Queen and the 65 naked girls on bicycles to shoot a video
November 16, 1978: during a concert by Queen at Madison Square Garden in New York, some topless girls on bicycles enter the scene during the “Bicycle race”.
It’s a “quote” from the video of the song, which also inspired the cover of the single (the one that illustrates this article). Originally the cover should have been this:
but then it was decided to “modify” it by drawing a pair of red panties around the girl’s butt. The uncensored image remained on the album’s advertisements.
while the album “Jazz” was combined with a poster with the entire group of girls on bicycles:
To shoot the video, the band organized – on 17 September of the same year – a ride at the Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium, for which 65 models were hired, who turned several times – completely naked – around the stadium track. The first version of the video was distributed in a “censored” form, with the images of the girls polarized to make them less clear and with the insertion of drawn sequences. The second version, the original one you see below, was distributed only in 2002.
A legend, probably apocryphal, claims that when the band returned the bicycles they had rented to shoot the video, the rental company demanded that 65 new saddles be paid to replace the ones used by the girls (which, if they had been preserved, today would be collector’s items).
But how did the idea of ”Fat bottomed girls” come about? He tells it Brian Mayauthor of the songs (in the book “Queen Opera Omnia” by Roberto De Ponti, Giunti Editore):
“A melody and a few words just came to mind.
Then it became a song about the girls behind the scenes who help keep the musicians’ morale high. The groupies, or whatever you want to call them. I remember thinking, ‘Why does everyone like the idea of having casual sex with people who in other situations they wouldn’t want to date? Why does it matter so much to them? Where did this idea come from?’ Then I also remember telling myself that Freddie had to sing it, and that I would write it so that it could be understood at will. You can give it any sexual connotation and it doesn’t lose any sense at all. I wrote it with Freddie in mind, as you do when you have a great singer who is attracted to girls with big butts… or boys.”
From the text, however, it seems that the inspiration came from a childhood memory:
“I was a skinny little boy, who couldn’t tell right from wrong, but I knew love before finishing kindergarten, they left me alone with a big, fat nurse, who was a real dirty girl… hey, big woman, you made a bad boy out of me!”
And the text concludes:
“I’ve played with my band all over the world, I’ve seen dozens of blue-eyed beauties, but their beauty and elegance get boring after a while – bring me some chubby ladies instead!”
“Fat bottomed girls” and “Bicycle race” are two songs connected not only by the fact that they are on the two sides of the same single, but also by cross-quotations in the lyrics. A line from “Bicycle race” says “Fat bottomed girls, they’ll be riding today, so look out for those beauties, oh yeah!”, while a line from “Fat bottomed girls” says “get your bikes out and ride!”.
Freddie Mercury wrote “Bicycle Race” while he was in France, when he saw the “Tour de France” riders passing by under the windows of the hotel where he was staying.
PS: Roberto De Ponti, who knows more than the devil, informs us that Mercury wrote “Bicycle race” not in France, but in Switzerland, in Montreux; they were still cyclists from the Tour de France, but that day the “Grande Boucle” had crossed the border. We thank and take note…
