All language subtitles for (Classic_Albums)_Queen_-_The_Making_Of_A_Night_At_The_Opera_(Eng)_[Shmanich]

CLASSIC ALBUMS:
"QUEEN - A NIGHT AT THE OPERA".

It took off like a rocket.

Suddenly we were in demand.

Suddenly we were looking like
we weren't going to be in debt.

And... Incredible.

It's four writers
that write very different songs.

They were not individual songs
done like someone's solo record.

It was individual songs
as part of the Queen aesthetic.

I love artists who take big risks.
It's just more fun for the rest of us.

We needed a big turning point.

And so we sort of banked everything

on the album, you know, and...

I don't know, maybe that was
one of the reasons we released

a rather daring record as a single.

Sometimes a band produces an album

that is just so...

seminal, I suppose,

that you know that nothing's ever going
to be the same again with that band.

There comes a moment
where a band gets so big, you know,

or arrive in people's consciousness
to such an extent,

that even people who aren't
really into music know who they are.

Two years earlier...

I got a white label through,
from EMI, of the first album.

And I hadn't really heard anything
about them.

Put the needle on the vinyl,
and it was Keep Yourself Alive.

And, you know, the guitar intro...

Within 15 seconds, I just thought, "Wow!"

You know, "Who is this?"

I heard the Queen album
and I absolutely loved it.

It was like a beautifully cut jewel
landing in your lap, ready to go.

It was perfection,
because unlike most first albums,

it had a proportion, a size to it.

It was always part
of what we wanted to achieve.

That's the vision we had in our heads
of what our sound should be.

Absolutely broad, absolutely...

Incredibly deep and incredibly wide.

The one word that, I think, in itself
sums it all up is "layered".

It was a very layered sound.
You know, layered guitars,

layered voices, you know, and lots of them.
Big production.

I think it was '73,
they opened for us in England.

We thought they were good because,
like, I would come in

during their last two songs,
which were Keep Yourself Alive and Liar...

Those were good songs, you know.

And I wouldn't see the rest of the set,
but Fred'd say, "What do you think?"

I'd say, "Well, look, you're all right.

"You're gonna be fine,
'cause you've got songs."

They were hugely ambitious

in a fabulously old-fashioned,
British kind of a way.

I mean, these were not...

They were not gonna get slowed down
by record companies,

you know, by narcotic intake,
by any of that.

Whatever the hell was going on,
they were going for the big one.

When you start off in this business,
you have to be confident.

A new band has got to have

a real confidence in yourself,
but you have to have

a certain amount of arrogance,
and that ego, and whatever,

because you have to believe
in what you do.

So, we had that sort of confidence,

and actually knowing
that we will get through to the public.

They were definitely established.
I mean, they were headlining acts.

Killer Queen had seen to that.

Queen always had a momentum.

I have seen artists make wonderful albums,
that because they didn't have momentum

the public didn't give them
the time necessary.

Queen had momentum.

Immediately prior to A Night At The Opera,

we were really going through
a difficult period.

We'd had a very successful album
with Sheer Heart Attack.

We thought it was a very good album,
and it had done very well.

We'd had a major worldwide hit
with Killer Queen.

And we were broke,

and we wanted to know why.

When were planning to put this record out,
A Night At The Opera,

the first track on the record,
Death On Two Legs,

was a pretty obvious statement
from Freddie's point of view

as to the kind of people
he'd been in business with.

There's a sense of humour to it, but
with Freddie there was a lot of anger there.

He was very aggrieved
at our management at the time,

who he felt didn't respect him,
hadn't paid him,

had stolen from him, you know, whatever,

and he wanted to put it down on record.

Musically, it's great, too. The riff is great.

Of course, I didn't invent the riff.
This is Freddie's riff,

'cause it was done on piano first.
But it works great on guitar. This...

I think even we were
a bit taken aback with...

with how vicious Freddie wanted it to be.
I remember thinking...

But it was what Freddie wanted, you know,

and the kind of unwritten law was that
the author of the song got his own way.

Sometimes you just disagree.

