'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen: The making of the operatic epic masterpiece

1 August 2025, 12:02

Queen released too many hits to mention during their stunning career - but 'Bohemian Rhapsody' is arguably their very best.

Queen had so many classic songs they had to release not one, not two but three unique Greatest Hits collections.

From 'Killer Queen' and 'Don't Stop Me Now' to 'We Are The Champions' and 'We Will Rock You', it's not easy to pick the very best –  but many will nestle on their 1975 epic 'Bohemian Rhapsody'.

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From its kitchen sink three-part structure to its unique lyrics ("Bismillah, no!"), brain melting music video and headbanging solo, there was never anything quite like 'Bohemian Rhapsody' before, and there hasn't really been anything like it since.

But do you know who wrote the song, what those crazy lyrics actually mean, or who has bravely tried to cover the song over the years?

Read on for all you need to know about Queen's absolutely massive (in every sense) 'Bohemian Rhapsody'.

Who wrote 'Bohemian Rhapsody' and why does it sound like someone stuck three completely different songs together?

Unlike many bands who just have one or two people writing their songs (if even that), every single member of Queen pitched in with banger after banger during their career.

That very much included frontman Freddie Mercury himself. Among the many hits he had sole credit for writing was 'Bohemian Rhapsody'.

"I always wanted to do something operatic," Freddie told Rolling Stone of the song in 1976.

"I wanted something with a mood setter at the start, going into a rock type of thing which completely breaks off into an opera section, a vicious twist and then returns to the theme."

He added: "I don't really know anything about opera myself. Just certain pieces. I wanted to create what I thought Queen could do. It's not authentic... certainly not. It's no sort of pinch out of Magic Flute. It was as far as my limited capacity could take me."

Queen The Greatest Live: Bohemian Rhapsody (Episode 37)

As well as being the main singer and backing singer on the song, Freddie also played piano on the song. Brian May played guitar, of course, while John Deacon played bass. Roger Taylor played drums, timpani and gong.

For the operatic section, that's Freddie filling out the middle register, with Brian on the low notes and Roger doing the high bits.

The song was produced by Queen with Roy Thomas Baker.

The roots of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' go back to Queen precursor Smile, with Freddie apparently bashing out parts of the track on the piano from the late 1960s. Some lyrics from a noodling bit called 'The Cowboy Song' ("Mama... just killed a man") ended up in the song.

Roy Thomas Baker revealed that three years before the song eventually came together, Freddie played the first part of the track to him.

Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody (Live Aid 1985)

"He played the beginning on the piano, then stopped and said, 'And this is where the opera section comes in!'," Roy said. "Then we went out to eat dinner."

Talking of different sections, 'Bohemian Rhapsody' clearly sounds like three very different songs melded together. The reason for that is because it is. "It was basically three songs that I wanted to put out, and I just put the three together," Freddie would later confirm during an interview in 1985.

While many Queen songs were hammered out in the studio, Brian May would reveal that the song was pretty much all there in Freddie's head before they started recording it.

With that said, a song like 'Bohemian Rhapsody' doesn't just leap from brain to plastic. The band worked hard and long to get it together in the studio.

It was during rehearsals at Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey in mid-1975 that the band started work on the song. They actually began recording it on Rockfield Studio 1 near Monmouth in South Wales on August 24, 1975.

But they didn't finish recording it there. In total the song was patched together in sections at FIVE different studios, with further work done at Roundhouse, Sarm Studios, Scorpio Sound, and Wessex Sound Studios

'Bohemian Rhapsody' was totally insane, but we enjoyed every minute of it," co-producer Baker told Mix in 1999.

"It was basically a joke, but a successful joke. We had to record it in three separate units. We did the whole beginning bit, then the whole middle bit and then the whole end. It was complete madness.

"The middle part started off being just a couple of seconds, but Freddie kept coming in with more 'Galileos' and we kept on adding to the opera section, and it just got bigger and bigger. We never stopped laughing ... It started off as a ballad, but the end was heavy."

What do the lyrics of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' mean?

What a question. The lyrics to 'Bohemian Rhapsody' raised over a million quid at auction, but what do they actually mean?

Being pasted together from three different ideas means that 'Bohemian Rhapsody' was never going to be the most coherent song, lyrically.

For his part, Freddie said: "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?"

Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody (Official Lyric Video)

Roger Taylor has suggested that the meaning of the song is "fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle", while Brian May has claimed that 'Bohemian Rhapsody' was quite a personal work for Mercury.

"Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood," May said.

"He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song."

For the over-arching narrative, we've got a nihilistic man who has committed either a real or metaphorical murder ("Mama, just killed a man... nothing really matters").

Some have suggested 'Bohemian Rhapsody' is Freddie's coming out song or comment on his relationship with Mary Austin, but that was never confirmed by Freddie or his bandmates.

