“And this is where the opera bit comes in”, Freddie Mercury casually mentioned the first time he ran through “Bohemian Rhapsody” in the studio.
I guess it was inevitable that Queen would one day make an opera. Their laser-beam harmonies in “Killer Queen”from a year before already seemed to be pointing in that direction.
They’d also been responsible for songs such as “My Fairy King” and “The March Of The Black Queen”, which are only a handful of Mama Mia’s short of being opera. “The March Of The Black Queen” is quite possibly even more over-the-top than “Bohemian Rhapsody” itself!
There’s also the little fact that Queen were extremely well educated for a rock band of their generation. Particularly for a rock band who – and I mean this in the nicest possible way – would ultimately record a whole lot of really stupid stuff.
John Deacon on bass was an Electrical Engineer. He invented his own amp.
Roger Taylor has a Bachelor of Science, specializing in biology.
Brian May also had a Bachelor of Science, but he specialized in physics. By the time Queen were starting to blow up, Brian had even begun a PhD in astrophysics! He’d soon use that big brain of his to write “Fat Bottomed Girls.”
And Freddie Mercury had studied graphic art and design. Freddie used these talents to design the Queen logo.
As band logos go – as logos for any product go – it’s about as over-the-top as “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Freddie incorporated the zodiac signs of each of the band members, and then threw in a phoenix, because phoenixes are cool. Would you expect anything less?
Even the band name, with a crown inside the Q, was excessive.
None of the members of Queen, you will notice, had studied classical composition.
For all their qualifications in other fields, the closest thing the four possessed to a qualification for writing opera was that Brian May’s hair was already approaching – or even exceeding – Vivaldi-like dimensions.
I’d like to pretend that I know anything about opera and say something snarky like “none of them had a degree in classical composition… and it shows”, but honestly, I don’t. Opera to me is pretty much whatever Queen are doing in the middle section of “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
But the question still needs to be asked: is “Bohemian Rhapsody” actually a good opera?
It’s something I have been pondering ever since I was listening to the radio one night, and they had an opera expert in to ask him that very question. Sadly, I can’t remember the opera expert’s answer, although I do recall it involved a lot of humming and hawing (a quick Google of “is Bohemian Rhapsody a good opera?” suggests that it is not.)
Whether or not it is a good opera, or even a legitimate one (once again, that same quick Google, suggests that it is not), is not the only question that “Bohemian Rhapsody” raises. “Bohemian Rhapsody” raises questions such as:
Is this the real life?
Or is it just fantasy?
And also: what the hell is this whole thing about, anyway?
This is a question that has perplexed many a listener over the decades, despite one newspaper at the time claiming that “the plot is simple.” Really?
Is ”Bo Rhap” – not an actual rap – the musings, and consequent trial, of a man on death row, ultimately deciding that life is pointless anyway? Or is it – as some have suggested – Freddie coming out to his mother? Is that why it’s called “Bohemian Rhapsody”? Because bohemians live outside of society (one problem with this theory: Freddie, for reasons unknown, initially wanted to call it “Mongolian Rhapsody”)
There are a smattering lines that can be used to support that coming-out theory:
Namely “Galileo, Galileo, Galileo.”
Galileo was famously persecuted by the Catholic Church, the same way that Freddie may have felt concerned he would be persecuted. Alternatively – and here’s another popular theory – Freddie just threw in that Galileo reference for fun, and as a wink to Brian’s astrophysicist nerdom.
As far as I know, Galileo has never been the subject of a classic opera. Figaro on the other hand, famously has. Mozart’s The Marriage Of Figaro … oh, I know that one! I do know something about opera after all!
Let’s please ignore Freddie’s assertions that “Bohemian Rhapsody” is just three songs stuck together – one of which, the first one about killing a man, was initially titled “The Cowboy Song” – and presume that there is some meaning, some plot, to it all. So, what is this plot?
So, Freddie has just killed a man. Put a gun against his head. Pull the trigger. Now he’s dead. The opera part is the court case. The defence pleading that he’s JUST A POOR BOY FROM A POOR FAMILY, SPARE HIM HIS LIFE FROM THIS MONSTROSITY!!!!
It starts off with a little silhouette of a man. That man’s name, it appears, is Scaramouche:
An Italian clown from the Renaissance period, who would later become a character in Punch & Judy puppet shows where Punch would routinely knock his head off.
