Queen Chart The Road To ‘A Night At the Opera’

Queen are celebrating the 50th anniversary of their classic 1975 album, A Night At The Opera, with a five-part installment of their video series “The Greatest.” After focusing on the creation of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the second episode explores the band’s previous recording experiences enabled them to go all-out.

“Queen The Greatest Special – Episode 2: The Path To A Night At The Opera (Part 1)” is out now and episodes continue weekly through November. A limited edition 50th anniversary reissue of A Night At the Opera is coming soon on crystal-clear vinyl.

In the episode, Queen’s Roger Taylor and Brian May recall how each album afforded them more creative freedom in the studio, specifically focusing on the experience of recording Queen II.

“Really, I think Queen II was the first time we were allowed a certain amount of freedom in the studio, whereas with the first album we weren’t,” says Taylor, “so basically it sounds better and more like the way we wanted it to sound. I don’t think it’s perfect by a long way, but we were building our confidence in the studio. It had a lot more light and shade.”

May specifically points to the ambition of 1974’s Queen II. “I’ve always been a big advocate of that album because I think it was a giant step. We’re going from a band that is hardly allowed in the studio – except a few hours in dead time – to a band that actually has studio time,” he says. “We can indulge ourselves. We can experiment, and we make a giant leap with painting pictures on the canvas of the tapes on Queen II. I love that album.”

Taylor recalls how the band pursued more conventional production on their third album, 1974’s Sheer Heart Attack. “In general, that was a hard-hitting, more simplified album. And, in my opinion, that was to its credit. The songs were good, they weren’t too long, weren’t over-elaborate. It was more stuff we could actually play live without getting too much into studio trickery.”

But Queen’s natural tendency towards the ambitious and grandiose set their course for A Night At The Opera. “We’ve done Sheer Heart Attack, it’s done quite well. But really, our heart is in chiselling out these unusual places,” May says. “In those days, it was fun, because it’s like getting a new car and seeing what you can do with it. It’s the four of us – with Mike Stone, the engineer and Roy Baker, our producer – and we’re all learning how to use the studio. Pushing things ever-further.”

“For any song we took on, no matter who amongst the four of us had brought it in, it was an exhilarating process,” remembers May “challenging, sometimes difficult, sometimes argumentative – but really rewarding, because what you got in the end was something so shiny, rounded, adventurous and dangerous. It became Queen stuff – and Queen stuff was a million times greater than anything that any one of the four of us could come up with on their own…”

Order Bohemian Rhapsody here and A Night at the Opera here.