The Song That Saved Queen From Financial Ruin

by Ethan Lambert | October 31, 2024

Written for Today in Music History

On Halloween 49 years ago, Queen defied the odds with “Bohemian Rhapsody,” an unconventional six-minute masterpiece that threw every pop convention completely out the window.

It's almost unthinkable that a legendary band like Queen once teetered on the brink of going broke. But in 1975, despite sold out shows and the success of their third album, Sheer Heart Attack, which featured the hit “Killer Queen,” the band faced serious money problems.

At the heart of this problem was a predatory record deal with Trident Studios.

Under the contract, Queen owed Trident for all touring costs, yet Trident controlled the band’s royalties and income stream. So, when bassist John Deacon requested funds for the down payment on a house, he was stonewalled and informed that Queen actually owed the label fifty times the amount he’d requested.

The situation made their next album, A Night at the Opera, a make-or-break moment.

“We were not only poor, but in debt,” guitarist Brian May recalled in a 2021 interview. “All the sound and lighting companies and the people that we worked with hadn’t been paid. We were at a really crucial point.”

In search of new management, Queen eventually negotiated themselves out of their contract and teamed up with 25-year-old John Reid, Elton John’s manager. His directive to them was simple: “I’ll take care of the business; you just make the best album you’ve ever made.” With everything on the line, the band dove into the studio in August 1975 to create A Night at the Opera, sparing no expense. At £40,000 (around £430,000 today), it became the most costly album ever produced at the time.

Typically, Queen members wrote their songs individually, but Freddie Mercury had a concept in mind that he’d been building, piece by piece, on scraps of paper since his days at Ealing College. A friend, Chris Smith, recalls hearing an early draft of what would become the song’s piano ballad section. “Freddie had lots of bits of songs, which we used to link together. And one of his bits, I just referred to it as ‘The Cowboy Song,’” Smith said. “It went ‘Mama, just killed a man. Put my gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he’s dead.’” You know how the rest goes.

On August 24, Queen began recording Mercury’s concept, fully aware of the stakes.

Mercury warned his bandmates that the song would be unconventional and demanded patience. Over three weeks and across five different studios, Queen poured everything into recording, especially the vocals, with May and Taylor backing Mercury’s operatic middle register with perfectly contrasting low and high harmonies. According to author Mark Hodkinson, certain sections included up to 180 vocal overdubs, pushing their 24-track tapes to their limits.

Queen’s approach to the song threw every traditional pop convention out the window.

No verse-chorus structure, cryptic lyrics, and a bold blend of genres, from 19th century classical music (think Chopin) to opera to heavy metal. Yet, somehow, it all came together beautifully. Even in an era of grandiose prog rock, this song was singular.

Mercury’s lyrics are famously opaque, leading to interpretations that range from confessions of personal trauma (some see hints of Mercury’s coming out) to the perspective of a young man who’s sold his soul or even an inmate on death row. To this day, no one knows if the words were random rhyming nonsense or a darkly poetic reflection on the absurd tragedy of existence.

The song bore the hallmarks of prog rock.

It was more accessible than anything Pink Floyd had created, more operatic than Pete Townshend’s rock operas with The Who, more daringly experimental than Genesis or Yes, and had a commanding vocal performance unmatched even by Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin.

Producer Roy Thomas Baker recalled hearing the final version for the first time: “I was standing at the back of the control room, and you just knew that you were listening, for the first time, to a big page in history. Something inside me told me that this was a red-letter day.”

But when Queen presented the six-minute single titled “Bohemian Rhapsody” to EMI, the label balked. A song this ambitious seemed destined for commercial failure. “A six-minute single? You must be joking!” the label protested, pushing for a shorter version. Queen, however, refused to budge: they wanted the song released in full or not at all. As Mercury assured a friend, “Of course they’ll play it, my dear. It’s going to be f***ing huge.” And he was right, though not without help.

Looking for an outsider’s opinion, Baker shared the track with Capital Radio DJ Kenny Everett. Everett was floored, saying, “I love this song. This is so good, they’ll have to invent a new chart position. Instead of it being number one, it’ll be number half.” Although instructed to keep the song under wraps, Everett couldn’t resist and played it on-air 14 times.

Listeners went wild, forcing EMI’s hand to release it in full on Halloween 1975—exactly 49 years ago today.

The legacy of “Bohemian Rhapsody” hardly needs explaining; it almost feels patronizing to do so. In 1975, it shot to number one in the UK, where it stayed for nine weeks, ultimately claiming the highly coveted Christmas number one spot. In 2018, it was crowned the most-streamed song from the 20th century. In 2021, Rolling Stone ranked it the 17th greatest song of all time. In 2024, the Daily Mail published a study naming it the 5th most iconic song ever recorded. In the UK, it’s the third best-selling single in history and the second most-played song on radio. In the U.S., it’s among only 154 songs to achieve Diamond certification. The track has been enshrined by the Grammy Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the U.S. Library of Congress.

The song’s inventive spirit proved that long, genre-defying tracks could succeed on the radio.

Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys praised the song for paving the way for more artistic and experimental music, calling it “the most competitive thing that’s come along in ages.” Greg Lake, whose holiday hit “I Believe in Father Christmas” was kept from the number one spot by “Bohemian Rhapsody” in 1975, acknowledged, “I was beaten by one of the greatest records ever made…a once-in-a-lifetime recording.”

And Queen wasn’t just musically ahead of the curve. When they chose to promote “Bohemian Rhapsody” with a video instead of performing it live on Top of the Pops, they broke new ground in a pre-MTV era where “pop promos” were almost unheard of. On November 20—just ten days after recording it—Queen released their iconic music video, featuring the band recreating the cover of Queen II. Its success was a catalyst, inspiring other artists to take up videos. It’s often hailed as the first commercially successful music video and was the first released pre-1990 to reach over a billion views on YouTube.

Queen’s performance of “Bohemian Rhapsody” during their Live Aid performance in 1985 cemented its legacy, with many proclaiming, “For 21 minutes, England was ruled by a different Queen.” Following Mercury’s death in 1991, the song was re-released and again hit number one in the UK. In the US, it surged to number two thanks in part to a scene in Wayne’s World where Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey headbang to it in a car. According to May, Mercury got to see the scene before his death and loved it.

In 2018, the Bohemian Rhapsody biopic added another chapter to the song’s story, grossing nearly a billion dollars, winning four Academy Awards, sparking a renewed interest in Queen’s music, and paving the way for biopics of stars like Elton John and Elvis Presley.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” wasn’t just a hit—it was a lifeline for a band in financial crisis, and a leap of faith that redefined the rules of rock.

Where a safer band might have retreated, Queen pushed ahead with an audacious six-minute masterpiece that defied norms and reshaped what music could be. Few songs hold this kind of cultural weight, but we can confidently say that everyone reading this knows this track—released on Halloween all those years ago.