Roy Thomas Baker, the journeyman rock producer who was behind the boards on hits like the Cars’ “Just What I Needed” and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” has died. He was 78.
Baker died earlier this month, April 12, at his home in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, though his family only just revealed the news. A cause of death has not yet been established.
Baker worked with some of the biggest rock acts of the past 50 years, including Queen, Lindsey Buckingham, Mötley Crüe, Ozzy Osbourne, Smashing Pumpkins, Guns N’ Roses, Foreigner, Alice Cooper, and Cheap Trick. He also worked as an A&R executive at Elektra, where he oversaw the signings of Metallica, 10,000 Maniacs, Yello, and more.
Baker began his career as a second engineer at Decca Studios in London, working under luminaries like Tony Visconti and Gus Dudgeon. He worked on records by the Rolling Stones, the Who, David Bowie, Dusty Springfield, and more, eventually rising through the ranks to become chief engineer. Among his earliest successes were T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong” and Free’s “Alright Now.”
Baker met and began working with Queen in the early Seventies, striking up a fruitful relationship that saw him co-produce their first four albums: 1973’s Queen, 1974’s Queen II and Sheer Heart Attack, and 1975’s A Night at the Opera. The latter album went to Number One, propelled by the seminal smash “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
A portrait of Brian May, John Deacon, Freddie Mercury from the British band Queen with record producer Roy Thomas Baker at press conference at the Fairmont Hotel, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, 31st October 1978.
David Tan/Shinko Music/Getty Images
Following his success with Queen, he went on to produce the Cars first four albums — their 1978 self-titled debut, Candy-O the following year, 1980’s Panorama,and 1981’s Shake It Up. The albums spawned hits including “Just What I Needed,” “My Best Friend’s Girl,” “Good Times Roll” and “Shake It Up.”
His forays into producing the Cars in the Eighties found him pulling a bit back from the big production sounds of Queen and expanding into new wave material from bands like Devo, while still helming the boards for hard rock bands such as Journey, Ozzy Osbourne, Sammy Hager, Guns N’ Roses, and more.
During his time at Elektra, he served as an executive producer or producer for artists such as Lindsey Buckingham, Dokken, and Mötley Crüe and signed artists Metallica, 10,000 Maniacs, and more.
In a 1999 interview, Baker noted how “Bohemian Rhapsody” bucked against the trend at the time of rock bands being “so intent on being heavy.” He said the notion behind “Bohemian Rhapsody” — with its multi-part blend of rock, pop, and opera — “was not exactly a cool idea,” describing it instead as “basically a joke, but a successful joke.”
He continued: “We had to record it in three separate units. 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 [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.”