Hello Everyone,
I am Kingsley Ward and in the 1960s my brother Charles and I founded Rockfield Studios out of the attic of our families Farmhouse in South Wales. Our new documentary 'Rockfield - The Studio on the Farm' is now available in the US featuring artists such as Black Sabbath, Oasis, Coldplay, Queen, Robert Plant, The Charlatans and much more...
Our new film details the history of our studio and the journey we have been on for the past 60 years, along with stories told by some of the great artists and musicians who have recorded here.
I will begin answering any questions around 3PM GMT.
Ask Me Anything!
Edit: Thank you all for your questions. We have many exciting Rockfield Studios projects coming up so please feel free to follow us on our social media platforms for more information.
Now available on BBC iPlayer, Liam and bonehead are involved with the interviews among other big bands who recorded there.
Thought I'd give you guys a heads up.
If you've seen the movie "Bohemian Rhapsody", you'll recall that Queen vanished to a farmhouse in Wales to make the album A Night At The Opera undisturbed.
Also, if you know your Rush lore, you know that the band vanished to a farmhouse in Wales to make the album AFTK undisturbed.
Yup, one and the same. Rockfield Studios. I was thinking about it just now because Facebook put a BBC interview with Dave Edmunds from 1973 in front of me. Sorry to link into FB, but the video doesn't seem to be hosted anywhere else. This is how it appeared four years prior to AFTK: https://www.facebook.com/BBCArchive/videos/358255074772368/
If you search on youtube there's lots of historic material. Here are Brian May and Roger Taylor re-visiting for the first time in 2004: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_23Q22gz370
Wikipedia has a list of artists that recorded there. Some of my great and strange albums! I had no idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockfield_Studios
Queen’s epic rock song “Bohemian Rhapsody” began life sometime in the late 60s, when Freddie Mercury was a student at Ealing Art College, starting out as a few ideas for a song scribbled on scraps of paper.
Queen guitarist Brian May remembers the brilliant singer and songwriter giving them the first glimpse in the early 70s of the masterpiece he had at one time called “The Cowboy Song,” perhaps because of the line “Mama… just killed a man.”
“I remember Freddie coming in with loads of bits of paper from his dad’s work, like Post-it notes, and pounding on the piano,” May said in 2008. “He played the piano like most people play the drums. And this song he had was full of gaps where he explained that something operatic would happen here and so on. He’d worked out the harmonies in his head.”
Mercury told bandmates that he believed he had enough material for about three songs but was thinking about blending all the lyrics into one long extravaganza. The final six-minute iconic mini rock opera became the band’s defining song.
Queen first properly rehearsed “Bohemian Rhapsody” at Ridge Farm Studio, in Surrey, in mid-1975, and then spent three weeks honing the song at Penrhos Court in Herefordshire. By the summer they were ready to record it; taping began on August 24, 1975 at the famous Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, Wales. It was a moment that May described as “just the biggest thrill.”
The innovative song began with the famous a cappella intro (“Is this the real life?/Is this just fantasy?”) before embracing everything from glam-metal rock to opera. A week was devoted to the operatic interlude, for which Mercury had methodically written out all the harmony parts. For the grand chorale, the group layered 160 tracks of vocal overdubs (using 24-track analogue recording), with Mercury singing the middle register, May the low register, and drummer Roger Taylor the high register (John Deacon was on bass guitar but did not sing). Mercury performed with real verve, overdubbing his voice until it sounded like a choir, with the words “mamma mia”, “Galileo” and “Figaro” bouncing up and down the octaves. “We ran the tape through so many times it kept wearing out,” May said. “Once we held the tape up to the light and we could see straight through it, the music had practically vanished. Every time Fred decided to add a few more ‘Galileo’s we lost something, too.”
The song, which appears on the album A Night At The Opera, was finally released on October 31, 1975, and the
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