It’s not impossible that Freddie just chose this character because he liked the word. It’s the reason he chose Beelzebub, after all.
Everyone seems to agree that the “fandango” is referring to the “hemp fandango” a slang term for the involuntary jerking of the legs when you are hanged until you are dead. Which certainly seems in keeping with the presumed plot.
Then comes “BIS-MILL-AH!!!”
“BIS-MILL-AH!!!” is Arabic for “In The Name Of Allah” and is usually used in the context of the phrase “Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim,” or “in the name of Allah, the merciful and compassionate.”
In this case however, Allah is being neither merciful nor compassionate for he WILL NOT LET HIM GO!! NEVER NEVER NEVER LET HIM GOOOOOOOOO!!!! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
Some have tried to tie this section to Freddie’s Zoroastrian upbringing, but that feels like a stretch.
There are moments when “Bohemian Rhapsody”, straddling as it does the line between oh-so-serious art and a bit of a frolic, genuinely starts to feel like a pisstake: “THUNDERBOLTS AND LIGHTNING!!! VERY VERY FRIGHTNING ME!!!”
The “MAMMA MIA, MAMMA MIA” bits might also feel like a joke.
But it turns out that “Mamma Mia” is a very popular phrase in opera songs. It is Italian after all!
Which begs an additional, and possibly flippant question: Was “Mamma Mia” at least partially an ABBA reference?
“Mamma Mia” wasn’t released as a single until September 1975, towards the end of the “Bohemian Rhapsody” sessions, but the album had already been out for several months. Was Freddie an avid ABBA fan?
Fun Fact: “Mamma Mia” would ultimately replace “Bohemian Rhapsody” at the top of the UK charts, when the latter finally fell from Number One spot after nine bombastic weeks!
Queen needed to go Number One for nine bombastic weeks. For, even before they went into the studio to make this impossible record, they were already drowning under mountains of debt.
It says a lot about the sort of band Queen were – the sort of decade that the 70s were – that instead of deciding to cut costs on their next album – perhaps record an acoustic set – they decided to record “Night At The Opera” instead:
An album that was rumoured to have ended up costing more than any other recorded on British soil.
Or quite possibly, any album, anytime, anywhere. We can probably take it for granted that “Bohemian Rhapsody” is much of the reason why.
I mean, “Bohemian Rhapsody” took five recording studios to make! It took a whole month!! The opera part alone took three weeks to record!! And they were working 10-12 hour days!. Or at least Freddie, Brian and Roger were.
John Deacon didn’t do any of the vocals, and that part doesn’t have any bass, so I imagine he just wandered off into the corner and tinkered with his amp.
Or maybe that’s when he wrote “You’re My Best Friend”, a love song to his new wife, and the song that the record company wanted to be the first single. “You’re My Best Friend” is a charming little thing, and it actually sounds like what a hit single is supposed to sound like, but the world would now be a very different place if the record company had gotten its way.
Conscious that radio might not play a six-minute single:
With the record company on their backs, telling them that there were too many notes, and demanding that they slice it up into separate songs:
The band tried to trim it down. They listened to it, over and over, trying to find even a second here and there that might be superfluous.
They never could. Not a note was unnecessary. There were just as many “Galileo”s and “Mamma Mia”s as were required, neither more nor less.
The band were correct not to cut it. They were not correct however that radio wouldn’t play it. There’s probably a radio somewhere in the world playing it now. There’s probably at least two or three.
The whole radio-won’t-play-it controversy went public when radio finally did.
Specifically, Capital Radio DJ, Kenny Everett, who went to visit Queen in the studio, and either:
(a): Was handed a copy of “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Freddie with instructions that he was not allowed to play it (instructions that I choose to believe were accompanied by a conspiratorial wink),
Or, (b): Just stole it.
Kenny Everett was famous for doing crazy things like that.
Kenny started playing little bits and pieces of “Bohemian Rhapsody” throughout his shows, kept on saying that his finger had slipped. He did this 14 times across two days, with more and more listeners calling in, begging him to stop torturing them and just play the whole damn thing. Eventually, he did.
“Excuse me whilst I scrape myself off the ceiling” Kenny remarked after playing it for the first time.
“That’s the modern version of Beethoven… oh, my spine’s turned to custard.”
Which is the only rational response to hearing “Bohemian Rhapsody” for the first time.
