All language subtitles for Classic Albums Queen A Night At The Opera

"QUEEN - A NIGHT AT THE OPERA"

- It took off like a rocket.
Suddenly we were

in demand. Suddenly we were
looking like we were'nt gonna be in debt,

and, um, incridible.

- It's, it's four writers that
write very different songs.

- They were not individual songs
done like it was someone's

solo record. It was, it was individual songs
as part of the queen aesthetic.

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

- We needed a big turning point.
And so we sorta 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 ever
again with that band.

- There comes a moment
where a band gets so big, yeah,

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

who aren't into music,
know who they are.

Two years earlier

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

and 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...

and 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 beautyfuly cut jewel landing in
your lap ready to go. It was

perfection, because unlike most
first albums,

it had a... 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, of what
our sound should be, absolutely broad,

absolutely incredibly deep,
and incredibly wide.

- The one word that, that
I think in itself sums it all up, is

layered. It was a very layered
sound, you know, layered

guitars, ah, layered voices,
and lots of them,

big production.
- Well, it was '73 there, before us,

in, ah, in England. We
thought they were good because I,

like, would come in during their last
two songs, which was

"Keep Yourself Alive" and "Liar".
And they was, those were good songs, you know,

I didn't see the rest of the set,
but Freddie said: "What do you think?

"What do you think?" I said:
"You were alright, you're gonna be fine,

"'cause you got songs."

- They were hugely ambitious in a
fabulously old fashioned

british kind of old way. I mean,
these were not, they were not gonna get

slowed down by record companies,
by, you know, by

narcotic intake, by any of that.
Whatever the hell was going on, they

they were going for the big one.
- When you start up 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... 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,

in actually knowing that we
were going to get through to the public.

- They were definitely a start of
something, they were headlining acts.

- "Killer Queen" had seen to that.
- Queen always had a momentum.

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

have momentum, the public didn't
give them the time necessary.

Queen had momentum.
- Immediatly prior to "Night At The Opera"

we, we were really going
through a difficult period. We had

a very successful album, "Sheer
Heart Attack", we thought it was, you know,

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

worldwide hit with "Killer Queen",
and we were broke.

And, um, and we wanted
to know why.

- When we 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,

ah, the kind of people
he'd been in business with.

- There's a sense of humor to it, but with
Freddie there was alot 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's a, it works great on guitar, this...

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

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

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, we just disagreed,
and in the end,

what just happened is the
writer is... is the boss, of... 'cause he

can say: "Yeah, look, this
is the way I want the song, and it's the

way I'm gonna have it."

- To cut a very long story short,
we... we agreed that we would

go with John Reid as our manager.
And John Reid's plan, you know,

'cause we said: "Yeah, how do we
get out of this?" His plan was:

"OK, 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. Um, especially the later ones

like, you know, like "Rubber Soul",
"Revolver" and "Abbey Road".

They were, They were very
eclectic albums.

- In those days, alot of the
effects that we used were

natural effects as opposed
to digitals we use today.

- The things that we did on
the lead vocals were this,

is that we needed the megaphone effect,
you know, 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's saying...

and they should be coming in
about now.

We also ran out of tracks, so
when we need two guitars,

we also did those on
the vocal tracks.

- What they did with, you know,
this album, "Night At The Opera", is

just take, sorta, recording techniques
to a... to an area that

they'd never gone before.
They pushed the technology to it's very limits.

- We had a fabulous engineer
in Mike Stone, you know, I've...

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 3 albums

to "A Night At The Opera" to
"A Day At The Races" which he,

he really just produced with us, 'cause
we had already 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... was on this path, and

when they hit "A Night
At The Opera" it was,

it was like their wings had spread, they
took everything they had learned from,

from touring all over the place,
and having recorded before,

they had finally found
their voice. And...

and that's what makes that
record so magic.

- We love 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
deciples of Hendrix and The Beatles,

particularly the way the used studios
as, almost like an instrument.

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

we pushed things alot further.
- Being in a 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 favorite,
not being a musical technician,

my favorite way of seeing them.
I liked to see them live.

- I had never really heard
a band in it's entirety

quite like that. You know,
you heard bands of different cuts for

different people, but not as varied
as this, and it probably reflected the fact

that they all did right,
and they all did have something to do

with the producing of the
record, the production of the record.

- It reminds me alot 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 blues background that
was, sorta the usual influence of bands

at that time.
- It was slightly different from your average

rock song, 'cause it's
basically in 6/8 time, which is

basically waltz time.
It was sorta... it was very sort of...

It's a great time signature to
play in, it rolls,

it has a certain unstoppable
rolling quality.

I made up a very rough demo
of it, and I remember turning

around to Brian: "So, what do
you think of that?" He looked at me, he said:

"You are joking, aren't you?
You are joking?" and I said: "No,

"No, Brian, deadly serious.
You know, it's about a car,

"and you know, and you know, somebody
who's in love with it..."

