Disclosure: I received a review copy from the publisher, Quarto, in exchange for my honest opinion.
Queen are one of the biggest classic rock bands and a few years ago I went through a big Queen phase, and not to be clichéd but Bo Rhap was the catalyst. It’s a biopic that was pretty good on first watch, but admittedly it didn’t age well because of how Disneyfied it was and that’s the issue I have with a lot of rock music biopics, but that’s another story for another day. I still like Queen a lot and they’re one incredibly talented, intelligent band, every member a master of their craft and well-educated too. Freddie Mercury went to art school and was a talented illustrator, Roger Taylor studied biology in university, John Deacon graduated with a First Class Honours in Electrical Engineering – and made his own amp, and Brian May has a PhD in astrophysics and made his own guitar, the Red Special.
As big as their bank balances are now, it wasn’t always the case. In the early years, the band were broke and screwed over by their record label, despite them making Trident a lot of money. They were touring the world, playing concerts in America and Japan, but going back home to their shared accommodation or bedsits, that’s just no way for a rock star (or anyone really!) to live!
In 1975, they decided to go big or go home with their album A Night At The Opera, which is now known as one of their best known albums. While in the studio though, they had no idea that it would be a smash hit. If it had flopped, Queen would have called it quits and then we’d have a bunch of articles talking about what could have been. Thankfully for Queen and their fans, it was a major success. Not only that, but it was a turning point for them.
Since it’s 2025, that means the album is 50 years old and the band’s best known song “Bohemian Rhapsody” is 50 years old. Wow, time flies! Could have sworn that was 30 years ago. But there’s much more to the album than that and this coffee table book by Gillian Gaar is a retrospective look at this historic, record setting album. Yes, it set the world record for most expensive album ever produced at £40,000 at the time and being recorded in three different studios. When I got an email asking me to review the book, I jumped on it because I love Queen and I love this album.
Like any coffee table book, it’s like a documentary that takes you on Queen’s journey from humble beginnings to their breakthrough A Night At The Opera, but no electricity needed. Even though their beginnings were humble, they did not have that attitude with their music. They wanted to be the best and they were not satisfied with good enough, they strived for greatness and always going onwards and upwards. Queen have an academic background and that’s where they had begun, Imperial College London – the MIT of the UK, where Brian May started to put together Queen with a simple advert saying he was looking for a Mitch Mitchell/Ginger Baker type drummer. In those days he was known as Brimi and he practically worshipped Jimi Hendrix and got him to play at Imperial College. Before they were known as Smile, they were called 1984 and they recorded a cover of “Purple Haze” not long after the original had come out. One thing I love about the members of Queen and those who were around them is how they preserved so much of the band’s history. Thanks to early bandmate Dave Dilloway you can listen to a pre-fame Brian May playing great covers of the popular songs of the era. Always fun to hear their influences.
A Night At The Opera is the band’s fourth album and so a little background is given on the previous three albums: Queen I, Queen II, and Sheer Heart Attack. In between discussion of these albums are quick bios about each band member and what they did before Queen and each got their own honourific: Brian May: The Man of Contradiction, Freddie Mercury: The Enigmatic Frontman, John Deacon: The Reluctant Rock Star, and Roger Taylor: The Rock ’n’ Roller. Personally, I’m not a fan of how this first bit was organised because I’d rather see each musician’s background talked about first before talking about their early discography.
After the introduction, the book talks about the making of the album, and of course there’s a feature on the producer Roy Thomas Baker. One of the things that makes Queen special is that they all played an important role in songwriting and each member had at least a couple of big hits and they contributed majorly to each other’s compositions: those harmonies! And in this album you can hear it: Brian May’s “The Prophet’s Song” is a brilliant epic, John Deacon’s “Your My Best Friend” is a classic and where he had found himself as a songwriter, Freddie Mercury’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” is a song whose genre is just “yes”, and Roger Taylor was so smart for making “I’m In Love With My Car” the b-side of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, making him a wealthy man.
One of my favourite sidebar segments in the book has to be the one about the visuals from this era of Queen, the famous Marlene Dietrich-inspired photoshoot for Queen II and how it went on to influence the music video for “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Freddie Mercury saw this photograph of Dietrich in the 1932 film Shanghai Express as everything he wanted to be: glamorous, mysterious, and classic. The reason for the music video was because of the complexity of the song and how they couldn’t mime it easily on Top of the Pops. When they couldn’t get the band in, they’d have a promotional clip playing and while Queen were far from the first to make a music video, this music video was made 6 years before MTV went on the air. The music video was quite simple, but striking and iconic. It only took 4 hours to film. Now if you’ve seen Bohemian Rhapsody, you’ll all know about how releasing it as a single was breaking the mould because most singles were around 3 minutes, 4 minutes max. Elton John’s reaction to “Bohemian Rhapsody” was that it was ridiculously long and the “campest” thing he’d ever heard in his life. However, it became a big hit and it’s just one of many examples where great artists take chances. The whole album took off like a rocket, it was a meteoric rise and Queen weren’t going to rest on their laurels. As an incredible live act, they were on the road playing to their adoring fans, not just in the UK, but the US, Japan, and Australia too. Way before Sabrina Carpenter’s quick outfit changes, Freddie was doing quick changes on stage.
A Night At The Opera is Queen’s best selling album and “Bohemian Rhapsody” is the band’s most successful single and it’s been parodied and referenced in a lot of media, but one of the most famous references has to be the scene where Wayne and Garth are singing it in the car in Wayne’s World. How many times have you recreated this scene in the car? I know I’ve headbanged to the hard rock section of “Bohemian Rhapsody” many times in the car, or even in other places because I can. Sadly, Freddie Mercury did not live to see the resurgence in popularity, but Mike Myers made it a point to send him the “Bohemian Rhapsody” clip. Fun fact from the IMDb research rabbit hole I’m going down: Mike Myers insisted on “Bohemian Rhapsody” being used in that clip, but Lorne Michaels preferred “Welcome to the Jungle”. Thankfully Mike Myers had a backbone and insisted or else he would have quit the production. The funniest part is that Dana Carvey didn’t even know the lyrics. As a Mike Myers fan, I really appreciated the pre-SNL history of Wayne’s World being mentioned in the book.
The book concludes with what happened to Queen after Freddie Mercury’s death and if you know their story, you’ll know the stories of the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, the musical We Will Rock You, Brian and Roger touring with Paul Rodgers and then Adam Lambert, and the release of the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, which launched another Queen revival in popularity.
It’s a well-written, well laid out book with lots of great photos from Queen’s glory days – loved looking at those! While I wouldn’t say it’s an essential or has anything groundbreaking, if you’re a big Queen fan, you’ll probably know all the lore and facts, but it makes a great gift for a Queen fan and it’s a beautiful book with a nice picture of the band at their prime on the front cover and presented beautifully in a slipcover with raised gold and red embossing. It’s regal looking, and fit for a band like Queen.
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