Not everybody, it appears, was quite so rational. Looking at the reviews, nobody seemed to know what to make of “Bo Rhap”.
Melody Maker described it as “a superficially impressive pastiche of incongruous musical styles” adding that “the significance of the composition eludes me totally, though I must admit to finding it horrifically fascinating.”
Record Mirror were blunter, claiming that it had “no immediate selling point whatsoever.”
But everyone seemed to recognize “Bo Rhap” as a sure-fire hit single, despite sounding like no other hit single before it. Also, despite the writers being utterly incapable of telling whether or not it was any good. Possibly because, like me, most rock writers don’t know shit about opera.
But “Bohemian Rhapsody” is good.
Maybe it’s the result of hearing it a zillion times–
And a zillion times more at karaoke –
But despite all the preposterous leaps from one section to another, the recording somehow sounds seamless. Despite knowing exactly what I am in for, despite having every “Mamma Mia” and “Galileo” seared into my cerebral cortex, every moment still sounds like a surprise.
Every time I hear “Bohemian Rhapsody”, I still have to sit down, hold on, and ready myself for a wild ride… and what a wild ride it is!
“Bohemian Rhapsody” is a 9.
Whilst Queen were worried that radio might not play a six minute single, the Queen Of Disco was getting radio to play one that went for seventeen…
Meanwhile, in Disco Land…
It’s “Love To Love You Baby” by Donna Summer
Twenty-two orgasms. In 17 minutes. That’s an average of one orgasm every 46 seconds. I didn’t even realize that was physically possible.
But Donna Summer, a far more sexual being than you or I, managed to consummate this orgiastic achievement. She was able to do it again and again.
That was according to Time magazine anyway. The BBC was reputed to have counted 23.
I honestly don’t know what they are counting, since I’m not convinced that Donna has even a single orgasm on “Love To Love You Baby”, and not just because she’s faking it. Okay, maybe during that bit about three minutes in when adds a little laugh-cry to her groaning, maybe then she’s having an orgasm. And then she makes the same combination of sounds towards the end… after having a break for a few minutes to replenish her fluids. But that’s two orgasms tops.
The rest of the time Donna might as well just be having a good foot massage. Look, I’m sure Donna’s having a good time, but a little groan every now and then does not an orgasm make. This doesn’t stop “Love To Love You Baby” from being one of the most sensual pop singles ever released.
After all, two orgasms is still two orgasms more than your everyday pop single. This doesn’t stop the 17-minute uncut, uncensored version of “Love To Love You Baby” from being the perfect soundtrack to your own orgasms. Here’s the whole thing in all its orgiastic glory.
How is song like “Love To Love You Baby” conceived? Where does one get the idea?
It all began in 1967 when Serge Gainsborough wrote “Je T’Aime” for his girlfriend Brigitte Bardot, after they’d had a fight and Brigitte demanded that Serge write the most beautiful love song ever in order to apologize.
They recorded the song together, and – if I’m reading this right – practically had make-up sex in the studio.
But Brigitte was married and her husband – a German millionaire playboy who had initially seduced her by dropping hundreds of roses from his helicopter over the top of her house – got mad, so the world didn’t hear that version of the song. Instead it became a hit for Serge and his next girlfriend, Jane Birkin. This version of ”Je T’Aime” – which went to Number One in the UK in 1969 – featured one possible orgasm towards the end.
Then, in 1974, “Je T’Aime” was released again, presumedly in order to capitalize on the release of a French movie of the same title.
Seeing “Je T’Aime” back in the charts, Donna Summer turned to Giorgio Moroder and suggested they record a song like that.
“Love To Love You Baby” probably would have happened anyway, even if “Je T’Aime” had never existed.
It wasn’t as though there wasn’t quite a lot of sexy stuff around:
“Pillow Talk” by Sylvia Robinson, which featured quite a number of “ooh”s and “aah”s.
Not to mention Barry White. Donna often mentioned Barry White, describing herself as the female version: “I just figured men needed something that was comparable to that… there was nobody singing erotic music for men.”
Donna Summer was working with Giorgio Moroder because she was living in Germany, having moved there in the late 60s to perform in the Munich production of Hair – where, in good preparation for her later role, she performed a scene in the nude – and then stayed there to perform in Godspell and eat a lot of Weiner schnitzel.
