In an interview in Comics Buyer’s Guide with Terry and Neil, shortly after the American release of Good Omens, Terry proposed the theory that, when you’re driving through the country late at night, and there’s nothing on the radio, you find yourself stopping in at an all-night gas station and looking through the tape rack; the only thing there remotely tolerable is a Best of Queen, so you buy that. Two weeks later you can’t remember how the thing got there, so you get rid of it, only to go through the same process again. Neil’s theory was that tapes really do turn into Best of Queen albums.
Since I received an iPod, I have become quite the avid Bit Torrenter, downloading the bulk of the music which currently makes up my song inventory. And no bones about it: Queen is, without a doubt, my favorite band in the world, of all time. While my love for the band probably started with Highlander, I think it was only cemented by the “whack a zombie” sequence in Shaun of the Dead.
So I’ve downloaded a lot of Queen music, as I only own two Queen albums (one of them a “best of”, and the other “Don’t Lose Your Head.”) One of the albums I downloaded was a tribute album, with numerous artists covering Queen’s songs. Let me say this real quick: Joss Stones’ cover of “Under Pressure” is sooo far and away better than My Chemical Romance’s.
(And don’t give me the “Under Pressure was a David Bowie song!” No, it wasn’t. Well, not exclusively).
In any case, two of the songs I downloaded purported to be “Bohemian Rhapsody.” One was. The other, clearly, was not, but I didn’t know if it was a Queen-cover mislabeled, or an original song by some obscure artist included in the download by purpose or accident. It was a pretty catch tune, but it took me a while to be curious enough to Google some of the lyrics. Ah-hah, so it was a Queen cover: ’39. Here’s the vid of the original (acoustic):
I don’t know how this song had escaped my notice before, but I love it. It’s fucking great. However, as I’ve listened to it (over-and-over again), I find myself trying to figure out if it’s a song about the Second World War, or about — wait for it — space travel.
I can’t quite imagine Queen writing a song about space travel. On the other hand, they wrote several songs about immortals who run around chopping off each other’s heads in the quest for a mystical prize, so, really, I don’t know why I can’t.
So I Googled. And what did I find? Whole online discussion boards where “’39 is about WWII” groups battled “’39 is about space travel!” groups in incredibly personal flamewars: “It’s about space travel, you douche bag! Your mother is a whore and I raped your grandfather up his anus with a pitchfork! AND HE LOVED IT!” Etcetra.
I mean, for fuck’s sake, it’s a song.
However, for the record, I am going to come down on the side of space-travel, and not just because I don’t want to be raped with a pitchfork. A lot of the lyrics can be interpreted to support either argument. However, what puts me firmly in the spaceship camp are these:
For the day I take your hand
In the land that our grandchildren knew.
Which just, to me, seems to be a really beautiful way of describing two adults reconnecting — a year of time for him, a generation for her — and getting caught up with what their kids and their kids’ kids are up to, and her being able to blame all the bad stuff on his absence.
Also, what the fuck is up with Freddie Mercury’s outfit? Wow.