Verification of Biopic Facts of Queen 'Bohemian Rhapsody' – Rolling Stone



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Nobody enters a movie while waiting for a blank history lesson. Cramming the entire saga of a rock band like Queen in a two-hour movie on PG-13 requires making tough decisions. If great moments like Freddie Mercury's first concert with the band and their triumphant set at Live Aid should definitely be aired, there's simply no room to delve into every album, tour and everything they've gone through. during their two decades of career. Huge time periods must be shown in a montage or not even referenced at all. It is also difficult to avoid playing a little fast with the facts for dramatic purposes or simply to save time. That said, we always wanted to put Bohemian Rhapsody under the microscope to see how Hollywood falsified the historical record. Here are eight examples where the film does not correspond to reality. Be warned: A LOT OF SPOILERS BEFORE!

Queen's training was not so simple.
Bohemian Rhapsody Freddie Mercury stumbled upon a concert in 1970 by Brian May and Roger Taylor's pre-queen band, Smile, after a fight with his parents. He finds the group after the show, just minutes after their bassist / singer Tim Staffell has decided to leave the band. The drummer and guitarist are initially skeptical about the big-toothed unknown, but once he opens his mouth and offers an a-cappella interpretation of their song "Doing Alright," they get him into the group. In fact, Mercury was a longtime friend with Tim Staffell and was a big fan of the band long before he arrived. Brian May remembers constantly harassing him for membership, and they did not let go until Staffell resigned in 1970.

John Deacon was not the original bassist.
Bohemian Rhapsody shows John Deacon playing the bass at the first Queen concert in 1970, but he was actually the fourth bassist to have tried and he entered the table in 1971. They showed them playing "Keep Yourself Alive "at the first concert, was indeed a very early original tune in their repertoire.

Freddie did not meet Mary Austin the same evening he joined the group.
In the film, Freddie meets his future girlfriend Mary Austin about 30 seconds before meeting the band and becoming a member. Of course, the reality is much more complicated. Austin briefly dated Brian May, but did not enter Freddie's orbit before he was already the band's lead singer.

There was no record director named Ray Foster.
In one of the film's most interesting casting decisions, Mike Myers, almost unrecognizable, describes record director Ray Foster. His main role is to tell Queen that they need to create more commercial music. He also hates "Bohemian Rhapsody" when he hears it for the first time and refuses to publish it as a single, forcing the band to come out disgusted and throw a pebble out the window. The character is based on EMI leader Roy Featherstone, but he was actually a big fan of the band. It was however true that he thought that "Bohemian Rhapsody" was too long to be single. All the rest of the character, however, is fictional.

Freddie's boyfriend, Jim Hutton, did not start as a servant.
In the film, a drunken and battered Freddie passes by a waiter named Jim Hutton, after a particularly chaotic evening. Hutton rejects him, but they talk long into the night and years later, Mercury looks at him in the phone book and they start dating. In real life, Hutton was a barber who worked at the Savoy Hotel. They met in a nightclub.

The group never separated.
The film is the farthest from reality in preparing for their 1985 performance at Live Aid. In a dramatic scene, Freddie reveals that he has signed a $ 4 million solo deal and wants to take a break from the band. The others are absolutely livid and they separate. The truth is that everyone in the group was burned in 1983 after being on the road for a solid decade. They all wanted a break. The film gives the impression that they did not talk to Freddie for years, but they started working on Works at the end of 1983 and have never been separated.

Live Aid was not a meeting.
In the film, the band does not even have the right to speak when it was proposed to play Live Aid in 1985 and he had not done a concert for years. He never mentions that they released Works in early 1984 and then toured worldwide. The last show of the tour was eight weeks before Live Aid. They were extremely well rehearsed at the time of the show, but the film shows that they have to come together to get back into shape. This makes the performance more spectacular, but that's not how things went.

Freddie did not learn he was HIV-positive before Live Aid.
During the rehearsals of Live Aid in the film, Freddie reveals to the group that he is HIV-positive, but he wants to keep the information completely private and focus all his attention on the music. The exact moment when Mercury learned that he was suffering from the disease remains somewhat controversial, but almost everyone thinks that this would happen between 1986 and 1987. He certainly had no idea when the group was rehearsing for Live Aid.

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