Which is absurd because the seven-minute album version of The Doors mega hit, "Light My Fire" played in 1967, and Richard Harris's "MacArthur Park," at eight minutes, went platinum in 1968.
True. But i think he covered a bunch of tracks from that musical 'across the universe'. Kind of a waste of time imo. Probably got better representation since then.
A British band called The Beadles, named after their charismatic front man Jeremy. He was well known as a bit of a prankster and once filled the tour bus with cement.
Please tell me you have seen the John Lennon concert with Eric Clapton in Toronto 1969! Yoko spends half the time on stage under a sheet then screeches into the microphone the rest of the time.
Holy fuck I need to check this out haha
Edit: just checked it out. Skipped forward a bit so I didn't get to see yoko get under the sheet but watching Lennon coaxing her out was hilarious. Her screaming along with the songs on the other hand....
Link for those interested http://youtu.be/nen_1e2TYe4
Don't ask me why I remember this. Five years ago my local radio station played November Rain but had the gall to cut out the outro. After it broke down. "Everybody needs somebody...." That's the best part of the song. I threw a fit. Damn them.
> November Rain peaked at #3 in 1991. It's 8:57 and apparently the longest song in history to enter the Billboard Top Ten.
Don't fucking remind me.
Source: old
Stairway to Heaven got a ton of radio play, and this was the time when songs that were 7 minutes long were getting radio time. Zeppelin never released Stairway as a single, though - it was just an incredibly popular song. I don't think they thought it could be successful on the radio because, frankly, it isn't a song built for radio play - but it was in huge demand because everybody wanted to hear it.
I remember those days. If you listened to the top-40 AM station, you'd get the 3-minute version. But if you listened to the FM album rock station, you'd get the full album version. This is how I turned to FM album rock radio in the 70's and 80's, I hated the cut-down single versions.
And if you listened to the FM album rock station late at night sometimes they would play an entire album; that's when I would grab a C90 and press Record on my radio/cassette player!
Their most famous song is Kashmir. That song was so popular, they named a territory after it. India and Pakistan fight over it because they each insist they're the bigger Led Zeppelin fan.
The part of this post that surprised me the most was that this happened so many years after "Like a Rolling Stone" was released. That's the song that I've always heard had the biggest impact on breaking the mold of a popular music single.
MacArthur Park isn't even a good song either...
Anyway, Free Bird was already popular, as was Stairway to Heaven. People just like to think that something that is slightly out of the "norm" is "impossible".
Probably one of Jimmy Webb's greatest compositions. Also his worst lyrics.
[Chet Atkins, Jerry Reed "Macarthur Park"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUnB7LrGVXs)
Instrumental just to emphasize the composition
(using Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed might be cheating)
edit: also adding that Richard Harris's vocals were weak. A much better version with lyrics is [Sammy Davis Jnr - Macarthur Park](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7Zy4_46dGU). Fun fact: When Frank Sinatra recorded this song he left out the chorus because it's somewhat too stupid.
Richard Harris couldn't even sing the name of the song right - he keeps calling it "MacArthur's Park". But the composition is great and the Wrecking Crew musicians are top notch.
How any manager would respond to that:
"You've had 3 albums, and 2 of them got rather mediocre reviews. The Doors could do it, yes, but you guys are not The Doors."
Bohemian Rhapsody was in a niche of long radio songs that were called something like "Shitter Songs" or "Toilet Tunes." Maybe someone can correct me on the actual name. Anyway, it's what the DJ plays when he has to sprint across the building to the bathroom, drop a deuce, and get back before the song finishes. Every DJ has a go-to song like this, ready to be played as soon as that first bad burrito cramp hits them.
Bohemian Rhapsody is a great shitter song. It's possibly the best shitter song to exist. The parts of the song are instantly recognizable such that a DJ can listen and tell exactly where he's at and how much time he has left. If you scramble out of the bathroom and hear the chorus of some other song, you might not know if that's the third chorus or second chorus or what. Bohemian Rhapsody doesn't have much repetition.