Giorgio had come from a tiny German-speaking town in the Italian Alps, in a quaint little valley in the shadow of the Dolomites.
He dreamt of being a musician, and so moved to Germany, where they already had discotheques.
He met Donna when she was doing backing vocals for Three Dog Night; some say you can hear her in the background of “Mama Told Me Not To Come”, advice that she very clearly did not take.
Soon Donna and Giorgio were making records together, one of which – a dramatic piece of Europop novelty kitsch in which Donna has to rescue her boyfriend from a gang of kidnappers, but he dies anyway – became hot stuff in The Netherlands.
Then Donna came up with the idea for making a new “Je T’Aime”. And she came up with a catchy title for it.
But she didn’t want to sing the thing. Donna considered herself a good little Christian girl and thought there were plenty of other pop stars who would be more suited to the role. But they needed to make a demo, and Donna agreed to be the voice on the demo.
Donna dimmed the lights, she lighted some scented candles, she lay down on the floor and imagined that she was Marilyn Monroe for about three minutes. She was remarkably convincing. So convincing that Donna’s demo was not a demo for very long.
Giorgio sent it over to America, to Neil Bogart’s Casablanca label, who went ahead and released it without her knowing.
Neil started playing “Love To Love You Baby” at his parties. Depending on what version of events you believe, people at these parties were either dancing, or else they were having an orgy and doing a lot of coke. People kept on asking Neil to play “Love To Love You Baby” again. And again. And again.
Presuming the orgy story is true – and here at tnocs, we print the legend – Neil was becoming increasingly frustrated having to excuse himself from the orgy in order to start the record over every three minutes. Finally, at 3AM he called Giorgio up – it would have been daytime in Germany – to tell him to make it longer. He thought 20 minutes would be ideal.
It ended up being 17.
But Donna wasn’t aware of any of this.
Donna didn’t know what was going on. Despite having had a novelty hit single in The Netherlands, Donna didn’t even have a proper recording contract. Donna had her own problems.
For, in something of an unsexy and unrelated tangent, Donna had to spend two months in hospital for heart problems. Then she went on a 10-day cruise to recover from that. When Donna finally arrived home, there were dead flowers at her door. Donna thought that was odd, but not as odd as Giorgio’s girlfriend, Helga, appearing out of nowhere to drag her to go clothes shopping, before jumping on a plane to America, where, unbeknownst to her, Donna was now a big pop star.
That one-off Marilyn Monroe impression was going to be her career.
In real life Donna Summer was nothing like Marilyn Monroe.
Donna did not consider herself a sexy character. She saw herself as a bit of a jokester. When she was asked, as she inevitably was, whether she had been touching herself in the studio, she’d say “yes, I was touching my knee.”
But now Donna was being marketed as a sex object. Radio stations were encouraged to play the just-shy-of-20-minutes version at midnight, with listeners encouraged to make love to it. Whether radio stations actually did so, I’m not sure, but the suggestion was made. “Love To Love You Baby” was marketed as if it were a new porn film, as this article/advertisement placement makes clear.
There is zero chance that this editorial decision was unintentional.
Time magazine called it “sex rock.” It wasn’t a cover story or anything – Mother Teresa got the cover – but the term still caught on. Neil Bogart had to protest, “it’s not sex rock, it’s just music.” Some went further and called it “porn rock.”
Indeed it was about this time that an actual porn star recorded a disco-sex record, one that was almost as big as Donna’s:
… it’s true; Andrea True.
Like Donna, Andrea had to move to Europe in order to become famous, although in her case it was through the Scandinavian porn industry, eventually appearing in such classics as “Meatball”, “Head Nurse”, “Sexposure”, “Switchcraft”, “Deep Throat Part II”, “The Wetter The Better” and “The Way We Were.”
At some point Andrea found herself in Jamaica, filming an advertisement for a real estate company, just at the moment that the U.S. put sanctions on the country as punishment for electing a socialist Prime Minister. This meant that Andrea couldn’t take her fee back home with her. She had to spend it in Jamaica. Which she did, on recording a hit record, with lyrics that appear to have been inspired by her own personal life experience: “get the cameras rollin’, get the action goin’”!
Honestly, that might be the least sexy supposedly-sexy record I’ve ever heard. It’s certainly no “Love To Love You Baby.”
