In the film Bohemian Rhapsody it gives the impression that the first album was recorded in one night.Is this true or was it recorded over a longer period than this?I always thought that it was a new studio and they let Queen use it to check the sound proofing of the studio.
Yes, it was recorded in 45 minutes, all in one long take.
.... or it was recorded over 6 months whenever other artist finished early or never showed up.
Accounts differ and we could really use a Mark Lewisohn type of researcher to actually know what really happened.
From what I've (not by any means flawlessly) gathered via different sources: some sessions (not all of them) took place in graveyard shifts, pulling all-nighters and working with whomever happened to be on shift; other sessions were arranged last-minute when someone cancelled or left early; other sessions were directly booked by Neptune Productions as full-fledged studio recordings. A combination of those three (and probably more) approaches during a few weeks gave rise to most of the album.
A few sources have suggested they had most of it ready by July 1972 (IIRC), but the release kept beign postponed and at some point the lead single was re-recorded shortly before its release (which also explains why they all sounded more mature on that song compared to the rest of the album).
Of course, journalists, fans and even those involved (band members, producers, etc.) have a tendency to highlight whatever sounds more heroic so the story gets modififed into a Hollywood-esque 'we went through so much pain just to deliver that' (which may have very well been true, but is obviously exaggerated to make it sound cooler). Same with loads other stuff (the alleged 180 vocals on 'Bo Rhap', etc).
By the way, 'the film says so' is not, and probably never will be, evidence of real life having been that way. Not only when it comes to Queen, but virtually any biopic. Hunter Adams' alleged (spoiler alert) murdered girlfriend never existed, for instance, and several events depicted on 'Theory of Everything' did not take place like that (or did not take place at all), etc.
I don't recall seeing anything in the movie that alluded to the album being recorded in one night.
In fact, the only song they were working on in Seven Seas of Rhye (the QII version).
Officially, the band recorded QI in downtime over an extended period of time... and was definitely not done in one night,
I am not so stupid to think Queen 1 was knocked out in one night I just thought the film gave the impression it was made very quickly.I think I still stands up pretty well now and is very enjoyable.Compare that album and I think Day At The Races took 6 months to finish.
In terms of man-hours it may have been rather swift indeed. A few weeks in December 1971 (not necessarily all day, every day) and a few weeks in Spring 1972 (ditto). Then a few days to re-record the lead single in Spring 1973 and that was it. It took forever for it to hit the shops, but they'd finished it (sans the opening track) roughly a year before that.
Sebastian, is it a fact or asumption that lead single was recorded in 1973 ?
It seems it was January 1973 the latest because we have BBC Session1 from 5th February 1973 with the same backing track. What do you think?
An early pressing had a different version, as far as I know. Now, that doesn't render it an absolute fact, of course, but that doesn't make it a mere assumption either. Black and white, greyscale, colours, infrared, ultraviolet, yadda, yadda...
Yes, I know it. But I think KYA final version was re-recorded at the end of main sessions in Autumn 1972. Not in 1973 as there was simply no time to do it.
As I said earlier BBC Sessions 1 was recorded in the beginning of February 1973. Also there's an information that the album was fully mixed by November 1972.
At this point I'm open to any possibility: all of KYA could've been laid down in 1972, or some in 1972 and some in 1973, or even all of it in (early) 1973. 'There was no time' isn't really sound evidence for this particular case because it was a song they'd already recorded at least twice, so it'd probably take them longer to set up the equipment than to actually re-record the track in its entirety (or partially, if they were just using the backing track from earlier).
We'd learn so much if they ever released studio diaries...
philip storey wrote:
I am not so stupid to think Queen 1 was knocked out in one night I just thought the film gave the impression it was made very quickly.I think I still stands up pretty well now and is very enjoyable.Compare that album and I think Day At The Races took 6 months to finish.
while i agree the film did make it appear as if it was done quickly - they were performing those songs for a year or two before recording them... and they did use studio time during off-peak hours to save on cash - i think i read it took over 6 months for them to get the tracks down, but they needed more time to perfect it - a pretty long process, especially for a first album.
i think Led Zeppelin I was the inspiration of making it look like it was recorded over an extremely short period of time. I believe the story on that one was that it was recorded in about 30 hours over a just a few weeks.
Most of Queen sound muddy and turbid, with the instruments mixed not to complement each other as they would on later albums,
but instead to blend with each other, unfortunately obfuscating the results. The effect was certainly unintentional: as mentioned before, the band
recording during down-time, and the mixing table levels would often have to reset after every recording, resulting in an uneven sound from song to song.
In an anguished moment, it was discovered that "Liar" had been overdubbed onto the wrong backing tape, necessitate a remix of the track.
(found that a few years back / unknown source)