link
quote:
"The original album version was over 7 minutes long. It was cut down to 5:55 for release as a single, which the record company leaked to a London radio station in order to build anticipation for the album. This helped the single jump to #1 in the UK shortly after it was released."
I also read that in QUEEN: THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY by LAURA JACKSON...
I'd like to hear the 1:05 secs they cut from the song...
Perhaps it was some of the expendable instrumental bits??
Itd be interesting to find out...
Nobody knows sure if this is true..
The band never confirmed it, and they also didn't say it wasn't true.
There are lots of quotes which are and are not in favour of the legend.
For example Roy T. Baker said "And Freddie added some Galileo's and the opera section got longer and longer"
Now the opera section is just about 1.30 minutes long. Is this really longer and longer? So before Freddie added the Galileo's (I think Bakers means a lot of other things besides Galileo's) it must 've been like 50 seconds long. Which would be really short.
So this makes you think there WAS a longer version.
Then there are some interviews where they say that radios didn't want to play it because it was too long. Which is strange because in 1975 there where songs with similar length, and some even longer.
And in other interviews they say that "they never intended to cut the song"
That can mean 2 things..
1) they never intended to cut the song but they did it because the record company told them to.
2) they didn't edit it, because they didn't want to.
There's sure a lot of people in various documentaries who refer to it as "7 minutes" so I've always wondered...
Of course nearly every studio creation gets tightened up, edited slightly to produce the final version, so it's not unthinkable that even long before they thought about it being a single, some bits might be cut just to get it how they/Freddie wanted it.
A good example of this is Fleetwood Mac's "Gypsy". Listen to the album version which is perfect and then listen to the 'unedited' version from their '25 Years - The Chain' box set and see how it just goes on and on at the end, but they didn't just fade it sooner, they edited it. Incidently, the video version uses pretty much the unedited version.. a situation similar to the recent 'Headlong' discussion. :)
I dunno how much you guys trust it but on QOL Greg Brooks answered a bunch of questions and this question was asked and he said he hadnt heard any longer version.
Well, for once Greg was right then :)
People (e.g. te Slade bloke) say "7 minutes long" because they're not Queen-trivia gurus, so they don't need to memorise "5:55". They say whatever pops in their mind, but people take that as the Gospel Truth.
Internet can (and does) state all sorts of bollocks yet people always believe so. Like the 180-voices crap in Bo Rhap or the famous "Paul is dead" hoax. I can just picture it:
Random Internet site: "Jimmy Greaves's second goal in the '67 World Cup final match between Croatia (winner of the South Asian cup) and Latvia (UEFA cup runner-up) at the International Stadium Yokohama in Sri Lanka had been direct from a throw-in after Latvia's captain David Platt headbutted Zidane and was given a yellow card (since it was his second red in the game). It was a Golden Goal btw..." - And people would swear it's true!
I'm not saying that it was true, nor did i believe it, but seeing as it was in more than one source, i considered it a possibility.
But thanks for that, it does make more sense that people just exaggerate the length of the song...
I subscribe to the idea that there's no missing extra-minute to Bohemian Rhapsody. It sounds complete, as is. Generally speaking you'd be able to tell if someone edited down something like this song. Or maybe not. Haha. I dunno.
Maybe there was an extended cowbell solo or something.
ill bet the vocal intro was longer, and the piano was faded in or something, because it always seems to cut right in to the piano section, and not very smoothly
Sebastian wrote: Well, for once Greg was right then :)
People (e.g. te Slade bloke) say "7 minutes long" because they're not Queen-trivia gurus, so they don't need to memorise "5:55". They say whatever pops in their mind, but people take that as the Gospel Truth.
Internet can (and does) state all sorts of bollocks yet people always believe so. Like the 180-voices crap in Bo Rhap or the famous "Paul is dead" hoax. I can just picture it:
Random Internet site: "Jimmy Greaves's second goal in the '67 World Cup final match between Croatia (winner of the South Asian cup) and Latvia (UEFA cup runner-up) at the International Stadium Yokohama in Sri Lanka had been direct from a throw-in after Latvia's captain David Platt headbutted Zidane and was given a yellow card (since it was his second red in the game). It was a Golden Goal btw..." - And people would swear it's true!
haha, spot on! Although, Jimmy "Psycho" Greaves was a good player.
What is the truth with the 180-voices fing?
Brian claimed Bo Rhap's got 180 voices, Fred claimed it's got 200, Roger said 134 and good old honest John said "over fifty".
Considering the overdubbing method they used (Roger, Fred and Brian singing each part three times and then moving on to the next), the "fattest" harmony would be the very last "for me", which however, doesn't have the three of them in every part (it's just Roger hitting the Bb4 and F4, just Freddie hitting the Ab4, and they're single tracked, not double or tripled, plus a double-tracked Fred doing the low F in "for"). Assuming they covered the entire spectrum the notes sung in "me" would've been:
Bb1: Double-tracked Freddie (2 voices)
D2, F2, Bb2, D3, F3, Bb3, D4: Triple-tracked Freddie + Brian + Roger (63 voices)
F4: Roger (single or perhaps double-tracked)
Ab4 and Bb4: Freddie and Roger respectively (single-tracked each, as you can notice via DTS tracks)
So the total would be 69 (no pun intended) tops (and that'd be a very high "tops" because it's quite likely that not all the vertical spectrum is covered). Even if John had sung some parts with the others (a theory I've always supported) it wouldn't add up the amount much.
And that's the fattest part, all the rest are 15, 20 or maximum of 30 voices each. Except the choirs-answering-choirs: Bismilah is just two voices (four if we assume Fred double-tracked himself for each), then there's a three part (27) and a four part (single-tracked Roger on top plus alledegly 27 made by B, R and F), for a total of around 60 (tops).
Bo Rhap's a wonderful song in its own right, I don't know why did they have to invent such myths to boost its popularity and status.