Music Review by Bill Rendall
A Night at the Opera - Queen
Variety is abundant in A Night at the Opera. The main songwriters are Freddie Mercury and Brian May but all band members wrote at least one song. Mercury's compositions tend to be theatrical with a nod to English music hall. May's compositions tend to be heavy guitar-based rock, such as Sweet Lady and The Prophet's Song, but he varies his style with the folksy '39 and the theatrical Good Company.
Roger Taylor wrote I'm in Love With My Car and sang lead vocals in a larynx shredding voice from the Noddy Holder school of singing. John Deacon wrote You're My Best Friend and contributed a catchy electric piano accompaniment.
The opening track Death on Two Legs is stunning in its vitriol. It is apparently dedicated to Queen's former manager but he is not named for obvious legal reasons. It is fairly common for musicians to write songs attacking the music business but this is the harshest personal attack I have heard.
The album climaxes with the gloriously bombastic mock-opera Bohemian Rhapsody. This epic track is foreshadowed by a couple of earlier tracks. The Prophet's Song exceeds Bohemian Rhapsody in length and also features a middle section of multi-part vocal gymnastics. The Prophet's Song segues into Love of My Life which sounds quite similar to the opening section of Bohemian Rhapsody.
Queen made extensive use of overdubbing to build up densely layered guitar and vocal harmonies. The superb quality of the vocals separates Queen from most rock bands.
A Night at the Opera was made at the height of Queen's musical development and I recommend it as essential listening. Queen's earlier albums show a heavy rock influence and are well worth a listen. In particular I recommend Queen II as an effective blend of progressive rock and heavy rock. Later albums tended towards commercial pop which appealed to many but not to me. It's a shame they didn't stick to their "no synthesizers" rule.
Because much of the early Queen sound relied on studio overdubbing they needed prerecorded backing, or human cloning technology, to reproduce their songs in a live concert. I cannot recommend any live recordings of their early material. They subsequently addressed this issue with sing-along crowd participation songs such as We Will Rock You.
The album cover of A Night at the Opera includes the crab and lion from the star signs of Queen.
Band Members:
Freddie Mercury - Vocals, piano
Brian May - Guitar, vocals
John Deacon - Bass
Roger Taylor- Drums, vocals