1975 is often considered the last year of the ‘Classic Rock’ era.
The last year to still feel the aftershocks of late 1960s psychedelia, before it was overtaken by punk and disco. And indeed, any year that saw Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti and David Bowie’s Young Americans; Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and Roxy Music’s Siren was not lacking big-hitters. Queen arrived at the top of this league with A Night at the Opera, released on November 28th to equivocal critical response but overwhelming public approval.
The build-up to A Night at the Opera
Queen’s roots go back to 1968, when astrophysics student Brian May recruited dental student Roger Taylor to his band Smile. The latter's two-year existence brought extensive gigging and various unreleased recordings, which stood them in good stead when design student Farrokh Bulsara joined them in what became Queen and changed his name to Freddie Mercury in the process. John Deacon joined early in 1971, at the start of an ascent from local success to international acclaim whose story is told in engrossing terms by the three studio albums from this period.
The debut: heavy rock, glam and prog collide
Recorded straight through the first half of 1972 but not released until July the following year, Queen [I] is an impressive statement of intent. Treading a fine yet judicious line between the heavy, glam and prog idioms from this period, its stand-out tracks are surely the openers on each side (of the original vinyl LP): the hard-driving ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ and the intricately layered dynamism of ‘Liar’.
Even more striking, however, are the multi-sectional ingenuity of ‘Doing All Right’ and the skewed pathos of ‘The Night Comes Down’, together with an admirable dose of live adrenalin to counter the finely-honed studio trickery. Each of these were surefire pointers to the stylistically inclusive band Queen was quickly becoming.
Queen II: growing ambition
Recorded over the autumn and winter of 1973-74, Queen II is more ambitious in conception, more sophisticated in construction and more visceral in impact. Again, Queen give us two strong side-openers in the anthemic ‘Father to Son’ and the visceral punch of ‘Ogre Battle’.
Side White (One) features one of May’s most affecting numbers in ‘White Queen (As It Began)’ with its sitar-like guitar, and ‘Some Day One Day’ with cascading guitar overdubs. Side Black (Two) finds Mercury as his quirkiest in his paean to artist Richard Dadd ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke’ or the shimmering rocker ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’. Mini-opera ‘The March of the Black Queen’ stood unrivalled in formal complexity and expressive diversity – if only for two years.
Sheer Heart Attack: power pop perfection
Recorded in summer and early autumn 1974, Sheer Heart Attack streamlines Queen’s more grandiose aspects into mainly succinct songs with a power pop immediacy ahead of its time. Cinematic opener Brighton Rock integrates May’s elaborate solo seamlessly into its onward course, then ‘Killer Queen’ gives its Gilbert O’Sullivan template a catchy yet sardonic twist.
‘Stone Cold Crazy’ breezily prefigures thrash metal, and ‘Bring Back That Leroy Brown’ is vaudeville at its wittiest. Most prescient are the closing tracks on each side: ‘Now I’m Here’ has an emotional panache born out of intensive touring with Mott the Hoople, while ‘In the Lap of the Gods…Revisited’ is the archetypal anthem Queen was intent on making its own.
A Night at the Opera: born in adversity
Queen’s next album could not have emerged in more unfavourable circumstances. The band was broke owing to contractual obligations, May endured bouts of illness before and during sessions, and their management structure was barely in place. New manager John Reid urged them to make the best album possible. Recorded in seven studios from August to November 1975, it was certainly – at around £40,000 – the most expensive album made up to that time.
Side One
The album could not have started more forcefully than with ‘Death on Two Legs (Dedicated To…)’, an outpouring of inventive from Mercury not so indirectly aimed at Queen’s original manager Norman Sheffield (who denied having mishandled the band almost until his death a decade ago). Powerful as this song is, Mercury’s invective abetted by May’s squalling guitar and Taylor’s powerhouse drumming, it is audibly enhanced by an introduction where piano, guitar and double bass meld into an ominous crescendo which sets the tone for what follows.
A very different side of Mercury is showcased in ‘Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon’, voice and piano elegantly aligned in a song the recently deceased Noël Coward might have been happy to write. The ‘tin-bucket’ vocal and May’s lolloping guitar complement each other perfectly. Taylor takes the limelight for ‘I’m in Love with My Car’, an ode to mechanophilia and among the most durable of his ‘one per album’ songs. Complete with strident vocal and grinding instrumental backdrop, there's a sense of send-up in the hint of waltz rhythm which underpins its progress.
Deacon wrote little more than a dozen songs for Queen, but these include sure-fire classics as ‘You’re My Best Friend’. A tribute to his wife, electric piano and bass intertwine with chunky drumming and, toward the end, eulogistic backing harmonies to enhance Mercury’s confiding vocal. A feelgood hit in its own right that represents mid-1970s pop at its straight-ahead best.
May rarely took lead vocal on his songs, with ‘39’ among his best for its eloquent description of astronauts trapped within the relativity of time-travel. This is channelled into a shanty-like number with country overtones; the title explained by its being the 39th track Queen recorded and a song beloved of George Michael from days spent busking on the London Underground.
Another side of May emerges in ‘Sweet Lady’, a straight-ahead rocker highly criticised at the time, for all that Mercury adopts a suitably strutting vocal and May enjoys himself with those multi-layered guitars at the end. Crotch-rock, as pastiche, is hardly out of place on this album. Next, a more contemporary take on vaudeville with Mercury’s ‘Seaside Rendezvous’, its blithe humour made OTT by an a capella section in which Mercury and Taylor conjure up a ragtime band then do a tap-dance playing thimbles on the mixing desk. All good (if not so clean) fun.
