Widespread Erroneous Info

Holly2003 wrote: Elements of the Bo Rap video were based on a promotional video for  a Beach Boys song (perhaps Good Vibrations, but I can't find the particular clip online -- I saw it at Uni a long time ago). However, becasue it was so memorable it seemed like it was first (at least in the UK -- no idea about the USA and rest of the world). The Rolling Stones, Beatles, Who, Doors etc were doing promo films long before Queen.
Holly you might be referring to a particular quality of both promos, in that they used a split lens to film parts of BoRhap. The Beach Boys film might have had a similar visual effect. These split lenses were used a lot in the '60's, to achieve a 'psychedelic effect'. The cameramen who shot Bo Rhap were obviously not that young and thought of using that effect to make BoRhap stand out and to visually portray the choral parts (many voices). 
Promo films of artists go back to the 1930's - I saw a retrospective of these promotional films at the BFI in London years ago (early 1980's): Bessie Smith made the earliest one and it would have been screened at cinemas at that time.
I think the band regarded the vid, in the same way they did the single: as a marketable product in itself. The way they interpreted the song visually went in yet another direction on the tour in 1975. They utilised 2 sections of the song visually to literally explode onto the stage. I saw them do this - and Fred was behind all this audio-visual sync -planning of the stage show.
Yes they were on tour and couldn't make TOTP to perform it but did TOTP have a policy then of making bands re-record the song if they were going on there to perform it? (eg. Good Old Fashioned Loverboy performance on TOTP was re-recorded). Over the history of TOTP they went in and out of this policy over many years. I can't remember if this was another reason why they couldn't do the show: they couldn't re-record the track: it was just too complex.

I very much doubt Kenny played it 14 times. I mean, the source is Roy Exaggeration Baker, the same bloke who'd claim Spain won the World Cup 7-0 or that there were two hundred yellow cards on the final.

There were many promotional music videos before BoRhap which were not just a performance film. What made the BoRhap video so outstanding and "new" was the  reception of the video. At the time people talked just as much about the video as about the song. It was exactly like Michael Appleton said in the Magic Years: people asked each other "have you seen the video?" just as much as they asked: "have you heard the song?" - maybe even more.  The reason why people talked so much about the video: it was just unbelievably good at the time. The images worked so well with the music and made a very strong impression (unlike "Penny Lane", for example). It was the most influential music video until "Thriller" was released.  In retrospect you can therefore say that  BoRhap started the important role of the music video. While the success of the "BoRhap" video was a lucky strike and could not be foreseen, "Thriller" was a carefully planned enterprise and the success could be expected.

I believe it is fair to say that "BoRhap" started a new era of pop videos.

I think it is the medium of recording that made Bo Rhap the first in something - before Bo Rhap, the music performance of the other bands were recorded on film whereas Bo Rhap was recorded on a video tape (presumably VHS tape) which could be duplicated easily.  Hence the term music videos.

Sebastian wrote: I very much doubt Kenny played it 14 times. I mean, the source is Roy Exaggeration Baker, the same bloke who'd claim Spain won the World Cup 7-0 or that there were two hundred yellow cards on the final.
Unfortunately I missed that particular weekend - I regularly listened to Kenny Everett's weekend show on Capital: it was hilarious. You'd have to get someone who remembered the shows over that weekend - the '14 times' bit I remember from being in the press c. 1975 with ANATO's release. Don't know if it was from RTB - but it WAS the sort of thing that KE would do... This is the man who got fired by the BBC twice I think... As he'd got the pre-press copy he probably was completely over the top about playing it so many times that weekend.

Darren1977 wrote: Used to have a copy of part of that show on audio tape, it was hilarious and it think that freddie made an appearance on there but don't know if he read out the weather forecast as was mentioned before some time ago. It was a very bad copy of another tape and was muffled, but Kenny was brilliant. Must check the attic for it  Yes, I listened and taped it at the time - had the reel to reel for years... Yes he did - he read it as "clean spells" instead of clear spells but I want to know when Fred appeared on KE's show the FIRST time? Because this was the second time he appeared - I missed the first time but someone at school told me about it the following day or so. He said that Fred had been on the show - it was the time of the release of ANATO.... Anyone know?

