Queen’s first manager, Norman Sheffield, write bitterly of his sense of betrayal after hearing himself described as a ‘sewer rat’ on their breakthrough album

Queen became one of the biggest bands in history (Image: Getty)

Queen’s smash hit Bohemian Rhapsody reached its 50th anniversary over Christmas and 2025 also marks 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. But that hit-packed collection proved to be the record that cemented the band’s position in rock’s top tier.

A Night at the Opera was showered with glowing reviews, with more than one critic praising it as the best album of the year. But not everyone was charmed by its wildly eclectic collection of songs.

In particular the band’s former manager, Norman Sheffield, was stung by the lyrics of A Night at the Opera’s opening track, Death On Two Legs.

Freddie Mercury’s brutal lyrics, which compared the song’s subject to “a sewer-rat decaying in a cesspool of pride” seemed to be very much aimed at the man that had secured Queen’s recording contract with EMI two years earlier.

“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 signed with Sheffield’s company, Trident Audio Productions, in November 1972.  After months of work, with the band honing their craft in overnight sessions when Trident’s studio wasn’t booked by commercial clients, Queen signed with EMI at the beginning of the following April.

But relations between band and manager soured over the following months. According to Sheffield, some members of the group – in particular flamboyant frontman Freddie Mercury – had been unwilling or unable to understand that recording royalties can take months or even years to make their way through the industry pipeline.

“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 couldn’t understand why he wasn’t richer, Sheffield said (Image: Getty)

Freddie complained that the band was selling millions of records, and yet he was still living in the same flat he’d been in when they started.

“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.”

But EMI executives saw Queen’s side of the argument, and put the band in contact with lawyer Jim Beach, who managed to free them from their Trident contract. By August 1975 Beach had succeeded in extricating Queen from Trident’s grasp and the four musicians had the job of finding new management as well as crafting what was to become their breakthrough album.

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

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

He added: “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.”

Though he’s never explicitly named in Death On Two Legs, after hearing the song for the first time, Sheffield sued Queen and EMI for defamation.  He secured an out-of-court settlement.

Sheffield’s discomfort was only sharpened when Bohemian Rhapsody, the lead single from A Night at the Opera, stormed into the UK chart to begin a nine-week reign at the top spot and becoming that year’s Christmas Number One.

It was a “bittersweet moment,” Sheffield said. Ruefully reflecting 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.”