Once again, the Song of the Week was inspired by my grandson, Ryder.  He is 17 months old, and one of the words he has learned over the past few weeks is “bicycle.”  He pronounces it as bicycle, with the emphasis strongly on the first syllable, reminding me of the song “Bicycle Race” by Queen, in which the beginning of the chorus is sung as “Biiiiicycle, biiiiicycle.”  I played the song for Ryder and he liked it.

To describe Queen, let me quote from a book by Phil Dellio and Scott Woods, entitled I Wanna Be Sedated (1993), at 84-85¹:

“Queen [was] a travelling theatre-in-the round troupe where art rock met glam, metal commingled with La Boheme, orthodoxy gave way to orthodontics, and Charles Darwin’s theories were continually brought into question.  Singer Freddie Mercury was the group’s main attraction, and certainly there were few pop stars in the seventies who could match his wry, extravagant, pan-sexual sense of human tragedy:  ‘Life is a cabaret,’ Freddie’s every gesture seemed to sigh, ‘I wanna ride it all night long.’  Musically, Queen was all over the place, dabbling in opera (Somebody To Love,’ 1976), Steam-like hockey chants (‘We Will Rock You,’ 1977), exciting hillbilly simulations (‘Crazy Little thing Called Love,’ 1979), and whatever else satisfied Freddie’s insatiable appetite for adventure.  Their summit achievement, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (1976), has inspired one generation of teenagers after another to bob rhythmically during the metal part and gesticulate wildly during the Italian part.”

“Bicycle Race” was recorded for the band’s 1978 album, Jazz, and released as a so-called “double-A side single with the song “Fat Bottomed Girls.”  I don’t believe it is a very complicated song.  I think it is the same basic song as that written by Arlo Guthrie – who wanted neither a tickle nor a pickle, but just wanted to ride his motorsickle – a dozen years earlier; or by Todd Rundgren – who didn’t want to work or play, he just wanted to bang on his drum all day – five years later.

The song could, for all I know, have been written about my friend and former co-worker, Greg Grossman, who is very intelligent and a successful escrow officer for a major title company, but would just as soon ignore all of that and jump on his road bike or his mountain bike and ride off for hours  – except in the Winter when he would just as soon serve on the ski patrol at Loveland Basin Ski Area or climb one of Colorado’s 14ers so he can ski down.  As I say, he can do those things for hours – or until he winds up in the hospital (which has happened), whichever comes first.  Such is the mindset of the narrator of this “Bicycle Race” song.

In other words, the narrator of the song finds such enjoyment in bicycle riding that although he is aware of the cultural and religious issues of the world at large, he is happy to ignore them and simply ride.

However, even a cursory internet search will bring up numerous commentators who will talk about deeper sexual meanings and references.  I think they are wrong, and I won’t even get into that discussion.

Nevertheless, I think, too, that Queen purposely fostered their fans’ beliefs that this, and many of their other songs, were something more than they seem.  This band was composed of very intelligent men with a great sense for marketing.

The group got its start when guitarist Brian May and bassist Tim Staffel decided to form a band.  They joined with drummer Roger Taylor, a dental student, and called themselves “Smile.”  Get it?  Smile.  Dental student.  They understood marketing from the very beginning.

Staffel had a friend, a fellow art student who came from Zanzibar, named Farrokh Bulsara.  When Staffel decided to leave the band in 1970, Bulsara joined as vocalist, changed his name to Freddy Mercury, convinced May and Taylor to change the group’s name to “Queen,” designed the band’s logo and joined with the others in hiring bassist/keyboard player John Deacon.

As mentioned above, Freddie Mercury was trained as an artist and Roger Taylor as a dentist.  John Deacon had an honors degree in electronics and Brian May . . .  Well, Brian May had been working on his Ph.D. in astrophysics.  He finally received his doctorate in 2008²  and he served as Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University from 2008 until 2013.  Besides that, almost every list you can find of the top 30 or top 50 or top whatever number rock guitarists includes Brian May.

So, I am pretty sure that a lot of the “buzz” about “Bicycle Race” is mere marketing coming from a band that (as you can see from the video below) was very aware of its posturing and presentation and was much smarter than many of its fans.  The song is here, though, because Ryder likes the chorus – and he is not swayed in the least by that marketing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncQsBzI-JHc

Bicycle Race
By Freddie Mercury

Bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where I like

You say black I say white
You say bark I say bite
You say shark I say hey man
Jaws was never my scene
And I don’t like Star Wars
You say Rolls I say Royce
You say God give me a choice
You say Lord I say Christ
I don’t believe in Peter Pan
Frankenstein or Superman
All I wanna do is

Bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my
Bicycle races are coming your way
So forget all your duties oh yeah!
Fat bottomed girls they’ll be riding today
So look out for those beauties oh yeah
On your marks get set go
Bicycle race bicycle race bicycle race
Bicycle bicycle bicyI want to ride my bicycle
Bicycle bicycle bicycle
Bicycle race

You say coke I say caine
You say John I say Wayne
Hot dog I say cool it man
I don’t wanna be the President of America
You say smile I say cheese
Cartier I say please
Income tax I say Jesus
I don’t wanna be a candidate
For Vietnam or Watergate
Cos all I want to do is

Bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where I like

Copyright: Emi Beechwood Music O/B/o Queen Music Ltd.
____________________________

1.  Dellio and Woods describe their book as a satiric look at pop music in the ’70s.  Both authors are Canadian, with dry senses of humor, and the book was written in the early 1990s when most of its readers could remember the music they were listening to 10-15 years earlier, and so could recognize the satirical parts.  Twenty-some years later, much of that humor, unfortunately, seems about as dated as The Knack.  Nevertheless, I think they summed up Queen fairly well, though they completely ignored the importance of Brian May.

2.  His thesis was entitled “A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud.”  If you are really interested in the subject, a copy of the thesis may be purchased at Springer.com for only $109.00.  It seems that from the time May had left his studies to make music full-time in 1970 until he resumed work on his doctorate some 30 years later, nobody else had bothered to do any meaningful research on the subject, so he basically picked up where he had left off.