What is BohRhap about?

When i was in college, my Musical "Commercial Bitch" Theatre teacher said the song is about a person who kills another and has to deal with the consequenses.

How i see it. The best way to find the meaning of the song is to look at the date and time the song was written and by whom wrote it.

Doing a Film Making Course at Uni helps me explain the meaning of the song in more deatail.

Firstly the lyrics
Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide
No escape from reality
Open your eyes
Look up to the skies and see
I'm just a poor boy
I need no sympathy
Because I'm easy come, easy go
Little high, little low
Any way the wind blows
Doesn't really matter to me
To me

Mama, just killed a man
Put a gun against his head
Pulled my trigger now he's dead
Mama, life had just begun
But now I've gone and thrown it all away
Mama
Didn't mean to make you cry
If I'm not back again this time tomorrow
Carry on, carry on
As if nothing really matters

Too late, my time has come
Sends shivers down my spine
Body's aching all the time
Goodbye, everybody
I've got to go
Got to leave you all behind and face the truth
Mama
I don't want to die
I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all

I see a little silhouetto of a man
Scaramouche, Scaramouche
Will you do the Fandango?
Thunderbolt and lightning
Very, very frightening me
(Galileo) Galileo
(Galileo) Galileo
Galileo, figaro
Magnifico
I'm just a poor boy and nobody loves me
(He's just a poor boy from a poor family
Spare him his life from this monstrosity)
Easy come, easy go, will you let me go
Bismillah!
No, we will not let you go
(Let him go!)
Bismillah!
We will not let you go
(Let hime go!)
Bismillah!
We will not let you go
(Let me go!)
Will not let you go
(Let me go!)
No, no, no, no, no, no, no
Oh, mama mia, mama mia
Mama mia, let me go
Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me
For me
For me

So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye?
So you think you can love me and leave me to die?
Oh, baby
Can't do this to me, baby
Just got to get out
Just got to get right out of here

Nothing really matters
Anyone can see
Nothing really matters
Nothing really matters to me
Any way the wind blows...

Onto the meaning.
What i conclude is that, the song is about "coming out"
at this time Fred was exploring his sexuality and was going out with Mary Austin (LOML) then there was some manager problems holding Fred (and the band) back (deathO2L)

Mama Just killed a man; is a a metaphor himself. he just come out. during this period (70s) homosexuality was one of those things people looked down on you as people said "it was bad for business" or "a shame to our society". Coming out then would thoreticly ruin (Freds) career esspaily at a time they were very venrible (killer Queen ripple affect). 

BohRhap is about coming out. just look at the words and compare them 

Mama, life had just begun
But now I've gone and thrown it all away

"I'm now myself and i can be who ever i want to be", then you relise society

Didn't mean to make you cry
If I'm not back again this time tomorrow
Carry on, carry on
As if nothing really matters

this is very self explainorty. "once your out, you can never go back in"

the whole third verse is facing society
the opera section is the strugles of keeping a massive secreat that makes you who you are
the rock section is "all bark and no bite" thinking you can challenge society
ending with the verse is metaphor of dying. the longer it is kept secret, the more it hurts

the song is not in order and is all told with an unreliable narrator and all parts of the song differ in theme

the first and last verse "is this the real life...anyway the wind blows" is about keeping a secret
second and third is a deam like state of a ripple effect of coming out
the oprea like i mentioned before is a internal sturugle
and the rock section is a polictical statement

THis is what i think BohRhaps about

What do you think.

and yes i'm aware of my spelling errors

Well what you decribe has been my idea about the song for years and years, we can only guess but it would make sense

It's about Freddie coming to terms with his sexuality. It's becoming more common knowledge now. People can disect this song to death but even Peter Freestone has been quoted as saying as such.

If Freddie repeatedly said he didn't know what the song was about, I'm not inclined to put my own meaning to it and I feel it's WAY to simplistic to say it's about Freddie's sexuality. I think it has no deeper meaning than it's form being defined by, say, Wikipedia:

Rhapsody (music),
an enthusiastic instrumental composition of indefinite form
A work of epic poetry, or part of one, that is suitable for recitation at one time, such as a book of Homer's Odyssey.

Freddie sort combined those two ideas and came up with something which *sounds* awesome and deep and meaningful, but really isn't much more than the equivelant of musical LEGO pieces mashed together.

Certain words have a great sound, including the two words in the title, and using them fires the imagination, which is WAY more compelling than the song needing to be *about* something.

No, in my humble opinion, the song has no meaning and is evocative because of the wordplay, the language and different styles.

How about who cares?

