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I made Queen into stars and then they wrote nasty hate mail about me

Norman Sheffield helped launch Queen to stardom, but the former manager claimed the band's song Death On Two Legs from A Night at the Opera was brutal revenge after their bitter split

[Photo of QUEEN]

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A Night at the Opera was Queen's biggest success to date(Image: Getty)

Queen's smash hit Bohemian Rhapsody reached its 50th anniversary over Christmas and 1975 also marked another turning point for the iconic British rock band.

Queen were already one of the biggest bands in the UK when they released their blockbuster 1975 album A Night at the Opera. However, that hit-laden collection proved to be the record that solidified the band's place in rock's elite circle.

A Night at the Opera was met with rave reviews, with numerous critics hailing it as the finest album of the year. Yet not everyone was won over by its wildly diverse selection of tracks.

The band's former manager, Norman Sheffield, was wounded by the lyrics of A Night at the Opera's opening number, Death On Two Legs.

Freddie Mercury's savage lyrics, which likened the song's target to "a sewer-rat decaying in a cesspool of pride" appeared to be very much directed at the man who had secured Queen's recording deal with EMI two years prior.

[Norman Sheffield]

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Norman Sheffield recalled his experiences with the band in a tell-all memoir(Image: Wikipedia)

"It was some kind of nasty hate mail from Freddie to me," Sheffield wrote in his autobiography Life On Two Legs: Set The Record Straight.

Queen had inked a deal with Sheffield's firm, Trident Audio Productions, in November 1972. Following months of graft, with the group perfecting their sound during late-night sessions when Trident's studio wasn't occupied by paying customers, Queen secured their EMI contract at the start of the subsequent April.

But relations between the band and their manager turned sour over the following months. According to Sheffield, some members of the group - particularly flamboyant frontman Freddie Mercury - had been reluctant or unable to grasp that recording royalties can take months or even years to filter through the industry pipeline.

[Photo of Freddie MERCURY and QUEEN]

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Freddie couldn't understand why he wasn't richer, Sheffield said(Image: Getty)

"Freddie demanded a grand piano," Sheffield wrote. "When I turned him down, he banged his fist on my desk. 'I have to get a grand piano,' he said.

"I wasn't being mean. We knew there was a huge amount of money due to come flooding our way from Queen's success. I explained that some of it was already coming in but the vast majority of it hadn't arrived yet".

Freddie moaned that the band was flogging millions of records, yet he was still stuck in the same flat he'd occupied when they first started out.

"The amount of money we'd invested in the band was huge," Sheffield said. "We'd advanced them equipment and salaries right at the beginning and had continued to pour money into them for four years.

"The fact the band owed Trident close to 200,000 (1.75 million today) didn't seem to register with Freddie."

[Queen]

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1975 was a turning-point for Queen(Image: Getty)

However, EMI executives sided with Queen and introduced them to lawyer Jim Beach, who successfully extricated them from their Trident contract by August 1975. The band then faced the task of finding new management and creating what would become their breakthrough album.

"By late 1975 I was hearing that they were making all sorts of derogatory comments about Trident," Sheffield revealed. "Then I heard a track from A Night At The Opera called Death On Two Legs.

He continued: "The opening two lines summed up what was to come - ''You suck my blood like a leech/you break the law and you breach', then, 'Do you feel like suicide?' it went on, 'I think that you should'.

"It was some kind of nasty hate mail from Freddie to me," he added.

Although he's never directly mentioned in Death On Two Legs, Sheffield sued Queen and EMI for defamation after hearing the song for the first time. He secured an out-of-court settlement.

Sheffield's discomfort intensified when Bohemian Rhapsody, the lead single from A Night at the Opera, rocketed to the top of the UK chart, reigning for nine weeks and becoming that year's Christmas Number One. It was a "bittersweet moment," Sheffield admitted.

Reflecting regretfully on his - and Freddie's - mistakes, he said: "We should have talked more. And I should have been more attentive to their feelings. By the time I realised things were badly wrong, it was too late."

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