Click here to play the podcastJoin us as we dive deep into one of Queen’s most iconic tracks, “Death on Two Legs,” from their legendary album A Night at the Opera, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. This episode features an in-depth analysis of the song’s history, production, and the individual tracks that make up this classic, along with performance insights from Tyler Warren, who has played this music live with the Queen Extravaganza. Don’t miss this chance to celebrate the music that shaped rock history.
“Death On Two Legs (Dedicated To……)” Freddie Mercury Copyright 1975 Queen Music Ltd
TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. I’m your host, Brad Page, and each episode here on the Pantheon Podcast Network, I pick one of my favorite songs and we dive into it together to discover what makes it a great song.
This episode we continue our look at one of the greatest albums ever made,” A Night at the Opera” by Queen, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Last episode, we talked about this album as a whole, what led up to the record, how it was recorded, and an overview of each track. We were joined by author Gillian Gaar, who’s just published a new book all about this album. Go back and listen to that episode for details.
This episode, we’re doing a deep dive on one of my favorite tracks on the album. It’s the song that opens the record and we’ve got a special guest who’ll join us at the end to give us some additional insight on actually performing Queen’s music live, especially the tracks from the “Night at the Opera” album. So let’s do it– Let’s dig into “Death on Two Legs” by Queen.
“A Night at The Opera” was Queen’s fourth album, mostly recorded during the summer and fall of 1975. As I mentioned before, we covered the making of this album on our previous podcast, so if you haven’t listened to that one, go back and check it out for the history of this album.
“Death on Two Legs” is the song that opens the album– side one, track one. The full title is actually “Death on Two Legs (Dedicated To…)”. The lyrics never mention who the subject of the song is, but clearly Freddie is not happy with them.
The target of Freddie’s rage was Norman Sheffield, the owner of Trident Studios, along with his brother Barry, and the band’s former managers. This was your classic dispute between artist and manager, with the band claiming they never received the money that they were due, and management maintaining that the band racked up huge expenses and there just wasn’t much money left.
When Norman Sheffield heard that Queen’s new album began with a song that raked him over the coals, he sued the band for defamation. Though Sheffield is never mentioned by name in the song, the band ended up settling out of court for a not insubstantial sum.
“Death on Two Legs” was written by Freddie Mercury and performed by Freddie on vocals and piano, Brian May on guitar and backing vocals, Roger Taylor on drums and backing vocals, and John Deacon on bass. It was produced by Queen and Roy Thomas Baker.
The song begins with the sound of a piano, distant at first, then coming closer to us, the listener.
That heavy riff is played by a distorted guitar and an acoustic upright bass, also known as the double bass, played with a bow. But before that riff appears out of nowhere, you can hear some strange sound effects in the background. My guess is that those were actually played on Brian May’s guitar with some delay or effects added.
Let’s go back and listen to that again in context and see if those sounds jump out at you.
Now you can hear those effects getting louder here.
Brian’s overdubbed some additional guitars here, including a part reminiscent of those violin stabs from the “Psycho” soundtrack.
It’s going to continue to escalate, culminating in a blood-curdling scream, performed by Roger I believe, before it comes to a screeching halt. Literally.
Now were hitting the song proper. The author Martin Power, in his great book “Queen: The Complete Guide to Their Music”, described this song as a “heavy metal tango”. Which is actually a pretty good description.
Before the first verse starts, Brian plays a short guitar solo that has a real exotic feel to it. It’s not your typical rock mode. Let’s listen to that guitar by itself. Couple of things to note here: As usual he’s playing his legendary Red Special guitar. That’s the guitar that he built himself with his dad, made out of a 100-year-old piece of mahogany that came from a fireplace mantle. For amplification, we can assume that he’s playing through a Vox AC30 amp using a Dallas Rangemaster Treble Booster pedal, between the guitar and the amplifier; that was his standard setup around this time. Another key element of the Brian May guitar sound is that instead of using a traditional pick, Brian uses a sixpence coin. So you’re actually getting a metal-on-metal sound whenever he picks the strings. So, that combination of all of these things– the custom-built homemade guitar, the AC30 amp, the treble booster pedal, and using a coin for a pick– all of these things contribute to giving Brian one of the most distinctive guitar sounds in all of rock. So let’s hear that solo.
I think you can really hear the sound of that metal coin on the strings. Let’s hear that again in context with the rest of the song.
