Beschreibung:

Freddie Mercury
Autograph manuscript working lyrics to 'Bicycle Race'
comprising five pages of fragmentary lyrics, including an early version of the song with significant differences from the final version, with unused lines ("I don't want a pink cadillac") and a short piece of stave music, the remaining pages mostly with various versions of the "you say"/"I say" lines ("You say black / I say white" etc.), in blue, black and red ballpoint and fibretip, text on rectos only, four leaves of A4 lined stationery and one leaf of plain stationery (252 x 197mm), altogether five leaves, c.1978
EARLY DRAFTS OF 'BICYCLE RACE', QUEEN'S FIRST SINGLE FROM THE ALBUM JAZZ. Composition can be dated to July 1978 as Freddie is believed to have been inspired by the sight of the Tour de France as the race came through Montreux on 18 July 1978. It is a light-hearted song that captures the exhilarating freedom of cycling on the open road - although it is admittedly somewhat difficult to picture Freddie himself riding a bike after he had found global fame. The song sets the simple pleasure of cycling against a cluttered world of politics, pop culture, and luxury goods, which are conjured through a series of paired words. The drafts show that Freddie played with various other pairings and inferior modes of transport: "I don't wanna roller skate", for example, which he somehow hoped to rhyme with "check mate". Although this song included complex vocal harmonies, these drafts are almost exclusively concerned with the song's lyrics; once the lyrics were largely in place, he copied them into his notebook and drafted the harmonies into that book (see lot 54).
'Bicycle Race' was paired with Brian May's 'Fat Bottomed Girls' as a double a-side single, and was released on 13 October 1978, a month before Jazz hit the shelves. For their promo video, the band filmed 65 naked female models pedalling around a stadium in south London (the rental shop subsequently demanded that the band pay for 65 replacement saddles). The single's cover showed one of the naked cyclists from behind, although at the record company's insistence a pair of knickers were added to the image, and a poster from the shoot was also given away with every copy of Jazz. There was a predictable ruckus that is unlikely to have damaged sales - "I guess some people don't like to look at nude ladies", opined Freddie. 
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