Freddie Mercury’s Bohemian Rhapsody original title discovered in unseen lyrics

Earlier this year Freddie Mercury’s former lover, to who he left half his estate, announced she would be auctioning off precious personal items owned by the Queen singer from his Garden Lodge home.

Alongside iconic costumes like his crown and robe are never-before-seen handwritten lyrics to some of his band’s biggest hits.

Now for the first time, fans can see his creative scribbles before they go on display at Sotheby’s in New York ahead of being auctioned off in September.

They include Don’t Stop Me Now, Somebody to Love, We Are the Champions and, of course, Bohemian Rhapsody. 

In fact, notes for the latter reveal that Freddie had another title and lyrics in mind for the colossal global hit.

READ MORE: Freddie Mercury – Bohemian Rhapsody’s music video was a happy accident

Sotheby’s shared: “Written in black and blue ballpoint pen and pencil, this early draft for Bohemian Rhapsody encompasses all sections of this most ambitious of Queen hits, one of the most globally beloved and streamed songs – with almost four billion streams across Spotify and YouTube alone – and the third best-selling UK single of all time. As with many of the lyrics held within this collection, the draft text is written across 15 pages of stationery from the now-defunct British Midland Airways.

“Revealing untold insights into other possible directions the song could have taken, one page reveals that Mercury originally planned to call the song Mongolian Rhapsody, before crossing out Mongolian and replacing it with Bohemian – rhythmically similar but with a different resonance.

“On another page, we are presented with an alternative to the famous second verse ‘Mama, just killed a man.’ Instead, a completely different wartime narrative is presented, ‘Mama, There’s a war began, I’ve got to leave tonight.’ A third page, focusing on the operatic section of the piece, is completely covered in a burst of words and phrases: ‘Galileo,’ ‘Fandango,’ ‘Scaramouche’ and ‘Thunderbolts and lightning’ are all on there, but so are other words that were never used: ‘Matador,’ ‘Belladonna.’”

Dr Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby’s Books & Manuscripts Specialist, commented: “Thanks to the sheer complexity of the music to Bohemian Rhapsody, and especially its unusual and varied structure, the song rests especially heavily on its lyrics to lend its coherence. In these pages we see Freddie Mercury wrestling in grand operatic terms with profound themes – sin, damnation, stoic acceptance – and witness the great efforts he goes to pinpointing precisely the right words to embody these emotions and to create the most extraordinary narrative. Quite unlike anything that had been released before, Bohemian Rhapsody was the band’s greatest risk, which swiftly became their greatest hit.”

Penned by Freddie in 1974, the handwritten working lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody are expected to be auctioned off for £800,000-£1.2 million.

To find out more about the auction and exhibitions of Freddie Mercury: A World Of His Own, click here.