And in the end, what does happen is,
the writer is the boss.

'Cause he can say in the end,

"Look, this is the way I want the song,
and this is the way I'm gonna have it."

To cut a very long story short,

we agreed that we would go
with John Reid as our manager.

And John Reid's plan...

You know, 'cause we said,
"How do we get out of this?"

His plan was, "Okay, boys,
I will deal with the financial situation.

"You guys go back in the studio

"and make the best album
you've ever made."

I think maybe we were subconsciously
influenced by the fact...

By the Beatles' albums, I think, really,

especially the later ones like, you know,

like Rubber Soul, Revolver,
and Abbey Road.

They were very eclectic albums.

In those days,
a lot of the effects that we used

were natural effects, as opposed to digital,
which we use today.

The things that we did
on the lead vocals with this

is that we needed the megaphone effect.

You know, like the old megaphone
from the old salad days.

He was singing it in the studio.
It was being fed into the console.

The console was then sending it out
to a pair of headphones,

which were in a metal can,

and then a microphone
was in the metal can

recording the voice coming out of the can,
and that is what went to tape.

We had background vocals bits as well,
where the whole band sang.

And they should be coming in about now.

We also ran out of tracks,

so that when we needed to do guitars,
we also did those on the vocal tracks.

What they did with, you know, this album,
A Night At The Opera,

is just take sort of recording techniques

to an area that they'd never gone before.

They pushed the technology
to its very limits.

We had a fabulous engineer
in Mike Stone, you know.

I've said this more than once, I'm sure,

but Mike Stone is really the unsung hero
of this whole thing.

Right the way through,
from the first three albums

to A Night At The Opera
to A Day At The Races,

which he really just produced with us,

'cause Roy had gone
somewhere else by then.

And the guy was really a phenomenon.

I remember it as being a very good time,
very creative time.

We were a good team.
It was a great team, you know,

between us and Roy and Mike.
Stupendous team in the studio.

It sounded to me like Queen

was on this path, and when they hit

A Night At The Opera,
it was like their wings had spread.

They took everything they had learnt
from touring all over the place,

and having recorded before.

They had finally found their voice.

And that's what makes that record
so magic.

We loved the studio. We always did.
And I still do,

because it's an open canvas
and you can do anything you want.

And we were kind of disciples
of Hendrix and the Beatles, particularly,

the way they used studios as...
Almost like an instrument.

But, obviously, we had more technology
than they had had,

so we could push things a lot further.

Being in the studio with Queen
was fascinating, but very long-winded,

because they were such perfectionists.

One day I spent with them

I don't think they did more
than about 30 seconds

of what actually ended up on a record.

So, it wasn't perhaps my favourite,
not being a musical technician,

my favourite way of seeing them.

I liked to see them live.

I have never really heard a band
in its entirety quite like that.

You know, you heard bands
with different cuts for different people,

but not as varied as this.

And it probably reflected the fact
that they all did write

and they all did have something to do

with the producing of the records,
the production of the records.

It reminds me a lot of the Beatles
that you had this kind of four equal people.

And at the same time they had these
influences that extended way beyond

the kind of the blues background

that was the sort of the usual influence
of bands at that time.

It was slightly different
from your average rock song,

'cause it's basically in 6l8 time,
which is basically waltz time.

And it's all very sort of...

It's a great time signature to play in.
It rolls.

It has a certain unstoppable rolling quality.

I made a sort of very rough demo of it,

and I remember turning around to Brian,

and I said, "What do you think of that?"

He looked at me and he said,

"You are joking, aren't you?
You are joking?"

And I said, "No. No, Brian,
I'm deadly serious.

"You know, it's about a car, and, you know,

"somebody who's in love with it."

He'll tell you it was written
about someone else, you know,

but we know the truth, don't we, Rog?

I mean, Roger was always into fast things,
you know, fast cars, etcetera, etcetera.

It's very tuneful,
but of course the vocal is the thing.

You know, the vocal is the song

and that's a very memorable
piece of writing there.

It' just so excessive, you know,
the way the vocals are all treated

and things going off backwards

and God knows how much overdubbing
and multi-tracking on it.