So here’s the first verse. Right before Freddie’s lead vocal comes in, we get a blast of those famous Queen harmonies. Then Freddie comes in with a vocal that is just spitting venom. Notice how he’s overdubbed the vocal on different tracks so that they overlap ever so slightly on the last word of each line.
All right, there’s a lot going on here. Right before that first chorus, we have a backwards cymbal that’s inserted.
Let’s hear that again in context.
There’s also an interesting drum pattern that Roger Taylor is playing under the chorus. Let’s hear some of that.
Then before the start of the next section, there’s a sound effect that, probably the best way to describe it is, it’s kind of a helicopter sound. I’m pretty sure that sound is made by Brian’s guitar through an Echoplex tape delay.
Let’s play through the next section.
Okay, let’s break down this section. We’ll start with Freddie’s piano, because that’s the part that’s really the foundation for this section. The original working title for this song was “Psycho Legs” because apparently Freddie’s piano playing was so intense.
Now let’s hear how Brian has layered a couple of guitars to thicken up this section.
Now the vocals.
Just wow. One more thing I want to hear before we move along is to listen to Roger Taylor’s drum part during this section,because this is just a classic Roger Taylor performance. Let’s hear it.
All right, let’s put that all back together again and hear the final mix of this section.
That is maybe the most brutal lyric in this whole song.
“Do you feel like suicide? You should.”
He’s basically telling this guy he should kill himself. Let’s go back and pick it up from there.
Another guitar solo from Brian May. This one is much more in a traditional rock vein, but still fantastic. Let’s just hear that guitar first.
And let’s hear what Freddie’s piano was doing under that.
And I haven’t forgotten about John Deacon. Let’s hear what he’s playing on the bass during this section. Theres some nice gritty distortion on the bass all through the track; that’s old studio trick that helps the bass cut through when you’re doing the final mix.
Okay, let’s hear that all put together.
That brings us to the final verse. Let’s play through that. I’ll stop along the way to point out a couple more things.
Nice bass guitar lick there by John Deacon.
And Brian May’s guitar joins in at the tail end of that lick.
And I’ve always loved the way Freddie sings the word “balloon” in this verse.
And let’s listen to the vocals on that part again.
And before we play through the final chorus, let’s highlight a couple more things. First, let’s hear Roger Taylor’s drums again.
And let’s hear John Deacon’s bass one more time.
And let’s hear how Brian’s guitar and Freddie’s piano work together.
On top of that, Brian plays some short little guitar licks; these were actually composed by Freddie on piano, then Brian learned them on guitar.
There are little licks like that throughout the song, which were all Freddie s idea. Okay, let’s put it all back together one final time and listen to this last chorus through to the end of the song.
And that’s it. That’s how the song ends, rather abruptly. On the album. It goes right into the next song, “Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon”. And that transition couldn’t be more extreme. Two completely different styles, polar opposites.
And that is just one reason why I love this album: the sheer nerve it takes to open your album with a one-two punch like this. And it keeps going like that through the whole album. It’s incredibly audacious, this album. It’s a masterpiece.
And someone who has experience actually playing this album live, all the way through in front of an audience, is my special guest on this episode, Tyler Warren.
Tyler Warren is a drummer and singer who was recruited by Roger Taylor himself to play in the “Queen Extravaganza”, the Queen tribute that Roger Taylor put together. Then, when Queen hit the road with Adam Lambert, Tyler joined them on stage, playing drums and percussion. So, he knows this music inside out. I met up with Tyler in Nashville at the RockNPod Expo, and we had a brief chat about his experience performing this album live.
BRAD: Well, Tyler Warren, thanks for joining me here at Live at RockNPod. My next episode is focusing on one particular track from “Night at the Opera”, “Death on Two Legs”. And I really wanted to get your insight, because you’ve actually performed this song.
TYLER: Well with his, with the tribute band, official tribute band that he put together, 10 years ago now, called Queen Extravaganza.
BRAD: And you actually played the whole album front to back?
TYLER: We did. We did. We did it a couple of tours where we did “A Night at the Opera” front to back. The first tour we did, it was in two sections, and the first section was all music pre-“Night at the Opera”,. And then the second half was “Night at the Opera”.
BRAD: I mean, that’s quite a lot of music to bite off…
TYLER: I loved it. I love all that stuff. So I was in heaven.
BRAD: And that’s incredible record. And so you played drums and percussion?
