Rock review

Seaside Rendezvous
With their voices alone, Taylor and 
Mercury imitate piccolos, flutes, 
trumpets and tubas on this one. They 
also imitate tap dancing sounds with 
their fingers. Ridiculously innovative, 
Seaside Rendezvous is another Mercury 
high society track.
The Prophet’s Song
A Brian May epic: The Prophet’s Song 
features some stunning guitar work, 
and complicated production. Multi-
layered and multi-tracked all over the 
place, this track still doesn’t feel too 
over-produced. Well thought through.
Love of My Life
One of Mercury’s most covered songs, 
Love of My Life is a tender piano and 
harpsichord number, influenced by 
Chopin and Beethoven.
Good Company
With vocals and ukelele by May, Good 
Company is another Brian May classic 
to rival The Prophet’s Song. The jazz 
break at the end involved the complex 
recording of May’s guitar in every 
possible way imaginable. The lyrics, 
too, are particularly poignant here.
Bohemian Rhapsody
The crown jewel track of (arguably) 
Queen’s crown jewel album, Bohemian 
Rhapsody couldn’t get anything other 
than five stars. In the style of a rock 
opera, and with the most unusual 
structure for a piece of popular music, 
the track’s six different sections 
feature both a cappella and heavy 
metal arrangements. Nothing short of 
incredible. ‘Shall we do the fandango?’
God Save the Queen
A possible homage to Jimi Hendrix’s 
version of The Star-Spangled Banner. 
Overt. Pure Queen excess.

---

12
ROCK REVIEW
track in form of the massive worldwide 
hit, Bohemian Rhapsody. The song reached 
No. 1 all over Europe, and even hit the 
Top 10 in the United States. Bohemian 
Rhapsody earned Mercury an Ivor Novello 
award, was promoted by a revolutionary 
music video, and is the second most 
played song on British radio. Years later, 
Mercury tried to explain the appeal of 
the track reflecting, ‘It’s one of those 
songs which has such a fantasy feel about 
it. I think people should just listen to it, 
think about it, and then make up their 
own minds as to what it says to them. 
Bohemian Rhapsody didn’t just come out 
of thin air. I did a bit of research although 
it was tongue-in-cheek and mock opera. 
Why not?’
The album also featured another major 
hit in John Deacon’s, You’re My Best 
Friend. Peaking at No. 14 in America, 
it was unlike anything Queen had done 
up to this point, and proved to be a 
forerunner for the myriad hits that the 
band became famous for. Deacon later 
talked about how Mercury originally 
hated the track, especially the Wurlitzer 
organ that the bassist had composed it 
on, stating, ‘Well, Freddie didn’t like the 
electric piano, so I took it home and I 
started to learn on the electric piano and 
basically that’s the song that came out 
you know when I was learning to play 
piano. It was written on that instrument 
and it sounds best on that. You know, 
often on the instrument that you wrote 
the song on.’
Throughout this period, the band 
spent much of their time promoting and 
gigging the album, including a huge free 
gig at Hyde Park in front of over 150,000 
people. Brian May later ruminated on 
the concert’s importance to the band 
remarking, ‘I think that Hyde Park 
was one of the most significant gigs in 
our career. There was a great affection 
because we’d kind of made it in a lot of 
countries by that time, but England was 
still, you know, we weren’t really sure if 
we were really acceptable here. So it was 
a wonderful feeling to come back and see 
that crowd and get that response.’
A commercial and critical smash hit, 
A Night at the Opera went three times 
platinum in the United States, and this 
success, as well as playing sold out venues 
all over the world, proved that Queen had 
finally made it big on the popular music 
scene.
This article is an extract from