okay; by now, we're all fairly familiar with the story of how BoRhap came to be, with Freddie coming into the studio with various sections wriiten down on scraps of paper. my question - does anyone know of any sections which wound up hitting the floor because they just didn't work/feel right? did any of those sections wind up in other songs?
There's a wonderful but little known version which goes all psychedelic and has John screeching in falsetto:-
"Trebor Mints are a minty bit stronger,
Stick 'em up your arse and they last a bit longer."
He left for Bali shortly afterwards.
The song was never cutted down, as confirmed by the guys:
Freddie (1975): "We were adamant that Bohemian Rhapsody could be a hit in its entirety. We have been forced to make compromises, but cutting up a song will never he one of them!"
Freddie (1975): "We look upon our product as songs. We don't worry about singles or albums. All we do is pick the cream of the crop. then we look upon it as a whole to make sure the whole album works. With Bohemian Rhapsody we just thought that it was a very strong song and so we released it. But there were so many arguments about it. Somebody suggested cutting it because the media reckons that we have to have a three-minute single, but we want to put across Queen as songs."
Freddie (1975): "There is no point in cutting it. If you want to cut Bohemian Rhapsody it just doesn't work. We just wanted to release it to say that this is what Queen are about at this stage. This is our single and you're going to get an album after that"
Brian (1991): "That doesn't happen by accident. This is Freddie going 1500 miles an hour. We were advised by everyone that we shouldn't release such a long single. We had the feeling that it was right and it shouldn't be messed with, that we should go out full-length and take the risk"
John (1976): "We listened to it over and over again and there was no way we could edit it. We tried a few ideas, but if you edited it, you always lost some part of the song, so we had to leave it all in. And luckily it took off anyway. We do take a long while in the studio, especially Freddie, with the songs he writes. He has all the ideas sort of up in his head of what he wants to go on top and all the little things here and there"
Interesting of course those quotes by the band menbers. But are they talking about not to cut down the album version to a shorter "single" version. Or are they talking about the "raw" version and explaining that it appeared unchanged on the album?
Ciao,
Tim
At it's raw stage - it is considered that BoRhap was indeed longer and edited to a shorter length.
I think what Seb says is true, but he has taken these quotes out of context.
For exmple when Freddie said "editing a song was never one of them...", the French BoRhap edited 7" was already released.
Nevermind, all will be revealed next month or so.