This is Queen The Greatest
in which we celebrate a song that was
not only a hit single with an iconic video,
but also led to one of the band’s
most memorable live moments.
It’s Radio Ga Ga.
Queen’s 1984 album, The Works, was
a perfect example of how the song writing
responsibilities within the band,
had evolved over the first 13 years…
[John Deacon] “In the early days,
it was Brian and Freddie who really
used to write most of the material,
but over the last five years, Roger and I
have started to contribute more.”
[Freddie Mercury] “I think the time has
come where we actually, in song writing,
we’re actually completely even.
Roger will come up with something like
Radio Ga Ga, and it’s perfect.”
[Roger Taylor] “On a Sunday afternoon,
my son Felix came in and he’s very young,
and he just sort of went
‘ah, Radio Ka Ka’, ‘cos he’s half French.
And so I just thought,
‘that’s quite nice’. You know.”
[Roger Taylor] “Sort of put the backing
track together and then presented it
to Freddie who really loved it.”
The song raced up the British charts,
and became a worldwide hit,
unsurprisingly attracting a huge amount
of Radio play.
However, ironically given the song's
subject matter, it was the video,
directed once again by the brilliant
David Mallet, that caught the imagination
of the MTV generation.
[Roger Taylor] “We had a killer video,
which we put a lot of work into.”
[Roger Taylor] “And the whole thing
just felt good and it felt of its time
and it felt a bit different.
Felt modern, and it was very fresh.”
Inevitably, some members of the British
press wanted a reason to dismiss it,
and accused Queen of incorporating
Fascist imagery – a notion that Roger
found more amusing than annoying…
[Roger Taylor] “That was so absurd,
I mean it was actually meant to be about
the film, you know it was meant to sort of
mirror the film, and the oppressed workers
and etcetera.
And the Nazi thing’s laughable really.
People will always find an agenda
if they need one.
And it’s a piece of entertainment,
you know, simple as that.”
If the success of the video and single
wasn’t enough, Radio Ga Ga had an
even bigger impact when
it came to the Queen live shows.
[Brian May] “One of Mallet’s great
contributions, of course, is
when the chorus comes you get a hand clap.
It was repeated electronically,
on the record, and so it sounds
like a double hand clap.
And Mallet kind of seized upon it and
made it a double hand clap done by
the audience, and it became something so….
Well I think it became one of the first
great proofs of the power of Television.
The first time we played this,
to a non-Queen audience at Live Aid,
everybody knew what to do at that point,
which is astonishing really,
so it has to be the power of the video.”