About The Song
Queen’s epic rock song “Bohemian Rhapsody” began life sometime in the late 60s, when Freddie Mercury was a student at Ealing Art College, starting out as a few ideas for a song scribbled on scraps of paper.
Queen guitarist Brian May remembers the brilliant singer and songwriter giving them the first glimpse in the early 70s of the masterpiece he had at one time called “The Cowboy Song,” perhaps because of the line “Mama… just killed a man.”
“I remember Freddie coming in with loads of bits of paper from his dad’s work, like Post-it notes, and pounding on the piano,” May said in 2008. “He played the piano like most people play the drums. And this song he had was full of gaps where he explained that something operatic would happen here and so on. He’d worked out the harmonies in his head.”
Mercury told bandmates that he believed he had enough material for about three songs but was thinking about blending all the lyrics into one long extravaganza. The final six-minute iconic mini rock opera became the band’s defining song, and eventually provided the title of the hit 2019 biopic starring Rami Malek as Mercury.
Queen first properly rehearsed “Bohemian Rhapsody” at Ridge Farm Studio, in Surrey, in mid-1975, and then spent three weeks honing the song at Penrhos Court in Herefordshire. By the summer they were ready to record it; taping began on August 24, 1975 at the famous Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, Wales. It was a moment that May described as “just the biggest thrill.”
The innovative song began with the famous a cappella intro (“Is this the real life?/Is this just fantasy?”) before embracing everything from glam-metal rock to opera. A week was devoted to the opera section, for which Mercury had methodically written out all the harmony parts. For the grand chorale, the group layered 160 tracks of vocal overdubs (using 24-track analogue recording), with Mercury singing the middle register, May the low register, and drummer Roger Taylor the high register (John Deacon was on bass guitar but did not sing). Mercury performed with real verve, overdubbing his voice until it sounded like a chorus, with the words “mamma mia”, “Galileo” and “Figaro” bouncing up and down the octaves. “We ran the tape through so many times it kept wearing out,” May said. “Once we held the tape up to the light and we could see straight through it, the music had practically vanished. Every time Fred decided to add a few more ‘Galileo’s we lost something, too.”
Queen also hired director Bruce Gowers to shoot a groundbreaking video, which features the band recreating their iconic pose from the cover of their Queen II album. The promo, which cost £3,500 to make in just three hours at Elstree Studios, was a superb piece of rock marketing, celebrated for its eye-catching multi-angle shots capturing Mercury in his favorite Marlene Dietrich pose. The band had fun making the video, and Gowers recalled: “We started at seven-thirty, finished at ten-thirty and were in the pub 15 minutes later.”
On November 20, 1975, the new video was premiered on Top Of The Pops to huge media and public interest. Queen watched the program in their Taunton hotel room. “Bohemian Rhapsody” became the band’s first US Top 10 hit. In the UK, it went to No. 1 for nine consecutive weeks, a record at the time, even holding off the surprise Laurel And Hardy novelty hit “The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine”, which had to settle for the No. 2 spot. “Bohemian Rhapsody” is still the only song to have topped the UK charts twice at Christmas. It was also the first Queen single to be released with a picture sleeve in the UK. The B-side, incidentally, was Taylor’s “I’m In Love With My Car.”
“Bohemian Rhapsody” opened their celebrated Live Aid set in July 1985 and it has remained remarkably popular. In 2004, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame, and Mercury’s vocal performance was named by the readers of Rolling Stone magazine as the best in rock history. “Bohemian Rhapsody” is the third best-selling single of all-time in the UK and, in December 2018, “Bo Rhap” – as it is affectionately known among Queen fans – was officially proclaimed the world’s most-streamed song of the 20th Century, passing 1.6 billion listens globally across all major streaming services, and surpassing Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” A mere seven months later, on July 21, 2019, the video surpassed one billion streams on YouTube.
Video
Lyric
Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide
No escape from realityOpen your eyes
Look up to the skies and see
I’m just a poor boy, I need no sympathy
Because I’m easy come, easy go
Little high, little low
Any way the wind blows
Doesn’t really matter to me, to meMama, just killed a man
Put a gun against his head
Pulled my trigger, now he’s dead
Mama, life had just begun
But now I’ve gone and thrown it all awayMama, ooh
Didn’t mean to make you cry
If I’m not back again this time tomorrow
Carry on, carry on as if nothing really mattersToo late, my time has come
Sends shivers down my spine
Body’s aching all the time
Goodbye, everybody, I’ve got to go
Gotta leave you all behind and face the truthMama, ooh (Any way the wind blows)
I don’t wanna die
I sometimes wish I’d never been born at allI see a little silhouetto of a man
Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?
Thunderbolt and lightning very, very frightening me
(Galileo) Galileo
(Galileo) Galileo
Galileo Figaro
Magnifico-o-o-o-oI’m just a poor boy, nobody loves me
He’s just a poor boy from a poor family
Spare him his life from this monstrosityEasy come, easy go, will you let me go?
Bismillah! No, we will not let you go (Let him go!)
Bismillah! We will not let you go (Let him go!)
Bismillah! We will not let you go (Let me go!)
Will not let you go (Let me go!)
Never let you go (Never, never, never, never let me go)
Oh oh oh oh
No, no, no, no, no, no, no
Oh, mamma mia, mamma mia (Mamma mia, let me go)
Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me, for meSo you think you can stone me and spit in my eye?
So you think you can love me and leave me to die?
Oh, baby, can’t do this to me, baby
Just gotta get out, just gotta get right outta hereOoh, ooh yeah, ooh yeah
Nothing really matters
Anyone can see
Nothing really matters
Nothing really matters to meAny way the wind blows