Bespectacled balladeer Elton John knows a thing or two about the “absolutely ridiculous”. After all, he was once nearly killed by Iggy Pop when the intoxicated punk mistook the Rocketman’s primate costume for an actual gorilla and leapt into primordial attack mode.
He’s also written a few ridiculous songs himself – see ‘Island Girl’ for the harrowing, inappropriate detail. But when he was confronted by one Queen classic, he knew he had encountered something so crushingly unique that it would take a while before he could wrap his balding head around it. He wouldn’t be alone either.
Back in 1975, young Elton was played a test pressing of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. He was blown away by what he heard – not necessarily in a good way. “We listened to the song and I shook my head, incredulous,” he recalls in his memoir. “You’re not actually going to release that, are you?” he asked their joint manager, John Reid.
Elton had a point. The song was the first of its kind, effectively a song suite in miniature. Its plot remains largely unfathomable, and it starts as a murder ballad and ends with a guitar solo that could give Beavis and Butthead cause for a whiplash claim. How the bloody hell was that ever going to work?
Even Queen were sceptical. Initially, the song was slated just to be a B-side, but having recently enlisted the band to his management company, Reid was in the mood to be daring. Freddie Mercury never needed much convincing to join him on that front – see the Jazz album launch party for the harrowing, inappropriate details.
However, Elton, who had known fallow periods in his own career, was convinced it was commercial suicide. “For one thing, it’s about three hours long,” the pianist protested. “For another, it’s the campest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. And the title is absolutely ridiculous as well.”
All of these seemed like valid points. But Reid, acting on an instinct that Elton was never able to fathom, seemed proudly convinced that it was going to be “one of the biggest records of all time.” Given that the former EMI and Motown man had brought a plethora of hits to the public – and would go on to be pivotal when it came to ‘Candle in the Wind, 1997’, the literal best-selling single of all time – he had form in this area.
But how big a success was ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ upon release?
Now, it is a song that you couldn’t imagine the world without… not because it has perpetuated a profound influence. Instead, the inverse is true. Nobody has been mad enough to ever attempt a song like it in the 50 years since it emerged like an oddball from the depths of some weird romance between prog, classical, and hard rock.
It roves through a wild west of imagery, musical choices, and proud chaos. But upon release, perhaps it was simply too original to be fully reconciled. It might now be one of the most heard classic rock songs of all time. But when it first hit the charts, it brought to mind the classic Hunter S Thompson quote: “There he goes. One of God’s own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.”
So, it proved too unique to seal the top spot in the US. It ran it close, but the public wasn’t quite ready to send it to the stratosphere, choosing to carefully study it for a hot second before adding it to every wedding playlist or school disco in modern history. It hit a modest ninth in the US, and just about pinched the top spot in the UK.
But since then, it has sold over 6million copies, and became the most-streamed song from the 20th century following the release of the film of the same now. Yet, there are many of us who still can’t quite get our heads around the manic, ungainly beast.
