Bohemian Rhapsody

What was lovely for me was I actually sat beside Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian, and, uh, being a Guardian reader for all my life, I mean, this was a, I, I did something really gauche.

I said, "Can I take a photo with you?" And he, he said, "Of course." And he's a lovely, lovely, lovely guy, and I think he likes The Beatles, too.

So, uh, but he, I asked him his opinion of the film, and he said he, he said he thought the film would be braver with the AI, but it's just this stupid 10-minute sequence that looks cheap and tacky, and I'm turning people off the movie before it's even released, but what the hell? [laughs]

Would you, i- is there any redeeming features of that movie that you'd, um, you know, say it's worth watching for?

Back in January, I went to Kinsale for the, for, I did some reporting on the Beatle weekend in, in Kinsale, and it was wonderful.

I got to meet people like Richard Mills, uh, Mark Lewisohn, the Nothing Is Real guys.

Uh, of course you know Steven Cockcroft.

Yeah.

Rise Jones has been homeless in England for nearly a decade when he walked into a church on a cold night and asked if he could play the piano.

His performance of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody was recorded-

Ooh

... went viral, and suddenly the world discovered a remarkable musician who had been hidden in plain sight.

Chris.

Oh, uh, Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.

Captain?

I had Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.

Ah.

Dom?

I, too, have Bohemian Rhapsody by the Queen.

Okay, and Aaron?

That's a band.

Uh, so I'm gonna take, even though it's a very hard song to sing, Bohemian Rhapsody.

[laughs] Oh, geez.

Oh my God, dude.

So you can, you can vote on the posts tab or section of the Purple Daily YouTube channel for your favorite roster.

Judd winds up with Sweet Caroline, These Boots Are Made for Walkin', and Build Me Up Buttercup.

Dex goes with Mr. Brightside, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Man! I Feel Like a Woman!.

And I wind up with Friends in Low Places, Closing Time, and Piano Man.

Our mission, as always, guys, to uncover the truth, to confront the myth, to reclaim the story, and boy howdy, do we have a subject for that this week for you with our new Queen episode.

On this bonus episode, we're gonna get into the truth behind the Queen story and what was eventually put up on screen in Bohemian Rhapsody.

We're also gonna dig into some of the treatment that the critics gave to Queen, the band, not the biopic, the Bohemian Rhapsody biopic anyways.

Plus, we're gonna get into your emails, comments, DMs, and as always, a whole lot of Rosie.

This is the podcast for the musically obsessed, the outsiders just like you, the independent thinkers who know that the best history is the history that gets buried.

All right, discos, let's get into it.

[upbeat music] By 1973, when Queen's first self-titled album was released, a critic from the New Musical Express tore it apart like a wolverine breaking its fast.

He compared the group's debut with a, quote-unquote, "bucket of urine." A few years later, in 1975, when Queen released A Night at the Opera, the LP containing what would become Queen's iconic masterpiece, Bohemian Rhapsody, Melody Maker described that track, Bohemian Rhapsody, as a pastiche of superficial ideas.