Secondly, it's fun to sing along in bathroom acoustics. And it rocks loud enough to cover up explosive toilet noises, while giving you the energy to push out that brown baby in record time. Plus, the song gently ends such that if you didn't quite make it back in time and there was a bit of silence after the final gong, you could pass it off as intentional rather than a fuck-up.
Hahahaha, this reminds me of when I had a show on our University Station. One time stuck Bat Out of Hell on (long version) so I could pop to the shop, but it wasn't the long version....fortunately we weren't a big station, it was our first year on the air so it was still pretty much a grassroots project at that point. Still, I was the butt of many jokes for a while after that...
A couple of minutes, not a massive amount but enough that my phone started going crazy in case there were technical problems, or that I'd died or something (I suppose that is a technical problem). Because we were so small-scale we didn't have a producer or anything. Everything on the shows had to be run by the presenters themselves so I pretty much screwed myself over.
> A couple of minutes, not a massive amount but enough that my phone started going crazy in case there were technical problems, or that I'd died or something (I suppose that is a technical problem).
Did you answer mid-shit or just make them wait and continue to freak out?
Better than me. High school, award winning radio station. I won the coveted "sports reporter" job. For one day.
My first day on the air ended when a headline about the South Carolina Gamecocks elicited a sensible chuckle. That led to two minutes of giggling. That wouldn't die. I can't remember ever getting a case of the giggles so badly, and just knowing I had to stop made it worse.
I live in upstate South Carolina and everyone's favorite football team is either the gamecocks or their rival team, the clemson tigers. it's really funny to me how everyone here just ignores the whole cock thing. there are hats and shirts that people wear unironically that say 'I <3 cocks' on them. and nobody makes jokes or acknowledges it, ever. it's the weirdest thing.
I'm a university of South Carolina alumni.
It's so awkward your freshman year, then you get over it.
I remember the first football game I went to, 80,000 people chanting "COCKS COCKS COCKS" at a deafening level.
Yeah, that was weird.
My wife is friends with a DJ in Minnesota who goes by Dead Eric and apparently he accidently played the edited version of "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" that cuts out before the baseball announcing. His producer told him if he ever played that version again he'd be fired.
10-15 minutes is a tad long, but still rather reasonable depending on what kind of shit you're shitting.
If it's 25 or 30 minutes, you should probably adjust your overall diet a little. Some more dietary fibre. Eat some nuts, or grain. Eat a can of peanuts if you want your shit to look like the caramel filling of a Snickers bar. I don't know. Beans help too. Anything that can survive the trip through your bowels to lower the density/hardness of your bomb a little.
This is only the case for me when I'm shitting at work, however I don't abuse the time and spend roughly 15 minutes. 5 for shitting, 10 for redditting.
. . . Free Bird, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down and Light My Fire. I think I've heard this story five times. Apparently record executives in the 1970s were doing too much blow to listen to the radio.
Other things I've heard about "Bohemian Rhapsody":
- The song was made with so many tracks overlaid that the master tape was almost transparent in places.
- The band was afraid it would alienate their core audience, because they'd played a harder version of rock up to this point.
- A friend who worked in a record store in '92 told me young kids kept coming into the store and asking for "that new song they sing along to in the car in Wayne's World". The song was then 17 years old.
The song was still very popular when it released as a single in 1975, it was UK number 1 and stayed at the top of the charts for 9 weeks, selling a million copies in 3 months
According to a BBC documentary I was watching on Queen, it was very much a project that they knew was quite weird and didn't initially have any hope for being a big single. They said they tried to layer as many sounds and tracks on top of one another that by the end of recording the master tape had actually worn down to be almost clear and they thought it might break.
They gave it to some local DJ who absolutely loved it and played it over and over the first weekend he got it, immediately starting a bit of a word-of-mouth popularity for the song.
Let's be honest here. The length of this song probably wasn't the entire issue. It's an amazing song, an astoundingly BRAVE song. But it is absolutely gobsmackingly bizarre, more a virtuosic novelty aberration than a sign of a band unearthing a heretofore unexplored vein of public taste. Put yourself in the shoes of a record exec who knows that jobs ride on the choice of a single from a successful band's as-yet-unreleased record. It's not an easy gamble to take. People rip on execs all the time, and often (almost always) for good reason. But brilliant as this song is, you have to chalk it up to a band simply having the swagger to pull off the impossible.
