A Night At The Opera
Queen Album
Produced by Roy Thomas Baker and Queen.
Engineered by Mike Stone and Gary Lyons.
Cover Concept by Freddie Mercury.
Freddie Mercury: Vocals,Vocals,Bechstein Debauchery and more Vocals
Brian May : Guitars,Harp,Genuine Aloha Ukelele,vocals and Orchestral Backdrops
Roger Taylor : Percussion and vocals
John Deacon : Electric Bass,Double Bass and Electric Piano
No synthesizers!
Recommended Songs: 39 (May), Bohemian Rhapsody (Mercury), Love Of My Life (Mercury)
Review
Queens ‘A Night at the Opera’, is consistently listed in those ‘Top Albums of All time’ style polls which you often see, and for good reason too – it’s an excellent album. It ranked #43 in Q Magazines Top Albums poll of 1993 and Mojo Magazine said it was ‘An imperial extravaganza, a cornucopia’. The album is named after the Marx brothers film of the same name, which the band watched during the recording.
One of the most obvious things about the album is that there are so many different styles of song throughout the album, everything from hard rock to a piano-based ballad.The Album opens with ‘Death on Two Legs (Dedicated To…)’ , which was an attack on a previous manager, Norman Sheffield, who did not leave on good terms. He even tried to sue the band over the song – but was unsuccessful.
The album contains some classic hits, the most popular being ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, but this epic pales in comparison with the eight-minutetwenty-secondd ‘Prophets Song’ which is also a good listen, and typical 70’s solid-rock. Freddie also has the classic concert piece, ‘Love of My Life’, on piano this time, but from here on you will hear thousands of fans sing along with it at Queen concerts from Rio to Rotterdam.
Other hits of note on the album include Brians, year of ’39’ and John Deacons, ‘You’re My Best Friend’, for which John had to go learn to play piano, as Freddie wouldn’t play electric piano, especially when there was a perfectly good grand piano available.
Again, Queen produces yet another brilliant album, however, some critics may point that ‘Sheer Heart Attack’ and ‘A Day at the Races’ are better quality albums, but this view is subjective at best. Personally, I like it and its another great early Queen album.
This album was also released as a 30th Anniversary Edition with CD and Companion DVD with rare and new video footage.
You can see a lot of what happened during the making of this album in the 2018 biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody.
Review Rating : 10
Did you know… Bohemian Rhapsody is considered to be the first Rock Video and it costs just £4,500, took 4 hours to record, & 1 day to edit. It was purely by accident that it happened, & was due to them not being available for Top of the Pops.
- Overall Rating 93%