Analysis of Bohemian Rhapsody

Hi everyone. Chiharu, Hideaki, Misa searched about and analyzed the song by Queen, “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Queen is the famous British rock band formed in 1971, consisting of Freddie Marcury (piano, lead vocal), Brian May (guitar, vocals), John Deacon (bass guitar), and Roger Taylor (drums, vocals). “Bohemian Rhapsody” is one of their hit songs written by Freddie Marcury, for the album “A Night at the Opera” in 1975. It reached No.1 of the UK single chart twice: right after the release of the album, and after the Marcury’s death.
We chose this song as our final project’s subject because it is not just a typical rock song, but its composition is unique, its lyrics are rich, and its groundbreaking music video arouses our interests.

I. Analysis of the song-Chiharu

What is remarkable, special and most characteristic about this song is the drastic changing structure. This song can be split into three parts, [Ballad Part], [Opera Part] and [Hard Rock Part]. We almost cannot help thinking that: Freddie Mercury, the author of this song, just put three different songs together (probably that is true). Here, firstly I am going to mention about instruments used in this song, and then analyze each segment.

Ensemble
-Acoustic Piano
-Electric Bass
-Drums
-Electric Guitars
-Lead Vocal
-Overdubbed vocals
-Chinese gong (at the very last sound of the song)
-”No Synthesisers!”

Although the song is quite long and dramatic, the instruments used in the song is not quite many. Basically they are the basic instruments of Rock music. What is worth mentioning is that they used over-overdubbed vocals (I will mention it in the [Opera Part]) and, they never used synthesizers in the recording. In the jacket of their 4th album “A Night At The Opera”, which includes ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, there is a credit saying: “No Synthesisers!”. Queen refused to use synthesizers and tried to make their original sound by the basic Rock instruments (Piano, Guitar, Bass and Drums). This policy made the identity of Early Queen Sound: Overdubbed Vocals and Guitar Orchestration (However, Queen started to use synthesizers 6 years after, in the album “The Game”).

1. -Ballad Part-

The song begin with four part a cappella sung by Mercury and the piano played by Mercury. Then other instruments gradually come in: Bass, Drums and finally, Electric Guitar, which is a bit similar to the way of making the song “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin. Slow half note rhythm is kept by the drums. Mercury’s vocal style is sorrowful, mellow and sings quietly, uses little bit of falsetto, and it is easy to get the meaning of lyrics. When the Guitar comes in, the Ballad Part comes to the peak and move on to the guitar solo by the guitarist Brian May. The guitar solo is bridging the Ballad Part and the next, Opera Part.

2. -Opera Part-

Probably, this part is the most significant part of the song, and for the rock music. This is perhaps the first song which contains the concept of opera in the Rock song. This thick chorus is performed by only three singers: Freddie Mercury (Vocal, Piano), Roger Taylor (Drums) and Brian May (Guitar) in the promotion video, we can see four of Queen singing, but the bassist John Deacon does not sing in the recording. “‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ took three weeks to record and in places featured 180 vocal over dubs” (Hodkinson 192). The element which made the choir so thick was that three different singers had three totally different characteristic voices. Freddie Mercury had sharp and clear voice and was able to sing in clean falsetto. Roger Taylor, who belonged to Church Choir group in his childhood had husky voice like Rod Stuart and also could reach very high tone. Brian May had normal, rounded soft voice and could reach low tone. Mixture of these three different voices could make this great opera part, which can be the good example of “Wall of Sound (actually the wall of voice)”. Instruments: piano, bass and percussion are also used effectively.

3. -Hard Rock Part-

After the Opera Part, here comes the Hard Rock Part. May’s guitar riff with unison bass is pretty impressive and it sounds almost angry. Taylor’s drumming really rocks. Mercury’s vocal is double-tracked and the way he sings is very different from that in Ballad Part: emotional, angry and also little urgent.
Then, the song calms down and moves back to the same theme as the introduction. As the bridge of hard rock and one minute of outro, May uses the guitar orchestration, double-tracked guitar melody. When doing it, he uses the amplifier called “Deacy Amp”, which was designed by the bassist John Deacon. At last, the song ends very quietly with only Mercury’s voice and his piano remain, same as the introduction.

-Where’s the idea of this song come from?