I've always been in love with producers
who don't know when to stop,

and I think Roy Thomas Baker
is very, very good

at knowing how to go too far,
but just enough too far.

And I think he, at this point, is coming
into his own just the way the band did.

They were very much in tune
with each other at that point.

There was no one writer.
Yet, there was one Queen sound.

And you could hear all the differences
in the song, but you could hear

the vocal sounds, and the guitar sounds,
and the drum sounds, etcetera, which is...

One of the things which is important to me

is to make sure that when people
hear a song for the first time,

even if they don't know who it is,
on the radio,

they could hear instantly it was Queen.

Normally, I think any other band that sang
that lyric, "You're my best friend",

people would throw things at them.

They would burn their records
live on the radio.

But what a beautiful song,

just the conviction of doing
a simple pop song, well-crafted.

All of a sudden, John Deacon
emerged from his vows of silence

to speak up that he wanted his song out
as a single.

He didn't write that many,
but if you think about it,

Another One Bites the Dust,
You're My Best Friend,

I Want to Break Free...

Big, big hits.

And You're My Best Friend
is still one of the most-played tracks

on American radio.

You're My Best Friend
was a significant song

as far as radio was concerned
in the United States.

I think that it was a kind of friendlier,
more accessible side

to some of the stuff Queen was doing.

John was always a dark horse,
he always was.

You know, he's the guy who doesn't say
very much, up to a certain point.

I mean, he would go nuts sometimes,
and say a lot.

But generally, he was the quiet guy.

And he would come in and we'd say,
"Have you got anything, John?"

And he'd go, "Oh, well, I've got this.
I don't know.

"Doubt if it's any good,
but we could try this."

You know, very self-effacing.

I think they encouraged him.

The other guys wanted them all
to have more of a stake in it.

'Cause, after all the songwriting,
there's all those extra royalties,

and that's often an issue
with rock 'n' roll bands,

and quite often the reason
why some of them break up.

So they wanted to make sure.

I know Freddie,
I mean, even as early as Queen II,

he'd be encouraging John to contribute.

And I think John was just a little reticent.
He was the last to join

and he was certainly the most shy.

He'd just write
in that one area which he likes,

which is almost like a Tamla Motown,
or the sort of...

And I love that,
'cause I love to sing on songs like that.

So he's very different. I mean,
you could never call his songs heavy.

It was written on a Fender Rhodes.

John played it.
John played his own keyboards.

And John, as far as I know,

wrote this song about his lovely lady wife.

Further than that,
you would have to ask John.

And I don't think he's probably in the mood
to answer at this point.

And it's a shame that he really feels

that he doesn't wanna be
a part of the music business these days.

I can see his point in some ways, but...

You know,
he just sort of doesn't really wanna...

He doesn't like meeting people a lot,

and he has opted for the quiet life.

Although he approves of what we do,

and has said so.

The vocal harmonies on a Queen record
are gonna provide it with unity,

regardless of what the individual style
of a particular song is.

You know, there's something that's
instantly identifiable about what they do.

The three voices that we had
blended instantly and sounded very big.

They interacted quite magically, and...

We all had different qualities
in our voices, and...

I had a sort of high, searing quality.

Freddie had an incredibly powerful quality,
in most ranges.

And Brian had a very nice quality
in the lower range.

And so the three made
a very good combination.

But what we would do is,
we would not take a single part each.

We would, all together, sing every part.

So as soon as the three of us sang a line,
it already sounded quite big.

You double-track that, it sounds very big.

And then we would sing the next line,
and the next line, and the next line.

So you really were looking after
both ends of the sort of spectrum there,

in fact all ends.

You were covering everything.

So it came out particularly strong.

And that was really part
of the Queen sound, I think,

the fact that the three of us sang every part.

It's the backing vocals, there.

This skill, that they could just build those
layers and layers and layers of harmony

and make the whole thing work,
rather than you focus on elements of it

and then, you know, forget the rest,

that, I think, is really
what always was the thing

that made them stand out
from everybody else.