Then you've got that part Taylor called a "bit of nonsense", which we'll unpick with a quick glossary of the most likely meaning or definition:

• silhouetto - a mispelling/cod-Italian "operatic" take on a silhouette
• Scaramouche - a stock clown character of the 16th-century commedia dell'arte (comic theatrical arts of Italian literature)
• the Fandango - the partner dance that came from Portugal and Spain
• Galileo - Galileo Galilei. The Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer who was the father of modern astronomy
• Figaro - the central character in 1775 play The Barber of Seville by Pierre Beaumarchais
• magnifico - derived from Latin - a magnificent person. Also simply the Italian for magnificent
• Bismillah - an Arabic phrase meaning "in the name of God"
• Beelzebub - another name for Satan, literally the Hebrew for "Lord of the Flies"

When was 'Bohemian Rhapsody' released and where did it get in the charts?

'Bohemian Rhapsody' was released as a single on Halloween, October 31, 1975. It featured Roger Taylor's 'I'm In Love With My Car' on the B-side.

It was released in its full-length six minute glory on both sides of the Atlantic, even though US radio especially wasn't generally a fan of such epics.

"We did have thoughts about even in the UK, perhaps editing it down at all, but we listened to it over and over again and there was no way we could edit it," John Deacon told Innerview.

"We tried a few ideas, but if you edited it, you always lost some part of the song, so we had to leave it all in. And luckily it took off anyway."

Bohemian Rhapsody | Muppet Music Video | The Muppets

And take off it did. 'Bohemian Rhapsody' went to number one in the UK and many other countries around the world, though it stalled at number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 on its initial release.

When the song was re-released in 1991 after Freddie Mercury's death (this time with 'These Are The Days Of Our Lives' on the flip), it topped the charts once more in the UK, and went all the way to number two in the US this time around, only being kept off the top by novelty rap smash 'Jump' by Kriss Kross.

It popped up in the charts once again in 2018 after the release of the Queen biopic that took its name.

Was 'Bohemian Rhapsody' the "first music video"?

Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody (Official Video Remastered)

"Did you know 'Bohemian Rhapsody' was the first music video?"

Many people will mutter something like that when talking about either Queen or MTV or pop videos more generally, but it's obviously, plainly not the fact.

Even if you ignore the band's own previous clips for songs like 'Keep Yourself Alive', 'Liar', 'Seven Seas of Rhye' and 'Killer Queen', you had pop promos from major, major artists long before Queen even existed.

The Beatles, as ever, were key players. Early on you could easily take the song segments out of their long-form A Hard Day's Night or Help! and call them (and treat them like) a music video.

The Beatles - Rain

More strictly, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who had directed episodes of Ready Steady Go! and would go on to make the Let It Be movie, directed the out-and-out music videos for 'Paperback Writer', 'Rain', 'Hey Jude' and 'Revolution', as well as The Rolling Stones clips for '2000 Light Years from Home', 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' and 'Child of the Moon'.

You could argue (just about) that the history of the form goes back to the magic lantern "illustrated song" for 'The LIttle Lost Child' all the way back in 1894. Or Warner Bros' clips not long after. There was Bessie Smith's two-reeler St Louis Blues and plenty other examples up to and including the promo clips made by some artists for Top of the Pops in the mid-1960s.

Even when it comes to doing something more interesting than just depicting a band performing (or more usually miming) to their song within the pop world, you had producer Alex Murray's clip for The Moody Blues version of 'Go Now'.

‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ scene from Wayne’s World Movie. #BoRhap40

So no, 'Bohemian Rhapsody' wasn't the first music video, but it was a stunning and important one all the same.

It was directed by Bruce Gowers, who had previously filmed the band at the Rainbow Theatre a year earlier. It opened with a re-enactment of the Mick Rock cover of Queen II and used clever analogue in-camera special effects available to make something very cool indeed.

Another visual that's inseparable from the song these days is the fantastic scene in Wayne's World featuring the characters miming along in a car.

Producer Lorne Michaels apparently pushed for a Guns N' Roses song to be used in the scene, but Mike Myers insisted that they use 'Bohemian Rhapsody', and thank heavens he stood his ground.

Who has been brave enough to cover 'Bohemian Rhapsody' over the years?

Black Lace - Bohemian Rhapsody

A fool's errand, trying to do 'Bohemian Rhapsody' if you're not Queen.

One of the first (and worst) covers was pretty quick out the gates. Black Lace recorded a depressingly straight cover in 1977. Instead of injecting a bit of weird novelty fun, it's just a weak attempt at a note-for-note cover. Agadon't, more like.

The London Symphony Orchestra did things with a bit more class and Frank Sidebottom with a lot more humour.

Queen - Elton John & Axl Rose - Bohemian Rhapsody (The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert) HD

Since then we've had intriguing versions from the likes of Fuzzbox, and "Weird Al" Yankovic, Panic! at the Disco and William Shatner feat. John Wetton.

More "proper" attempts came from Elaine Paige, G4 and Russell Watson, who naturally leaned on the opera/vocal side of things.

The post-Freddie Queen performed the song at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert together with Elton John and Guns 'N Roses man Axl Rose. In the years that followed, they also did it with Paul Rodgers and Adam Lambert, as well as The Muppets.