Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
It utilized over-dubbing to a level that had hardly ever been done before.
Alex Bailey/Fox
It introduced everything from hard rock guitar to virtually a cappella operatic vocals to esoteric lyrics to a ballad.
Its very rural; its a real farming community.
I wanted to make them look like they felt really out-of-place.
Alex Bailey/Fox
Theyre wearing their high heels and fur coats and very London-oriented clothing.
Brian was very much the slightly tonier guy.
Roger and Deaky were the more fun elements, what people think the essence of the 70s is.
20th Century Fox
A bit more flamboyant in that 70s way.
Deaky wears the pair of jeans that are made out of waistbands of jeans and a matching jacket.
You see the chicken and [Roger is] almost like dressed as a chicken.
20th Century Fox
Like a very preening cockerel.
There was an element of that in the way we portrayed it on set each day.
That they didnt create this song overnight.
20th Century Fox
That wasnt in the script, but Brian [May] said, Oh, he always did that.
Its come straight from the horses mouth.
Hes about to do this world-famous guitar solo.
20th Century Fox
That summed him up throughout the shoot really.
He was so supportive and never looked at us with a critical eye.
As did Roger Taylor in terms of the Galileos.
I wanted to celebrate both of their contributions to it and give them a distinct look between the two.
Give it a bit of a grimace because it really is quite a push on that string.
This was at a time when analog was still king.
The tapes couldnt take any more dubs.
They were basically clear at that point.
You felt safe to be singing away.
I was there on set in the recording studio and all the crew is down.
Everyone was going to hear it.
I was quite intimidated.
When we shot that, it was mainly me and Joe.
We had a lot of fun with it.
He kept saying higher.
Theres a certain pitch that Roger does it at, so you couldnt go any higher than that.
He brought in his acoustic guitar that he was given when he was about 12.
This is a piece of music history.
We would have been in so much trouble.
It really gave you a sense of how fun it mustve been for the band working together.
Something like that is so iconic, you know theres not too much room for artistic license.
We actually shot it twice.
We got to that moment in the song and we were like, What do we do now?
That exists somewhere, and I hope the world gets to see it sometime.