Well, there was never any question
of writing a single.

We just wrote albums, and then...

You know, so there would...
Really, by consensus,

it would be, "That sounds
like the first single," you know,

and then there might be some argument.

Obviously you have
certain of your own babies,

if you wrote the song,
and you want them to be...

heard in a wide area.

Usually the writer of that particular song

would be arguing, you know,
he should have the single.

And if you miss that opportunity,
it's kind of gone forever. In my case...

I think we all had things like that
that we felt sad about.

In my case, there's things like Long Away,

'39 off of this album,
which could have been a single.

And part of me wishes they had been,

because they would have been
much more in the public consciousness.

You know, songs become hooked
into people's lives

in a very wonderful way.

You know, you hear a song
and it reminds you

of being on a beach somewhere
at a particular time with a particular person.

And if...

Generally, if the song
hasn't become a single,

it doesn't have that opportunity
to become part of life.

It was meant to be sort of...

science-fiction space folk.

I remember waking up with the idea,

thinking a lot of people do folk songs
with acoustic guitars,

about sailors that went off on a long trip,

and nobody ever did anything
about a spaceship

and the spacemen who go off.

And the whole story seemed
to be very appealing to me,

of the guy going off

to search for new lands in a spaceship.

But because of the relativistic,

general relativity, time dilation effect,

he's going at speeds near to light speed,

so his perception of time is completely
different from the people back home.

He comes back
after what he thinks is a year,

but to the people back on Earth
it's been 100 years.

The middle part is, of course,
the journey itself,

and it goes through very strange chords.

It is a tour de force for Roger,
who does this very high, ethereal vocal.

It's very much like science-fiction movies
were when we were kids.

That's kind of the effect I was looking for.

The only thing to add to that
is perhaps that...

all songs have more layers in them
than very often the writer even realises.

And I'm sure there's a lot of this feeling
of what it's like to be on tour

and come back and find life very changed
when you get back.

It was a pretty difficult thing to adjust to,
and I think we all suffered from it.

Well, Brian did work his arse off
on this album actually, I have to say.

Brian is one of the great rock guitarists.

I mean, you know,
there's no argument here.

He's a wonderful guitar player,
and a brilliant musician.

We make a very good noise
together on stage.

And it's quite a magical thing.

And it's a big row.

I mean, there are certain points about
Freddie Mercury that are so obvious

that's it's easy to miss them, you know.

And in a sense, the kind of theatricality

of running through a variety
of different styles

is what drew him to...

you know, music hall.

You know, is what drew him
to glam-rock, you know?

It's what he liked about metal.

It's what he liked about the rock 'n' roll
that he liked, that there was...

And running through all that
was just this element of performance,

and inventing a character, and theatricality.

He could tap a broad range of emotions
in his psyche,

and that did include a little nostalgia.

But not nostalgia in the corny,
looking-back sense,

but culling some of that emotion
and bringing it into the dynamic present.

And that's obviously what he did
with Seaside Rendezvous.

I like to capture a song very quickly
so that it's fresh,

and then you can work on it afterwards.

But, I mean, I hate, sort of...

trying to write a song, and if it's
not coming, "Come on, let's try this..."

It either comes quickly
and then you have it,

you know, like the basic skeleton,
and then I say, "Yes, we have a song",

and then we can start putting in
all the clever bits.

One sweaty afternoon, I was with Freddie,
just the two of us there, I think,

and we did a lot of those...

things. We were...

The tap dancing was
thimbles on the fingers

on the metal bit,
on the top of the desk, and...

And I think I did a little brass section,
and Fred was doing the woodwind.

With his mouth, you know, he was going...

It was like experimentation,

but we were sort of laughing
at the same time.

But I think it turned it out rather well.

It was meant to be cod, and cod it was.

You never got a sense that this band
was taking itself too seriously.

There was a kind of wit,

and a campiness, a self-irony,

that was really a pleasure.

This is a George Formby,
genuine George Formby ukulele.

It has him on there,
you can see his picture.

And this is the instrument my dad
carried with him all through the war,

the Second World War.

