Queen's 1975 studio album A Night at the Opera — which instantly became a classic and includes its highest-selling song, "Bohemian Rhapsody" — was nowhere to be found while perusing several Seattle record stores. But longtime Capitol Hill scribe Gillian G. Gaar remembers what the city's been missing. Her book Queen & A Night at the Opera: 50 Years, published by Quarto Motorbooks, drops on April 1.

It deftly lays out the band's past, present, and future around the album that exploded them into orbit, beginning with the four personalities — or polarities — at work. Roger Taylor is the natural-born star but constantly stuck on ways to project his fabulousness from behind the drum kit, flailing, wailing, and penning the mechanophillic (not autophilic) "I'm in Love with My Car." Guitarist Brian May (who also had a doctorate in astrophysics) built his own guitars but always had a little trouble looking the audience in the eye. Bassist John Deacon was the quiet one, happy to plunk and stay out of the others' epic screaming matches.

Last but not least was singer Freddie Mercury — the man, the myth, the mustache, the mystery. Mercury didn't discuss his early life as bucktoothed, bumbling Farrokh Bulsara, before he changed his name. His queerness was off the table, consigned to those who knew the right angle to squint.

"I can't cook," Freddie giggled to an interviewer. "I'm not very good at being a housewife."

But God — or the equivalent — gave him the voice of a god and an imp's humor. He'd pass archly on love-life questions, but he'd pose wearing T-shirts from London's Heaven bar and NYC's Mineshaft.

Even today, "Bohemian Rhapsody" remains the song boomers, millennials, and gen alphas know. It belongs, after all, to the radio and the turntable, but also to the Muppets, the passionate souls of the AMC Pacer in Wayne's World, and more lately to Adam Lambert, who tours with May and Taylor.

Gaar's book holds all you need to know: the early years, struggles, poverty, management betrayals, recording hassles, resounding triumphs over everything, exhaustion included.

The hardcover book with an assortment of illustrations is available for $50. For more information, visit https://www.quarto.com/books/9780760388426/queen-a-night-at-the-opera.