TYLER: Yeah, I played drums and sang lead vocals with Queen Extravaganza. And then with Queen, I do percussion and background vocals, stuff Roger doesn’t want to do anymore.
BRAD: So tell us just a little bit about what is it like to work with Roger.
TYLER: It’s like I tell everybody else, like, Roger and Brian– obviously, I have more experience being around Roger– but they are who they are. They’re freaking legends. But they’re humans, too. And whenever we’re hanging out, it’s just like I’m hanging out with. buddies, you know? They just happen to be these massive, gigantic rock stars that are legends, you know?
BRAD: Right, right. So, let’s talk a little bit about this particular song, “Death On Two Legs”. What’s always fascinated me about this song is there’s so many elements, little pieces to that song. What was the most challenging thing about doing that particular song live?
TYLER: Really, the most challenging thing for us, whenever we did it with Extravaganza– with pretty much anything that’s Queen related– is background vocals. Because everything else kind of falls into place and it kind of goes where it needs to go. But we just wanted to make sure that everything we could possibly do is there. And, you know, Roger was, and still is, extremely keen on not using tracks. So everything that we did, we did live.
BRAD: Right. No backing tracks, no fudging it.
TYLER: No, no, no, no, no. So if you screw up, it’s for real. But I would say that definitely the most difficult part was doing the background vocals. And we spent a lot of time making sure we got that one right. Because it’s important for us. Because especially for Roger, back then with the tribute band, the whole reason that he put it together was, he was sick of seeing all these other tribute bands that were way more focused on dressing up like Queen and putting on the mustache and stuff like that, and less focused on representing the songs and the albums as good as they possibly could, and making it something that actually sounded amazing. And that was the whole impetus of Queen Extravaganza; like, we didn’t dress up like them or anything. We just performed. And, you know, there are certain bands where the visual is just as important. You know, if you’re going to see a Kiss tribute, man, you want to see them dressed up in the makeup and stuff, you know? But a band like Queen, the visual is important, so there is a really good live show and everything, but the music is just as important.
BRAD: Right.
TYLER: And another thing I learned from Roger and, even back in the day with Queen, is they knew they couldn’t reproduce those records note-for-note live. So they became their own beast. They became their own little edgy thing live. And, you know, we tried to translate that as much as possible with Extravaganza, and most certainly still do with Queen and Adam Lambert.
BRAD: How difficult you find it in general reproducing some of those songs live, because there’s a lot of studio, I don’t want to say “trickery”, but, like, real production value. I mean, a lot of ways, on “A Night at the Opera”, Roy Thomas Baker is almost like the fifth member of that band, right?
TYLER: Sure. For sure.
BRAD: Yeah. So there’s a challenge there, right? Just getting that sound right.
TYLER: And honestly, like, Death was probably one of the easier ones. I don’t want to downgrade it that way, but it’s a little more straight ahead than some of the other songs on the record. Like, probably the hardest one that we did was… I would say it’s either a cross between “Seaside” and “Prophet Song”, because there was this guy named Mark Martell that was a lead singer in Extravaganza for a while, and when it got to that middle section with the echoes and stuff, you know, we did that live, and if you mess up, it messes up three times. But we worked so hard to make sure that that was good. And yeah, the hardest parts, the vocals; instrumentally, if we know the songs and we know what we’re doing, it comes together. But vocally, we all sang in that group, so we all had to make sure we knew our stuff.
BRAD: So did you sing the Roger parts generally?
TYLER: Yeah. Or just whatever needed to be filled in. I always took the high stuff and then Roger, anything that Roger sang lead on, I would do. Like, “Car” and things like that.
BRAD: So what were some of the other challenging things, aspects, maybe, that we wouldn’t necessarily think about doing that particular album, or just any Queen stuff in general, live?
TYLER: Well, it’s kind of two different beasts. With Extravaganza, we do what we can to do some of those, some of the stuff that they did in the studio that they didn’t do live. Like, with “Seaside”, doing all the mouth trumpets and all that stuff, we would do that, and the ukulele things for “Good Company”. And a lot of it was pre-prep. Like, we would spend a lot of time on our own. Either I or the keyboard player would transcribe vocals and send each other parts. And, like, “you do this, you do this, you do this”, just to make sure that we’re all on the same page.
BRAD: Right.
