5425

Is this real life,
or is it just fantasy,
Caught in a landslide,
No escape from reality.

I was the music correspondant for my junior school class from 1972 to 1976. In that I, alone, went home for lunch (or dinner, we called it dinner and the school had dinner ladies), but anyway.

On Tuesdays, I would wait until quarter to one to listen to the top five rundown on Radio 1. They would play the top five, in reverse order, then before the number 1 would do the top 40 rundown.

School restarted at one fifteen, which meant I could stay home, listen to numbers 5 to 2, the rundown and the opening bars to the number 1 and scamper back to school along Hadleigh Drive, up Woods Loke West, along the passageway that lead to the school, and be in class as the bell went.

And then along came Freddie.

We had the radio on all the time at home, Radio 1, as there was little else if you wanted to listen to pop or whatever that was modern. And, I cannot remember Bohemian Rhapsody being played before. These were the days that a record entering the charts in the top ten were almost unheard of. Slade did in 1973, I think twice, but no act had a record go straight to number 1 again until The Jam and Going Underground in 1980.

So, in at number five was Bohemian Rhapsody.

It was twice as long as all the other singles at the time, and the DJ played pretty much all of it.

I had no idea what Bohemia was, of what a rhapsody was either, for that matter. And I had to remember these two new words for as long as I got to school to tell my friends who would be waiting.

The words left my brain like a butterfly leaving a flower, I couldn't remember the title. I had to say some long record by a group I had not heard of before, Queen had gone in at number 1. I seem to remember it as summer, and running to school trying to beat the bell for start of afternoon lessons, but it was released on the last day of October, so was into Novemeber when it crashed into the charts.

By Thursday we were waiting for Top of the Pops so we could see this band play, but instead of the band miming in the studio, there was a video, the one we all know, with the three parts of the song, special effects and fancy, for then, video effects.

And it stayed arund for like ages. Number 1 for nine weeks, so much so even the BBC got bored and added their own effects to the video.

And that would have been that, the song become something of a kitch classic, a guilty pleasure and would really only get played on Simon Bates' Golden Hour, rarely on other shows. And then came Mike Myers and the song took on a whole new life for a new generation.

For me, it will always remind me of that Tuesday lunchtime, looking at the clock and wishing the bloody song was over so the rest of the top 5 would be played so I could get to school without being later.

Nothing really matters, Anyone can see,
Nothing really matters,
Nothing really matters to me
Any way the wind blows...