How sexy was “Love To Love You Baby”? So sexy that, when performing it in a tent in Italy, to 5,000 Italian stallions – and perhaps a smattering of women – the crowd tried to rush the stage, unable to control themselves. Donna was so spooked by the experience that she never performed “Love To Love You Baby” again.
“It’s not the kind of song you just want to throw out there” she explained.
We’ll look into Donna again in a few years when, once again, she’s feels love.
“Love To Love You Baby” is a 9.
Meanwhile, in Funk Land…
It’s “Low Rider” by War
In the beginning, War were a backing band.
The backing band for pro-football player Deacon Jones, of the Los Angeles Rams.
I have no idea how serious Deacon Jones was as an R&B singer – he already had a good thing going with the football – but his act included showing off his ability to do one-handed push-ups on the stage.
It appears to be something he enjoyed doing, to unwind at night.
Presumedly this is why his band were called The Nightshift.
One night, hit-producer Jerry Goldstein – the man responsible for “My Boyfriend’s Back”, “Hang On Sloopy” and “I Want Candy” – walked into the topless bar in the San Fernando Valley in which they played and he was blown away. And not by Deacon’s one-handed push-ups either. Jerry was so blown away that he gave Eric Burdon a call.
That’s the, ‘Eric Burdon of The Animals’ Eric Burdon!
Eric Burdon was considering giving up the rock game and returning home to the colds of Newcastle. At the very least, he was sick of playing the blues and was looking for a new sound.
Just as blown away as Jerry had been, he met with the band, who had no idea who he was, even after – I’m imagining this – he hummed a bit of “The House Of The Rising Sun” to them.
But they realized that a British rocker was probably a more promising prospect than a pro-football player.
And before they knew it they were in the studio, listening to Eric singing some nonsense about how he was strolling one very hot summer’s day, laying down to rest in a big field of tall grass, when he had a dream that he was in a Hollywood movie.
Not only that, but he was the star of the Hollywood movie, which he found hard to believe given that he was an overfed, long-haired leaping gnome. Then he ended up at the Hall Of The Mountain King, standing on a mountain top, naked to the world. Then the girls come…
“Spill The Wine” is up there with “Age Of Aquariaus/Let The Sunshine In” as one of the most hippie things that have ever happened. The flower-power vibes are only slightly lessened by Eric giving his new band the least free-lovin’ moniker hoe could think of: WAR.
For the first few albums, War was pretty much just Eric’s backing band:
As evidenced by their album titles Eric Burdon Declares War and The Black Man’s Burdon.
This phase of War’s career ended when Eric collapsed on stage during a show in Berlin, as the result of an asthma attack, and decided that now it was definitely time to get out of the rock game.
War continued. They’d actually already released an album without Eric before he quit, people just liked to hear them jamming so much.
War didn’t need a pro-football player or a washed-up British rocker as a crutch. War were so funky that people would hand-over their hard-earned cash just to hear them jamming.
So many people just wanted to hear them jamming that, even before “Low Rider”, they were selling a whole lot more records than they had when Eric had been the singer.
Particularly popular had been their “The World Is A Ghetto” album:
Which originally began as an idea their percussionist – Papa Dee Allan – had to write a book about a character called Ghetto Man, before then they got a little bit carried away jamming and forgot about the plot.
They didn’t forget the plot of “The Cisco Kid” though:
A TV show from the 50s, whose titular character – being pretty much the only Latino-looking face on TV at the time – was considered something of a hero amongst Latino kids.
This turned War into heroes amongst Latino kids. Or, the slightly older Latinos who could remember the show.
“The World Is A Ghetto” was full of jams. War just couldn’t seem to stop jamming. Their concerts were effectively three hours of nothing but jamming. Jerry set up a roving remote recording studio, recording each of the shows just in case they played anything that might turn into a hit.
“Low Rider” for example, came out of a jam that had lasted an hour and a half – that’s longer than “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Love To Love You Baby” combined!! – the highlights of which Jerry cut and pasted and edited down until it’s the three minute classic stoner jam that you know today.
War wasn’t just a jam band though. War was a jam band with a message.
They were always going on about how, although their name was War, they were actually all about peace, and harmony, and bringing people together.
That they were waging war against war, using their instruments as weapons instead of guns.
This philosophy would most obviously manifest itself on the silly singalong “Why Can’t We Be Friends?”, the single before “Low Rider”
“Low Rider” came from much the same place as “The Cisco Kid,” in that it was inspired by the local Chicano culture.