- He'll tell it's written about someone else,
you know, but we know the truth, don't we Rog?

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

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

yeah, the vocal is the song, and that's
a very memorable piece of writing there.

- It's 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 are... I've always
been in love with producers

who don't know when to stop,
and I think Roy Thomas Baker was

very very good at knowing how,
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.

- The was no one writer, yet
there was one

Queen sound. And you could hear all the
differences in the song, but you could hear,

with the vocal sounds, and the
guitar sounds and the drum sounds, etc.

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 how it is,

on the radio, they could hear
instantly it was Queen.

- Normally, I think, any other band
that's saying that lyric: "You're my best friend",

then people would throw things at them,
they would go... they would

burn their records, you know, live
on the radio. But what a beautifull 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, to speak up that he wanted
his song out as a single.

- He didn't write that many, but, you know,
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 in American radio.
- "You're My Best Friend" was a significant

song as far as radio is concerned
in the United States. I mean, I think that

it was a kind of friendlier, more accessible song,
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 alot, but
generally he was the quiet guy,

and he would come in and
we'd say: "Have you got anything?", He'd go:

"Oh, I've got this. I don't know", you know,
"Don't know if it's any good, but we could

try this". You know, very self effacing.
- I think they encouraged him, the other guys wanted

ah, the more... to have more of a staking,
'cause after all, the songwriting...

you know, there's all those extra royalties,
and that's often an issue with rock n' roll bands,

and quite often, a reason why some of
them break up. So they wanted to make sure...

I know Freddie, I mean, even as early
as Queen too, he'd been encouraging

John to contribute, and I think John
was just a little

reticent. He was the last to join, and,
and he was certainly

the most shy.
- He'd just write in that on area, which he likes,

which is, almost like a motown, sort of...
and I love that, 'cause I love to sing on songs like

that. So he's very different, I mean,
you can 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
the song about his

lovely lady wife. Further than that,
you would have to as John.

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

- And it's a shame that, you know,
he, he really feels that he doesn't

want to be part of the music
business, ah, these days. I see his point,

in some ways, but, um,
you know, he just

sort of doesn't really want to,
he doesn't like meeting people alot, and...

and he has opted for the
quiet life, although,

he approves of what we do,
and has said so.

- The vocal harmonies, you know, on a Queen
record, are gonna provided...

with unity, regardless of what
the kind of, you know, individual style of

a particular song is. You know,
there's something that's, you know, 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

serin quality, Freddie had an
incredibly powerfull quality in

most ranges, and Brian had a
very nice quality in the lower range,

and so that 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...

- So, you really were looking
after both ends of the

sort of spectrum, there, in fact all ends,
and you were covering everything,

so it came out particularly strong,
and...

and that was really ofthe Queen sound,
I think, the fact that the three of us

sang every part.

- It's the backing vocals there...

- The skill that they could just build those
layers and layers and layers of harmony

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

as... and then, you know, forget
the rest, that, I think, is what always

was the thing that made them
stand out from anybody else.

- Well, there was never any question
of writing a single, you did... we just wrote

albums and then... you know, so
they, they would really

by consensus it would be:
"Ah, that sounds like the first single"

you know, and then... and then
maybe there might be some argument.

- Obviously, you have certain... of your own babies, if you wrote the song,

and you want them to be, um, heard in a

wide area.
- Usually the writer of that particular, right, song

would be arguing that
he should have the single.

- And if you miss that opportunity,
it's kind of gone forever, and 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 this album,

you know, which... which could have been
a single and part of me wishes they had been,

because they had been much more
in the public consciousness, um,

you know, songs become hooked into
people's lives in a very wonderful way, you know,

you hear a song that reminds you of
being on a beach somewhere, in 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,
to become part of, of life.

- It was meant to be sort of,
um, science

fiction space folk.
- I rememer waking up with the idea,

thinking: "Alot 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 spacemen who go off", and the
whole story seemed to be

very appealing to me, of the
guy going off, um, to search

for new lands, um, in
a spaceship, um,

but becuase of the relativistic
general relativity

time dialation effect, he's going
at speeds near to,

to light speed, so his
perception of time is

completely different from the
people back home. He comes back after what he's...

he thinks is a year, but to the
people back on earth it's been a hundred years.

The middle part is of course the,
the journey itself and it goes through

very strange chords, it's a tour de force
for Roger, who does this very

high ethereal vocal.
It's very much like science fiction

movies where... when we were
kids, that's kind of the effect I was looking for.

The only thing to add to that is,
perhaps that, um, all songs

have more layers in than,
very often, the writer even realizes, and I'm

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

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

it was a pretty difficult thing
to adjust to, and I think we all,

we all suffered from it.
- Well, Brian did work his ass 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. He's... and

brilliant musician. We make a
very good noise together on stage, and it's quite

a magical thing, and it's a
big wow.

