Queen: Days of Our Lives Page #6

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and said, "So am I!"

Freddie, when I first met him,

wasn't out to the band

because he was struggling

with his own sexuality anyway.

And Freddie was from a very, very

traditional Zoroastrian background

and I think his family considerations

were probably paramount.

I remember when we went into the studio to make

A Night At The Opera, it felt like make or break.

We were not only poor,

but we were in debt.

All the sound and lighting companies and

the people we worked with hadn't been paid,

so we were at a really crucial point. We might

have had to break up if that album hadn't done well.

It was an expensive album,

enormous complexity on there.

Even now, I wonder

how we did some of that stuff.

There was so much hunger there. We

had so much we wanted to bring out.

It was all kept in

and so we had all kinds of songs.

Bohemian Rhapsody was basically like three songs that

I wanted to put out and I just put the three together.

I think the groundwork for a song

like that was done at Ealing College.

Freddie had lots of bits of songs

which we'd link together

and one of his bits, I just referred to it as The

Cowboy Song and it went, "Mama, I just killed a man. "

# Mama

# Just killed a man... #

The first thing I heard was Freddie

playing "Mama, just killed a man... "

"What do you think?" "I love it. It's absolutely

brilliant. " Not knowing what was to come.

We ended up having to do it

in six studios.

Because they were using all these

studios, you didn't know what was going on.

You would have guitar parts in one

studio and vocal stuff in another.

# Galileo

# Galileo

# Galileo, Figaro... #

Freddie would just turn up and go,

"I've got a few more Galileos. "

We were going round all these studios

just hearing parts.

# Thunderbolt and lightning

Very, very frightening me

# Lightning, very, very frightening,

very, very frightening me... #

Only Fred had it in his head and he was

making some of it up as we went along.

I thought, "I'll do as I please. "

# Thunderbolt and lightning,

very, very frightening me... #

Do as many multi-layer harmonies as

possible. You know, go well over the top.

It really was tongue-in-cheek, but at

the same time, "I bet you can't do this. "

# He's just a poor boy

from a poor family

# Spare him his life

from this monstrosity... #

But the record company as a mass came to us and

said, "This is too long. Nobody's going to play it. "

I played it to Elton John

at the time

and he said, "Are you off your head?

You'll never get that on the radio. "

I said, "It goes out in its entirety

or not at all. "

At the crucial moment, this young

man called Kenny Everett came in,

loved the track, stole a copy of it

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