| Queen - A Night At The Opera
(1991)
|
| Cover Front |
Album |
Cover Back |
|
| Artist/Composer |
Queen |
| Length |
49:30 |
| Format |
CD |
| Genre |
Hard Rock |
| Label |
Hollywood Records |
| Index |
4255 |
|
|
| Musicians |
| Drums and Percussion |
Roger Taylor |
| Bass Guitar |
John Deacon |
| Guitar-Electric |
Brian May |
|
| Credits |
| Engineer |
Gary Lyons |
| Engineer |
Mike Stone |
| Producer |
Queen |
| Producer |
Roy Thomas Baker |
|
| Track List |
|
| 01 |
Death On Two Legs (Dedicated To...) |
03:43 |
| 02 |
Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon |
01:07 |
| 03 |
I'm In Love With My Car
Song Review by Donald A. Guarisco In addition to his drumming and vocal duties, Roger Taylor could always be counted on to add at least one solid, hard-hitting rocker to a Queen album. The best-known example of this skill is "I’m In Love With My Car," a fun rocker from A Night At The Opera. The double entendre-laden lyrics portray a macho dude who has found the ultimate thrill: "I’m in love with my car/Got a feel for my automobile/Get a grip on my boy racer rollbar/Such a thrill when your radials squeal." The music lives up to the macho tone of the lyrics by matching up verses that swagger in a midtempo hard rock style with a chorus full of exuberant ascending phrases that capture the song’s sense of ecstasy in style. Queen’s recording of "I’m In Love With My Car" plays up the automotive theme, building itself on pounding backbeat and rumbling piano lines that sound racing cars and also adding plenty of hanging power chords that sound like revving engines. Roger Taylor supplies a gravelly, Rod Stewart-styled vocal that fits the song to a ‘t’ and overdubbed vocal harmonies on the chorus add an ethereal bit of pure pop into the mix. The result was tight hard-rocker with a few pop edges that became a highlight of A Night At The Opera. It was later used as a b-side for the "Bohemian Rhapsody" single and became a concert favorite that was included in its concert version on Live Killers.
|
03:05 |
| 04 |
You're My Best Friend
Song Review by Greg Prato Until Queen's late-1974 hit "Killer Queen," the band was known primarily as a heavy metal/ glam/ progressive rock band, but it was the aforementioned composition that showed the world that they were also masters of penning pop. The group's subdued bassist, John Deacon, got his first taste of the spotlight when his self-penned song "You're My Best Friend" became a big hit in 1975. Taken from their breakthrough opus A Night at the Opera, Deacon wrote the song for his wife - while Queen earned a reputation throughout the decade as one of rock's biggest partiers, Deacon enjoyed a rather quiet homelife with his wife and children. While many Queen songs up to this point were driven by Brian May's guitar riffs, "You're My Best Friend" was powered by a phased-out Fender Rhodes piano (when the song was played live, however, Freddie Mercury would replace the Fender Rhodes with a regular piano, as heard on 1979's Live Killers). As the title suggests, the song lyrically focused on the importance of friendship and the union of relationships, again showcasing the band's fantastic vocal harmonies throughout (the song was also Queen's second song to have had an accompanying promo video filmed for it).
|
02:52 |
| 05 |
'39
Song Review by Bruce Eder In 1975, Queen, which was rapidly becoming serious in its quest to be the leading hard rock/ progressive rock band of the decade, surprised everyone with A Night at the Opera. A work of dazzling production genius and amazing musical invention, it was considered by some to be the Sgt. Pepper album of its era. Stuck amid the album's virtuoso production efforts, such as the multi-layered "Bohemian Rhapsody," was a song that went in exactly the opposite direction: "'39." Written as a solo effort by guitarist Brian May, its instrumentation consisted of a single acoustic guitar and a fretless bass, but what made the song even more uncharacteristic for the band was its subject - space travel at near-light speeds. Couched as a country-folk singalong-style number, its only obvious progressive attribute being the chorus over the opening bars (which made many first-time listeners mistake it for a Justin Hayward/ John Lodge Bluejays-era track), it told the story of a man who sets out on a mission into deep space, travelling near the speed of light, who returns to find his wife and children aged and gone, while he has aged scarcely at all. The tune was catchy, the chorus unforgettable, May's acoustic guitar attack hard and lyrical at the same time, and the song found an even bigger audience when it turned up as the B-side of the Day at the Races single "Somebody to Love" - it was a favorite singalong number at the Queen concerts that followed, and is captured for posterity in that form on the Live Killers concert album. Along with the Byrds' "5D," cut nine years earlier, "'39" is one of two popular songs that deal with the time and space distortion effects inherent in Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which probably has less to do with its popularity than a great beat and arrangement, and superb guitar playing.
