previous albums, the band started from scratch this time and had little new material to work with; only portions of ‘The Prophets Song’, which had been started and subsequently abandoned during sessions for Queen II, had existed in some form prior to the sessions. However, it was difficult to deny that 1975 was a year of creativity for the band: inspired by their recent headlining tour to America (they were able to finish it this time) and Japan, they felt a sense of rejuvenation and excitement. They had passed the proverbial ‘third album’ litmus test, and were ready to prove to the world that they were going to be around for quite some time.
The ideas flowed abundantly as the band immersed themselves in the studios. Expanding on the previous two albums’ creed of experimentation, instruments were hired and attempted by all band members, and if there was a sound they couldn’t achieve without the aid of synthesizers or session musicians, Brian worked out ways to create it on his guitar. The song that was given the most attention was Freddie’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, which the others initially found to be both puzzling and amusing. Once they realized he was serious, they still had their reservations but, because Freddie was extremely confident about the song, they let him create whatever he wanted as they focused on their own songs. “We ran the tape through so many times it kept wearing out,” Brian said about the rough mix for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, often believed to be a myth but, in reality, true. “We transferred it in a hurry. Strange business – holding on to this elusive sound signal which gradually disappeared as we created it. Every time Freddie decided to add a few more ‘galileos’ we lost something too.”
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.”
