When Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody was climbing the charts in 1975, its multi-tracked vocals and mock-operatic bombast made it impossible for the band to perform the song on television.
True, they could have lip-synced to the song but having a quartet simulate a choir that had taken 200 overdubs to record would have looked risible.
“We really weren’t too keen on going on Top of the Pops and standing on those little podiums and miming Bohemian Rhapsody. It would have been really crap,” Brian May, Queen’s guitarist, admitted.
The alternative of having the show’s regular dance troupe Pan’s People gyrate to the band’s magnum opus was dismissed as equally preposterous and so the band summoned Bruce Gowers and asked him to shoot a video to