The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Queen · produced by Roy Thomas Baker and Queen · EMI · twelve tracks on two sides, about 43 minutes
Mode
Rock album made as a revue: hard rock, music hall, pop, skiffle, piano ballad, progressive suite and mock opera on one bill
Mythos
A trial of the soul, the flood and its prophet, and the returning voyager built; the seaside, the car and the nation evoked
Phase
Twelve tracks; a curse for an overture, seven turns on the first side, five longer pieces on the second, the showpiece last but one and the anthem as the house closes
Presentation
Album; twelve tracks on two sides, about forty-three minutes; all four members writing; Bohemian Rhapsody issued as a single before the album
Register
Stacked voices made into a studio choir, a guitar orchestrated in layered lines, piano, music-hall pastiche and hard rock, every song in quotation marks
Scale
One night’s bill: a self on trial, a couple, a working life, a flood, a voyage through time, the nation and a car
Governing Proposition
A rock band of four writers makes a record as an evening at the theatre: a curse for an overture, a run of turns, a flood vision at the head of the second half, a six-minute confession tried by a choir made of its own voice as the showpiece, and the national anthem as the house closes. Everything on it is performed, and it knows the self as theatre. Its weight lies in the second half; its first half is a bill of turns, several of which could be changed without loss.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The night opens with a curse. Before any song of love or any joke, the record puts a hard-rock song of real bile, a grudge against a manager made into an overture. It clears the stage. The rage is played as melodrama, the voice arch even at its harshest, and that is the record’s first instruction: what follows is performed, and the performance is the matter. The last thing heard, about forty-three minutes later, is the national anthem, arranged by Brian May and played without words, as the house closes. Between the two ends the record lays out a night’s bill at the theatre, and it takes its title from a night of comedy, the Marx Brothers’ film of 1935.
A Night at the Opera was issued by EMI in Britain in November 1975, and by Elektra in America, produced by Roy Thomas Baker and the band: twelve tracks on two sides. Queen were four players and four writers. Freddie Mercury sang lead and played piano, Brian May played guitars, John Deacon bass, and Roger Taylor drums and high harmony, singing lead on his own song. Mercury wrote five of the tracks and May four, with the arrangement of the anthem; Taylor and Deacon wrote one each, and three of the four write in manners nearly unrelated to one another. The record was made as the band was leaving its first management, and its first song carries the grudge.
The bill is laid out with care. The first side holds seven tracks, most of them short; the second holds five, longer and graver. Eight manners appear in twelve tracks: hard rock, music hall and vaudeville, a pop single, a skiffle-folk song, a progressive suite, a piano ballad, a through-composed suite of ballad, mock opera and hard rock, and an instrumental anthem. The frame is meant, and it carries knowledge. Everything on the record is performed, every song set in quotation marks, and the record knows the self as theatre: a voice borrowed for each turn, a company of four playing every part. A form of this kind can hold almost anything, and that is both its freedom and the record’s difficulty.
Movement II
The first side is a run of turns, and the subtractive test bites on it. Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon is a brief music-hall piece, a turn and no more. I’m in Love with My Car, Taylor’s song, is a slight joke given a heavy arrangement. You’re My Best Friend, Deacon’s song, is a bright pop single, well made and well placed. Sweet Lady is the plainest hard rock on the record, and the record would lose nothing without it. Seaside Rendezvous repeats the music-hall manner of Lazing at more length, its voices imitating a band. Three of these seven tracks could go and the record would know the same things; its scale here is permitted by the bill, not compelled by anything it has to say.
Among them stands the record’s first true song. ’39 is May’s, a skiffle-folk tune, and it carries relativity as grief. A party of travellers sets out on a voyage that for them is short, and returns to find that a hundred years have passed at home and that the people they left are old or gone. The song was written by a guitarist trained in astronomy, and it sets a hard fact of physics; what it discloses is what the physics costs, a homecoming to a world that has gone on without the traveller. The tune is warm and wide, and it lifts at its chorus. The voyager who returns to find his world gone is an old figure, the sleeper and the wanderer, here given a physics, and the song builds him whole.
Take the two most distant elements on the record: Death on Two Legs, a song of real bile, and Seaside Rendezvous, a toy. One law can be named that both obey: the record as a stage, the band a company, the curse played as melodrama and the toy as music hall. The range is wide, and wide range is credited. But the law is the law of the bill, and a bill has no physics beyond the order of its turns. On the first side most tracks are containers for a manner, and could stand in another order or on another record. Sweet Lady obeys only the genre it plays; I’m in Love with My Car obeys its writer’s taste more than the record’s. It is the second side that gives the law its weight.
