Queen will release a limited-edition 12-inch vinyl version of “Bohemian Rhapsody” on November 27 in celebration of the song’s 40th anniversary, and in conjunction with the 2015 Record Store Day Black Friday campaign. There’s the drink Bohemian Raspberry, by the Jones Soda Company; the song “Rap, Soda and Bohemias” by the Spanish group Molotov; and in Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s book Good Omens, the devilish character Crowley plays it in his auto constantly, even quoting the lyrics in times of trouble, most specifically “Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me…” But for now, check out our roundup of the best covers and parodies of the iconic tune.
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May said: “I didn’t know Mike Myers but he rang me up out of the blue and said: ‘We’ve done this incredible sequence in our new film – can we have your approval?” “It always seemed like a bit of a travesty”, he said of the series. These days, you get the Foo Fighters doing something similar on “Learn to Fly” and everybody is rollicking with laughter, but in those days there was a real feeling of shock and horror in a few of those media people and it absolutely damaged the record. He was confined to his bed, but I took it round and played it to him and he loved it. Strangely enough, the humour in it was quite close to our own. But we weren’t that shocked, because we were used to that way of working and we’d done things like “My Fairy King” on the first album, and lots of complexity on Queen II, so it wasn’t unusual for Freddie to come in and have this rather baroque-sounding backing track and wondering what was going to go on top.
There’s a huge irony there – because there was a time when we completely owned America and we would tour there every year. You’ve got two events there – you’ve got Wayne’s World and Freddie dying which, looking back on it, is the oddest thing and it did become a sort of rebirth for us in the States. And, in a sense, that was what happened. But no air guitar.
“I do think Freddie enjoyed the fact there were so many interpretations of the lyrics”, he said.
“In the line “Mama, I just killed a man” he’s killed the old Freddie, his former image”, Rice told the Daily Mail. It’s an outlandish song. “Do I think he managed it?” That’s not me trying to be evasive.
“It had never occurred to me, but “Bohemian Rhapsody” was Freddie’s coming-out song, written in a time when he wasn’t able to be honest and open about his sexuality”.
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This Hammersmith Christmas concert was the culmination of the 26-date “Queen invite you to A Night At The Opera United Kingdom tour of 1975, and was the last show of a very eventful and exciting year for Queen”.
