Late September 2022, the moment we'll be recording this episode, is the moment of quiet reflection
and acceptance of how fleeting life is.
In the UK specifically, this September we celebrated the life and accomplishments of
a real modern royalty, a person who changed how the world viewed, and treated the life,
death and legacy of famous people.
As you can guess from the episode title, it will of course mean, to the true queen, the
only queen, the band queen. And to do so we will discuss two important queen videos. The
queen is sent to 1984's I want to break free and 1991's I'm going slice your mouth.
Press F in chat for the respect of the queen. Nah, I'm okay.
[MUSIC]
[Music]
Two very different videos, each with a very different vibe.
I Want To Break Free is likely the most famous and infamous music video,
with the band's members all dressed up in drag,
parodying British soap operas but most notably Carnation Street,
a concept proposed by the band's drummer Roger Taylor.
I'm Going Slightly Mad is a black and white surrealist and absurd collection of things
that just happened for no other apparent reason beyond the vigils that work well with the lyrics
of the song itself. Also surrealist and absurdist.
This collection of things include Freddie Mercury in a field daffodils, Freddie Mercury with a banana wig,
Brian May in a penguin mask, a person possibly Elton John?
What? What's this about Elton John?
I forgot to wish that sentence!
A person probably Elton John but probably not in a... in a gorilla suit.
Ah, okay.
Is there... is there... is there a chance it's Elton John then?
No, I think they... they say that it's not him but also it's a... urban legend.
Okay, cool.
Bit like when Daniel Craig was a Stormtrooper.
Um, Elton and I have been friends for a long time.
We've actually sort of said to each other one day we'd probably go in there together and write a song
but it's better being friends, you know what I mean?
A person, possibly Elton John, but probably not, in a gorilla suit
Roger Taylor with a kettle on his head, John Deakin as a court jester
Also, real penguin
♫ Finally happened ♫
♫ I'm slightly mad ♫
♫ Just very slightly mad ♫
And there you have it.
The big secret behind Queen tracks in general is that they sound like bangers.
And let's be honest, they are bangers.
But underneath the crowd pleasing, sometimes there are deeper back toys in meanings.
When I'm going slightly mad, reflecting the memory loss Mercury struggled with due
to his AIDS, or in the case of I Want to Break Free, a once released song got accepted as
a symbol of opposing unjust political systems.
But back to the actual music videos, I Want to Break Free is directed by David Mallet,
a very extremely prolific music director who worked on oh so many music videos, including
an old friend of ours, Dancing in the Streets by David Bowie and Mick Jagger.
A bloody classic, yes! While they're on the topic of Mallet, he was born in West Horsley,
Surrey. This is a fact that will make sense to a very small number of you people, but
let's not elaborate on it any further.
Yes, I did it!
For listeners at home, me and Neil have no idea what Delhi is writing about here. I'm
presuming Neil doesn't know, because I don't know.
Literally nobody knows beyond a very, very, very small group of people. I'm not going
to elaborate further, so let's just move on.
There's some intense googling there.
Oh shit, it's me.
The video of "I Want To Bake Free" is so well known that there's no reason for us to keep talking about it.
Instead, more interesting was the reaction and subsequent backlash to the video.
Not in Britain, of course. We might have big issues with transphobia in society in general,
but the UK also has a long running heritage of men donning wigs and doing drag for comedic purposes.
So the wink-wink, nudge-nudge of the video was widely understood in the UK.
Meanwhile, across the pond, people had an immediate knee-jerk reaction to seeing men in skirts.
"We can't play this, people think it's homosexual!" said someone from MTV, probably.
Citation needed.
So the video was effectively banned in the US.
In Latin and South America the song was well received,
but infamously audiences started throwing stones and bottles at Freddie Mercury
when he put on a wig and fake boobs at a concert in Brazil.
An extra note on this though, this may have been partly due to the song being seen as a
protest song in Brazil and they thought Freddie was making light of it.
The antics surrounding the making of I'm Going Slightly Mad were less of an antics
and more of making the best with a very bad set of cards while trying to have fun doing so.
