Hallo Alan!
Post by Alan TiedemannSag Bescheid, wenn Du sie gefunden hast - das interessiert mich nämlich
auch ;-)
Das läßt uns einfach keine Ruhe, nicht wahr? ;-)
Nun habe ich nochmal nach "voices" und "bohemian rhapsody" gegoogelt,
und noch zwei interessante Hinweise gefunden.
Offensichtlich stammen einige Stimmen bei Bohemian Rhapsody doch von
Roger und Brian (dafür soll aber auch die Gitarrensoli von Freddie
geschrieben worden sein!). Und die Harmonien am Anfang des Stücks werden
komplett von Freddie gesungen. Er war es wohl auch, der aus den
einzelnen Stimmen das Werk zusammengebastelt hat. Und er selbst
bestätigt in einem Zitat von 1980 das Bild, welches ich im Kopf habe:
"For Bohemian Rhapsody I had to work like crazy. I just wanted that kind
of song"
Über einen Auftritt des SFGMC (San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus) zusammen
mit einer Rockband
<http://www.examiner.com/ex_files/default.jsp?story=X0418QUEENw>:
Mercury did 180 vocal overdubs when the band recorded "Bohemian
Rhapsody." The chorus has 180 live male voices singing the song. "We're
very fortunate to have men who can sing as high as Freddie Mercury," she
says. "Everything is sung in the original keys."
Und seeehr aufschlußreich und detailliert, deswegen ausnahmsweise
ungekürzt <http://members.fortunecity.com/enoky/borhap.htm>:
BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY
- SONGWRITING & ARRANGEMENTS: 100% Freddie's. He wrote everything,
including the guitar solos.
- INSTRUMENTATION: Basic track was Freddie on Bechstein Piano, Roger on
Ludwig Drums and John on Fender P-Bass. Brian added about four Red
Special tracks, doing different things, Roger added a Paiste Gong and
some Ludwig Timpani. Basic track was at Rockfield Studios, the rest was
at Sarm.
- VOCALS: Lead vocals are by Freddie. Harmonies at the beggining are a
four-part by Freddie, Freddie, Freddie and Freddie. At the end of the
ballad section there are two bounces of two-part harmonies, done 100% by
Freddie. After the opera section the song calms down and there's a
three-part harmony sung all by Freddie. Now take a look at the operatic
bit:
The harmony on 'scaramouche' is all Freddie, in a three-part, nothing
special, just on his normal range. The 'thunderbolt thing is a
seven-part. The top line is Roger + Freddie, they reach an A of 880 Hz.
The second highest reaches a high E, it was probably Freddie falsetto +
Roger falsetto + Freddie head + Roger head, they could both reach that
note. The other five harmonies were in the range of all of them, so they
all sang each one of the lines unison and then the next one, etc.
The high Galileo is Roger, the low is Freddie. The 'magnifico' cascading
harmonies are totally Freddie, they are up to five-part. Then on 'poor
boy from a poor family' is seven part again. The top line is again Roger
and Freddie pretending to be girls, they hit the high Eb several times.
The next is Roger, Fred and Brian both falsetto and head. On "HIS life"
Brian reaches the high D, his highest note. The following four are all
of them and the bottom line is just Freddie.
'Bismilah' is just paralell octaves, the low one is Freddie, the high
one is Freddie + Roger. The "NO" word is a six-part, Roger and Freddie
on top singing that high Eb, all the rest are made by all of them. 'We
will not let you go' is a three-part, again unison, and the 'let me go'
sentences are Roger on top (and sustaining the note), then Freddie and
then Brian. The 'never never' words and the next cascade harmony is
again all Freddie.
"No no no no no no no" is one of the trickiest harmonies on the Queen
catalogue, such an amazing counterpoint, in a six-part. The top line is
Roger, Freddie and Brian in falsetto, they reach a high D, the bottom
line is just Freddie and the others are by all of them. Note how when
the four voices are put together all the voices are "covered" by
Freddie, and Roger sometimes. "Mamma mia let me go" is a five part. They
all sung all the lines, Roger would show on his solo career that he also
could make those low bassy voices.
The ending harmonies are a seven part again. The top line is just Roger,
he reaches a high Bb, the top note of both his voice and all the Queen
studio catalogue. I'm sure Freddie could also do that note but his
falsetto screaming sounded awful those days (that's why Roger sung the
high Galileos as well). The next line is a bounce of head Freddie,
falsetto Freddie and falsetto Roger, being Roger's voice the most
notorious. They reach a high F, the highest note Freddie could do
without falsetto. The next line is Brian, Fred and Roger trying both
"modes", again Brian hit the high D. The next three are by all of them
and the bottom line is just Freddie, he reaches an F1.
Freddie
1975: "With Rhapsody we've squeezed our vocal limitations to four
octaves and not slowed down the tape"
1977: "A lot of people slammed Bohemian Rhapsody, but who can you
compare that to? Name one group that's done an operatic single. We were
adamant that Bohemian Rhapsody could be a hit in its entirety. We have
been forced to make compromises, but cutting up a song will never he one
of them!"
1980: "For Bohemian Rhapsody I had to work like crazy. I just wanted
that kind of song"
"We wanted to experiment with sound. Sometimes we used three studios
simultaneously. Bohemian Rhapsody took bloody ages to record but we had
all the freedom we wanted and we've been able to go to greater extremes"
"There is no point in cutting it. If you want to cut Bohemian Rhapsody
it just doesn't work. We just wanted to release it to say that this is
what Queen are about at this stage. This is our single and you're going
to get an album after that"
"I'm really pleased about the operatic thing. I really wanted to be
outrageous with vocals because we're always getting compared with other
people, which is very stupid. If you really listen to the operatic bit
there are no comparisons, which is what we want"
Brian
1998: "It's something great, but it's also hard to live with because
people want to talk about it the whole time. It's hard to get away from
something that big"
1998: "Freddie did some of that stuff on his own. The first thing you
hear in Bohemian Rhapsody is just Freddie multi-tracking himself. He
could sing so accurately, double-tracking, that it would phase. Quite
amazing."