It wasn’t that they were intentionally writing songs that might appeal to the new Chicano fans they’d gained from “The Cisco Kid”, the members of War were living that lifestyle.
War wrote “Low Rider” because Charles had recently bought his own low rider. The drummer, Harold Brown, also had his own low rider.
War was well into the low rider community. They came out of Long Beach and Compton, pretty much Ground Zero for that community.
Low riders had been a thing in the Mexican American community since the 1940s, when, instead of customizing their cars so that they could go fast – like white American kids were doing – they’d customize their cars so that they could go slow.
“You don’t have to go fast”, explained one self-professed low rider, Ronnie Lopez, in the San Francisco Examiner, “be slow and cool”… explaining that when you drive slow you can check out the artwork on other low riders. And also, presumedly, girls.
The article features such prose as “here among the taco-strip, such machines are known as low-riders, they make envious men grit their teeth, teen hearts flutter, cops mutter and parents run for cover.”
Initially low riders just put bags of cement in the trunk to keep their cars low to the ground.
Until a law was passed – the Lay Low Law – designating how low a car could lay. That’s when hydraulics came in, so that the car could bounce up whenever the police passed by. Pretty soon low riders noticed that this looked pretty cool. That this looked potentially cooler than just riding low to begin with.
Bouncing your low rider up and down soon became the defining characteristic of the low rider.
By the mid-70s, the Chicano Movement had emerged, professing– amongst other things – a championing of Mexican-American pride and Mexican-American identity.
Low riding rapidly became a critical part of that identity. Low rider groups became community groups. Driving a low rider became a political act.
The hugely popular Low Rider magazine wasn’t just a whole lot of photos of cars, and girls posing next to those cars, it was a mouthpiece for the Chicano community.
But really, everything you need to know about lowriders and the lowrider community, you can learn from “Low Rider” itself.
“The low rider drives a little slower Low rider don’t use no gas now”
The latter was an important consideration at the time, what with America being in the middle of the oil crisis.
Just in case “Low Rider” wasn’t Chicano enough, Charles Miller recorded his vocals whilst sitting in the studio – you can tell that he’s sitting can’t you, nobody can sound that relaxed standing up – drinking from a bottle of tequila.
“Low Rider” is the low rider of funk songs, by the low rider of funk bands (whilst other funk bands might have a horn section, what other funk band featured a flute and a harmonica?)
A funk song far more suited to cruising in your car than dancing.
The vocals not so much a performance, so much as the sound of someone drifting off into a siesta on a long summer’s afternoon. And in case the whole thing is too languid, there’s always the tooting, the saxophone and harmonica, playing together, a hook that I’m choosing to assume is supposed to sound like a car horn, even though I know that the jam took place before they knew they were making a record about a car.
So tight were the members of War with the local low rider community, that they involved said community in the marketing of their own anthem.
They handed out free cassettes of “Low Rider” to the low riders in the Long Beach/Compton area, who naturally blasted it out of their low riders!
Imagine it; entire suburbs of low riders blasting “Low Rider” out of their low riders!
It was an anthem even before it was even released!
& Presenting The Official It’s The Hits Of November-ish 1975 Spotify Playlist… It’s a very sexy, funky, 70s disco party playlist from “Love To Love You Baby” to “Love Hangover”.
Mitch Hedberg was a master of the anti-narrative approach. This is my attempt to figure out why a guy mumbling one-liners about escalators and rice can be just as creative as a comic with a perfectly crafted 10-minute bit.
Ah, budding adolescence. Such a wondrous time of life. And by “wondrous,” we of course mean, “torturous.” Contributing AuthorChuck Small remembers a particular calendar year when it seemed that love was constantly in the air – and on the air
On the country side of the tracks, Linda Ronstadt hit with one of her more country oriented singles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xfVe8g1iHI
Galileo was the subject of a Philip Glass opera that premiered in the early 2000s and one by Ezra Laderman that premiered in the late 1960s.
& Presenting The Official It’s The Hits Of November-ish 1975 Spotify Playlist… It’s a very sexy, funky, 70s disco party playlist from “Love To Love You Baby” to “Love Hangover”.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/11sISyxXdXHlWxrKyvmgnY?si=6baa6110dd424c3c