The video was shot in 1991. By that time, Freddie Mercury had a very advanced form of AIDS,
with only a few months left. The video partially looks the way it does due to those constraints.
He had to have his face caked up in makeup to cover blotches and also wear bad clothing and many
layers of it to hide his physical state. He also wore wigs and hats. The video is also in black and
worldwide to help covering up his date.
In his statement at the weekend, Freddie Mercury said he hoped that everyone would join him,
his doctors, and all those worldwide in the fight against this terrible disease.
But despite all of this, he had a real creative input to the video and was even partially
co-directing scenes with the official directors from Duru Productions, who also directed all
the videos from the album Innuendo, including his final performance.
This will be a ride of an episode. Strap in lads, ladies. Let's get going.
Me first to be the first person to be one of the great states of the UK to
actually give my sorrow to the passing of Freddie Mercury back in the early 90s
I was only an infant but he will be sorely missed.
Yes I'm also very sad about Freddie Mercury dying, no one else.
I think we from, we can't rewind, we've gone too far.
I'm very sad that we can't rewind time and go back to the time when he was alive and creative,
the creative force he was.
Don't laugh, David! You have to accept his immense legacy in music and pop culture.
No, I'm just laughing because we're not talking about the Queen.
That's how much you mentioned the name, now you have to talk about it.
No, actually, October is the International AIDS Awareness Month,
when this will hopefully be released, David, if you manage to, if you don't.
November also works because he died in November.
Anyway, we're kind of like, got several months of being depressed.
Anyway, should we start with "I want to break free" or "I'm going slightly mad"?
I'm thinking I'm going slightly mad because it's a bit more of a sad story.
So we'll start with the sad one and then go to the happier one.
I like the sound of that.
Yes, let's not be depressed.
This episode will get progressively less depressing as it goes on.
It's really good. It's really fucking good video.
Can I be the L1 out?
Convince me it's a good song and a good video because I'm a bit sort of like,
what is this? Why have we watched this?
Why do we watch anything? Why do we watch Hadway?
It's not like... I think I'm quite critical when it comes to the stuff we tend to watch and talk
about and I don't know, this one I was a bit sort of torn because I didn't really get it, but in
fairness I was kind of looking at it with the glass half full. I didn't realize it was one of the last
sort of videos that I guess Queen made together. It's not the last, is it? The last is Days of Our
Lives. It's basically one where he barely was, he kind of sucks at the camera. There's a whole story
how they had to wrap it up with ASAP because he was more or less dying by the stage.
No.
Well, I can't convince you to like the song. It's a very weird song. It's not like a
conventional song. It's a bit of a, you know, it's a surrealist piece. If you vibe with it,
that's fine. If you don't, then fair enough. Queen have many other songs to like.
They do. Well, speaking of vibing, why don't we start off with the props that they use within
this video such as the kettle hat. It's one of my favorite parts of this video in fairness.
Is this going to be your suit, part of your suit for your wedding?
Maybe, yeah. I'm thinking of a, what do you call it, a coffee maker though instead of a kettle.
Because it's kind of two jobs in one. Looks good and also keeps me caffeinated.
Just drag your wine into your brain.
Yeah, I think all the props in question are like the very sort of euphemisms for being crazy. Like
I think my favorite one is things like "I think I'm a banana tree" and it just cuts down with
with a bunch of like a literal bunch of bananas on his head.
- Some, I won't say Wikipedia, but I think it was somewhere else actually.
They were explaining the process of writing and they basically spent the whole night just
making progressively more and more bizarre statements like kind of and yes in each other
all the time.
But yeah, by this point, the context was Mercury's 8th-prone dementia.
So that was the background, but he also wanted to make it a funny song to actually genuinely
have fun with this, because if you don't slap off stuff like this, what else do you have?
It reminds me of Aladdin and the High-Checkers' Guide to the Galaxy, which many things do.
