SOUNDTRACK DRAMA
ABOVE Rami Malek’s voice was used for the vocal performances, things like breathing and lip smacks
get off the ground, and John was there from the beginning.” Thanks to Warhurst’s work, the filmmakers enjoyed full access to Queen’s comprehensive archive. Shirley-Smith remembers: “We got the call from John Warhurst, then we went through the list of songs that were in the scripts – both studio tracks and live tracks. John’s first question was ‘Do you have the multitracks for these things?’ and the answer was yes. Better than that, we even had premixed stems for some of them.” Even the 1985 Live Aid concert was available. Despite several contributors demanding it not be recorded, BBC radio producer Jeff Griffin recorded it anyway, and the original two-inch, 24-track tape was retransferred for Bohemian Rhapsody . EARLY MATERIAL Material from early on in Queen’s existence was sometimes less complete, or sourced from one of several live performances. “On things like Bohemian Rhapsody , we had to dig in deeper and find which is better,” Shirley-Smith says, “and Doing All Right is a pre-Queen track. There’s a version on the first album, but it was done with Brian and Roger’s band before Queen, which was
We had three sources. We had Freddie, who we used for as much of the singing as we could
called Smile. It’s depicted in the film and it was compiled from all the different sources we had – partly from the Queen backing track and a live version from Earl’s Court.” Even so, not every required piece of music could be found in existing recordings. There were, Hartstone says, three sources for the vocals of Freddie Mercury, played in the film by Rami Malek. “We had Freddie, who we used for as much of the singing as we could; Rami, for the vocal performances, things like the breathing and lip smacks; and Marc Martel, who was our Freddie soundalike. He’s really good. The advantage of being able to use him was that we could get as many takes as we liked, as close to Rami’s performance as possible.” Musical material for the production was shot with playback, which editor and composer John Ottman used to assemble the picture edit. Ordinarily, Hartstone would work to that fixed edit, but the unalterable timing of the music made it an iterative process. “The music is the thing that can’t be changed, really,” she confirms. “You get your edit turned over to you and
APR I L 20 1 9 | DEF I N I T ION 43
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