Bohemian Rhapsody is one of my favorite songs of all time. So much so that I have spent two years practicing the chords and rhythms that would allow a solo violin performance. Still, no matter how much you study something, there is always the opportunity to learn more.
This article is full of trivia about both Freddie Mercury and the song itself, some of which I have never heard before, some of which I only know because I love Mercury as a musician and have studied his compositions in detail. I included some of the gems below:
Freddie Mercury used a piano as the headboard of his bed. The double-jointed Mercury would awake with inspiration, reach up and back behind his head and play what he'd heard in his dreams. This was how Bohemian Rhapsody began.
Senior Lecturer in English at UCL and Queen fan Matthew Beaumont says: "The architecture of Bohemian Rhapsody - and it is an architecture - is self-consciously, ostentatiously baroque. It is rich in ornate, curious details, occasionally Moorish in provenance. Also in soaring, sometimes dizzy-making, shifts of register and in a lachrymose emotiveness that is almost impossible to resist."
It's also impossible to resist seeking something autobiographical in the lyric. Paul Gambaccini told Kirsty Young: "Tim Rice has this theory that it's to do with [Mercury] coming to terms with being gay, and I think there's a lot in that - the resignation, the abandonment of a previous role." The allusions to persecution and secret love in Galileo, Figaro and the rest don't hurt this theory, but not everyone agrees.
Indeed, it's the language in the court scene that arouses most curiosity. There's a touch of Italian culture: Scaramouche is a buffoonish stock character in commedia dell'arte; Galileo was a Florentine astronomer found guilty of heresy by the Inquisition and Figaro is the title character of Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville, in which he helps true love to prevail.
Some hypothesize that this song is a testament to Mercury's coming to grips with being gay. It speaks of loneliness, sadness, acceptance and pain, all realities for a gay man in his profession and period of time. Some say it was just a musical masterpiece waiting to be born, and I find myself falling into this train of thought. Freddie wrote a lot of music, and the one thing that always carried from song to song was a classically sound musical experiement. He knew what worked, and he wasn't afraid to leave his comfort zone to try something new. That is how I think of him, and I of course realize I am not alone in that regard.
What do you guys think? It is just headbanging good fun, or an attempt to say something through a clever blend of musical styles?
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