It was, despite having broken every rule in the pop-hit-writing manual, an instant commercial success. Realising its chart potential, the band drummed up support among radio DJs such as Kenny Everett and ‘Diddy’ David Hamilton for the unusually long (5:55 minutes) album track to be released as a single. The song was recorded originally for Queen’s studio LP ‘A Night at the Opera’. The truth, though simply, is infinitely more personal. It wasn’t even a deliberate ‘showcase single’ of everything this superlative rock band was capable of, not only musically and lyrically, but also collectively and individually – as numerous music scholars around the world believe.
He was not diagnosed as HIV positive until ten years later. He conceived the idea for the song in the late 1960s, and dabbled with it for years, only completing, recording and releasing it with the band in late 1975. It could not have been, as has been widely reported, Freddie’s lament about having become infected with the AIDS virus. Nor was it merely a fictitious fantasy, describing a random individual confessing a murder to his mother, pleading poverty at his trial, and resigning himself to a tragic fate – never revealing the identity of whom he had killed, nor why. The ‘baroque’n’roll’ classic was not, contrary to popular belief, Freddie Mercury’s attempt at writing a song to upstage Led Zeppelin’s folk-rock epic ‘Stairway to Heaven’. While Queen’s surviving members – guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor and retired bassist John Deacon – have always protected their frontman’s most closely guarded secret, intense speculation persists.įorty years this month since Queen’s soaring, decadent, magnum opus was originally released, I can reveal the song’s true meaning. Note: This article was first published on Octoand is being republished on April 9, 2017.Īlthough Bohemian Rhapsody’s creator, the late Freddie Mercury, never explained the lyrics, declaring vaguely that they were ‘just about relationships’ with ‘a bit of nonsense in the middle’, conflicting theories about the song’s true meaning are as rife today as they have ever been.