Queen must have been influenced by many artists who used “Wall of Sound” like the Beach Boys and the Beatles. Also, the idea of putting different themes was already used by the Beatles. In the song ‘A Day in the Life’, as we saw in the class. Most of the song was written by John Lennon, but the middle part (“woke, fell out of bed...”) was written by Paul McCartney. They wrote the song separately and put their songs together. This song must have influenced Queen’s song making.
‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was created mostly by Freddie Mercury. “So much has been said about Bohemian Rhapsody, of course, and it’s Freddie’s baby, it always will be, it’s Freddie’s dream Of course we all contributed pieces to it, but really he, he’s a mastermind”, said May in the video :

The idea of structure changing was not suddenly come up by Mercury. This idea was already existing in their 1st album “Queen”. In the song ‘Great King Rat’ written by Mercury, we can see the change of rhythm and melody for four times.

Also, the song ‘The March of the Black Queen’ from their 2nd album “Queen II” has same idea of changing. The change in this song is very drastic and it is obvious that Mercury put some of totally different songs together. What is more, there are a lot of over-dubs of instruments and voices already used.

By making experiments like these songs above, Mercury and Queen made a complete masterpiece of Rock Music.

Work cited:
Hodkinson, Mark. Queen. Omnibus Press, 2004.

II. Lyrics① - Hideaki

Words

Is this the real life-
Is this just fantasy-
Caught in a landslide-
No escape from reality-
Open your eyes
Look up to the skies and see-
I’m just a poor boy, I need no sympathy-
Because I’m easy come, easy go,
A little high, little low,
Anyway the wind blows, doesn’t really matter to me
-to me-,

Mama, just killed a man,

Put a gun against his head,
Pulled my trigger, now he’s dead,
Mama, life had just begun,
But now I’ve gone and thrown it all away-
Mama, ooo,
Didn’t mean to make you cry-
If I’m not back again this time tomorrow-
Carry on, carry on,
As if nothing really matters-

Too late, my time has come,
Sends shivers down my spine-
Body’s aching all the time,
Goodby everybody-I’ve got to go-
Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth-
Mama, ooo-
I don’t want to die,
I sometimes wish
I’d never been born at all-

I see a little silhouette of a man,
Scaramouch, scaramouch will you do the Fandango-
Thunderbolt and lightening-
Very very frightening me-
Galileo, Galileo,
Galileo, Galileo,
Galileo figaro-Magnifco-
But I’m just a poor boy and nobody loves me-
He’s just a poor boy from a poor family-
Spare him his life from this monstrosity-
Easy come easy go will you let me go-
Bismillah! No-,
We will not let you go-let him go-
Bismillah! We will not let you go-let him go
Bismillah! We will not let you go-let him go
Will not let you go-let me go
Will not let you go-let me go
No, no,no, no, no, no, no-
Mama, mia, mama mia, mama mia let me go-
Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me-
for me-

So you think you can stone me
And spit in my eye-
So you think you can love me
And leave me to die-
Oh Baby-Can’t do this to me baby-
Just gotta get out-
Just gotta get right outta here-

Nothing really matters,
Anyone can see,
Nothing really matters-,nothing really matters to me

Anyway the wind blows...

II. Lyrics② - Hideaki

Interpretation

This song is about the young man who killed someone a short while ago. The murderer confessed his crime to his mother. One chorus means the merciful society for the criminal, while the other chorus shows the severe society which want the murderer to be excluded from the society. Beelzebub has already prepared to execute this young man for murder, however, this man wants to be free. But after all, in the epilogue, the murderer himself believes that the reality will not change, no matter how this problem is resolved.

Difficult Terms in This Song

silhouetto(Greece?)

=silhouette

Scaramouche

=a character who is talkative, wily, and small-sized buffoon in Italian comedy

Fandango

=Mexican music, classical opera about escape

Figaro

=the main character in the opera “The Marriage of Figaro”. He serves for the earl, and is a eccentric genius.

Magnifico

=Wonderful!-the word of praise in Latin

Bismillah

= “I swear by God” the word of a Muslim

Mama mia

= “Oh, my god” in Italian

Beelzebub

=devil, Satan

About “so you think you can stone me and spit in my eye”

According to the Old Testament, there is a religious precept that the person who is absorbed in love out of morality must be beaten by stones until he or she dies.

The Secret of The Song

Mercury refused to explain his composition other than it was about relationships. The band is still protective about the secret of this song. Brian May said “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. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song”. The song contained the veiled references to Mercury’s personal traumas.

