Producer Roy Thomas Baker, essential in the career of artists such as Queen and The Cars, and in that of many others, has died. His death occurred in Arizona on April 12, but has not communicated until Tuesday, April 22. He was 78 years old and the cause of death has not been revealed.
Roy Thomas Baker was the producer of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, Queen’s significant song, which today approaches 3,000 million streams on Spotify and 2,000 million on YouTube, well above the last hits of The Weeknd or Taylor Swift.
In 1999, the producer declared on that recording in an unmissable interview: «’Bohemian Rhapsody’ was a total madness, but we enjoyed every minute. It was basically a joke, but a successful joke. We had to record it in three separate units. We made the first full part, then the complete central part and then the full end. It was absolute madness. The central part began lasting two seconds, but Freddie continued to make more “Galileans” and continue adding things to the opera section and became more and larger. We never stop laughing. It started like a ballad but the end was Heavy ».
In this talk Roy Thomas Baker talked about the influence of Phil Spector’s melodies and Beach Boys’ harmonies. His career began as an engineer in the London label Decca Records, where he rubbed shoulders like Tony Visconti and Gus Dudgeon (the latter responsible for the sound of ‘Your Song’ of Elton John). In Trident Studios he worked with Rolling Stones or Frank Zappa, and moved to the United States when he was asked to work with Journey.
Special was his relationship with Queen, with whom he worked in 5 of his albums from his debut ‘Queen’ (1973) to ‘Jazz’ (1978), and also on the Elektra label, producing the first 4 albums of The Cars. That means that he was in charge of the recording of classics such as the debut ‘The Cars’, a multiple album often recognized among the best albums in history, or his successor ‘Candy-O’.
Other artists he worked were Foreigner, David Bowie, Cheap Trick, Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, Devo, Santana, T-Rex, The Who, Yes or Frank Zappa.
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