Movement III
The second half opens with its longest and most serious piece. The Prophet’s Song is May’s progressive suite, and it builds the flood: a dream of a prophet who warns a people of the waters, Noah’s story told from inside the vision. It begins in storm, and the voice is a warning more than a song. The myth here is not furniture. The prophet, his warning and the water are the structure of the piece, and its dread is real: of all the heights on the record, this is the one that is frightening rather than grand.
In its middle the storm stops, and Mercury’s voice is heard alone. It is then sent back on itself in canon, the phrase repeated against itself and against its own echoes until one voice has become a crowd, and the crowd is still only the one voice. Then the storm returns. It is the most daring passage on the record. The canon makes the prophet’s isolation audible: a man warning a people, and hearing only himself answer. The device is a studio device, possible only on tape, and here the making is the meaning. Change the form of the passage and it would no longer know what it knows.
Two tender pieces follow. Love of My Life is Mercury’s piano ballad, a song of the couple held at a tender height over the piano. Good Company is May’s, and in it his guitar is orchestrated to sound as a trad-jazz band, clarinet and trombone, to tell a life from its end: a man takes his father’s counsel, gives his life to trade, and is left alone. The imitation band sets the life in the past, as a record of the period would, and so the song is heard as memory. It is the Everyman of trade, and with ’39 it is the record’s quietest disclosure. Neither song is pastiche alone; each makes its manner carry a condition.
Movement IV
Bohemian Rhapsody was issued as a single on 31 October 1975, ahead of the album, and reached number one in Britain; sixteen years later, in 1991, it returned there. It runs about six minutes and has no chorus. It opens with unaccompanied voices asking whether this is life or fantasy, moves into a piano ballad, breaks into a mock opera of answering choirs, turns into hard rock, and ends on a piano coda. The voices of Mercury, May and Taylor are stacked into a studio choir that no group of singers could perform live, and the stacking is placed with exactness, the answering choirs distinct, the climb legible.
The song builds a trial of the soul. A son confesses a killing to his mother; then a crowd of voices contends for him, “Bismillah” is cried and answered by refusal, a devil is set aside for him at the cry of “Beelzebub”, and he breaks free in the hard rock and escapes into indifference. The coda says it: “nothing really matters”, and the song sings it so that it does. The form is the content. The confession breaks into a hallucinated trial because the self cannot hold one voice, and the multiplied voice is the crowd that judges it. Much of the furniture, Scaramouche, the fandango, Galileo, is sound chosen for colour, but the frame of confession, trial and release is not, and the archetype bears load.
The song has been argued over for half a century without settlement: read as confession, as a coming out, as nonsense chosen for sound. A reading through the singer’s life rests on biography rather than on what the record states. Its reception renewed itself on a large scale in 1991 and 1992 and again with the film of 2018. Its reach is real: the stacked vocal and orchestrated guitar became a sound of arena rock and later of operatic and symphonic metal, and its promotional film is commonly credited with advancing the music video, though that film is not the album. But the reorganisation was of the single and of studio scale more than of the album, and within a year punk turned the field against exactly this grandeur.
Movement V
The record ends as an evening at the theatre ends, with the national anthem, played without words in May’s arrangement as the house closes. It is ceremony, and it completes the frame: an overture of rage, a run of turns, a serious piece at the head of the second half, the showpiece last but one, and the curtain. The record holds a wide span in that frame: a consciousness on trial, a son and mother, a father’s counsel, a couple, a working life, a grievance, a flood, the cosmos and its physics, the nation and a car. But the orders arrive one to a track, joined by the bill and not by any consciousness or argument, and the nation, the machine and the seaside are present as jokes.
Its survival is not in doubt. The recording survives as issued, continuously in print and remastered, and its presence over fifty-one years is among the widest of any rock album of its decade. Much of that presence belongs to one song, and the album is heard less than its song. The fabric dates moderately: an analogue production of 1975, a theatrical manner tied to glam, a grudge against a manager. It avoided the synthesiser, and so carries fewer period timbres than many records of its years. The making keeps yielding to study, the stacked voices and the canon taken apart by those who make records; the first side, once its pastiches are recognised, gives on return what it gave at first.
Beside Zooropa, at 7.8 here, another eclectic studio record joined by a frame, it stands a tenth higher, carried by wider survival and stronger making. Beside The Dark Side of the Moon, at 8.6, its nearest kin as a studio-maximal record of the same years, and Led Zeppelin IV, at 8.7, another record of many manners, it stands well below, and the gap lies where the difference between a joined cycle and a revue would put it: The Inevitable at 7.2 against 8.5 and 8.6, The Living Form at 7.8 against 8.9 and 8.6. That is what holds the record in Tier III. Its second side has necessity, height and a making that carries meaning; its first side is a bill of turns, and a record must be judged on both.
