John had married his steady girlfriend, Veronica, in January, and had asked Queen's managers, Norman and Barry Sheffield, for an advance of £5,000 for the down payment of a house, which was outright rejected. They had been touring and recording relentlessly for five years, and none of their hard work had started to pay off yet, which raised concerns for the band members. Recorded at Sarm Studios, Roundhouse Studios, Olympic Studios, Scorpio Studios, Landsdowne Studios, London, England and Rockfield Studios, Wales.Despite having two Top Ten albums and two Top Ten singles to their name, Queen found themselves in serious dire straits at the start of 1975. Queen: Freddie Mercury (vocals, piano) Brian May (guitar, harp, ukulele, background vocals) John Deacon (electric piano, acoustic & electric basses) Roger Taylor (percussion, background vocals). It's prog rock with a sense of humor as well as dynamics, and Queen never bettered their approach anywhere else.
But the appeal - and the influence - of A Night at the Opera is in its detailed, meticulous productions. No one in the band takes anything too seriously, otherwise the arrangements wouldn't be as ludicrously exaggerated as they are. Using the multi-layered guitars of its predecessor as a foundation, A Night at the Opera encompasses metal ("Death on Two Legs," "Sweet Lady"), pop (the lovely, shimmering "You're My Best Friend"), campy British music hall ("Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon," "Seaside Rendezvous"), and mystical prog rock ("'39," "The Prophet's Song"), eventually bringing it all together on the pseudo-operatic "Bohemian Rhapsody." In short, it's a lot like Queen's own version of Led Zeppelin IV, but where Zep find dark menace in bombast, Queen celebrate their own pomposity. Queen were straining at the boundaries of hard rock and heavy metal on Sheer Heart Attack, but they broke down all the barricades on A Night at the Opera, a self-consciously ridiculous and overblown hard rock masterpiece.
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