While I think it was very important to Freddie that his audience be able to find their own meanings in his songs, I'd bet everything I own on the fact that it was inspired by and closely tracked his coming out  -  to himself primarily, and to Mary  secondarily.  Both Brian and Roger have confirmed this in roundabout ways, multiple times.  Roger in particular has stated directly that he knows what the song is about and that he thinks it's 'pretty clear' or 'self explanatory' at least twice in filmed interviews. Both Brian and Roger have referenced 'things that Freddie was going through at the time' [paraphrased] and Brian said that Freddie 'put a lot of himself into the song'. I think there is virtually no doubt that it is heavily autobiographical.

To steal a line, it's about 5:55 to 5:59, depending on the CD or LP issued.

I tend to think that the operatic section is a reference to how Freddies religion views homosexuality.

My god, this debate again.  I think it may be possible that Brian and Roger just gave in to what the media and everyone else who tried to find a meaning in the song wanted to hear.  Personally, I think it was a drug induced dream that Freddie remembered  vividly and put to paper.  When the song was re-released in 1991, I heard people say that it was about him having AIDS, with the lyrics "send shivers down my spine, body's aching all the time" as their justification.  Obviously, it could never have been, but it is an example which shows that people are over-willing to put their own meaning to the song.  It is, musical brilliance taken out, just a mish-mash of complete and utter nonsense he had a dream about.

To me it's simply about his growing up...leaving the nest...without acceptance from the family.

This is who i am, this is what i'm doing...

and yes, the man he killed... was his former self.

The "civil" life.... mundane... school, work, "career" wasn't for him... so he "threw that all away"

...

the last lyrics probably came about as a reflection of his elder self addressing HIMSELF...

probably cause by the time the rest of it came together, he had a mindset to make it HORRIBLY ...incomparably epic and dramatic in scope ...(but also in a mockish sort of way)...

Hence... the drama of "LET ME GO!"

shouts of the family, critics... diverging perspectives (represented by combating voices)...

parents saying "we've given you ALL THIS and you're going to "spit in our eyes??"

that's all what it meant to me. And i'm not projecting MYSELF into it... but it seems that this would be very likely the "meaning" behind the song. I'm also sure that Fred would have decided to keep some things cryptic... who knows what the original complete lines may have been.

I'm getting sick and tired of people listening to it and saying... "how sad, it was about him giving AIDS to his lover"...

god, i heard that at a party a month ago from this girl, who said her father told her that...

kinda makes me feel disgustipated...but then again... it's in the literal sense...ignorance.

i refuted it first logically by the conception date... (1974-75)... YEARS before the AIDS virus was .....(well it may have been created even around this time)...but WAY before it was publicly recognized...

and on the second refutation point...i just said... YOU'RE A MORON!

;-) juuuuuuuust kidding.

But that's been my take on the song for years.

-Matt

Just to practice my Spanish, I translated Bo Rap into Spanish. Yes, I know, I need to get out more!  As it can't be translated literally, I had to really think about what it was trying to MEAN. As a result, I discovered the beauty of the English words. It has a sort of natural poetry. And I became absolutely certain that  it was about Freddie realising he was gay and dealing with the emotional consequences. He couldn't tell anyone about his emotional turmoil, so he expressed it in the way he did things best - through music.
Incidentally, I have also studied a poem by the Spanish poet/playwrite Garcia Lorca who was also gay. He expressed his tribulations through poetry. And one of his poems about his sexuality was called "Suicide...." He too used the metaphor of death and also wrote of "shivering" and "aching" in his poems. That was back in the 1920/30s.

Boh Rhap is about six minutes.

Thistleboy 1980 wrote:My god, this debate again.  I think it may be possible that Brian and Roger just gave in to what the media and everyone else who tried to find a meaning in the song wanted to hear.  Personally, I think it was a drug induced dream that Freddie remembered  vividly and put to paper.  When the song was re-released in 1991, I heard people say that it was about him having AIDS, with the lyrics "send shivers down my spine, body's aching all the time" as their justification.  Obviously, it could never have been, but it is an example which shows that people are over-willing to put their own meaning to the song.  It is, musical brilliance taken out, just a mish-mash of complete and utter nonsense he had a dream about.
===========================

Yeah!  If it was a dream about profound life changes and the emotional impact of a accepting that you're a gay man.  ;) 

What is your evidence that "Brian and Roger just gave in to what the media and everyone else who tried to find a meaning in the song wanted to hear".  Have they done this sort of thing before? Where did that come from?

It is a good question tho....

GF, just my theory - I'm not saying I'm correct or that it's based on hard evidence, it's just my theory.  It's all open to interpretation, but if I was asked the same question day-in-day-out for about six hundred years, I'd eventually just say "yeah, you're right" just for a quiet life.  People will take what they want from a song - It may be about his sexuality, it may be an elaborate piece of fiction or it may be a vivid recollection of a dream.  Either could be correct, but we'll never know for certain.  personally I think it's been over-analysed.