Maybe I'm gonna rub some people in the wrong way, but I can't see how In the lap of the Gods was a prelude to Bohemian Rhapsody. I keep listening the song and I don't see any similarities...
I think he means In the Lap of the Gods.
In the Lap of the Gods is less so a prelude to Bohemian Rhapsody than My Fairy King and March of the Black Queen. It does, however, have distinct sections (albeit only two). It has high wails by Roger, it is piano driven, and has bombastic vocal harmonies - I realise these things appear in many Queen songs, and it doesn't necessarily mean they resemble Bo Rhap, but they're nonetheless shared qualities between it and Lap of the Gods.
One could argue that Freddie and the band also saw Bo Rhap as something of a spiritual successor to Lap of the Gods, because Bo Rhap was seamlessly swapped in to take Lap of the Gods' place in the live medley:
SHA tour: Lap of the Gods, Killer Queen, Black Queen
ANATO tour: Bo Rhap, Killer Queen, Black Queen, Bo Rhap
Neither of them immediately spring to mind as songs that were in BoRap's evolutionary tree but of course you can make a case that anything that preceded BoRap and was vaguely epic in scale was a step in that direction. Ironically, I think a Brian May song, Brighton Rock, probably influenced Fred. It had a build up, an epic "operatic" middle section (on guitar rather than vocals), no chorus, the song title doesn't appear in the song itself, and the whole song builds towards a hard rocking guitar riff that immediately follows the "opera" bit of both songs.
Alternatively, you could just accept the obvious, that March of the Black Queen is BoRap's immediate predecessor :p
It's a natural forward progression from 1969-77. No single piece of music is an immediate predecessor to another.
What doesn't seem to be mentioned much around here is that Brian and Roger had about 90% of the Queen sound worked out in Smile. Ever heard those demos of Freddie's band in 1969? They're awful. It wasn't until these three became creatively involved that something exploded. It was a case of creative minds with a common goal influencing one another.
And then falling apart when they'd made enough money and the sex and drugs started to get out of control.
Like pretty much every band.
The Real Wizard wrote:
What doesn't seem to be mentioned much around here is that Brian and Roger had about 90% of the Queen sound worked out in Smile. Ever heard those demos of Freddie's band in 1969? They're awful. It wasn't until these three became creatively involved that something exploded. It was a case of creative minds with a common goal influencing one another.
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Good spot - Freddie on his own sounded pretty poor from a sonic point of view (Wreckage, Ibex, even Mr Bad Guy!), whereas as early as 'Smile' Brian and Roger sounded professional and had an large element of that Queen sound already in place, and still retained it organically on some of their later solo work ('Driven By Yo'u being a good example of not trying to copy Queen, but just sounding a hell of a lot like them!)
What a shitty post Wizard. It was Freddie that turned May and Taylor round and who styled the group 100%
without Freddie the band would not have become so famous.
Freddie was the flavour of Queen and everyone knows that.
He had a massive ego on stage and left the others in the background.
Rugby_guy wrote:
What a shitty post Wizard. It was Freddie that turned May and Taylor round and who styled the group 100%
without Freddie the band would not have become so famous.
Freddie was the flavour of Queen and everyone knows that.
He had a massive ego on stage and left the others in the background.
You really dont know your facts, do you..........
Like he said in the first place.............listen to the Smile songs...........there's a LOT of the early Queen sound already there.......even one song that made its way to the first Queen album!
Brian wrote about as many songs for Queen as Freddie did (or was it slighty more?)...............Roger and John wrote a few hit songs themselves..............
I forget what its from, but theres a clip of someone interviewing Freddie at some time in the 80s I think......the interviewer said something about Freddie being the leader of the band................he said something like, no I'm not the leader, we're 4 equal guys...........
Freddie left the others in the background on stage? Oh, yeah, so much that he let Brian have a 10-minute guitar solo............
Rugby_guy wrote: What a shitty post Wizard. It was Freddie that turned May and Taylor round and who styled the group 100%
without Freddie the band would not have become so famous.
Freddie was the flavour of Queen and everyone knows that.
He had a massive ego on stage and left the others in the background.
Rugby_guy wrote:
What a shitty post Wizard. It was Freddie that turned May and Taylor round and who styled the group 100%
without Freddie the band would not have become so famous.
Freddie was the flavour of Queen and everyone knows that.
He had a massive ego on stage and left the others in the background.
Well, while it's been established that there would have been innumerable influences on Bo Rhap, it's still reasonable to call My Fairy King, Black Queen and possibly Lap of the Gods 'preludes' to it in the sense of being earlier ventures which follow a similar direction.