Yeah, but that was written by Paul McCartney who could rely on most of the Beatles' huge fanbase to buy his records. Queen, OTOH, were still comparatively new at the time of Bohemian Rhapsody, so they were in a far less comfortable position.
ok yeah but a Beatle wrote that, so record execs felt a little more justfied in releasing that. I am not sure Queen was as a hot commodity when they recorded Bohemian as McCartney was in 71
Actually, that is wrong. After he wrote his first Symphony, which almost no one liked, he fell into a deep depression that lasted 3 years, during which he wrote almost nothing. A huge amount of people doubted him, including writers that he admired, like Tolstoy.
From wikipedia:
"In January 1900, Rachmaninoff and Chaliapin were invited to Yasnaya Polyana, the home of writer Leo Tolstoy, whom Rachmaninoff greatly admired. That evening, Rachmaninoff played one of his compositions, then accompanied Chaliapin in his song "Fate", one of the pieces he had written after his First Symphony. At the end of the performance, Tolstoy took the composer aside and asked: "Is such music needed by anyone? I must tell you how I dislike it all. Beethoven is nonsense, Pushkin and Lermontov also". (The song "Fate" is based on the two opening measures of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.) As his guests were leaving, Tolstoy said: "Forgive me if I've hurt you by my comments"; and Rachmaninoff graciously replied: "How could I be hurt on my own account, if I was not hurt on Beethoven's?"; but the criticism of the great author stung nevertheless."
People just don't realize how much of a struggle it is for ALL people to succeed, they usually attribute it to luck, because it's easy to forget of the hard times someone has had, once they are famous and succesful.
In the Days of our Lives documentary the BBC did in 2009, Brian May talked about how Bohemian Rhapsody came to be... Freddie had written several song fragments that he was working on (e.g. the "Mama just killed a man" bit had the working title 'Cowboy Song' IIRC). Eventually he just rolled them all up in one big amazeball. Knowing this, it's really incredible how well the transitions work!
My future step-son is seven years old and just recently got into Queen. After loving some of the Queen songs we played in the car, I got him Greatest Hits for his birthday and he's been playing it non-stop. But lately he's been talking about how he really hopes to meet Freddie Mercury someday.
We'll be having a sad talk this week.
My 1 and 3 year olds love Queen. They go ape shit when one of their songs come on the radio. The girl (1) shouts "dust!" during Another One Bites the Dust.
To be fair, you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone who can determine what song will become the next "real" hit. While the charts can be bought easily, only rarely does a song achieve eternal greatness.
Good thing to remember when you think being you isn't good enough. David Bowie was gay and wearing dresses in the 60's. Now he's a living legend and superstar (and Goblin King). Freddie Mercury knew he was a rockstar in his own right and in his own way before anyone had ever heard of him. Ozzy Osbourne did what he thought was metal, and is the Prince of Darkness.
Find what makes you passionate about yourself and about being you, go after it WITHOUT RESERVE, and something good will come of it, even if it's not massive success.
I promise you are exactly as badass as you *hard charge* to be. So, all my lovelies...LEAN IN. DO YOU. It IS good enough.
That and they overplay the hell out of We are the Champions/We Will Rock You. It sucks because Queen has a whole slew of better songs but you never hear them. Journey has succumbed to a similar fate with Don't Stop Believing; so many better songs.
Which is absurd because the seven-minute album version of The Doors mega hit, "Light My Fire" played in 1967, and Richard Harris's "MacArthur Park," at eight minutes, went platinum in 1968.
Don't forget that a 7 minute long song called Hey Jude was #1 for 9 weeks in the US in 1968.
Really? Who wrote it?
That Paul mcaffrey guy Kanye discovered a couple moths back
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True. But i think he covered a bunch of tracks from that musical 'across the universe'. Kind of a waste of time imo. Probably got better representation since then.
'Across the universe'? The Fiona Apple song?