I think it might just be in the radio play, actually, but anyway, it doesn't matter.
morning I decided to go mad and now I'm chasing a Chesterfield sofa through prehistoric England
is what's going on in the book and he's like he's like I decided to go mad this morning
it's going great! It kind of feels like the kind of the fun side of going a bit mad if
that makes any sense you know where you've just went fuck it I'm gonna embrace it.
Yeah and then you end up with penguins pooping on your sofa.
Yeah that was from a there's a behind the scenes video of this which is actually nice
because we don't usually get those.
I'll put that in the show notes and there's a good bit
where the penguin that you see running around
just takes a massive shit and goes over.
That's quite a big number there.
What means that massive shit just...
we're running?
Well, just a penguin's...
penguin's size shit, I don't know how big penguin shit generally is.
Right on the seat.
That seat's got to be real...
Clean that...
fucking seat.
It was a big one. I think, Antti, if you said in our Discord, it's...
Well, either it was the art department scrubbing it as Freddy's is pointing.
Saying, "I'm gonna have to crawl on the floor."
It's Freddy Mercury. And you mentioned earlier there was like another
who I presume is the official director from Doro Productions.
I presume that's who the guy is he's talking to.
No, there's two people. Doro is a...
-Pawthmont Tor, of the names. -Okay.
But yeah, they directed a bunch of stuff for everything from Queens, a new endo album,
which kind of makes sense visually when you see them.
I feel like the black and white and all that stuff is kind of a happy accident though,
because it kind of fits with the general style. I don't know if there'd be a name for that kind
of general style. It kind of reminds me of like Metropolis and stuff like that. So old German films.
Yeah, like Frankenstein style. Yeah, it's that bit where he talks about the screw at the very
very beginning just reminded me of that. Yeah, I thought that was the thing they were going
for. The founders are Austrian, you might not be
that far off. But in terms of like the props and stuff like
that, I think it looks like a decent amount of effort has been put into sort of making
them all up and stuff like that. The kettle head is the most impressive one, I think,
that looks like it's actually boiling. Because he's static. It might have been just
the kettle that was connected to the plug at the back and it was just us or something.
That's the only thought I had and it's literally just a literal kettle that it's boiling.
You know, it did just pop up on my screen here and it does have the plug in.
It looks like it could be right down his back.
So yeah, maybe the poor fucking... was it Brian May that had the kettle inside?
That was Roger.
Roger Taylor, yeah, poor bastard was just standing there with a kettle going inside.
I would have a question for both of you.
If you were going slightly mad, what item would you turn into in terms of becoming an
Is that a term?
A phrase that I quite like, which is mad as a box of frogs.
I've always just found that funny because a box of frogs would be pretty angry, I imagine.
I'd probably turn into a box of frogs and hop away in various directions and live my
life in the wilderness.
I like that.
Is this is the phrase or the term laughing your bap off?
Is that is that a familiar one to you guys?
I've heard laughing your arse off.
Yeah, like your arse or head.
But I always pictured it as like a bap.
So I think I would look like a burger?
Also if you went by lapping your ass off, your ass is just two buns.
Literally.
It would just fall off.
So I'm a frog, Neil is some former breaded goop.
A little baguette.
What are you, Neil?
I don't know actually, I should have thought about that before asking the question.
a person that they describe me once as a slightly angry lemur lemur lemur lemur lemur lemur
lemur lemur thanks. I still don't know why but that stuck so I would imagine I'll just
turn into a slightly angry lemur. Is there any good Bulgarian phrases for going nuts
or have you all just accepted it? It's just a fact of life. Several expressions that kind
in the same vibe. But the one that I know of translates vaguely as "I'm being called
by the horned ones". I think the context is of devils or something.
Being called by the horned ones. Caught. Being caught.
Being caught, right. Sounds like it could be a euphemism for something else though.
Yeah, no, I fully realised this. It took a second while I was translating it, but it's
literally what it says. Now, will it be a translate? You horny bastard.
Is it fair to say that if you were turning mad, you would turn into a giant penguin?
Well, I've had Brian May style, but actual penguin.