1999: "Bohemian Rhapsody was much more Freddie's baby that anything
else. It was really his dream, or nightmare or whatever you wanna call
it."
2001: "It would pretty odd. I mean this is really Freddie's brain child.
You know he came in here with most of it formed in his head and he was
just trying to get it across to us, which was difficult. And he was
going "Da d-da da da", then it stops, you know, and then we go "Why,
why's it stop?" and he's say, "No, this bit goes in here", you know the
acapella bit. "And then there's..." and we'd go "Okay Fred, yeah", you
know, and it was all done in bits and it sounded very weird cos there
was no vocals on it. It was just bits of backing track, urm, and he had
all the vocal parts written out on these little pieces of paper, which
came from his Dad's work - all written in A's and B's and C's - not
dots, 'cos we don't do dots really very well, but in, in the names of
the notes. All the chords, every note that everyone was gonna sing. And
some of these things were sort of 9-part harmonies, as you can tell, you
know, plus we sing it 16 times each, over the 3 of us, so there's a
colossal number voices on there by the time you stop, by the time you've
finished. Um - and we thought this is either something which is (laughs)
gonna be completely incomprehensible, or else it will be the biggest
thing ever, I suppose"
2002: "The harmonies on the beggining of the song are not any of us,
it's just Freddie multi-tracking himself"
"This is Freddie going 1500 miles an hour"
Roger
1998: "Somebody asked me that the other day. Yes, I sung that high note
on Bohemian Rhapsody. It's the very high one at the end of operatic
section, mock operatic section. we didn't have synthesisers. It was, it
was genuinely sung - yeah, yeah. Yeah - we used to be able to get
higher, but I think as a natural - your voice does get lower as you get
older."
1999: "Bohemian Rhapsody was, although it is, I think it's a wonderful
song and it's quite serious in some ways, its got a tremendous sense of
humour about it, especially in the, obviously in the central sort of
pastiche section, you know. That sort of mock operatic section. I mean,
we thought it was hilarious when we were doing it. In fact, great, you
know, quite exciting, and fun and big and quite funny. We did think it
was special and it was worth spending literally weeks on recording it."
"I am very proud of being involved with it. But it never ceases to amaze
me that the sort of legs of the song. People still really hold it with a
great deal of affection"
John
1985: "It was a very strange song to record, we actually did it in
sections"
Others
Roy Thomas Baker: " Freddie was sitting in his apartment and he said
"I've got this idea for a song" and he sort of sat down and he sort of
started playing the song and it was all going along good, you know, and
he had some words missing and some bits of melody that he hadn't quite
worked out, but it was just the basic framework of the song. The he was
playing away and he stopped and he said "Now dears, this is where the
opera section comes in" and I went oh, my god! So we said, "Oh OK, this
is the opera section" and it was just gonna be at the time a little
brief interlude of a little bit of you know a few little things like
Galileos. So we said OK, fine , stick a few little Galileos and then we
can get on to like the rock part of the song. It started off as a ballad
and then there's the opera section and then it went on and on. As we got
into the studio we started formatting the song which we had to record it
in sections because it was actually designed in sections, so we recorded
it in sections and everything was fine. We did the ballad section and
then we did the rock section going back to the ballad section - if you
hear the song you understand what I mean. And we left a blank piece of
tape to do the opera section. When we started doing the opera section
properly, erm, it just got longer and longer and we just kept adding
blank tape to this thing and it got bigger and bigger and bigger. Every
day we just sort of thought "Oh, this is it, we've done now" and Freddie
would come in with another lot of lyrics and say "I've added a few more
Galileos here dear" and so we would put on a few more Galileos and it
just got bigger and bigger and bigger and in the end it became the epic
we all know. "
Peter Freestone (2001): "He was always very proud of it"
Ozzy Osbourne: "One of the best things ever put on magnetic tape"
Dave Stewart: "It redefined the parameters of what one can do in a
song"
Gary Langan (worker of Sarm West Studios): "I wasn't there for the basic
track, because they did it at Rockfield. But then they came to Sarm due
to all the guitar and vocal work they'd got to do. The song arrived I
three sections and they were given funny nicknames -which, sadly, I
can't remember- but Fred knew what he was doing. With Queen, unlike some
bands, the big picture was very much in place. The reason for being in
the studio was to complete his picture, not to make it or design it and
I don't think there was ever a feeling that it might not work. That was
never in the equation"
Gary Langan: "There were technical hurdles to overcome, but they worked
through that and got a system or how to do the vocals efficiently and
quickly and how you'd do all the marshalling of the tracks. Sarm had
24-tracks recording, which was very advanced at the time. This was where
technology and Fred went together because here was a medium he could use
to further his greatness. When 24-track came along it must have been
like the sun coming out for him, the fact that he could use
multi-tracking to do all these vocals. You had to keep bouncing things
down, without losing the quality of everything. You had to work
carefully, there was no undo button on these days."
Roy Thomas Baker: "As we got into the studio we started formatting the
song which we had to record it in sections because it was actually
designed in sections, so we recorded it in sections and everything was
fine. We did the ballad section and then we did the rock section going
back to the ballad section - if you hear the song you understand what I
mean. And we left a blank piece of tape to do the opera section"
Gruß,
Ingo