Just learned that 'Bohemian Rhapsody' wasn't actually recorded in one take like I always thought

I was reading an article about Queen's recording process last night and apparently they spliced together something like 180 separate takes for that song. All those harmonies and guitar layers were done in pieces. I've been blasting that track in my car for 15 years straight and never knew it wasn't just five guys in a room going for it. Has anyone else found out something dumb about a song they thought they knew inside out?

2 comments

2 Comments

hayden70918d ago

That 180 takes thing blew my mind too when I first heard it... I actually ran into a similar situation with "Hey Jude" thinking it was one live take, but turns out they pieced together a lot of it in the studio. If you ever want to double check stuff like this, just pull up the song's Wikipedia page and scroll to the recording section, it usually lists all the weird details you'd never guess.

carr.gavin18d ago

Actually that "180 takes" thing is a bit of a myth that gets passed around. It was 180 splices on the master tape, not 180 full takes of the song. A lot of those were tiny fixes like fixing a wrong note in a harmony or adjusting the timing between sections. Brian May mentioned in some interview that they recorded the opera section in bits and pieces but the main ballad and hard rock parts were done in pretty big chunks. Still wild how they pieced it all together though, especially with the tech they had back in the 70s.