In that month, Channel 4 showed a Queen documentary, and with nothing else to do I watched it. I didn’t know much about them before – the two big discoveries were that all these songs I knew all came from the same band (having a similar discovery with ABBA the year earlier), and that they’d kept going until 1991, I’d previously thought they just quietly fizzled out in the 1980s. I was enjoying it so much that I recorded the rest of the show…and at the end, they played this.

It was the first time I’d ever heard the song in full. I’d seen the occasional clip before (and a weird memory of it being performed by a load of puppets on Blue Peter for some reason) but that was all. The moment it finished, I rewound the tape back six minutes and watched it again. And again. And many many more times. Twenty five years after it came out I’d never known anything like it, and spent the whole of the next week telling everyone at school about this amazing old song I’d just heard.

Six years later it was one of the first songs I downloaded from iTunes. I don’t listen to it regularly anymore, but when I do, I try to get past its now-familarity and imagine myself back in 2000, wearing out that VHS tape until I knew every single lyric, and totally in love with every second.

The only thing that annoys me is that much later it kept off what would have been two of the most amazing consecutive #1s ever. But that’s for another time…

As social history, with their conservative attitudes about strikers, scroungers and national service, plus the interesting caricature effect of hearing great records being travestied, I do find them rather compelling, if not remotely good.

The following week, it did the same.

As opposed to selling 2 million in one week, which would cause any company cash flow problems to manufacture.

But I can buy the idea of Bo Rhap being about repression!

Also it was initially played, some weeks prior to its release, on Capital Radio (over and over) by Freddie’s next door neighbour Kenny Everett.

Two of the rutles. Pretty damn sure of that.

Anyroad: Bohem R was number one for ages, one reason being stocks kept running out and it kept having to be repressed. Now, of course, d/l’s mean everyone who wants it NOW can get it NOW.

Anyone remember the reviews of BR when it came out? Quite a morsel for reviewers to get their heads around on first hearing. Record Mirror said “It’s inconceivable that it won’t be a hit, but it’s the most unlikely serious chart contender ever… snatches sounding like Sparks and David Cassidy…”

Or this reaction the following year: “Yeah I listen to what’s out today… like for instance there’s a band called Queen. They made a record called “Bohemian Rhapsody” which for me was the answer to a teenage prayer. They got tired of what was going on and got into a studio and just stomped!” – Brian Wilson, 1976.

I liked Al Murray’s comment I read recently that Freddie’s gayness was viewed by the public in the 70′s and the 80′as a “national family secret.” It was obvious to everyone but they simply chose to ignore it. It was seen (correctly, though suprisingly) as irrelevant.

I think of Queen as the nearest 70′s equvilant to the Beatles- no bandleader, apolitical, timeless yet utterly of their time, able to dip their toes into any contemporary genre they chose(glam, disco,metal,prog etc) yet still sounding like no-one but themselves. IMO the description fits them better than pseudo Rutles such as ELO et al..