Side Two
Nothing has quite prepared us for ‘The Prophet’s Song’, the longest song Queen recorded and the most complex in structure. May’s inspiration was a dream about the Great Flood as described in the Book of Genesis, and certain lyrics allude directly to those Biblical events. The track moves continuously from an introduction on acoustic guitar and toy koto, the first part (0’36’’) setting Mercury’s vocal against modal harmonies at a martial tempo whose ‘two by two’ references the Ark. Entirely a capella, the second part (3’21’’) is a mesmeric texture of layered harmonies and fragmented chants; the third part (5’48’’) suddenly erupting in a strident instrumental with voices entering later. At its height (7’18’’) the conclusion fades into those ethereal sounds from the beginning.
In what might be the most sentimental of all his songs, ‘Love of My Life’ has Mercury joined by May on acoustic guitar and swirling harp arpeggios in a ballad which became a singalong favourite, most notably in South America, and united the masses as few politicians ever could. Mercury sits out ‘Good Company’, May’s homage to jazz revivalists such as the Temperence Seven. His deft vocal is nimbly self-accompanied on banjo ukelele, layers of guitar evoking those trad-jazz bands which were as far away in time from this album as it is from the present day.
The song that redefined the possible
‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, Mercury’s mock-operatic epic that occupied the No. 1 spot on the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks, redefined what was feasible in pop-song writing and recording. Whatever the influence of opera, its multi-section ‘scena’ is cannily derived from this source.
A capella voices, contrasting fantasy with reality, start the Introduction - Mercury’s vocal and piano entering as a transition into the Aria (0’48’’). Invoking absolution in the face of murder, the two verses of this lengthiest section are crowned by an Instrumental (2’36’’) with May’s guitar heightening the melodrama. This is curtailed (3’03’’) at the start of an Ensemble, with its allusions to characters historical or operatic, in a melée of overdubbed voices and layered harmonies.
Taylor’s climactic falsetto cadences (4’06’’) into a Cabaletta, Mercury’s fractious lyrics shouted out against May’s lunging guitar until (4’51’’) an upward piano phrase heralds a Conclusion which subsides poignantly into resigned calm capped by a resonating tam-tam. The late Brian Wilson hailed 'Bohemian Rhapsody' as a worthy successor to ‘Good Vibrations’. Enough said.
Although taped almost a year before the rest of this album, May’s arrangement of ‘God Save the Queen’ slots in effortlessly at its close. It was played at the close of almost every Queen concert, so prompting an ovation for the National Anthem which was not done on sufferance.
What's A Night at the Opera's legacy now?
Queen subsequently completed another 11 studio albums and nine international tours, plus a half-hour set at Live Aid that, four decades on, is often hailed as the best live rock gig of all time. The video for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ set new standards for a medium no longer merely a promotional tool but an artefact comparable to the actual music. That said, A Night at the Opera is often dismissed as, at best, a guilty pleasure; at worse, an admission of poor taste.
An album certified platinum in the UK and triple-platinum in the US could hardly be accused of failing expectations, yet a sense persists that A Night at the Opera is in some way a failure next to other releases in and around 1975. As has hopefully been made clear, this is an album whose songwriting and musicianship withstand comparison to all-comers: a trail-blazer from a time of change for popular music and a high-point in the career of a band which, Mercury’s untimely death and Deacon’s retirement notwithstanding, remains a sure attraction to this day.
Endless potential
Nor was the classical element that insinuated itself over this album absent from later releases - not least Mercury’s solo albums, hence the orchestrations on 1985’s Mr. Bad Guy which he personally supervised or operatic overtones on 1988’s Barcelona – the title-track a duet with soprano Monserrat Caballé chosen as the anthem for that city’s hosting of the Olympics four years later.
A culmination of sorts emerged with Queen Symphony, a six-movement orchestral work devised by Tolga Kashif. Premiered by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in November 2002, it imbues numerous classics from the Queen back catalogue, not least ‘Love of My Life’ and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, with the breadth of the classical tradition. May and Taylor were evidently both moved by what they heard, and one can only imagine Mercury’s delight in the endless potential of Queen’s music.
Queen and the Marx Brothers
Throughout that period writing or recording A Night at the Opera, Queen spent much of their downtime watching Marx Brothers films, not least the 1935 classic which gave the album its title. Criticized for playing-down the anarchy of their earlier films, the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera broadened their appeal considerably and provided a template for those that followed.
Not the least of its innovations was adapting numbers from Verdi’s Il trovatore and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, heard alongside popular songs of the day as ‘Alone’ or ‘All I Do Is Dream Of You’ by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed. Having trained singers made a considerable difference, soprano Kitty Carlisle and tenor Allan Jones garnering as much praise as did those meticulously planned routines.
Queen repeated the trick by naming their follow-up album A Day at the Races after the Marx Brothers’ next film, while in March 1977 Groucho Marx invited the band to visit his home in Los Angeles where they sang an a capella ‘39’ in thanks. Marx, who had attended the Beatles’ landmark Shea Stadium concert in August 1966 then appeared on the front cover of Rolling Stone magazine with Alice Cooper, died five months later – three days after Elvis Presley.
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