It's a ukulele banjo.

It's not a ukulele or a banjo,
it's a ukulele banjo.

And it makes this particular sound
which was part of my upbringing.

My dad used to sit
and put this on his knee and go...

This is how I learnt the guitar.

The chord shapes that my dad taught me
to play things like that

transferred quite easily onto the guitar.

And I remember, they got me a guitar
for me seventh birthday

and started working out the chords
for the guitar.

So, the idea for Good Company
obviously comes from here.

It's been 20 years, you know.

It also developed to another place,
which is the place of the jazz band,

and that's very much
part of my childhood, too.

The Dixieland jazz band
was kind of revived when I was a kid.

And there was a wonderful group
called The Temperance Seven

who played a mixture of Dixieland
and very arranged, pseudo-'20s music.

And I learnt a lot of my arrangement
from those guys.

So, when it came to doing the solo part
for Good Company,

I wanted it to sound like a jazz band,

and, of course, I wanted the guitar
to be the jazz band's.

It was very work-intensive.

Every note was done separately
to get the actual proper trumpet sounds

and the trombone sounds, etcetera.

Very painstaking, but a lot of fun,
'cause it had never been done before.

I don't think
I would do it these days, really,

unless there was a very good reason.

I just love this stuff.

It was wonderful to be able to take the time
to do this stuff in the studio,

which I'd always dreamed of doing, I guess.

That's the great thing about
A Night At The Opera.

We had the time, we were given the
opportunity to explore all those avenues,

rather than be rushing in and out.

It's hard to believe that it is guitar, and that
somebody actually created that. I mean...

Am I a Queen fan?
Do I sound like a Queen fan? I don't know.

I mean, if I wasn't a fan,
you'd have to just go,

"What is that? How did that happen?
Who is responsible for that?"

This is roughly what they sound like
without anything else.

And the bells.

When you hear any other vocalist

trying to sing a Queen song,

it's not until you hear them trying

that you realise what an incredible vocalist
Freddie was.

What a range he had,
what great expression he had,

and how idiosyncratic
some of the songs were

in terms of being written for him
and his way of expressing lyrics in a song.

Basically, I think if you sort of
put them all in one bag

I think my songs are all...

under the label "emotion", you know?
It's emotion and feeling.

So, I mean, I write songs
that a lot of people have written before.

It's all to do with love and emotion.
Me, I'm just a true romantic.

And I think everybody's written songs
in that field.

I just write it in my own way,
so that they carry a different...

It's a different texture or whatever.

Some of them were obviously about Mary,
whom he was very fond of,

and was his best friend, I think, all his life.

That's fascinating in itself, that she...

It really was, ironically, the love of his...

Not withstanding
whatever his sexual life was,

that actually she was the love of his life.

But that was fabulous.
I mean, I have these wonderful pictures

and you can see that Freddie loves her.

Some lovely backing harmonies
from Freddie on this as well.

Freddie had the ability to sing
multi-tracked so accurately

that it would actually phase.

One take would phase with another

because he would sing it
so similarly each time.

He has beautiful backing harmonies.

It's the background vocals.

And they blossom now.

I just remember him doing it in the studio.

He had a wonderful touch
on the piano, Freddie.

Really, he didn't think he did.

You know, he was very deprecating
about his piano playing.

And in later years really didn't do any of it.

He played less and less piano on stage
because he wanted to run around

and deliver it to the audience,
which he did so magnificently.

He didn't have the classical range,

but he could play what came
from inside him like nobody else,

with incredible rhythm,
incredible passion and feeling.

But I love this song,

and pretty much every concert we play

I sing this song now for Freddie.

And I find it much more satisfying
than singing one of my own songs.

It's because it seems to bring back
so much of Freddie,

with me and the audience.

We didn't really realise for years,

Brian and myself, I'm really speaking for
now, and probably John,

we didn't realise
how great he was, actually.

People forget he was actually
a great musician.

And that sort of pisses me off sometimes,
'cause, I mean, they say,

"Oh, he was quite a great showman,"
you know.

But he wasn't just a showman.