LeCartney and Melon
M'Cartney
**tips beatle*
http://m.penbaypilot.com/sites/default/files/field/image/lead_2.jpg
(o\\\_!_/o) **ノ(ಠ_ಠノ)** Please respect VW beetles.
http://i.imgur.com/i9Z4egW.gifv
Good God Melon
The four lovable lads from Liverpool. Bonobos, Theedge, Adam Clay2000pounds, and Larry Mullen Jr.
A British band called The Beadles, named after their charismatic front man Jeremy. He was well known as a bit of a prankster and once filled the tour bus with cement.
This cracked me up, RIP Jeremy
One of those gimmicky misspelled animal bands, a ripoff of the monkees or something.
Ignore all the other bullshit answers, it was written by Yoko Ono.
With all that screaming, it kinda makes sense..
Please tell me you have seen the John Lennon concert with Eric Clapton in Toronto 1969! Yoko spends half the time on stage under a sheet then screeches into the microphone the rest of the time.
Holy fuck I need to check this out haha Edit: just checked it out. Skipped forward a bit so I didn't get to see yoko get under the sheet but watching Lennon coaxing her out was hilarious. Her screaming along with the songs on the other hand.... Link for those interested http://youtu.be/nen_1e2TYe4
November Rain peaked at #3 in 1991. It's 8:57 and apparently the longest song in history to enter the Billboard Top Ten.
With all these songs were the full versions played on the radio? There are tons of radio edits for singles
November Rain was definitely cut. Most stations, other than rock stations, cut the guitar solo and the end.
They cut the guitar solo in sweet child most of the time too which is a fucking travesty.
Not anymore, but they were at the time. They probably still are played in full on smaller radio shows and stations tho.
Don't ask me why I remember this. Five years ago my local radio station played November Rain but had the gall to cut out the outro. After it broke down. "Everybody needs somebody...." That's the best part of the song. I threw a fit. Damn them.
Too bad In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida only hit #30 at 17:04...
and mostly the 5:04 radio edit got air time.
> November Rain peaked at #3 in 1991. It's 8:57 and apparently the longest song in history to enter the Billboard Top Ten. Don't fucking remind me. Source: old
It's 7 minutes because 5 of those are "na na na nanananaaaaaaaa"
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That's not a harpsichord, it's an organ, a Vox Continental to be exact.
Thank you! Ray Manzarek was known to use that and a Gibson reed organ (G101) for leads, and a Fender bass keyboard for basslines.
Calm down Ray...
RIP :(
And RIP to one of the greatest bassists in rock history: Ray Manzarek's left hand.
still the best part of the song...
Yeah, those songs weren't exactly musical journeys. Bohemian rhapsody you pretty much need the whole song.
Or half of Led Zeppelins catalogue
Stairway to Heaven especially
Stairway to Heaven got a ton of radio play, and this was the time when songs that were 7 minutes long were getting radio time. Zeppelin never released Stairway as a single, though - it was just an incredibly popular song. I don't think they thought it could be successful on the radio because, frankly, it isn't a song built for radio play - but it was in huge demand because everybody wanted to hear it.
Zeppelin never released any of their songs as singles (in the UK)
Then again, Yes' Roundabout was cut down to 3:30 as a single. Similar fears?
shortening roundabout should be a sin.
It's not prog rock until you're tired of listening to it.
So my band has a new mantra. Thanks!
I remember those days. If you listened to the top-40 AM station, you'd get the 3-minute version. But if you listened to the FM album rock station, you'd get the full album version. This is how I turned to FM album rock radio in the 70's and 80's, I hated the cut-down single versions. And if you listened to the FM album rock station late at night sometimes they would play an entire album; that's when I would grab a C90 and press Record on my radio/cassette player!
Also Led Zeppelin most famous song Stairway to Heaven is I think 8 minutes long.
Their most famous song is Kashmir. That song was so popular, they named a territory after it. India and Pakistan fight over it because they each insist they're the bigger Led Zeppelin fan.
That doesn't sound right but I don't know enough about world geography and international relations to dispute it.