Act III · The Twelve
The subtractive test bites hard on the first side. Death on Two Legs must open, the curse that clears the stage, and ’39 is required as the record’s first true song. Around them, Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon is a brief turn; I’m in Love with My Car is a slight joke given a heavy arrangement; Sweet Lady is the plainest hard rock on the record and could go without loss; Seaside Rendezvous repeats the music-hall manner at more length. The second side resists far better: each of its five tracks does what no other does. What holds the figure is that the record’s scale is permitted by the variety bill, not compelled by an argument: three of seven first-side tracks could go and the record would know the same things.
Score: 7.2 / 10
What the record brings into the open can be stated in two places and glimpsed in two more. Bohemian Rhapsody discloses a self that confesses to a killing, is tried by voices it cannot control and ends in resignation, “nothing really matters”, sung so that it does; the voice multiplied into a crowd that judges it makes the disclosure by form as much as by word. ’39 sets a fact of physics as grief: travellers return from a short voyage to a world a hundred years older. Good Company tells a life given to trade and left alone at its end. Held back by the record’s chief mode, pastiche: most tracks render a manner rather than a condition, and the Rhapsody withholds as much as it states.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Elevation is real and comes often, mostly of the grand and theatrical kind. Bohemian Rhapsody rises three times: the unaccompanied opening harmony, the mock opera as the voices climb to the cry of “Beelzebub”, and the hard-rock break; its piano coda settles into a lower, real height. The Prophet’s Song reaches dread, a storm and a flood vision and then a long unaccompanied passage in which one voice is sent back on itself in canon. Love of My Life holds a tender height over piano; ’39 lifts at its chorus; God Save the Queen ends in ceremony. The first side stays mostly level, and camp, the manner of the heights, is also their limit. Five or six of twelve tracks rise.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Myth is built in three songs and evoked across the rest. Bohemian Rhapsody builds a trial of the soul: a son confesses to his mother, a crowd of voices contends for him, “Bismillah” is answered by refusal, a devil is set aside for him, and he escapes into indifference. The structure bears load, though Scaramouche, the fandango and Galileo are sound chosen for colour. The Prophet’s Song builds the flood and the prophet who warns of it, Noah’s story told from inside a dream; ’39 builds the voyager who returns to find his world gone. Each myth stands in its own song: the record as a whole builds none, and its first side evokes nothing deeper than the seaside and the car.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The inheritance is Queen’s own Sheer Heart Attack (1974), already eclectic and in places already music hall, beside glam, hard rock, the British progressive suite and the stacked harmony of the Beach Boys and the late Beatles. The turn has two parts. One is Bohemian Rhapsody: a six-minute single with no chorus, built as ballad, mock opera and hard rock in succession, its voices stacked into a studio choir no group could sing live. The other is the album’s ambition, a rock record made as a revue of eight manners, made as the band was leaving its first management. What holds the figure is the path: Sgt. Pepper had made the revue album, the suite was the common coin of the decade, and the band’s previous record had begun the pastiche.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The sequence is counted here, once. The record is shaped as its title promises, a night’s bill at the theatre: an overture of rage, a run of turns, a long serious piece at the head of the second half, the showpiece last but one, and the national anthem as the house closes. The frame is meant and it carries knowledge: everything here is performed, and the record knows the self as theatre. Within tracks form is often the instrument. Bohemian Rhapsody’s form is its content; the canon of The Prophet’s Song makes the prophet’s isolation audible; Good Company’s imitation band sets its life in the past. What holds the figure is the first side, where most tracks contain a manner and could stand in another order, or on another record.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Fifty-one years supply evidence, much of it drawn from one track. Bohemian Rhapsody has been argued over without settlement, read as confession, as coming out, as nonsense chosen for sound, and its reception renewed itself on a large scale in 1991 and 1992 and again with the film of 2018. The making keeps yielding to study as well: producers and players still take apart the stacked voices, May’s orchestrated guitars and the canon of The Prophet’s Song. But the album as a whole is returned to less than its centre. The first side gives on the fifth hearing what it gave on the first, the pastiches, once recognised, do not reorganise, and ’39 and Good Company deepen only modestly. A deep well at one point of a shallow pool.