|
03:30 |
| 06 |
Sweet Lady |
04:04 |
| 07 |
Seaside Rendezvous |
02:15 |
| 08 |
The Prophet's Song
Song Review by Donald A. Guarisco "Bohemian Rhapsody" may be the best known epic from A Night At The Opera but that album features another epic that is just as fascinating: "The Prophet’s Song" is a mystical rocker that manages to sustain its eight-plus minute length with a combination of strong riffs and a complex arrangement. The lyrics were inspired by a long stay Brian May underwent due to hepatitis in 1974. During this time, he had some bizarre fever-induced dreams that inspired him to create a lyric about someone who is tormented by a dream of a prophet foretelling the end of humanity: "I dreamed I saw on a moonlit stair/Spreading his hand on the multitude there/A man who cried for a love gone stale/And ice-cold hearts of charity bare." The combination of Shakespearean phrasing and raw emotions make it a lyric that is powerful and hallucinatory all at once. The music behind these lyrics is appropriately dramatic, contrasting dark verse melodies that slowly crawl up to an intense peak with a stately, sing-along chorus. Queen’s recording of "The Prophet’s Song" takes its spooky atmosphere even further with a multi-part arrangement that lends a cinematic feel to the piece: after an atmospheric instrumental intro played by May on the koto (a Japanese string instrument), acoustic guitar riffs lead into a heavy midtempo piece nudged along by heavy guitar riffs worthy of Black Sabbath. Freddie Mercury delivers the lyrics in a suitably operatic style and the group sweetens the sound with lush, airy vocal harmonies, including a dramatic accapella section where complex, interweaved overdubs create intensely swirling ‘rounds’ of vocals. There is also an epic guitar break where Brian May blends several guitar lines into an orchestral tidal wave of sound. This fascinating arrangement makes the song a true tour-de-force and allows "The Prophet’s Song" to stand alongside "Bohemian Rhapsody" as one of Queen’s finest studio achievements.
|
08:21 |
| 09 |
Love Of My Life
Song Review by Greg Prato Queen penned many exceptional ballads over the years ( "Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together)," "Save Me," etc.), but surely one of their most popular was the Freddie Mercury composition "Love of My Life." When the track first appeared on 1975's A Night at the Opera, the song was given the full production treatment: a harp and overdubbed vocal harmonies were the main ingredients of the song. And while on the surface it appears as though Mercury is singing a love song, closer inspection to the lyrics show that it could easily be a tale of heartbreak. When the band played the song live, they had to rearrange it and it eventually took on a life of its own. Gone was the heavy production and the in-concert version would consist simply of Mercury's vocals and Brian May's acoustic guitar as heard on Queen's 1979 release Live Killers. The song also became a special one to the people of South America; at Queen shows, the huge crowd would sing along perfectly, showing once and for all that music is a universal language (although many of Queen's fans there did not speak English).
|
03:38 |
| 10 |
Good Company |
03:23 |
| 11 |
Bohemian Rhapsody |
05:54 |
| 12 |
God Save The Queen |
01:18 |
| 13 |
I'm In Love With My Car (1991 Remix)
Song Review by Donald A. Guarisco In addition to his drumming and vocal duties, Roger Taylor could always be counted on to add at least one solid, hard-hitting rocker to a Queen album. The best-known example of this skill is "I’m In Love With My Car," a fun rocker from A Night At The Opera. The double entendre-laden lyrics portray a macho dude who has found the ultimate thrill: "I’m in love with my car/Got a feel for my automobile/Get a grip on my boy racer rollbar/Such a thrill when your radials squeal." The music lives up to the macho tone of the lyrics by matching up verses that swagger in a midtempo hard rock style with a chorus full of exuberant ascending phrases that capture the song’s sense of ecstasy in style. Queen’s recording of "I’m In Love With My Car" plays up the automotive theme, building itself on pounding backbeat and rumbling piano lines that sound racing cars and also adding plenty of hanging power chords that sound like revving engines. Roger Taylor supplies a gravelly, Rod Stewart-styled vocal that fits the song to a ‘t’ and overdubbed vocal harmonies on the chorus add an ethereal bit of pure pop into the mix. The result was tight hard-rocker with a few pop edges that became a highlight of A Night At The Opera. It was later used as a b-side for the "Bohemian Rhapsody" single and became a concert favorite that was included in its concert version on Live Killers.
|
03:28 |
| 14 |
You're My Best Friend (1991 Remix)
Song Review by Greg Prato Until Queen's late-1974 hit "Killer Queen," the band was known primarily as a heavy metal/ glam/ progressive rock band, but it was the aforementioned composition that showed the world that they were also masters of penning pop. The group's subdued bassist, John Deacon, got his first taste of the spotlight when his self-penned song "You're My Best Friend" became a big hit in 1975. Taken from their breakthrough opus A Night at the Opera, Deacon wrote the song for his wife - while Queen earned a reputation throughout the decade as one of rock's biggest partiers, Deacon enjoyed a rather quiet homelife with his wife and children. While many Queen songs up to this point were driven by Brian May's guitar riffs, "You're My Best Friend" was powered by a phased-out Fender Rhodes piano (when the song was played live, however, Freddie Mercury would replace the Fender Rhodes with a regular piano, as heard on 1979's Live Killers). As the title suggests, the song lyrically focused on the importance of friendship and the union of relationships, again showcasing the band's fantastic vocal harmonies throughout (the song was also Queen's second song to have had an accompanying promo video filmed for it).
|
02:52 |
|