They're just perpetually sort of daft looking animals, sort of running around with their
wee wings going "wee hee".
And I think maybe one of the reasons I like this video is just because there's lots of
penguins running around and that's...
Yeah, it's true.
Do you think those penguins are still alive?
I'll have to what?
I mean...
I'm just curious.
Probably not.
What is the life...
I was going to say, what is the life shelf?
What is the lifespan of penguins?
How long does a penguin...
to Google. They exist for 15 years. Oh yeah they probably did. But they enjoyed their
fame while they had it. Shall we break free through some form of editing transition? I
haven't thought of it yet. Are we travelling back? We're travelling back to 1984.
I'm sure we all of us are... it's actually a video and so maybe all of us know Neo.
Yes.
Initial thoughts?
It's the first time I've watched it in years.
I remembered all the crossdressing stuff obviously.
Did not remember any of what I'm referring to in Freddy's Dreamworld.
it like teleports to this strange hedonistic land full of people in skin suits and not
skin suits like skin tights sorry and eating grapes and rolling over each other and shit
I totally forgot about all that.
Yeah I'm alright yeah I'm the exact same I could not remember I just remembered him in
a vacuum so in my head the song was just three minutes of vacuuming so yeah so that was a
nice surprise I like that sort of transition they've done when he opened the cupboard I'm
I'm wondering if that's like a saying like, I don't know, we're hidden behind the closet
or something. I don't know.
Going out of the closet?
I don't know.
Going into the closet?
Going back straight into the closet.
Don't have to come out of the closet? But you're going into the closet with me?
I don't know but I read an interesting article about how the juxtaposition between like all
this. Well in fact I think first we should probably talk about the EastEnders thing before
we get onto that.
Coronation Street.
Whichever one. I had no idea. Obviously I'm not familiar with the coronation.
Street cast of that time so I probably wouldn't have got it but however turns out the video
that all the characters are playing in the video are like Coronation Street characters
they're like a parody of them which I had no idea.
But even if you don't know this it kind of still works as stereotypical characters like
you know the you have the angry old lady and you have the mother that it's kind of a bit
too trying to look young and hip and the actual teen schoolgirl. Anyway yeah point is that
they were kind of still going to stereotypes which was even if you didn't know the coronation
street connection it still reads as part of your stereotype.
Everything looks like your standard British soul popper at the time as well. So interesting
bit that I think someone put in which I noticed as well when I was reading the Wikipedia page
as you do, sort of all knowledge. It quotes Freddie is playing a liver puddly in slag which
I thought was a little bit a little bit intense for Wikipedia. I was like okay.
It should be censored.
Because my experience of Wikipedia is that anything even slightly out of line is immediately
removed because I've tried to add stuff before. So I'm surprised that one got through.
I think that's a quote.
Oh right okay.
This is one thing I didn't understand though because Coronation Street and I asked my codex
who actually slightly more familiar with that than me. It's a shot in Manchester or like
the story is in Manchester so I don't understand why she's, oh sorry, why is he a Liverpool
it must be the character he's based on I guess but still I was just surprised that that was
on my computer.
I was like well okay.
[LAUGHS]
>> This jumped out to me it just made me laugh.
I was gonna say should we get to the whole topic about the continent who didn't understand
this?
>> Well the Americans.
>> Yeah that's it.
>> Honestly I'd always presumed there would have been a bigger backlash to it at the time
because you know dresses women, oh it's scary etc etc.
From what I was reading it sounds like in the UK at least because there's so much sort
traditionally in pantos you've got a leading boy or whatever what isn't it it's like it's
traditionally always oh no that's not the way around that's a woman dressed as a boy
dame i believe there's a lot of cross-dressing in like british culture especially related to
comedy you know you can debate either way if that's good or not but either way the uk saw
the funny side of it and i think it is funny to be honest because like uh freddie marquee running
around dressed a woman but still with his mustache i'm like i'm sorry that's just funny yeah
I genuinely think that Roger Taylor looks fantastic as a woman.
Yeah, those were rather shocking.
