express– This week’s episode of Queen the Greatest looked back at the band’s incredible rock music videos. But did you know that two of them were deemed so controversial that they were banned from airing on MTV? In 1982, the band’s Body Language video became the first ever to be censored from the cable channel.
Body Language’s erotic bath house scenes were considered unsuitable for 1982 audiences, but the track still went on to be Queen’s fifth-biggest US hit single.
In fact, the song outperformed Radio Ga Ga and Somebody to Love across the pond.
Then, two years later, MTV banned Queen’s famous I Want To Break Free music video, with Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon dressed in drag as Coronation Street characters.
But this time the ban saw the single stall just outside of the US Top 50 and Queen drummer Roger was far from happy.
In this week’s Queen the Greatest, Roger said: “Well MTV were very narrow-minded. It was Whitesnake, and ****ing Whitesnake, and then another Whitesnake track.
“And they decided they didn’t think that men in drag was ‘rock enough’ I guess, and so they didn’t play the video.”
During the episode, archive footage of Freddie Mercury talking about making Queen music videos for the likes of MTV was featured.
The singer said: “Well things have come a long way, of course, they’re becoming film budgets aren’t they?”
Freddie continued: “And the technique and everything is, sort of, improved vastly, so, I mean, you can come up with all kinds of things.
“I remember that in Bohemian Rhapsody we wanted these multiple images, and at that time the only way we could only get it was to use a prism.
“And then we wanted a sort of jagged effect and we had to shake the cameras, somebody had to kick it.”
The Queen singer said how technology had advanced so much that it all just worked automatically.
Freddie added: “It’s beyond me as well, I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
It’s been 30 years since the Queen singer died and thanks to modern technology Brian May is about to duet with him.
This takes place during Queen and Adam Lambert concerts when the guitarist sings Love of My Life and footage of Freddie appears on a screen behind him.
Next week’s episode of Queen the Greatest will look back at Roger Taylor’s hit Radio Ga Ga.