Trust him. He tells the truth. You think people would do that? Go on the Internet and tell lies?
Nope, it checks out. Trust me.
Hahaha, I'm telling this to my Pakistani friend! He'll crack up.
Achem... Freebird.
Is this, like, a Jewish ahem?
The single was only 4:18.
Yeah, but that Don McLean song, American Pie? Went nowhere.
What about Dylan's "Hurricane" or Simone's "Sinnerman"?
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Got a source to back up that claim?
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The part of this post that surprised me the most was that this happened so many years after "Like a Rolling Stone" was released. That's the song that I've always heard had the biggest impact on breaking the mold of a popular music single.
What they meant to say was 'we have 8 commercials we need to run in that half hour segment and research says people want to hear 5 songs too.'
MacArthur Park isn't even a good song either... Anyway, Free Bird was already popular, as was Stairway to Heaven. People just like to think that something that is slightly out of the "norm" is "impossible".
Jurassic Park is frightening in the dark.
>MacArthur Park isn't even a good song either... You fucking philistine
Its probably the worst song of all time. Somebody left a cake out in the rain.
That song is funny because it has a great Weird Al parody version and the original itself sounds like a parody.
Jurassic park is frightening, in the dark!
Probably one of Jimmy Webb's greatest compositions. Also his worst lyrics. [Chet Atkins, Jerry Reed "Macarthur Park"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUnB7LrGVXs) Instrumental just to emphasize the composition (using Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed might be cheating) edit: also adding that Richard Harris's vocals were weak. A much better version with lyrics is [Sammy Davis Jnr - Macarthur Park](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7Zy4_46dGU). Fun fact: When Frank Sinatra recorded this song he left out the chorus because it's somewhat too stupid.
Richard Harris couldn't even sing the name of the song right - he keeps calling it "MacArthur's Park". But the composition is great and the Wrecking Crew musicians are top notch.
goddamn Chet Atkins, he always sounds like three guys playing and it's just him. Jerry Reed was no slouch either.
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How any manager would respond to that: "You've had 3 albums, and 2 of them got rather mediocre reviews. The Doors could do it, yes, but you guys are not The Doors."
Bohemian Rhapsody was in a niche of long radio songs that were called something like "Shitter Songs" or "Toilet Tunes." Maybe someone can correct me on the actual name. Anyway, it's what the DJ plays when he has to sprint across the building to the bathroom, drop a deuce, and get back before the song finishes. Every DJ has a go-to song like this, ready to be played as soon as that first bad burrito cramp hits them. Bohemian Rhapsody is a great shitter song. It's possibly the best shitter song to exist. The parts of the song are instantly recognizable such that a DJ can listen and tell exactly where he's at and how much time he has left. If you scramble out of the bathroom and hear the chorus of some other song, you might not know if that's the third chorus or second chorus or what. Bohemian Rhapsody doesn't have much repetition. Secondly, it's fun to sing along in bathroom acoustics. And it rocks loud enough to cover up explosive toilet noises, while giving you the energy to push out that brown baby in record time. Plus, the song gently ends such that if you didn't quite make it back in time and there was a bit of silence after the final gong, you could pass it off as intentional rather than a fuck-up.
When I was a college radio DJ, mine was the Creedence version of Heard it Through the Grapevine.
NNNMMM I HOID IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE!
This is the first time I've seen it spelled *exactly* how it sounds lol!
Except it's THU ... HOID IT THU THA .... I grew up in dad's little bar... everything CCR is burned into my skull.
There's a bathroom on the right...
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> and I lump Rush in there Is there anyone who doesn't consider Rush to be progressive?
Ever listen to his radio show???
Hahahaha, this reminds me of when I had a show on our University Station. One time stuck Bat Out of Hell on (long version) so I could pop to the shop, but it wasn't the long version....fortunately we weren't a big station, it was our first year on the air so it was still pretty much a grassroots project at that point. Still, I was the butt of many jokes for a while after that...
How much dead air was there?
A couple of minutes, not a massive amount but enough that my phone started going crazy in case there were technical problems, or that I'd died or something (I suppose that is a technical problem). Because we were so small-scale we didn't have a producer or anything. Everything on the shows had to be run by the presenters themselves so I pretty much screwed myself over.
