On October 31, 1975, "Queen" released one of the greatest songs in the history of music - "Bohemian Rhapsody".
(Photo: Still From 'Bohemian Rhapsody' Music Video)
Here are some interesting facts about the iconic song:
1. Freddie Mercury began writing The song in the late 60's. The name he gave it during the writing process was - "The Cowboy Song".
2. He also wrote all the roles of the various instruments for the song. The piano, bass, drums, and even the guitar.
3. The recordings lasted about three weeks and were held in August and September 1975. During the recordings, the band used no less than four different studios.
4. The vocal harmonies were the hardest to record, the band members testified that they would sometimes repeat the vocal parts for 10-12 hours a day.
5. The recording of musical instruments also took a long time and included a large number of channel uploads. The song had layers upon layers of musical and vocal channels, some say there were about 180 different overdubs to create the wonderful harmonies and rich sound.
6. The piano that Freddie Mercury played on during the recording is the same piano that Paul McCartney played during the recording of the song "Hey Jude".
7. Despite the length of the song (about 6 minutes) and despite the record company's opposition to its release as a single, the song was very successful on radio stations and reached number one on various charts around the world.
8. Very ironically, the song with the title "Mama Mia" by "ABBA", managed to knock "Bohemian Rhapsody" from the top of the British chart.
9. The word "Scaramouche" in the song, refers to a clown in Italian literature.
10. The word "Beelzebub" in the poem, is attributed in Christian literature to the devil.
11. The word "Galileo" Mercury used in the song was a tribute to guitarist Brian May who is a doctor of astrophysics.
12. The name "Figaro" appeared in Rossini's opera "The Barber of Seville".
13. The word "Bismillah" is the first word in the Qur'an.
14. The famous video for the song was the band's first ever. It was created because the band did not want to appear on the British TV show "Top Of The Pops" live, since the song was too complex to perform live.
15. The video clip for the song was based on the "Queen II" album cover.
16. The "Queen II" album cover was based on the famous photograph of Marlene Dietrich.
17. The director of the clip was Bruce Gowers, it took him 3 hours to film it for 3,500 Pound.
18. Freddie Mercury noted that the song "In the Lap of the Gods" from the album "Sheer Heart Attack" is the prologue to the song "Bohemian Rhapsody".
19. Following the death of Freddie Mercury in 1991 the song was released again as a single and this time too it reached number one in the music charts.
20. The song returned to the charts a year later following its inclusion in the soundtrack of the movie "Wayne's World" from 1992. This time it jumped straight to second place on Billboard.
(Photo: Paramount Pictures)
21. The song reached the top of the charts for the fourth time in 2018, following the success of the movie "Bohemian Rhapsody".
22. In 2002 the song was voted in the "Guinness Book of World Records survey" as the first of all the singles released in the UK ever. John Lennon's "Imagine" and the Beatles' "Hey Jude" came in second and third.
23. In 2012 the song was selected at the top of the list of songs with "The Best Vocal Performance in Rock" by "Rolling Stone magazine".
24. It also ranks 166th on the same magazine's "500 greatest songs" of all time list.
25. In 2000 it was selected in England, Israel, and other places in the world, as the Millennium song.