Yeah, I was like, what?
Yeah, I think he's the one who's like really, really committed to it.
He's just like, yeah, people are going to feel very confused when they see this.
When I first watched the videos as a kid, I thought he was a girl.
Obviously, he had a concept of men dressing as women for like comedy or whatever,
but he just looked so convincing, he didn't even question.
I was like, oh, he's just a girl there.
little did five-year-old nearly know yeah i think if you hadn't seen him before you wouldn't know
so fair play to him in the makeup arts and did quite a good job on him
but yeah i think in america it was seen as more controversial they're very puritanical country
aren't they like surprising of everything like nowadays you can be like oh they did the whole
like europe or drag race blah blah blah blah blah blah but there's only the more progress
i think it basically boils down to one they don't have the context of kind of like how that was used
for comedic purposes and also just general homophobia. Were you so surprised when you
found out that MTV just refused to play the video though? They just outright banned it? Yeah, I don't
know if it was banned banned but they just it was like soft banned by your mission of not trying it
as far as I know. And it's basically the song didn't chart nowhere near as high as other countries
because of this. So what was your thought about Latin America and their... The thing is this was
based on just one article. So citation needed again, but apparently I think you mentioned
in the opening that a lot of places that kind of became a political thing, sort of probably
unrelated to the video where, you know, I want to break free, but they kind of took that as I want
to break free from whatever oppressive government system, blah, blah, blah. Seemed like that gig in
particular where he got stuff thrown at him, it seems like it could, could have been partially
homophobic, but also could have been partially people just thinking, why aren't you taking the
song which we consider like an anthem of political unrest etc. Seriously, you know, I imagine
the song still used like political rallies and stuff today. That point I was making earlier
where he kind of disappears into his own I kind of interpret this dream dimension, dream
world thing. I read quite a good thing where they were saying that's kind of an analogy
for having a boring normal life and then just sort of fantasizing about going out and being
hedonistic and sliding over people and eating grapes and stuff like that. You know, as he
does in the video, maybe not literally that. I don't know. I kind of feel like climbing
on the sofa being fed grapes is pretty hedonistic. You can buy, you can buy in the two. You have
a boring life where you can come home and just do fuck all. But then also have like,
you know, some, I don't know where I'm going with this. Just have an orgy in the weekend.
We don't judge. What do you guys think of the, the sort of Freddy's dream world? The
bit of the video way to ballet movement for my tastes. I think I'm less keen on that.
It's interesting to see because like I said, I didn't remember it, but I'm less keen on
that than the kind of East Enders cross dressing that coronation street. Yeah. Sorry. They
just blend it to one of my head. It's cool, but it's just, um, I know and I think there's
something slightly disturbing about the kind of body suits are wearing. They kind of look
like they've skinned a cow and they've just sort of pasted it on themselves. They were
like, was this like National Palate or something? So I don't know what the attraction was for this,
I'm afraid. I think there's a real contrast between what, you know, the parody of the video
is and this. It kind of gives like a deeper insight to like, what his mind must be, because
I assume that these videos are probably mostly Freddy's doing, right? I don't think the rest of
the guys are like, yeah, let's go in and we'll have a mattress of people and Freddy can lie on
them and it can be really seductive and sensual and you know I get the feeling
that they just go along with it I think it's quite fun because that must have
really pissed the Americans off even more that's true it's like okay here's
here's a couple of men in drag and okay now here's the mind of one of them like
oh no it's almost like they you know they kind of look at it for the fear of
God I enjoy I enjoyed it I think I was it's one of my sort of favorite points
actually when he's lying on the the human slip and slide where he's just
like that's it's actually quite quite a clever idea because basically all the people just
roll over and he's on top just going I'm freddy fucking mercury canceled in America as long
as the music is still there and along with the people are still buying the music then
then it's okay when they stop buying our records and i'll say goodbye and do something else
become a strip artist or something yeah what's the music you would strip what music would
to you. All the songs I've written. Oh, come on.
