Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
Ghost leader Tobias Forge talked about the experience of performing the Queen classic “Bohemian Rhapsody” at last year’s Polar Music Prize in a recent interview with Tom Power, host of “Q” on Canada’s CBC Radio One, as per Blabbermouth. The ceremony, which took place in May 2025 at the Grand Hôtel in Stockholm and was televised live in Sweden on TV4, recognized the renowned rock group Queen, American jazz great Herbie Hancock, and Canadian singer and conductor Barbara Hannigan. Eric Ericsons Kammarkör (The Eric Ericson Chamber Choir) and guitarist Fredrik Åkesson of Opeth joined Forge on stage for the concert. When asked about the experience of performing a Queen song for members of the legendary band, Forge responded as follows.
[Chuckles] Hard, hard, hard. Now we’ve done a few of the [songs] that you shouldn’t do. [Laughs]
This is how he came to take part in the event.
We did play at the Polar Music Prize one time before [when Metallica received the prize in 2018], and so Marie [Ledin, managing director of the Polar Music Prize and daughter of the award’s founder, ABBA manager Stig ‘Stikkan’ Anderson], who’s the bigwig, the main character in the Polar Music Prize committee, and she’s the spokesperson and she the one that approached me the first time. It was, like, ‘Yeah, you’re friends with Metallica, right?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Yeah. They’re getting the prize.’ ‘Oh, great.’ ‘You wanna play?’ ‘Sure. No. What? Yes. But yeah. What? Uh, okay. Of course. I wanna be there. I wanna pay tribute, but what do you want us to do then?’ And she’s, like, ‘I want you to play ‘Enter Sandman’.’ Oooooh. It’s just one of those songs that you don’t wanna play, because it’s ‘Ace Of Spades’, it’s like ‘Smoke On The Water’. It’s the one song that you don’t wanna do, because it’s one of the most played songs, most well-known songs. Everybody knows it. Everybody can hum along to it. And back then, I said, ‘Well, I wanna do a rework of it. I wanna rework it and do a different version.’ And that turned out pretty cool. And later it had meaning that went way beyond that award show. But this time around she asked the same question. She was, like, ‘Queen’s gonna get it. I want you to do this song, and I want that to be the big one.’ I was, like, ‘Goddamn, I don’t wanna do that. I don’t wanna play that song out of all.’ I mean, I’m a good singer in my band. But I’m not Freddie Mercury, obviously, but there are these singers out there who can sing in any band, because they’re just great singers in whatever they do. I am not that singer. I’m a great singer in Ghost. That’s what I can do. If you want me to sing back-up in Stranglers, sure. But then you have to just take it like a big boy and just do it.
How was it on stage?
Well, the first thing that happened in the days leading up to it, was that I had been on tour. So there was not a whole lot of time for us to rehearse. And so me and that the band that was playing, and Fredrik, my friend Fredrik from Opeth, who was playing guitar… I invited him because I wanted to have someone there just to be part of where I come from and who’s my friend. And he was gonna have that sort of Brian May role. We had not played the song together. And what happens often when you play a cover, and especially when it’s slightly a little bit more of a elaborate song — I mean, that song is not super hard if you just play one part of the time. It’s stitching it all together and playing it in one whole — that is when it becomes hard because you have to really learn how to count, and you have to learn how to meticulously, almost like an acrobatical act, you have to sort of go back in time and, like, ‘How did they think here? Why do they do that bit? And, oh, yeah, why did they always have the operatic bit on track?’ Now I understand why. Because if you play the ballad bit and the rock bit and the ending, you’re good. You’re happy as a pig in shit. But if you do the whole thing from start to finish, that’s a big fricking track. But we had the [Eric Ericson Chamber] choir guys, and they were so professional, so good. And the band had really done a great job to sort of decipher everything and played with swing. And so to answer your question, it was a lot to think about, remember everything. Not necessarily the words, but, yeah, well, words [as well]. Funnily enough, I don’t know how many times I’ve sung along with that song. There’s always things that you’re, like, ‘What does the lyrics say there? I did not know that.’