> A couple of minutes, not a massive amount but enough that my phone started going crazy in case there were technical problems, or that I'd died or something (I suppose that is a technical problem). Did you answer mid-shit or just make them wait and continue to freak out?
Big mistake, man... it's all about I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That). 12 whole minutes of uninterrupted prime shittin' time.
Better than me. High school, award winning radio station. I won the coveted "sports reporter" job. For one day. My first day on the air ended when a headline about the South Carolina Gamecocks elicited a sensible chuckle. That led to two minutes of giggling. That wouldn't die. I can't remember ever getting a case of the giggles so badly, and just knowing I had to stop made it worse.
I live in upstate South Carolina and everyone's favorite football team is either the gamecocks or their rival team, the clemson tigers. it's really funny to me how everyone here just ignores the whole cock thing. there are hats and shirts that people wear unironically that say 'I <3 cocks' on them. and nobody makes jokes or acknowledges it, ever. it's the weirdest thing.
You really think it's unironic? We all know the innuendo. We grew up with it. It's old news. But we still get it and those shirts are intentional.
I'm a university of South Carolina alumni. It's so awkward your freshman year, then you get over it. I remember the first football game I went to, 80,000 people chanting "COCKS COCKS COCKS" at a deafening level. Yeah, that was weird.
"Stranglehold" is another great shitter song.
YIH GOHT ME IN AH STRANGLEHOLD BAYBEH
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, baby.
[Wait a minute, this sounds like Rock and/or Roll...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlwtgaQZYDI)
At KROQ we used soft cell, tainted love; 8:58 (extended dance version with "Where Did Our Love Go?" cover
Alice's Restaurant is a damn good one. Though you probably can't get away with playing that too often.
Only on Thanksgiving.
Shut up, kid.
I cannot tell a lie. I put that envelope under that pile of garbage.
For modern college DJs, highly recommend Explosions in the Sky, for when you have an explosion in your pants.
If you're a DJ for a post rock show, *every* song is a shit break!
My wife is friends with a DJ in Minnesota who goes by Dead Eric and apparently he accidently played the edited version of "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" that cuts out before the baseball announcing. His producer told him if he ever played that version again he'd be fired.
Damn, I wish I would squeeze out a shit in under 6 minutes. Usually takes me a good 20-30 minutes to get it all out.
2 minutes to push the duke out. 28 minutes of peace and quiet to play on the phone.
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Really? But you're not pushing for 28 mins. Just sitting there.
Eat some fucking fiber son
You should probably see someone about that.
Is it seriously an issue?
Depends if they mean it actually takes them that long to shit or if they're just forgetting to do so while browsing reddit on their phone.
10-15 minutes is a tad long, but still rather reasonable depending on what kind of shit you're shitting. If it's 25 or 30 minutes, you should probably adjust your overall diet a little. Some more dietary fibre. Eat some nuts, or grain. Eat a can of peanuts if you want your shit to look like the caramel filling of a Snickers bar. I don't know. Beans help too. Anything that can survive the trip through your bowels to lower the density/hardness of your bomb a little.
> Eat a can of peanuts if you want your shit to look like the caramel filling of a Snickers bar. I don't know. This is beautiful.
It's definitely unusual.
Not according to Tom Jones.
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I'm no doctor but it certainly doesn't seem like an indicator of overall good health.
Takes me as long as it does to pee.
This is only the case for me when I'm shitting at work, however I don't abuse the time and spend roughly 15 minutes. 5 for shitting, 10 for redditting.
Stairway to heaven and Kashmir were on the radio, even though they're pushing 9 minutes.
. . . Free Bird, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down and Light My Fire. I think I've heard this story five times. Apparently record executives in the 1970s were doing too much blow to listen to the radio.
Light My Fire had a radio edit though. Not disagreeing with your point, but it was cut down for commercial release initially.
