Good call.
The scene in Wayne’s
World where Wayne, Garth, and their crew rock out to today’s song (here in
honor of the birthday of late vocalist Freddie Mercury), reimagined, for the
early Nineties, the feel of riding in Mirth Mobiles, or their equivalent,
getting stoned and listening to tapes. Nobody does any drugs in Wayne’s World and though one guy is
always trashed we don’t really see drinking either. It’s a very clean version
of a time when pot went without saying.
And for stoned ears the technical sleight-of-hand—all those
multi-tracked vocals!—of Queen’s magnum opus was a thorough delight. To me, it
all seemed a bit too premeditated, a bit “too too” by 1975. Prog, y’understand,
was on the way out as of 1974. Queen were the last wave, marrying glam and prog
and taking it to the top. The song was tremendously successful in England, and
made top ten here. It was, as it were, a last sop to the legions for whom “classical
trappings”—in this case opéra bouffe—merged with rock could still get a rise.
Don’t get me wrong. I really admire the song, but much more as form over
substance. It’s flash, but then, that was what Queen did so well. Mercury was
extremely charismatic and very flashy—he made all those heavy metal shriekers
and berserkers look like clods, and compared to the glam legions, from Bowie to
Marc Bolan to David Johanson, he truly looked a sex symbol in his dark-eyed, chiseled
chin, deep cheekbones, androgynous bisexual beauty. And Brian May’s guitar was
flash all the way, flash with grandeur. And that phrase pretty much sums up my
take on the overall sound of “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
It begins with a kind of prologue that sets up the
perspective of the performer: “nothing really matters to me”—“easy come, easy
go, anyway the wind blows.” But the opening line asks if we are dealing with
real life or just fantasy. And that’s key to the dramatics of the song, which
will enact a fantasy of killing someone and trying to shrug it off or atone.
And the flip between those two positions is what makes the song so appealing,
at the level of a rendering both dramatic and comic.
All the protestations to “mama”—I killed a man, I didn’t
mean to make you cry, I’ve thrown my life away, I’ve got to face the truth—turn
on a great “woe-is-me” vocal that Mercury plays to the hilt, never dropping the
sense of façade, complete with a great parting line, ending in falsetto, “so
long, everybody, I’ve got to go.” Also key to the “sorry to hurt you, mother”
pitch is the line apt to inflict more suffering: “I sometimes wish I’d never
been born at all.” It’s a great sendup of teenage angst, a kind of Romeo moment
when he experiences true grief for killing Tybalt. O I am fortune’s fool!
Then comes the operatic part as an imagining of our hero’s
fate via commedia dell’arte, with a reference to Scaramouche, who, like our
hero, is known for his skirmishes, and comic opera, with a reference to Figaro,
the barber of Seville. The references—and to Galileo after a mention of
thunderbolts and lightning (very, very frightening)—don’t amount to much except
to characterize the musical segment as comic opera, full of sound and voices,
signifying nothing. It’s handled very well, musically, so that we immediately
envision the kind of vignette we’re meant to think of. A clownish hero, a dire
predicament, and a plea for leniency (“spare him his life for his
monstrosity”), with a struggle—and captors calling upon Allah (“Bismillah, we
will not let you go”). We could say it’s a worked-up rendition of a struggle of
conscience ending with the great shriek (after the operatic “mamma mia, mamma
mia”) “Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me, for meeeeeee.”
And that’s the point at which Wayne and company rock out
like headbangers. And it’s hard not to because when Queen wants to rock, they
really rock. Mercury comes in to match
this hard-rocking bit with his voice in nasty mode, telling off some twat: “so
you think you can love me and leave me to die?” If we really want to overthink
it, we can see this bit as the real heart of the song, that the scene of
pleading with mother and the struggle of conscience is all because of the turn
his love has taken. But, really, it just seems like these words go along with
the riff of this section, and, yes, that drum fill that Wayne (Mike Myers) so
ably mimics. And soon we’re awash with chiming guitar that sounds like
someone’s ship has come in—it truly sounds inspiring and rhapsodic, almost like
an “and they’re off” clarion at the track, whipping up a fevered “escape” of
sorts before we settle back into the very lyrical and serene (and Myers and
Dana Carvey—as Garth—parody this segment remarkably well too) “nothing really
matters, anyone can see, that nothing really matters . . . to me.”
And just like that we’re absolved of all wrong-doing, that
bad chick is behind us, and mama hasn’t really lost her son, though we’re
pretty sure she still has her claws in. If you want to “face the truth.”
As a production, the song is amazing. Having heard it once
you won’t forget it, and it seems the best of all possible showcases for
Mercury’s vocal prowess. Like Mercury in general, it’s all showmanship—I don’t
think there’s a single Queen song that actually says anything—and it’s a great
ride. Perfect for the Mirth Mobile.
Get drunk and sing
along with Queen.
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