Behind the Album: ‘A Night at the Opera,’ the Record Where Queen Went for Broke and Nailed It

It’s not Queen‘s most successful album, nor we would argue their best. In both cases, those honors belong to The Game, released in 1980. But there’s no doubt A Night at the Opera, released in 1975 as the group’s fourth LP, stands as the most important one of their career.

After all, this is the record that established Queen’s artistic aesthetic, a big-tent approach where every possible style gets thrown at the wall, and the band’s massive talent makes it all stick. Here’s how Queen created this enduring, endearing piece of work.

A Beautiful Night

Some bands have classic albums that seem to come out of nowhere. Others build gradually to a peak. Truth be told, A Night at the Opera contains a little bit of both of those extremes in its DNA. On the one hand, Queen had been showing more sides with each new record, evolving steadily from the battering ram, hard-rock focus of their earliest songs.

That progression started to show on Sheer Heart Attack, released in 1974. They still whipped up a fury now and then on songs like “Stone Cold Crazy.” But Queen was also starting to display a bit more versatility, which helped them score their first big pop hit on the lilting “Killer Queen.”

Still, A Night at the Opera represented a much bigger artistic swing. Recorded in between tours in 1975, the album found the band stretching out their muscles to the point where it unnerved their record company (usually a good sign). This was especially true as lead singer Freddie Mercury hammered “Bohemian Rhapsody,” his lovably loopy magnum opus, into shape.

The fact Queen received songwriting contributions from all four of its members, each on his own wavelength, also played into the variety. Roy Thomas Baker, the band’s stalwart producer, helped knock all these different styles into a cohesive shape, which he did by emphasizing certain characteristics specific to the band, such as the tone of Brian May’s guitar, those multitracked backing vocals, and, of course, Mercury as the benevolent master of ceremonies.

Queen spent an unprecedented amount of money making the record. Mercury’s gambit of leaking “Bohemian Rhapsody” to a friendly DJ built up the demand before the album was even released, so that A Night at the Opera provided a hefty return on that investment.

Revisiting the Music of A Night at the Opera

It’s impossible to go back and hear “Bohemian Rhapsody” for the first time all over again, which blunts some of the impact of A Night at the Opera as a whole. (Although it’s a kick to hear it followed by May’s space-rock guitar version of “God Save the Queen” to close out the album). It’s as if Mercury took all the song-length stylistic flourishes found elsewhere on the record and jammed them into one wild and woolly epic.

There’s a bit of whiplash involved as you go from track to track. “Death on Two Legs,” with Mercury’s angry lyrics softened by the lush production, leads into the antiquated “Lazing on a Saturday Afternoon,” which is followed by Roger Taylor’s “I’m in Love With My Car,” every bit as turbocharged as the title suggests.

But that was Queen’s point, really. Why give listeners one band over the course of the record when they could deliver five or six different ones? It wasn’t all that revolutionary an approach, as The Beatles had done it years before. It’s just that Queen went at it with a maximum of flair and a minimum of restraint.

The poppier moments (John Deacon’s sweet “You’re My Best Friend” and Mercury’s heartfelt “Love of My Life”) paper over some of the cracks showing on the uptempo material, which seems a bit phoned-in compared to the invention elsewhere. A Night at the Opera established that Queen would try any style or genre to please the crowd, a strategy to which they returned for the remainder of their fantastic career.

Photo by Fin Costello/Redferns