I didn't know of the band then and I was more concerned with going over to see what this big, new studio was like. An AKG D12 was used on the bass drum. He happened to be in London and heard it on the radio. It was a great stepping stone.". Roy Thomas Baker had a hand in producing Queen's first four albums: 1973's 'Queen'; 1974's 'Queen II' and 'Sheer Heart Attack; and 1975's 'A Night at the Opera.' Musically, there were the ballads, the heavy bits, and complex arrangements -- it all stemmed from there. Roy Thomas Baker is similar to these musical artists: Sam Hollander, Robert Kraft (composer), Kristian Bush and more. In classical music they are allowable, whereas in rock music they normally are not. It certainly all stands up today when I hear it all again.". We said, 'But you haven't heard it yet.' At this time under his new CBS deal RTB produced Journey, Starcastle, Reggie Knighton (The Grass Roots), Ian Hunter and Ronnie Wood(The Rolling Stones). The pairing of Roy Thomas Baker and the Darkness is a one-way ticket to heaven. He also produced Yes's forthcoming 2014 album Heaven & Earth, 35 years after his previous experience with the band, working on sessions in Paris that never led to an album. So he played the first part and said, 'This is the chord sequence', followed by the interim part, and although he didn't have all the lyrics together yet, I could tell it was going to be a ballady number. A lot of it was backward cymbals, backward gongs, and backward tom fills. Grammy Winning Producer-Engineer Bruce Swedien. "There were a few harmonies that were a little dissident, such as two notes next to each other which weren't quite spot on in passing phrases. That's when I ran into the guys and heard their demos. "Freddie's piano was miked with two Neumann U67s and we also set up a Shure mic for his guide vocal. The story behind the epic Queen single. "It was a great period for me, because it gave me the chance to work with international artists," says Baker. The thing that made it difficult was that even the end had lots of vocals on it (the 'Ooh yeah, ooh yeah' part), so we had to record the basic backing track of drums, bass, guitar and piano, then do the background vocals without having the lead vocal on first. Another trick that Roy Thomas Baker used when recording Queen, Starcastle, the Cars, Journey, etc., was to hit the tape with as hot a signal as possible in order to get that loud but compressed sound. ", Due to the complex nature of the recording, it is not surprising that the occasional vocal faux-pas was noted by Baker's keen ears. But it didn't matter who had written the song; it still had to sound like a Queen record. With a band whose four individuals were no shrinking violets when it came to writing songs and taking the creative lead, one of Roy Thomas Baker's major tasks was to singularly encourage the band to work as a concise unit while keeping the distinctive Queen sound. He recalls: "Queen were recording free of charge while the engineers tested. While the first three Queen albums had been recorded on 16-track equipment, 'Bohemian Rhapsody' benefitted from 24-track technology, although not without a few problems. "It was a more difficult situation than working with a band with only one songwriter, because they were all so good. So if we ever did any, we would hide them or disguise them. ", Unfortunately, there are no rough mixes around to audibly demonstrate how 'Bohemian Rhapsody' was created in stages. "We weren't into multiple snare miking back then, so there was just a single mic on the snare. We just used the one machine, because there was no syncing available to us. Once, at Trident Studios, Billy Cobham was working next door and we hid our tapes in that control room, labelling them 'Cilly Bobham'. That section alone took about three weeks to record, which in 1975 was the average time spent on a whole album. Encouraged by music producer Gus Dudgeon he soon moved to Trident Studios, where he worked with Dudgeon, Tony Visconti, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Frank Zappa as well as recording artists like The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, The Who, Gasolin', Nazareth, Santana, The Mothers of Invention, Be Bop Deluxe, Free and T.Rex. Then we did the vocal overdubs at Scorpion Studios, where they had a Telefunken machine. So I would always make a room available for them to go to and argue in private. He is married to entertainment executive and actress Tere Livrano Baker (The Godfather Trilogy, General Hospital ). ", It was in 1972, while on an inspection tour of the De Lane Lea studio complex in Wembley, North London, that Roy Thomas Baker first met Queen, who were then still using the band name Smile. It was around then that I first met Queen. Share. John's bass was DI'd. "I listen to it now and it's a great piece of art, although I didn't realise at the time we had made a classic. After co-founding Neptune (Trident's record company), Baker met the rock band Queen. Veteran music journalist Rick Clark conducted hundreds of revealing interviews with some of the biggest names in the industry to create this extraordinary title. It was planned that the highly pronounced snare beat at the beginning of the heavy rock section would be a distinct edit point, its crashing velocity a by-product of the manual mixing. They retained Roy Thomas Baker (best known for his work with Queen) as producer, but drummer Aynsley Dunbar was replaced with Steve Smith, formerly with Ronnie Montrose’s band. One of the ways was to get involved with The Cars, because I could use all my production techniques as a way of under-producing. You had to store data on two tracks, so you'd end up with no more than 22 tracks of music on your tape, to provide room for the data. When Baker and Queen retreated to SARM (East) Studios for the mixing sessions, they were treated to a Trident B console. "Ken was working with Bowie and Robin was engineering for Elton John and other more mainstream acts with Gus Dudgeon. "We formed a 3-part harmony by recording one harmony at a time and bouncing. But it isn’t the band’s first collaboration with the producer of Queen, Journey and The Cars: 35 years ago, Yes convened in Paris to begin work on their follow-up to 1978’s Tormato, although the sessions never saw the light of … Freddie said to me, 'If there are any ideas that you've had that you can't use with boring, human type bands, we'll try them out on this.' 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