Bedtime Music

Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody (Live At Wembley Stadium 1986)

One of the most incredibly constructed musical pieces of all time Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen is truly a genius work of art. The piece contains several different types of parts including an extremely intense choral, operatic middle that can not be reproduced live.

According to Wikipedia, the choir effect was created by having members Brian May, Freddie Mercury, and Roger Taylor sing their vocal parts continually for ten to twelve hours a day, resulting in 180 separate overdubs. According to Roger Taylor, the voices of May, Mercury and himself combined created a wide vocal range: "Brian could get down quite low, Freddie had an incredibly powerful voice through the middle, and I was good at the high stuff." This was useful as the band wanted to create "a wall of sound, that starts down and goes all the way up"

In order to perform the piece live - and is seen in this video - the opening ballad would be played on stage, and after Brian May's guitar solo, the lights would go down, the band would leave the stage, and the operatic section would be played from tape. A blast of pyrotechnics after Roger Taylor's high note on the final "for me" would announce the band's return for the hard rock section and closing ballad. Queen played the song in this form all through the Magic Tour of 1986. This worked well for the band, as it allowed them to play the entire operatic section from tape (though Mercury often sang the first line) before taking the stage.