Contrary to Queen legends BoRhap was not the first single that broke the "3-minutes-is-the-most-played-on-radio" rule.

The first single that was almost 7 minutes long was "Hey Jude" from the Beatles. According to Beatles documentaries it was the best selling Beatles single ever - and it was years before BoRhap.

There were plenty of singles longer than three minutes before BoRhap, but record companies really pressured bands to write shorter songs or edit long ones down. They had a low opinion of listeners' attention spans and thought anything which ran long would cause people to change the channel. It was stupid, but it was very true.

Billy Joel's song "The Entertainer" reflects that this sort of thing was prevailant at least up to 1975, the year his (and Rhapsody) came out:

"I am the entertainer,
I come to do my show.
You've heard my latest record,
It's been on the radio.
Ah, it took me years to write it,
They were the best years of my life.
It was a beautiful song.
But it ran too long.
If you're gonna have a hit,
You gotta make it fit--
So they cut it down to 3:05."

Supposedly, this is refering to the radio edit of Piano Man, which was almost 6 minutes long on the album.

rhyeking wrote: There were plenty of singles longer than three minutes before BoRhap, but record companies really pressured bands to write shorter songs or edit long ones down. They had a low opinion of listeners' attention spans and thought anything which ran long would cause people to change the channel. It was stupid, but it was very true.

Billy Joel's song "The Entertainer" reflects that this sort of thing was prevailant at least up to 1975, the year his (and Rhapsody) came out:

"I am the entertainer,
I come to do my show.
You've heard my latest record,
It's been on the radio.
Ah, it took me years to write it,
They were the best years of my life.
It was a beautiful song.
But it ran too long.
If you're gonna have a hit,
You gotta make it fit--
So they cut it down to 3:05."

Supposedly, this is refering to the radio edit of Piano Man, which was almost 6 minutes long on the album.
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If I'm parking my car somewhere where I plan to be back out within an hour or few, I usually let the satellite radio in my car run. Because it has a large listening buffer that allows you to pause, rewind etc., it means that I end up with a big selection of songs to come back to and pick and choose from on my drive home or wherever.  While I've never seen actual track length trends over time, I can say anecdotally that  when the channel I leave my radio on is the 70's feed there is a noticeably greater number of songs for the same buffered time period than when I choose other stations. So it's clear that shorter track lengths were likely definitely a 'thing' in that time period.

Yes, you are both correct. I was only pointing out that  it was the Beatles who broke the "3 minutes single rule", not Queen's BoRhap. Like so often the Beatles had already pioneered what later bands wanted to claim as their own true novelty - like for example stadium rock :-)

On the subject of widespread erroneous information:

Tim Staffell did not make the alien model used on the Fun In Space album cover.

I'm not sure where this idea came from, but it is most easily disproved by the actual liner notes which credit Alistair Bowtell.

Here is the obituary for Mr. Bowtell:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2006/oct/13/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries

"I'm planing a new section (or at least a 2-page PDF article)"

PLEASE dont.....

I'm sorry not to please you (actually, I'm not, I couldn't care less). If you don't want to read the upcoming section (or PDF article), then I suggest you try something: DON'T.

I read somewhere or heard someone say that Killer Queen's solo was composed by Brian. It is, for me, the most thrilling moment of the song, especially when John steps in with the bass and the song gets quite groovy.

Is it true that he composed the solo? Such a beautiful piece of music!

I recently found out, that Freddie doesn't sing the C5 in the Glasgow 1979 version of Bo Rhap. It took a friend with some VERY good sound equipment, and some VERY good ears to detect it.

Now I have to beat myself!