A Night At The Opera

Queen had just come home from a successful tour of their third album Shear Heart Attack and after selling many albums found themselves broke. Apparently there was some impropriety on the side of their manager. The new manager sent them to the studio where they made their most expensive album to that point in time, A Night At the Opera. The album starts with a Freddie Mercury song Death on Two Legs, where the singer has the opportunity to express his feelings over his former manager. I will not quote you any lyrics, I will give you the opportunity to listen to the song and let it speak for itself.

Queen’s new album showed off the raw talent of the band, and the mastery of the engineers. The writing and the music were powerful and the effects never detracted but added a new layer. In one song, Lazing On a Sunday Afternoon, the vocals were sung into a microphone replayed through a set of headphones in a metal bucket to provide a specific sound. We take for granted that songs like Bohemian Rhapsody, and The Prophet Song, sound so majestic and even eerie, but I know that personally I never consider how that work was accomplished.

Cover

I was introduced to Queen sadly through the movie Wayne’s World, I say sadly not because I have any problem with the movie but that I will really only ever remember it as the movie that introduced me to Queen. I loved The Bohemian Rhapsody and for a while that was all of them I knew. But just as the love of this band was being birthed in me they were also growing into the central favorite band of my close friend Chris. It was through him that I placed songs I already knew to Queen. Before I knew that Another One Bites the Dust belonged to Queen It was simply the entrance theme for the Junkyard Dog in the WWF.

Old and New

Later when I found out that the theme to Highlander was written and performed by Queen I went out to buy a CD. At my father’s recommendation I bought their greatest hits album. I loved it and then had the opportunity to fall in love to Queen myself. Over time I bought A Kind of Magic and Live At the BBC. They moved very quickly to an all-time favorite but I don’t know if I ever really felt like true fan until I picked up A Night At the Opera from Shangri-La Records in Memphis TN, used for 5 dollars. I found this album in the early 2000’s and have loved it ever since. I debated for months when I started collecting again as to whether I would buy a new pressing or just continue to use the old one. I decided, just recently, to buy a new pressing and frame my old copy.

This album shows me a band that, even in their hardest work, doesn’t take themselves too seriously. When I play this album I prance around like I’m on stage to Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon and Seaside Rendezvous. I sing along to ’39 imagining a great rocket leaving our atmosphere. When the Prophet Song comes on I am a prophet on the mountainside of some long lost people. I sway to You’re My Best Friend and Love Of My Life, thinking of my wife. When I am really angry at someone I need Death On Two Legs. I chuckle at Sweet Lady and laugh at the innuendo of I’m in Love With My Car. God Save the Queen provides a wonderful ending, and then there’s Bohemian Rhapsody, and I hope there always will be.

I don’t own a CD of this album, I don’t have the digital copies, I don’t know if I want them. Someday I might buy a cassette deck to wire in so I can copy them down and carry a Walkman again but I fell in love with this album on Vinyl. There is something poetic about that. I never knew this album digitally.

If all you know of this album are the popular songs you are missing something big in your life. So one day when you’re lazing on a Sunday afternoon, take some time to listen to this album, and seriously just listen, no better yet, prance around like the rock star you really are.

Inside the cover