18 December 1975 and 19 December 1991
I wasn’t born when it was first a hit, and I hadn’t developed any interest in Queen since then, so I knew very little of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ when it came around again after Freddie Mercury’s untimely death. I reckon today you wouldn’t even fill a taxi with the number of people who don’t know ‘Bo Rhap’, as we young folk call it. It has become Freddie’s signature song, his ‘Imagine’, even the name of his biopic. In the immediate aftermath of his death it was the song that became his tribute record. Why is this?
One reason is that it’s a someway decent track by an otherwise godawful band who made dumbed-down stadium rock music for Jeremy Clarkson fans to play on their car stereos. Another lesser reason may be its enjoyable flamboyance, which seems more fitting for the generally likeable and entertaining Freddie than, say, the knuckle-dragging dirge of ‘Radio Ga Ga’. Finally, I suppose they couldn’t very well have gone with ‘Another One Bites The Dust’; ‘Bo Rhap’ it was.
What of the other song on the 1991 re-release? Well, ‘These Are The Days of Our Lives’, written mostly by Roger Taylor, had already been released as a stand-alone single in the US a few months before Freddie’s death. Its lyrics suit the mood of a tribute record, and given the long and visible deterioration of most AIDS victims it may well have been written with that in mind. In that regard, maybe we can excuse it for being maudlin and conservative, with all its pining for “back in the old days long ago” despite the tacked-on title trying to swim against the strong current of the song, and for not having anything interesting or original to say about its subject matter. You can see why, despite the more fitting title, they didn’t call the biopic after this one. Stick with ‘Bo Rhap’ and remember him that way.
