A Royal Night At The Opera With Queen
This review was originally posted on rateyourmusic. It was one of the reviews I was assigned in the "Go Review That Album" game on their community forums. This version of the review has had some editing and corrections.
“I see a little
silhouette of a man,
Scaramouch, Scaramouch will you do the Fandango,
Thunderbolt and lightning - very very frightening me –
Gallileo, Gallileo,
Gallileo, Gallileo,
Gallileo Figaro-Magnifco”
This is the quintessential Queen album. This album shows the band’s versatility
and the wide range of their talents, especially their harmonizing. The title
and some of the tracks themselves suggest that this is a concept album that the
listener is attending “A Night at the Opera” a Rock Opera that
is. Even though that is the suggestion it could be argued that it is not a
concept album since the style of the songs is a large range, they don’t
contribute to a common story and only a couple of them could be called Opera
music, of course I think it is mostly because Freddy Mercury and the band were
big fans of the Marx Brothers as their next album was called “A Day at
the Races” According to Wikipedia they were watching “A Night
at the Opera” in the recording studio while working on the album. I
like my Marx Brothers fanboy angle better. I’m not sure of my first thoughts of
the album the first time I heard it other than knowing the title was also the
name of a Marx Brother’s movie and having heard Bohemian Rhapsody on
the radio many times. I have also always thought that it possibly could be made
into an opera, or at least Bohemian Rhapsody could be made
into a sort of mini opera.
Well I wasn’t going to do my review like this, but I think I will give a brief
track-by-track comment. This album opens in the first few notes sounding like
some sort of science fiction B-grade movie with “Death on Two Legs”.
The listener is then shocked a little bit with track two sounding like a 1920s tin
can soundtrack to a tennis or cricket match in “Lazing on a Sunday
Afternoon.” Then Drummer Roger Taylor gives what can best be called an
autosexual serenade to a car on “I’m in Love With My Car”. We get
back on track with typical ‘70s album oriented rock with “You’re My
Best Friend” one of the tracks on the album that gets a good amount of
radio airplay. Then we switch gears and styles on “‘39” an
acoustic folky almost sea chantey type feel. Next we come back to modern times
with “Sweet Lady” a typical Queen sounding type song.
We get really artistic with “Seaside Rendezvous” which goes
back again to the early 20th century tinny (in a tin can sort of way) sounds
and the extraordinary vocal talents of Roger Taylor imitating percussion
instruments and Freddie Mercury imitating woodwinds. Next “The
Prophet’s Song” mixes a marching sort of Native American sound with a
bit of a school choir recital that flows into an Acapulco canon and then back
into a modern rock band sound and back again. After the fact I can hear some of
the styles that would later appear in the theme to “The Highlander” movie.
The song sort of drifts from a summer cabin in the rain to the piano
dependent “Love of My Life” which gives us some more of
Queen’s beautiful harmonizing. Next we add a little harmonizing with a little
vaudeville ukulele and a little Beatles influence sound on “Good
Company”. I think as a kid I did think that song was by the Beatles.
Near the end we have the most famous song from the album the piece that is most
Opera like of the whole album “Bohemian Rhapsody”. The song played
a big memorable part in the movie “Wayne’s World” after having
been re-released shortly after Freddie Mercury’s death. It crosses a wide range
of vocal styles and musical themes exploring high and low sounds fast and slow
tempos as well. Then we end the album on the Patriotic instrumental “God
Save The Queen”.
The copy of the CD I have and based this review on is an “Original Master”
recording (OMR) made by Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs (MFSL) pressed on a Gold CD.
Most CDs of the time were from analog recordings and mixed with analog
recording with digital mastering (AAD). The OMRs and especially the gold discs
were ADD recordings. Back before CDs audiophiles had to get “1/2 speed” master
recordings on “Virgin” Vinyl to get their pure sounding records with as little
sound distortion as possible. The idea is that there are less impurities in
virgin vinyl than ordinary vinyl. These OMRs usually would cost twice as much
as the regular version. I started getting into OMRs in the early 80s when the
prices for MFSL OMRs started getting more reasonable, just as CDs were starting
to take over.
