“Yeah, he loved the whole thing,” says his bandmate, Queen drummer Roger Taylor. “You know, the house would have been full of all these decorations. He loved his decorations. And he had a great, unerring eye.”
Queen had special reason to celebrate 50 years ago, when their creation “Bohemian Rhapsody” changed the world. Number one in the UK for nine weeks between November 1975 and January 1976, it’s the epic that turned the group into global superstars and household names. It’s the third-best selling single in British history. And until Wham! reached the top spot in 2023 with the near-40-year-old Last Christmas, it had been the only single to be the UK Christmas number one twice in its original form.
So how would Freddie be celebrating the anniversary if he was still around? Queen guitarist Brian May grins and says, “I think that he’d probably open a bottle of Cristal. He would be very, very happy, and I can see that kind of wicked smile on his face, like, yeah, we did it after all, didn’t we?”
In this week’s Big Issue, Brian May and Roger Taylor reflect on the making of a seasonal classic.
We look at Christmas past , present and future
In the tradition of the greatest of all Christmas morality tales (maybe aside from the one that came out of the manger) we look to Christmas past, present and future to see how the key period sits. From Labubus to AI, here’s what we learned.
Revealed: The new drugs crisis hitting Britain’s creaking prisons
Prisons have rarely been more political. A wave of mistaken releases led justice secretary David Lammy to describe the system as “under horrendous strain” – and his shadow Robert Jenrick to post a video of the minister as a clown. But beyond the Commons chamber, something hidden is happening at the point of release: prisoners are dying within a single day of being let out.
