There’s something a bit annoying about listening to fabulously successful and wealthy people talking about how they weren’t always so fabulously successful and wealthy. Brian May and Roger Taylor do quite a lot of that in Queen: From Rags to Rhapsody (BBC4), which tells the story of their rise from nothing to world domination and that song.
“I remember being on the train with Fred,” says Roger. “Can you believe, he did use to travel on the train? Hated every second of it.”
“It was tough,” remembers Brian. “We were all students, we’d run out of student grant, I was actually teaching in a comprehensive school to make ends meet.”
Oi! You were lucky to get a grant at all; these days students have to pay it back. As for the teaching in a comprehensive school, some people do that for ever, to make ends meet (as well as because they want to, you’d hope).
Roger remembers he and Freddie Mercury had a stall in Kensington Market. “We used to flog old Edwardian scarfs, and Russian fox furs … don’t think Brian would have liked that very much.” Ha, that is quite funny, May being not just a stargazer, but an animal rights activist. They do have a nice rapport between them. John Deacon doesn’t take part, of course; he’s opted out of this kind of thing. He’s the real winner here, I think.
How much you take from these Friday night BBC4 music documentaries – of which this is a fairly standard one, chat and clips – really depends on how good the story is, and how much you like the music and the people involved. This isn’t the greatest story. Four people, with a lot of focus and self-belief as well as – undeniably – a hell of a lot of talent, achieve the success they deserve. They mainly got along pretty well. Freddie Mercury was extraordinary, and his tragic death obviously changes everything, but until then – which is the focus of this documentary – it’s a story of a band on a Soyuz trajectory (Don’t Stop Me Now was playing in Major Tim’s rocket as he took off, inevitably).
I enjoyed the 10cc one the other day more. Well, there was a proper split, a wedge driven right down the middle. And, though in some ways similar, I like the music better. Less preposterous.
