It was also the first Queen single to be released with a picture sleeve in the UK. “Bohemian Rhapsody” is still the only song to have topped the UK charts twice at Christmas. 1 for nine consecutive weeks, a record at the time, even holding off the surprise Laurel And Hardy novelty hit “The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine”, which had to settle for the No. “Bohemian Rhapsody” became the band’s first US Top 10 hit. Queen watched the program in their Taunton hotel room. On November 20, 1975, the new video was premiered on Top Of The Pops to huge media and public interest. The band had fun making the video, and Gowers recalled: “We started at seven-thirty, finished at ten-thirty and were in the pub 15 minutes later.” The promo, which cost £3,500 to make in just three hours at Elstree Studios, was a superb piece of rock marketing, celebrated for its eye-catching multi-angle shots capturing Mercury in his favorite Marlene Dietrich pose. Queen also hired director Bruce Gowers to shoot a groundbreaking video, which features the band recreating their iconic pose from the cover of their Queen II album. The band were told the song had no hope of getting airplay, but they were helped by Capital Radio DJ Kenny Everett, a friend of Mercury’s, who played it 14 times in one weekend and started the buzz that eventually ended with the single going to No. Though the group’s record company were initially reluctant to issue “Bohemian Rhapsody” as a single, Queen were united in insisting that it was the right choice, despite exceeding the three-minute running time expected of most single releases. “I was green with envy when I heard ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.” It was a piece of sheer originality that took rock and pop away from the normal path,” said Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA. The song, which appears on the album A Night At The Opera, was finally released on October 31, 1975, and the impact was instantaneous. Something inside me told me that this was a red-letter day, and it really was.” “I was standing at the back of the control room, and you just knew that you were listening for the first time to a big page in history. “Nobody really knew how it was going to sound as a whole six-minute song until it was put together,” producer Roy Thomas Baker told Performing Songwriter magazine.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |