The rock anthem that Elton John had no faith in
It’s never easy trying to get someone to understand your musical vision. For all of the great anthems that have come out of rock and roll history, there have always been a few naysayers standing in the way, not thinking that the greatest songs in the world had the X-factor that would make people want to sing along. Each classic song has an uphill battle in store, but Elton John was not all that impressed when greeted with one of the greatest rock anthems ever.
Before he had even started to get his hits, though, John was already having trouble determining what made a hit in the public eye. During his first mainstream efforts with lyricist Bernie Taupin, John was known for writing songs with a mainstream appeal, only to become famous when he started writing what was in his heart rather than what he thought others wanted.
As John made his inroads to success on songs like ‘Your Song’ and ‘Tiny Dancer’, Queen were on the other side of England painting their first masterpieces. Coming out of the hard rock tradition, Queen had always operated under the veil of grandiose rock and roll, putting their all into making lavish statements on tracks like ‘Great King Rat’ in the early days.
While the band would score their first major hits like ‘Killer Queen’ later, Freddie Mercury knew he had struck gold when first putting ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. Although every band member would contribute songs to A Night at the Opera, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was Mercury’s brainchild from the beginning, containing three distinct sections that move in and out of one another to create an epic journey over six minutes.
When John first heard that the band planned to release the song as a single, though, he thought they were making the biggest mistake of their careers. Discussing the track in his biography ME, John thought that the band were trying to become too ambitious too quickly when their manager, John Reid, played it for him.
As John remembers: “We listened to the song, and I shook my head, incredulous. [I said] ‘You’re not actually going to release that, are you?’. He frowned. [He asked] ‘What’s wrong with it?’. [I said], ‘Well, for one thing, it’s about three hours long. For another, it’s the campest thing I’ve heard in my life. And the title’s absolutely ridiculous as well.”
Regardless of John’s criticism, the band were adamant about releasing the song as a single. When talking about the single in Classic Albums, drummer Roger Taylor talked about pushing the song to be released first, recalling, “It was definitely my choice for the single because I loved the original melody of ‘Mama, just killed a man’. I thought that was very strong. But it wasn’t obvious. In those days, singles weren’t supposed to be longer than three minutes. It had to grab you.”
Even though John may have been harsh on his friends, he did admit to hitting it off with Mercury almost immediately, explaining, “From the minute I met him, I loved him…He was just magnificent. Incredibly smart and adventurous. Kind and generous and thoughtful, and outrageously funny.” John would even perform the song alongside Axl Rose in honour of Mercury after his tragic passing due to AIDs in 1991. Though singles may not have been John’s strong suit in those days, he was more interested in the character behind the artists he liked rather than the sales.
