If they had only ever recorded Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen would have been assured of pop immortality. Perhaps the most opulent and outrageous hit single in history, as well as one of the longest, it combined the band’s musical talents with Freddie Mercury’s lavish operatic ambitions, but it needed the technical skills and imagination of their producer Roy Thomas Baker to bring it to fruition, not least the 160 tracks of vocal overdubs.
Baker, who has died aged 78, described the recording process in Stuart Grundy and John Tobler’s 1983 book The Record Producers. “The basic backing track was done over a two-day period,” he said. “The opera section was done over a seven-day period of at least 10 to 12 hours a day continual singing, and also continual laughing, because it was so funny to do that we were all in hysterics while it was being recorded. Then there were all the guitar overdubs and getting on for two days to mix it. I’d say that track, on its own, took … three weeks, because it’s three songs merged together to make up this one track.”