Score: 7.7 / 10
The field is the rock album of the mid-1970s. The intrinsic force is real: the record showed that a rock band could use the multitrack studio to make a choir and an orchestra of four players, and that a through-composed single without a chorus could command the largest public. That reorganised the single and the scale of the studio more than the album, since the revue album was Sgt. Pepper’s and the suite was progressive rock’s. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the stacked vocal and guitar orchestration became a sound of arena rock and later of operatic and symphonic metal, but punk, which turned the field within a year, turned against exactly this grandeur, and much of the reach travels as one song rather than as a model of the album. Those two discounts hold it three tenths below Sticky Fingers and Who’s Next, both at 8.7, and below Born to Run, at 8.8, and The Dark Side of the Moon, at 8.9, whose reach is wider and is carried by the record as well as by its songs.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Survival is weighed over fifty-one years, on form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the recording survives as issued, continuously in print and remastered. Presence is continuous and among the widest of any rock album of its decade: Bohemian Rhapsody is one of the most heard recordings of its century, number one in Britain on its release and again sixteen years later, and still in heavy use. But popularity is not permanence, and the album is heard less than its song. The fabric dates moderately: an analogue production of 1975, a theatrical manner tied to glam, a grudge against a manager. The record avoided the synthesiser, and so carries fewer period timbres than many of its decade.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Command of the recorded medium is the record’s strongest claim, and on the second side it is load-bearing. The stacked voices of Mercury, May and Taylor are placed with exactness: the opening harmony of Bohemian Rhapsody, the answering choirs of its mock opera, the delayed canon of The Prophet’s Song. May’s guitar is orchestrated in layered lines, and in Good Company is made to sound as a trad-jazz band, clarinet and trombone. Mercury’s piano carries Love of My Life and the Rhapsody’s ballad and coda, and Roy Thomas Baker keeps the density legible. The faults weigh on a share of the record: Sweet Lady and I’m in Love with My Car are routine hard rock, the stacking is at times glassy, and some pastiche is exercise. Below Low, at 9.0 here, where the making is the content throughout.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: Death on Two Legs, a song of real bile, and Seaside Rendezvous, a toy of voices imitating a band. One law can be named: the record as a stage, every song in quotation marks, the band a company playing every turn. Under that law both obey, the curse played as melodrama and the toy as music hall. The range is very wide, eight manners in twelve tracks, and that is credited: narrowness is not coherence, and nor is variety. But the law is the law of the bill, and a bill has no physics beyond the order of its turns. Sweet Lady obeys only its genre; I’m in Love with My Car obeys its writer’s taste more than the record’s. The second side holds together better than the first.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. Consciousness is held in Bohemian Rhapsody; the family in its son and mother and in the father’s counsel of Good Company; the couple in Love of My Life and You’re My Best Friend; trade and a working life in Good Company and, as grievance, in Death on Two Legs; judgement and the sacred in the Rhapsody’s trial and the flood of The Prophet’s Song; the cosmos and its physics in ’39; the nation in the anthem; the machine in the car. The span is wide. What holds the figure is integration: the orders arrive one to a track, joined by the bill and not by any consciousness or argument, and several, the nation, the machine and leisure, are present as jokes.
Score: 7.1 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.9 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.8, then The Made at 8.7 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.4. A recording whole and in print after fifty-one years, its presence among the widest of its decade’s rock albums, though much of it the presence of one song; a command of the multitrack studio that is load-bearing on the second side, in stacked voices placed with exactness and a guitar orchestrated into choirs and into a jazz band; and that studio choir carried into the field, a sound of arena rock and later of symphonic metal, though much of it travels as one song.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.1: many orders present, consciousness, the family, the couple, trade, the sacred, the cosmos, the nation and the machine, arriving one to a track, joined by the bill and several held as jokes. Then The Inevitable at 7.2, where three of the first side’s seven tracks could go and the record would know the same things, and The Unconcealment at 7.4, where pastiche renders manners more often than conditions. Between them they hold the record below Tier IV: a second side of real necessity and height, and a first side that is a bill of turns.
The Necessity Cap is unmet: The Inevitable at 7.2 falls three tenths short of the threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.8, The Made at 8.7, The Inner Law at 7.5, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 8.8 clears the bar of 8.5, but Pressure on Tradition at 8.4, The Swerve at 8.0, The Archetypal Deep at 7.8 and The Unconcealment at 7.4 fall short of it. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Inevitable, 7.2, and The Unconcealment, 7.4, both below 7.5; The Inner Law meets it exactly at 7.5, and The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.1. Two of the five summit conditions are met, the Coherence Floor and the Megethos Floor. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.9, in the band of Tier III, a tenth short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and well short of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · the album as first released by EMI in Britain in November 1975, and by Elektra in America, twelve tracks in their original order on two sides, about forty-three minutes, produced by Roy Thomas Baker and Queen; judged from knowledge of the recording, its words and its reception; no recording, sleeve or lyric sheet was in hand, and running times are approximate. Later remasters and the expanded reissues with bonus material are evidence for survival, not the object; the single of Bohemian Rhapsody, issued on 31 October 1975, its promotional film and the film of 2018 are evidence for reach and return. Songs are cited by title, and words are quoted only where certain and never beyond four words. Facts that could not be verified, among them the studios, the instruments each player took up beyond his principal ones, the drawing of the crest on the sleeve, the track timings, the album’s chart position, the reported cost of the record and of its making, the advice given about the single, and the singer’s own account of his song, are not given.