Song of the Day 7/23: Queen, “Bicycle Race”
This year’s Tour de France isn’t over, but the winner was determined this morning when teammates Wout van Aert and Jonas Vingegaard finished 1-2 in Stage 20, a 40-km individual time trial. Vingegaard, who’s more than 3 minutes up on pre-race favorite Tadej Pogacar, will wear the yellow jersey when the Tour finishes with its ceremonial ride in Paris tomorrow.
Even for a band given to histrionics for their own sake, releasing this song as a single was ridiculous, yet it actually charted — No. 24 in the US, No. 11 in the UK and Top 10 in several European countries.
Roger Taylor said Freddy Mercury came up with the idea for the song after he saw a stage of the Tour de France pass by their hotel in Switzerland, complete with the idea of the bicycle-bell section of the bridge. By that point in their history — the song appeared on their 1978 LP “Jazz,” which contained no jazz — the band was accustomed to Mercury’s outré ideas, so a bicycle-bell bridge is what they did.
Taylor also said that Mercury’s lyrics aren’t at all autobiographical — he didn’t much care for bicycling, and in reality he was a Star Wars fan.
Though the clip claims to be the original video, it’s not. The original video for the song featured 65 nude women, all professional models, riding in a mock race; despite judicious editing, it was promptly banned in several countries. You can see it on YouTube but it’s age-restricted.
My favorite part of this post is that there is a clean delineation between “one who rides bicycles” and “one who likes Star Wars”.
But this TdF has been a pretty good one. The storylines have been riveting, the performances have been astounding (especially the mountain stages) and it hasn’t been marred by huge pileups caused by inattentive spectators.
There have been several instances of protesters gluing themselves to the road. Their cause was largely omitted by the coverage, and the form of protest has been quite dangerous to the riders. I wish there was a way to get the attention without risking the injury or death of a cyclist…