Roy Thomas Baker, Hitmaking's record producer behind some of the largest and most proudly polished songs and albums of the rock era, including Queen's list and the multiparte “Bohemian Rhapsody”, died on April 12 at his home in the city of Lake Havasu, Arizona. He was 78 years old.
His death was announced by a spokesman, Bob Merlis, who said the cause had not yet established himself.
Known for his technology expert and his discipline in the recording studio, Baker supervised the creation of the first four albums of the Queen, which caused a varied variety of singles in the early 1970 Show-Tune-Style-Style-Thyle through a Stentyle-Shensence of a densado of the plea. ” Climax in a hard rock section that inspired a head set in the movie “Wayne's World” in 1992.
“'Bohemian Rhapsody' was totally crazy, but we enjoyed every minute,” Baker told Mix magazine in 1999. “It was basically a joke, but a successful joke.” The song went to number 1 on the Singles list of the United Kingdom in 1975 and then reached its maximum point in number 2 in the Billboard Hot 100 after “Wayne's World” was launched. In 2018, “Bohemian Rhapsody” provided the title of the biography of the successful biographical one about the extravagant Queen leader, Freddie Mercury; In Spotify, the song has transmitted more than 2.7 billion times.
Baker had an equally close artistic relationship with cars, whose first four albums produced; Among the brilliant New Wave successes they created were “just what I needed”, “The girl of my best friend”, “come on” and “shake it.” The producer also worked with Journey, Cheap Trick, Alice Cooper, Devo and Ozzy Osbourne, among many others. He met Queen in 1978 to make “jazz.”
Born in the London Hampstead area on November 10, 1946, Baker began in music as the second engineer in the Vaunted Decca Studios and Trident Studios in London, where he helped producers Gus Dudgeon and Tony Visconti and worked on David Bowie's albums, The Who and the Rollingones.
He moved to Los Angeles at the end of the 70s and then became an A&R representative for Elektra Records, helping to bring acts, including Metallica and 10,000 maniacs to the label. At the end of the 90s and early 2000s, he produced Local H albums, The Smashing Pumpkins and the Darkness. Baker is survived by his wife, Tere Livrano Baker, and his brother, Alan Baker.
Asked by Mix what he thought of the artists who pronounce the producers to make their own records, Baker compared the decision of “someone who wanted to be his own lawyer in court” and advised against him.
“I think, even if you are a great producer who turns out to be an artist, and you are excellent for working with other artists, you should never produce yourself,” he said. “You still need someone else to make sure you get the best of yourself, because you can't be in two places at the same time.”
