Roy Thomas Baker, who was among the most successful record producers of the 1970s and ’80s and who helped bring to life Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” a nearly six-minute tornado of operatic harmonies and thundering guitar salvos that became one of rock’s most unconventional hits, died on April 12 at his home in Lake Havasu City, Ariz. He was 78.
His death was announced by a spokesman, Bob Merlis, who said the cause was unclear.
In a career as a producer and sound engineer that spanned more than half a century, Mr. Baker worked with an array of platinum-selling acts, a list that also included the Cars, Journey, Cheap Trick, Foreigner, Ozzy Osbourne, Devo and the Smashing Pumpkins.
Known for his attention to detail and his theatrical approach to sound, he was a fitting collaborator for Queen, a band that defied genres and turned excess into art. He produced the group’s first four albums: their 1973 debut, simply titled “Queen,” followed by “Queen II” and “Sheer Heart Attack,” both in 1974.
The band reached new heights with their fourth album, the 1975 blockbuster “A Night at the Opera,” which peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard album chart and spawned “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Mr. Baker and the band were again the producers, with valuable contributions from the engineer Mike Stone.
The song, a sprawling pop epic that blended balladry, opera and heavy metal, “was basically a joke,” Mr. Baker said in a 1999 interview with Mix, a magazine for the professional audio and recording industry, “but a successful joke.”
“We had to record it in three separate units,” he added. “We did the whole beginning bit, then the whole middle bit and then the whole end. It was complete madness. The middle part started off being just a couple of seconds, but Freddie” — the lead vocalist, Freddie Mercury — “kept coming in with more ‘Galileos’ and we kept on adding to the opera section, and it just got bigger and bigger. We never stopped laughing.”
“Bohemian Rhapsody” flummoxed some critics on its release but came to be widely viewed as a masterpiece. The song was the opening number in Queen’s storied set at the Live Aid charity concert at Wembley Stadium in London in July 1985; with its electric performance by Mr. Mercury, the set has often been called one of the greatest live gigs of all time.
Fueled by an indelible appearance in the 1992 film comedy “Wayne’s World,” in which the characters played by Mike Myers and Dana Carvey sing along and bang their heads with their friends in an AMC Pacer, the song, which first eked onto the U.S. charts in 1976, soared to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 that year.
Last year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked “Bohemian Rhapsody” No. 17 in its list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.”
When the song was released, “I thought it was going to be a hit,” Mr. Baker said in an interview with The New York Times in 2005. “We didn’t know it was going to be quite that big. I didn’t realize it was still going to be talked about 30 years later.”
Roy Thomas Baker was born on Nov. 10, 1946, in Hampstead, England. He began his career at Decca Studios in London in 1963, working as a second engineer to Gus Dudgeon, an English record producer who would become known for his collaborations with Elton John, and Tony Visconti, an American producer who went on to work with David Bowie and Marc Bolan.
Mr. Baker later worked with Ten Years After, Dr. John, the Moody Blues, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones and the Who. He was a chief engineer on the 1970s anthems “All Right Now” by Free and “Bang a Gong (Get It On)” by T. Rex.
Mr. Baker met Queen in the early 1970s, when he was working for Trident Studios in London and had gone to look at a new studio complex in London. The band, just starting out at the time, was recording free demo tapes in exchange for helping the new studio test its sound, Mr. Baker said in a 1979 interview.
The band’s debut album was recorded during Mr. Baker’s downtime, as something of an experiment for him, because, he said, he wanted to be more involved with production. During his time with the band, Queen also tallied a hit with the song “Killer Queen,” which climbed to No. 12 in the United States in May 1975.
Queen produced its fifth and sixth albums, “A Day at the Races” and “News of the World,” without Mr. Baker, but he returned for the seventh, “Jazz” (1978), which contained the enduring songs “Fat Bottomed Girls” and “Don’t Stop Me Now.”
At the behest of Columbia Records, he later relocated to the United States, where he produced hit albums like Journey’s “Infinity” (1978). “We did so many different things on that record that I’d never tried, or even thought about doing,” Journey’s lead guitarist, Neal Schon, said. “I learned a lot from Roy.”
With his company, RTB Audio Visual Productions, Mr. Baker also produced records by Ian Hunter, Ronnie Wood and Reggie Knighton.
While he built his reputation on extravagant productions for Queen and others, Mr. Baker pared down his sound as a producer of the Cars’ first four albums, particularly the band’s landmark 1978 debut, which included the hits “Just What I Needed,” “My Best Friend’s Girl” and “Good Times Roll.” The album marked a transition from the slick commercial rock that dominated the FM airwaves in the late 1970s to the lean, taut New Wave that would follow.
“I had been doing Queen, which was kitchen-sink overproduction, which I loved,” he said in the 1999 interview. But, he added, “I would run into the Sex Pistols, because they were working over at Wessex. They were saying the usual, ‘All you bands are going to be gone because you’re overproduced.’”
As a result, Mr. Baker took a leaner approach with the Cars’ first record, although he augmented its spare, sinewy sound with Queenesque vocal cascades.
“‘Good Times Roll’ is a classic one for that,” he said. “When they sing those words, it’s huge and then it’s gone, and everything is back to sparse again. I was able to put big vocals on a sparse, punkish background, sort of inventing post-punk pop.”
Mr. Baker is survived by his wife, Tere Livrano Baker, and his brother, Alan.
“My whole thing is, the more different you can sound from anything else around but still be commercially successful is great,” Mr. Baker once said of his philosophy as a producer. He added: “People need an identifiable sound. When your song is being played on the radio, people should hear who that is, even without the D.J. mentioning who it is.”
Sara Ruberg contributed reporting. Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
Alex Williams is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
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