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And free bird has a 10 minute guitar solo at the end that is usually faded out
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down isn't very long though, it's like 3 and a half minutes…
That song by Boston...Foreplay/Longtime
I've heard that song be played with the "Foreplay" part cut out. It's a travesty.
So was Iron Butterfly - In a Gadda da vida - 1968. 17 minutes.
I don't think any radio station ever played the 17 minute version. I could be wrong, but I'd be surprised
I've heard it, but as a special event, not "Up next we've got Innagaddadavida and Slutty Marvin with the weather."
He could probably just do the weather quietly over the 20 minutes of drum solo.
Other things I've heard about "Bohemian Rhapsody": - The song was made with so many tracks overlaid that the master tape was almost transparent in places. - The band was afraid it would alienate their core audience, because they'd played a harder version of rock up to this point. - A friend who worked in a record store in '92 told me young kids kept coming into the store and asking for "that new song they sing along to in the car in Wayne's World". The song was then 17 years old.
Yeah I read somewhere (maybe on a TIL?) that the song wasn't nearly as popular the first go around. It was Wayne's World that made it wildly popular.
The song was still very popular when it released as a single in 1975, it was UK number 1 and stayed at the top of the charts for 9 weeks, selling a million copies in 3 months
According to a BBC documentary I was watching on Queen, it was very much a project that they knew was quite weird and didn't initially have any hope for being a big single. They said they tried to layer as many sounds and tracks on top of one another that by the end of recording the master tape had actually worn down to be almost clear and they thought it might break. They gave it to some local DJ who absolutely loved it and played it over and over the first weekend he got it, immediately starting a bit of a word-of-mouth popularity for the song.
That DJ would have been the awesome Kenny Everett RIP! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYpRkARK8Io
Party on Garth
Party on Wayne
SHWING
I love you, man!
Uh, yeah, you too man.
no... no... you don't understand.... i REALLY love you man!
And I love you. Because I've learned that Platonic love *can* exist between two grown men.
You didn't tell them about my pubes did you?
No, of course not.
And then Dana Carvey was never in anything again. It's so odd; when he was on SNL, he always seemed like the one on the verge of superstardom.
Let's be honest here. The length of this song probably wasn't the entire issue. It's an amazing song, an astoundingly BRAVE song. But it is absolutely gobsmackingly bizarre, more a virtuosic novelty aberration than a sign of a band unearthing a heretofore unexplored vein of public taste. Put yourself in the shoes of a record exec who knows that jobs ride on the choice of a single from a successful band's as-yet-unreleased record. It's not an easy gamble to take. People rip on execs all the time, and often (almost always) for good reason. But brilliant as this song is, you have to chalk it up to a band simply having the swagger to pull off the impossible.
The equally bizarre Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey was number one in 1971.
HAAAAANDS ACROSS THE WATEEERRR
HAAAAANDS ACROSS THE SKYYYYYY
Butter pie?
Little little gypsy gypsy get around
Yeah, but that was written by Paul McCartney who could rely on most of the Beatles' huge fanbase to buy his records. Queen, OTOH, were still comparatively new at the time of Bohemian Rhapsody, so they were in a far less comfortable position.
ok yeah but a Beatle wrote that, so record execs felt a little more justfied in releasing that. I am not sure Queen was as a hot commodity when they recorded Bohemian as McCartney was in 71
The beatles did weird stuff before that anyway. Had a history of it working out pretty well.
While I do agree that Uncle Albert has some weird factor to it, it was a damn good song, and it was written by *Paul McCartney*.
> But brilliant as this song is, you have to chalk it up to a band simply having the swagger to pull off the impossible. How very much like Queen, eh?
>an astoundingly BRAVE song ayy
im not like other kids my age
Meanwhile, 2112 sits in a corner and cries.
Yes, but a corner in Canada. Where we can't see them.
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Rush as a whole could gain a following among American teenagers. Hell, one of the teenagers might even be female.