III. Promotion Video ① - Misa

“Bohemian Rhapsody” is also famous for its promotional video, which is the first music video to have accurate live performance scene of a band, to match music with an image, and to convey great visual impact to audiences (The history of music video). After “Bohemian Rhapsody” achieved success, many record companies started to produce music videos for their musicians, so that musicians could publicize their music without appearing on TV shows in person or could choose whatever visuals they like to accompany their music (Wikipedia).
However, and interestingly, the promotional video of Bohemian Rhapsody was made not because of these reasons above. According to Brian May, who is the guitarist of Queen, the video was made because the song was too complex and overdubbed so many times that it seemed impossible to perform the song on TV show Top of the Pops, and also because of actual absence of Queen on the day of the TV show because they had a tour (wikipedia). So, surprisingly, the video was produced in only four hours at a cost of £4,500!
(Later, an alternative edit of the video was produced.) (wikipedia).
The video consists of promotional video part and live performance part. It begins with the Freddie’s harmony part with all members standing in the formation that is almost same as the cover photograph of their second album Queen II.
The video continues with the shot of
member’s full close-up and Freddie’s close-up superimposed, which is only in the alternative version.
And then the video moves to the live performance part accompanying the first ballad part. Because the vocalist on this section is only Freddie, the video mainly focused on Freddie in this part.
The next opera part is the main part of the film effects. It starts with the shot that Freddie standing in a mist, which correspond to the lyrics “I see a little silhouette of a man”. And suddenly the shot returns to the “Queen II” formation (wikipedia). As the chorus becomes heavy, the video also switches into honeycomb shot, which was done by a shaped lens (wikipedia). Another part the video effect corresponding to the music is that when the Freddie’s voice “go” echoed, his face also cascades away by pointing the camera at a monitor (wikipedia) .
Finally, in the hard rock part, the video goes back to the live performance again. And when the song reach the very last part, “Queen II” shot once again appears and it fade out with the sound of a Chinese gong.

III. Promotion Video ② - Misa

Because this video becomes very famous all over the world, there are many parodies. The famous one in Japan is produced by Gucchi Yuzo, who is a Japanese talent, in the NHK’s educational program “Hatch Potch Station”. In this parody video, he crosses over “Bohemian Rhapsody” with a Japanese children’s song “Dog gy cop and lost kitty”. He not only mimics the way Freddie sings and performs, but also copies high-quality video effects.
I remembered that when I was young, I saw this parody video on TV but hadn’t seen the original music video by Queen. Even so, I enjoyed watching Mr. Gucchi’s performance, but a person who laughed the most was my mother whose generation has many fans of Queen. She happily recorded the program and showed it to my father, and they bursted into laughing together. … Now I understand why they laughed so much at that time. It was so well-made parody video!

III. Promotion Video ③ - Misa

Lyrics
Ballad Part
ママ～　どこなの　僕まいごになって　今ひとりなの
Mama, where are you? I’m lost and alone now
ママ～　財布なくして　電話するお金もないんだ
Mama, I lost my wallet so I even don’t have a money to call you
ママ～　グ～　お腹の虫が　ほら鳴き出しているよ　ママ～
Mama, goooo(stomach growling) My stomach begins to growls mama…

Opera Part
迷子の迷子の　こねこちゃん　あなたのおうちは　どこですか
Little kitty little kitty lost and all alone,
Doggy cop was saying he would take her home
ｺｰﾗｽ（わからない－よ　お金もないよ）
(chorus) I don’t know and I don’t have money either
借りれよ　借りれよ　借りれよ早く
Why don’t you borrow, Why don’t you borrow, Why don’t you borrow right now
そりゃ　無理だぁぁぁぁぁぁ――――
You’re asking too muuuuuuuuuch
おうちを聞いてもわからない　名前を聞いてもわからない
Where do you live? Doggy cop smiled and said
What’s your name? Poor kitty only shook her head
にゃん　にゃん　にゃにゃ―ん　にゃん　にゃン　にゃにゃンーアー
Mew, mew mew mew, mew mew mew mew ahhhhhh
泣いてばかりいる子猫ちゃん
Poor little kitty she only cry and cry
２時間たってもわからない
2 hours passed but the situation doesn’t change
そうだ　ママの名前はミヨコ
Oh, I remember now! My mother’s name is Miyoko
名前は　ミ　ヨ　コ
Her name is Miyoko
ママミヨ　ママミヨ　ママミヨ　いずこ
Mama Miyo, mama Miyo, mama Miyo, where are you?
ポリース　ポリース　ポリース
Police, police, poliiiiiiiice

Hard Rock Part
犬のおまわりさん　困ってしまって　ワンワンワワン　ワンワンワワン
Doggy cop feeling sad and lost
He barked, Bowwow bowwow, bowwow bowwow
ワンワンワワン　ワンワンワワン