- I mean, there are certain points about
Freddie Mercury that are so obvious, that it's easy to miss them,

you know, eh, and in a sense, the...
the kind of theatricality, running through

a variety of different styles,
is what drew him to

you know, ah, 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, you know,
that, there was... I mean, running

through all that was just this element
of performance, and inventing a character,

theatricality.
- He could take 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, calling some of that
emotion and bring 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, "Oh, 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 now..." 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, we
did alot of those things,

we would ta... we did 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...
it was like

experimentation, but we
were sort of laughing at the same time, and...

but, I think it turned 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, ah, that was,
that was really

a pleasure.
- This is a George Formby, genuine

George Formby ukulele, it has even...
there you can see his picture, and this is,

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, um, makes this particular sound,
which was part of my upbringing.

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

This is how I learned the guitar.
The chord shapes that my dad taught me, to

play things like that, transfered
quite easily to the guitar, and I remember I got,

I got the guitar for my 7th birthday, and
started working out the chords for the guitar.

So the idea of "Good Company", obviously
comes from here, ah, it's like...

It's been twenty years,
you know...

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

that's pretty much part of my childhood
too, the dixieland jazz band, was

kind of revived when I was a kid, and
there was a wonderfull group called

The Temperant Seven, who played a
mixture of dixieland and very arranged

pseudo '20s music. And I learned alot
of my arrangement from,

from those guys. So when it came to
doing the, 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. It was very
work intensive, every... every note was done separately

to get the actual proper trumpet sounds,
and the trombone sounds, etc.

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 the was a very good reason.

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 "Night At The Opera", we had
the time... that 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 had actually created that.

I mean, am I a Queen fan? is that
a Queen fan, I don't know... I mean, you know,

even if I wasn't a fan, you'd have to just
go: "What is that? How did that happen?

"Who was 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... 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 alot of people

have written before, it's always to do with love
and emotion, you know, 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, sort of...

it's a different texture or whatever.
- Some of them were obviously about Mary,

who he was very fond of, um,
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. That was fabulous,

I was, I mean, I have these wondefull
pictures, they're all pretty, and you can see
that Freddie loves her.

- It's 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 singularly each time. It's
beautyfull backing harmonies.

- It's the background vocals.

And they blossom there...

- I just remember him doing
it in the studio, um...

He had a wonderfull touch
on the piano, Freddie. Really didn't

think he did, you know, he was
very depricating about his piano playing, and in

later years, really didn't do any
of it. Um, he played less and less

piano on stage, because he wanted
to run around and deliver to the audience, which he

did so magnificantly. He
didn't have the classical range, but

he could play what came from him,
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 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 with the audience.

- We didn't really realise, for years,
Brian and myself, I'm really speaking for

him now... and probably John, um, we
didn't realise how great he was,

actually. People forget he's actually
a great musician, and...

and that sort of pisses me off sometimes, 'cause,
I mean, the say: "He's a great showman",

you know, it wasn't just showman, it was,
actually he was a brilliant musician, and...

and quite an inspirational one, and um...
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",
you know, 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, 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, you know,

"Mama, just killed a man..." that, that was
very strong, I love the beginning of it.

But it wasn't, wasn't obvious. In those
days, you know, singles would, they had to be

no longer than 3 minutes, and,
you know, had to grab you.

- There was some concern on the
part of Elektra, I just happened to walk into the

presidential office one day, and
he said: "Look what your band sent us."

and it was this single,
and he...

he sort of, he said that
sort of half jokingly, and he played all

5 minutes and 55 seconds of it
and said: "Whadda 'ya think?", I said:

"You got a high class problem, release it."
- It's a monster, isn't it? It's one of those...

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

- It's a piece of art, let's be honest about it.
I don't... it was 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 on of the most expensive
records ever made, and it took 'em

over 3 weeks to cut this one
single. But the,

the layers of guitars,
and the overdubs of vocals

and then when I got to see
the video, and you

realised that Freddie Mercury
was so charismatic and so unique.

- My favorite solo is in... again,
what I liked about Queen was...

and, 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, um...

to get into it with other people's
songs than my own, I think, and...

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 use these

two pickups out of phase, again,
which is a favorite, because it makes it

scream. It really makes the harmonics
come out. It'll be different

every time I play it, but basically it,
it has that screaming kind of quality to it.

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

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're gonna 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, and
of course they went on to do it.

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

he had, you know, all of London
at his feet, and clearly in his element.

You know, he's... 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 everybo... in every one of them, you know.

- 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, as

something big,
something exciting,

something significant.
- It was the... it was our sort of epiphany, it was our

turning point, and I would
say, ah... so in that sense

with the single that came from it
and, and the album, it was really

probably the most
important album ever made.

-- Transcribed and synced by
Ronnie Har-Paz --