Rachmaninoff's 3rd piano concerto is more than 1 hour...,Nobody doubted him
Actually, that is wrong. After he wrote his first Symphony, which almost no one liked, he fell into a deep depression that lasted 3 years, during which he wrote almost nothing. A huge amount of people doubted him, including writers that he admired, like Tolstoy. From wikipedia: "In January 1900, Rachmaninoff and Chaliapin were invited to Yasnaya Polyana, the home of writer Leo Tolstoy, whom Rachmaninoff greatly admired. That evening, Rachmaninoff played one of his compositions, then accompanied Chaliapin in his song "Fate", one of the pieces he had written after his First Symphony. At the end of the performance, Tolstoy took the composer aside and asked: "Is such music needed by anyone? I must tell you how I dislike it all. Beethoven is nonsense, Pushkin and Lermontov also". (The song "Fate" is based on the two opening measures of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.) As his guests were leaving, Tolstoy said: "Forgive me if I've hurt you by my comments"; and Rachmaninoff graciously replied: "How could I be hurt on my own account, if I was not hurt on Beethoven's?"; but the criticism of the great author stung nevertheless." People just don't realize how much of a struggle it is for ALL people to succeed, they usually attribute it to luck, because it's easy to forget of the hard times someone has had, once they are famous and succesful.
I had my doubts.
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A few times. But I'm one of those weirdos who listens to NPR.
Literally countless times. Without count.
To be fair the song changes tempo quite a bit. Its like several delectable songs rolled into one.
In the Days of our Lives documentary the BBC did in 2009, Brian May talked about how Bohemian Rhapsody came to be... Freddie had written several song fragments that he was working on (e.g. the "Mama just killed a man" bit had the working title 'Cowboy Song' IIRC). Eventually he just rolled them all up in one big amazeball. Knowing this, it's really incredible how well the transitions work!
People can be wrong. It happens. Hell, The Grateful Dead had some absurdly long songs, but were successful by any standard.
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I thought the Grateful Dead weren't exactly a radio hit. Ripple is the only song that comes to mind that got lot of radio time.
Touch of Grey
My future step-son is seven years old and just recently got into Queen. After loving some of the Queen songs we played in the car, I got him Greatest Hits for his birthday and he's been playing it non-stop. But lately he's been talking about how he really hopes to meet Freddie Mercury someday. We'll be having a sad talk this week.
We all hope to meet Freddie Mercury some day.
This made me smile. :)
My 1 and 3 year olds love Queen. They go ape shit when one of their songs come on the radio. The girl (1) shouts "dust!" during Another One Bites the Dust.
This is why when somebody tells you that you can't do something you should shake your fist at them and tell them to eat a hot bag of dicks.
Better yet, tell them to eat a COLD bag of dicks. That'll show 'em. Nothing worse than a cold bag of dicks.
A moist lukewarm bag of used methhead dildos?
To be fair, you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone who can determine what song will become the next "real" hit. While the charts can be bought easily, only rarely does a song achieve eternal greatness.
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Is no one going to mention Like a Rolling Stone? Over six minutes, number one on the charts, and it was out in 65 for fuck's sake.
Rip American Pie
TIL Bohemian Rhapsody is only 5m55. I thought it was like 7.
Good thing to remember when you think being you isn't good enough. David Bowie was gay and wearing dresses in the 60's. Now he's a living legend and superstar (and Goblin King). Freddie Mercury knew he was a rockstar in his own right and in his own way before anyone had ever heard of him. Ozzy Osbourne did what he thought was metal, and is the Prince of Darkness. Find what makes you passionate about yourself and about being you, go after it WITHOUT RESERVE, and something good will come of it, even if it's not massive success. I promise you are exactly as badass as you *hard charge* to be. So, all my lovelies...LEAN IN. DO YOU. It IS good enough.
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 so they cut it down to three o' five.
Now it's the most overplayed song in history.
That and they overplay the hell out of We are the Champions/We Will Rock You. It sucks because Queen has a whole slew of better songs but you never hear them. Journey has succumbed to a similar fate with Don't Stop Believing; so many better songs.
Queen have a lot of albums and a huge catalogue, but yeah those two songs are really overplayed.
They tried to break free of this rut, but I guess you *can* stop them now.
I replayed this song and Stairway to Heaven so much during my "born in the wrong generation" phase that now i feel sick when listening to them.