The Most Stunning Detail About Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody

Queen’s guitarist Brian May was the recent guest of Rick Bento’s YouTube channel and talked about their legendary song ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’ The guitarist revealed a shocking detail about the track stating that they didn’t rehearse it before recording.

The song ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was written by Freddie Mercury and was featured in the 1975 album ‘A Night at the Opera.’ It has not only been one of Queen’s most popular and loved songs, but it is also considered one of the greatest rock songs of all time.

Mercury’s songwriting was so genius that even 46 years after its release, the contributors, such as Brian May, are often asked about the making process. Even though Queen has been highly praised for creating such a song, May revealed some shocking details.

As it turns out, the band didn’t practice or rehearse before its recording. The band members just entered the studio with an idea in mind and were instantly in sync. The whole recording process was all about being in sync and trying to come up with a tune that Mercury was happy with. It seems like the band mostly improvised to get what was inside Mercury’s head.

Here is what Brian May said when he was asked if they rehearsed:

“Oh, no, we didn’t. I don’t think we rehearsed it at all. Well, there’s a kind of rehearse-and-record situation in the studio, generally, we went in there with ideas, and we’d start playing around. But in the case of John and Freddie and Roger, they would pick things up very quickly, they would sort of throw things at each other, and very quickly they’d be very much in sync.

You’ve probably listened to the backing track on its own, and it’s immaculate, isn’t it? There’s no click. Freddie himself was like a metronome, but a metronome with a lot of balls. It had a bite to it the way Freddie hit that piano. So he was incredible to play with on the occasions where I’m doing the backing track with him, it’s astounding. But Roger would instantly lock-in and he had an amazing knack for just finding the right pocket and the right place to be.

“So no, it was like – Freddie would play it in the case of this, I remember him playing it down in pieces like, ‘This is this piece, and this is this piece,’ and we’re like, ‘ok…’ And then, ‘Well, let’s try this piece…’ And he played a bit, and then Roger would join in, Deacon would join in, I’d be in the control room, and pretty quickly it would come together. So if that counts as rehearsal, that’s it, I suppose.

And generally, whoever was manning the tape machine would be running the whole time, just in case, something good happened. And generally, by the time they’d run it three or four or five times, they’d have it, they’d have the one. And in those days, we didn’t do edits on multi-tracks, really. Occasionally, very, very occasionally we tried an edit on one track, but generally, we wanted the good take, and we’d do it until the tape was good.

You can watch the interview below.