Final points. I like First Mario is a surreal visual interpretation of what going mad in
a comedic fashion feels like. I quite like the fact that it's sort of a cheerful view
of going mad, which considering everything that was going on in like Freddie Mercury's
life at that time, that's pretty impressive. They managed to laugh at the problem rather
than, you know, laughing rather than crying, which I think is commendable. And I wanted
to break free. It's classic for a reason.
I don't know much of Queen outside of their hit songs.
I knew about I Want To Break Free, because who didn't?
It was, but it's fun.
It's campy.
It's pure Queen madness.
You know, it's exactly what it should be.
I really don't understand why America couldn't see it as a laugh, but that is their loss.
Yeah.
I don't know about the other song.
I'm going slightly mad.
I didn't know about it until the podcast.
I think musically it's utter trash.
It made me realize how much rubbish, in my opinion, that Queen actually released.
but you honestly can't hate on them. I think what they brought to the world and the world
of music is pretty legendary regardless what anyone else has to say.
So on this podcast we often discuss videos that try very hard to be quirky but they usually
miss something and usually that's what they're missing, the creativity and vision that those
two videos have, regardless of whether it's Freddie Mercury or the door production or
combination thereof and I frankly don't think Queen have a single real bad video
even considering the more you know conventional and boring videos like
crazy little thing called love. Yeah they're awesome go and watch them
especially if you haven't seen I'm Going Slightly Mad. My favorite parts of I'm Going
Slightly Mad has to be Freddy with bananas on his head. It's on the nose as
fuck but I found it funny. The runner-up is the penguin mask that I can't
remember which which member Queen had it but one of them has like a giant there's like
a big steampunk penguin mask and he uses it to talk to penguins and shit quite enjoy that
and I want to be my favorite part is the fact Freddie still has his mustache on when he's
in drag totally embracing the gag was fun and the worst part I think we mentioned this
earlier in the behind the scenes of I'm going slightly mad Freddie and one of the other
directors or whatever are arguing about the creative aspects of the film blah blah blah
well one of the art department is literally cleaning penguin shit off a couch and that
just had very close to home for me. I've been that person trying to get something mundane
done well. Fucking fucking people in charge are arguing about their bullshit.
The only person working on that set at that time, let's be honest.
I've got a runner up as well. The fact that me and my dad frequently argue about which
generation had the best music usually at Christmas and stuff like that. And every fucking time
eventually just brings up queen and I don't have her reply to that.
I know he's always telling me just has to look harder for better music now,
but you know, he's got a point.
Um, favorite part of slightly mad is the kettle on Roger's head.
I am convinced it's a real cattle.
We just noticed the plug.
I didn't notice the lead until, until we talked about it.
Um, if you have a part of, I want to break free.
I think it's ready lying on the pile of people.
Um, just seems like a fairy Freddy sliding.
It's like a very Freddy thing to do.
And I wonder where these people are today.
I wonder if they still use that as like an icebreaker.
I was once Freddy Mercury's mattress.
Worst parts for I want to break free.
I don't think it could do anything wrong in my book.
So I do not have a worst part of that song.
For I'm going slightly mad.
I thought it was a literal to I'm sorry.
I thought it was far too literal for my liking.
I didn't like the way the, you know, the battle lyric of something.
I don't like a screw.
then there's a screw, then there's a three wheeled bike.
So my favorite point from both videos is, so I already mentioned it's Puffin and the
Wee Child, I genuinely thought Roger Taylor in I Want to Break Free was a woman.
That's my favorite part, just the tilks, oh what really convincing.
And the worst part is, nope, nope, nope, doesn't exist.
Love both videos.
There is no negative.
Nope, not today.
And there you have it.
And there you have it!
Take a look at these show notes for links to today's video, links to Instagram, Twitter...
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Also, email us at gontofarcast@gmail.com
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And if you're enjoying your podcast, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your podcast
Play with Choice. As you know, that kind of actually helps a lot of things. Anyway, bye!
Bye!
Bye
(upbeat music)
[Music]
(door opening)
(silence)