Not long after, I saw the film Wayne's World (1992) and that scene everybody now knows, where Wayne and Garth lip sync to Freddie Mercury's vocals and headbang to the heavy section of the song. I loved the movie and that scene. Still, the song seemed like a gilded novelty to me; the lean, mean rock of 1977's News of the World appealed to me more than the extravagant A Night at the Opera.
It really wasn't until a road trip in the winter of 2001 that I warmed to the genius of "Bohemian Rhapsody."
I'd driven from Charlotte to New Orleans for a job interview at a publishing house. The most bizarre interview I've ever had in my life. The gentleman who owned the company was kind of like a cross between Boss Hog and Colonel Sanders; he had the all-white linen suit and everything. The moment he asked me, "Who are your people, son?" and then let slip that their original headquarters on the other side of the Mississippi may have been set ablaze for insurance purposes, I started looking around for the hidden cameras. It was all too Tennessee Williams to be real.
Feeling quite sure I was not the candidate that he and his HR henchwoman were looking for, I re-packed my bags the next morning and got on the road for North Carolina. (The weirdest part was, six months later, after I'd already landed a job at a trade magazine in DC, the HR woman called my mother's house, asking if I'd found an apartment in New Orleans. They hadn't seen me at work, and they wondered when I might be coming in. Apparently, the old fella had hired me, but no one had bothered to tell me!)
So I was in the middle of the 11-hour drive from New Orleans to Charlotte. I'd stopped off at a McDonald's on the west side of Atlanta to psych myself up for the traffic hell that is Georgia's capital and get a very large cup of much-needed coffee. As you might have guessed, I promptly spilled about half of the coffee on myself/my seat as I was getting back into the car.
Still deliriously tired, I get back on the expressway. I'm zipping along I-20 with the strong smell of java and warm sugar wafting from my upholstery, when I hear Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? coming from the classic rock station on my car radio.
It was the perfect line to sum up the entire experience.
By the time I started winding my way through the center of the city on I-85, I was belting out the opera section and not really giving a damn if other drivers could see me.
And that's when it hit me: that was Mercury's whole point. He knew the song was going to raise some eyebrows. But so what? Why not put opera and hard rock together in the same song? The people who understood that the world is bizarre would get it.
A Night at the Opera was a "now or never" moment for Queen, and Mercury boldly put what was in his head out there as if no one (and everyone) was listening. And it paid off.
Anyway, when I listen to the song now, I not only think of that trip, but also I listen and marvel that Mercury pretty much had the whole 6-minute suite with all of its mood shifts and operatic vocals, mapped out in his head before the band had even started to record, as guitarist Brian May notes in this interview.
It's simply a work of art.
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