With Queen, it is totally different because we can, it always comes together. But, like, whenever we get in rehearsals, we really don’t practice the music that much. You would think we would, but… we might, we’ll do, like, top and tail, beginning of a song, end of a song, and if there’s any massive train wrecks, we’ll go through it. Bbut other than that, we’ll spend a little bit on music, a bit on production, and then first show, hopefully everything comes together, and it always tends to. It always seems to be like, the first show is great, the second show is terrible, and then it evens out after that.
BRAD: That’s interesting.
TYLER: Yeah.
BRAD: So you’ve toured with the Adam Lambert version of the band?
TYLER: Yes. Yeah.
BRAD: And what’s it like working with Adam?
TYLER: It’s ridiculous. It is unbelievable what that man can sing, and it’s almost like it’s nothing to him. Like, we can show up for sound check and he’s not warmed up. He might have just woken up or might have just gotten back from a lunch or something. And we get up there and it’s there. And it just seems like it’s nothing to him. His voice is absolutely insane.
BRAD: What a gift, right? Man.
TYLER: And he’s such a nice guy. I just saw him a couple weeks ago because he was doing “Cabaret” in New York, and we saw his last show, March 28, I think. And of course, naturally, he was as ridiculous on that as ever. But he’s got a gift, there’s no doubt about it.
BRAD: Yeah. Well, let’s talk about some of your music. You were telling me you’ve released a couple of singles on your own.
TYLER: I have. I’ve got another band called Flare Light, but we’re kind of on hiatus at the moment. But around Valentine’s Day last year, we were in Japan with Queen and Adam Lambert, and the last show was Valentine’s Day, and I released two singles called “Beautiful Ways” and “Falling Into You”. It’s the first solo stuff that I’ve done in nearly 10 years, I would say. It’s just I’ve been so caught up with Queen and stuff like that, I just hadn’t really had time. But since those two singles, I’ve been kind of getting back into the idea of being a solo artist again. And I’ve been writing, recording, so hopefully I’ll have a record out. And hopefully it’s some time this year. But it’s on Spotify, Apple, all the streamers, wherever you get your music, “Beautiful Ways” and “Falling Into You”.
BRAD: Okay, and that’s under your name?
TYLER: Yes. Tyler Warren.
BRAD: Yeah. Cool. All right, well, thanks, man. I appreciate you coming by, talking a little bit about the record. And we’ll play a little bit of that track to get us out of this episode.
TYLER: There you go.
BRAD: But thank you so much, man.
TYLER: The most vicious Freddie might have ever been. Oh yeah, It’s a great one. Thank you so much. Thank you.
BRAD: Thanks, brother. Appreciate it.
Tyler Warren. I had a good time chatting with him.
Well, this wraps up our special two-parter on Queen’s “Night at the Opera” and the song “Death On Two Legs”.
Of course, “A Night At The Opera”, led by the hit single “Bohemian Rhapsody”, would become the album that broke Queen in the US and around the world. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Thanks for joining me for this edition of the podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, there’s about 180 other episodes just waiting for you to discover them. You can find them on your favorite podcast app– Spotify, Pandora, Apple, Amazon, iHeartRadio, whatever podcast player you prefer, you can find us there. Just search for the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. Or you can listen on our website, lovethatssongpodcast.com.
You can send your thoughts and comments to lovethatsongpodcast@gmail.com or post them on our Facebook page.
If you’d like to support the show, head on over to oldglory.com and buy a t-shirt or some merch from your favorite bands. They’ve got some quality Queen t-shirts there, and it’s all properly licensed stuff, so the bands don’t get ripped off. And when you use our discount code lovethatsong, you’ll save 15% off anything you buy there, and this show gets a few bucks on the deal, too. So go to oldglory.com, use the discount code lovethatsong, save some money and support this show. Thanks.
From everyone here on the Pantheon Podcast Network– where fans belong– I thank you for listening. I will be back in two weeks with another new episode. Until then, crank up your copy of “A Night At the Opera”.
Now, to play us out, let’s hear a little bit of our friend Tyler Warren and his song “Falling Into You”. You can find it on any of the streaming services, so please make sure you support artists like Tyler. See you next time.
RESOURCES:
Queen:
https://www.queenonline.com
A Night at the Opera (Album):
https://www.queenonline.com/discography/albums/a-night-at-the-opera
Tyler Warren:
https://www.tylerwarrenmusic.com
Roy Thomas Baker:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Thomas_Baker