Inside the studio where Queen recorded

Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” one of the most influential rock songs ever recorded, was released 50 years ago.

It broke records and rose to the top of the British charts. It was number one twice in the UK and also made history with the first rock promotional video.

But in the United States, it took 17 more years for the song and it appeared in the movie “Wayne’s World” to become a mega hit. Today, it has almost 3 billion streams on Spotify, which is the most for any song of the 20th century.

“It changed the dynamics of music”

The hit song was brought to life in the Welsh countryside at Rockfield Studios, founded in the 1960s by two farmers and musicians, Charles and Kingsley Ward.

Queen band members Freddie Mercury, John Deacon, Roger Taylor and Brian May lived in Rockfield for two weeks in 1975, working on their fourth album, “A Night at the Opera.”

“I don’t think anyone realized at the time that ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ would end up being the iconic record that it was,” said Kingsley Ward, now 85.

In the main studio, which is still in use, Queen cut the song into three sections: choral, hard rock and opera. The sound was revolutionary, as was the song’s duration of almost six minutes.

“It’s probably the best record ever made, a rock record, because it changed the dynamic of music and people now realize they can do anything with music,” Ward said.

Ward remembers Queen frontman Mercury as “very quiet, modest and just a genuinely kind person, he wasn’t anything extravagant.”

He said Mercury made the band wait for the song they then knew only as “Freddy’s Thing.”

“Brian and John were playing Frisbee. I remember talking to Brian and saying, ‘You’ve been here a long time, five days, you haven’t done much.’ And I think Brian said, ‘Freddy’s over there writing something.'”

Ward explained that Mercury was inside what is now an office and in the corner of the office was an old piano. Through the window, Kingsley said Mercury would have been able to see the farm’s old weather vane.

“Now, the strange thing is that a lot of people ask me, ‘Did Freddy get the idea of ​​that iconic line, ‘any way the wind blows,’ by looking at the weather vane?” We don’t know, because Freddy isn’t here to tell us, but it’s a great story, right?