Actually he was a brilliant musician,
and quite an inspirational one, and...

So, you know, I think there should be
a bit more balance there.

I mean, you know, it wasn't just all about
getting people to go, "Hey, hey!"

It was...

He was a great musician.

So much has been said about
Bohemian Rhapsody, of course.

And it's Freddie's baby. It always will be.
It's Freddie's dream.

Of course we all contributed pieces to it,
but really, he's the mastermind.

It is an amazing conception in my opinion.

I have to say
it was definitely my choice for a single,

'cause I love the original melody
of the "Mama, just killed a man".

That I thought was very strong,
and I loved the beginning of it.

But it wasn't obvious.

In those days singles were meant to be
no longer than three minutes

and, you know, had to grab you.

There was some concern
on the part of Elektra.

I just happened to walk into
the president's office one day, and he said,

"Look what your band sent us."
And it was this single.

And he sort of...
He said that sort of half-jokingly.

And he played all five minutes
and 55 seconds of it

and said, "What do you think?"

I said, "You got a high-class problem.
Release it."

It's a monster, isn't it?
It's one of those things.

It's not gonna go away, it's just gonna go
where it's supposed to go.

It's a piece of art. Let's be honest about it.
I don't...

It's great rock 'n' roll.
It's fair enough if it's great rock 'n' roll.

It doesn't have to all be art.

But that is art.

There was no record company
invention going on here.

There wasn't any...
We weren't smarter than anybody else.

We just had a tiger by the tail.

And the only place we were smart was
we said yes more often than we said no.

It was one of the most expensive records
ever made.

And it took them over three weeks
to cut this one single.

But the layers of guitars,
and the overdubs of vocals...

And then when I got to see the video,

and you realise that Freddie Mercury
was so charismatic, and so unique...

My favourite solos...

And again, what I liked about Queen,

and Brian's playing,

is that it is...

You try and make a little statement.

You try to have, like, a beginning,
a middle and an end,

and some kind of dynamic change
in a solo.

I find it easier to get into it

with other people's songs
than my own, I think.

You know, because the inspiration
comes from a separate place

and perhaps you feel more free.

So, with Freddie's stuff,
I always could hear the solo

long before I played it on his tracks

because they just invited something.

For this I used these two pickups
out of phase,

again, which is a favourite
because it makes it scream,

it really makes the harmonics come out.

It'll be different every time I play it,

but basically it has that
screaming kind of quality to it.

It is the crossing-the-threshold album
for Queen, I think.

From popularity
into sort of, you know, superstardom.

It took them to a completely different level,

both in terms of their sales,
and in terms of the perception of the band,

and in terms of their live shows.

The opportunity to play Hyde Park came up,

and they said,
"You can have this new site,"

which had never been played before,

"you can play it for free,

"and there's no limit
to the amount of people you can get there."

Which was amazing for us.

The thought of being able
to put that show on,

and be able to get it across
to more than a 100,000 people

was really beyond our imagining.

It was a major step in Queen
realising what they could do.

And of course they went on to do it.

Freddie could play in front of 100 people
and act like a total star,

and here he had, you know,
the whole of London at his feet,

and clearly in his element.

He had the kind of charisma

that I think the world was
just about small enough a stage

for him to feel comfortable on.

I think what happens
when a band hits that stride

it's so true that the fans
can't help but feel it.

And that's why it translates to a record
that just resonates.

And then it becomes almost iconic
for that band and their fans.

I think it just started off
as a band with a singer.

And then they found all this great stuff
hidden away in every one of them.

The size of it, the perfection of it,

the willingness to go everywhere

from music hall to jazz,

and to have them wear
those different musical costumes

close to their skin
and part of who they were.

It was not fake, it was always genuine,
and you can always tell the difference.

In England, and Europe, and Australia,

I think it defined us.

It defined us as something... big,

something exciting, something significant.

It was our sort of epiphany.
It was our turning point.

And I would say...

So in that sense, with the single
that came from it, and the album,

it was really probably
the most important album we ever made.

--- Ripped by Shmanich ---