Queen’s epic song “Bohemian Rhapsody” began life sometime in the late 60s, when Freddie Mercury was a student at Ealing Art College, starting out as a few ideas for a song scribbled on scraps of paper.

Queen guitarist Brian May remembers Mercury giving them the first glimpse in the early 70s of the masterpiece he had at one time called “The Cowboy Song,” perhaps because of the line “Mama… just killed a man.”

“I remember Freddie coming in with loads of bits of paper from his dad’s work, like Post-it notes, and pounding on the piano,” May said in 2008. “He played the piano like most people play the drums. And this song he had was full of gaps where he explained that something operatic would happen here and so on. He’d worked out the harmonies in his head.”

Mercury told bandmates that he believed he had enough material for about three songs but was thinking about blending all the lyrics into one long extravaganza. The final six-minute iconic mini rock opera became the band’s defining song.

While Freddie Mercury wrote the lyrics, there has been a lot of speculation as to their meaning.

Mercury's parents were deeply involved in Zoroastrianism, and his family grew up in Zanzibar, but was forced out by government upheaval in 1964 and they moved to England.

Some of the lyrics could be about leaving his homeland behind. Brian May seemed to suggest this when he said in an interview about the song: "Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song."

Whatever the meaning is, we may never know. Mercury himself remained tight-lipped, and the band agreed not to reveal anything about the meaning. Mercury himself stated, "It's one of those songs which has such a fantasy feel about it. I think people should just listen to it, think about it, and then make up their own minds as to what it says to them."

The song, which appears on the album A Night At The Opera, was finally released on October 31, 1975, and the impact was instantaneous. This was Queen's first Top 10 hit in the US, peaking at #9 on April 24, 1976. In the UK, where Queen was already established, it went to #1 on November 29, 1975, and stayed for nine weeks, a record at the time.                                                                                                                         

The accompanying music video was very innovative, the first where the visual images took precedence over the song. The video turned out to be a masterstroke, providing far more promotional punch than a one-off live appearance. Top Of The Pops, the British weekly music program, ran it for months, helping keep the song atop the charts. This started a trend in the UK of making videos for songs to air in place of live performances.

Various Sources