(Credits: Far Out / Koh Hasebe / Elektra Records)
Sat 24 January 2026 19:34, UK
It turns out that Queen have David Bowie to thank for their big break.
Six years before their ‘Under Pressure’ duet, Bowie failed to submit a promo clip for Diamond Dogs’ ‘Rebel Rebel’ lead single to the BBC’s flagship Top of the Pops. It was a sign that the glam star had truly made it, so big he could afford to be tardy to the weekly music show that most acts would offer a kidney to appear on.
So what to do? The Top of the Pops team were stuck with a performance gap for the scheduled February 21st, 1974 episode, and it needed filling. Producer Robin Nash made a call to EMI promotions man Ronnie Fowler to see if he had anybody on the label’s roster who could take Bowie’s place. He assured the anxious Nash he had just the band, swiftly signing Queen up for the coveted Top of the Pops slot. Trouble was, there was no planned single to perform.
By early 1974, Queen had built a steady audience supporting Mott the Hoople, but they weren’t anywhere near the rock giants they’d become. Eager for their break, the band shot to the BBC Television Centre for their big Top of the Pops debut. With the studio impacted by industrial action, the rush of excitement was hit by a fairly dull thud of deflation.
“We were on with nobody because it was in the weather studio,” drummer Roger Taylor recalled to Record Collector. “I think there was a strike, Bowie cancelled, and we got his slot. It was a tiny studio and they shot it with no audience.”
Still, they were on TV. Racing ahead of schedule, ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’ was plucked as their Top of the Pops song a month ahead of Queen II’s release, the grandiose hard rock number honouring the fictitious realm frontman Freddie Mercury and his sister, Kashmira Bulsara, had dreamed up as children. Fans would have noted its presence in their earlier eponymous debut as an instrumental coda, now fleshed out as a fully expanded song in its revisit.
While a cherished institution, Top of the Pops could be scoffed at as deathly uncool in the era of rockist primacy. Mercury was no exception. According to 2010’s Is This the Real Life?, the Queen frontman took some convincing to appear on the show. “I’m not doing Top of the Pops,” he reportedly scoffed to EMI’s radio plugger Eric Hall. It’s rubbish.” After some begging from the band, Mercury finally acquiesced.
It was more than worth their while. Frantically pressed to vinyl two days after their Top of the Pops appearance, ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’ would stand as their first single to enter the UK Singles Chart, peaking at number 10 and providing Mercury a chance to quit his day job at a clothing stall in Kensington Market. Next single ‘Killer Queen’ would sail to number two that year as did its Sheer Heart Attack on the album charts, and Queen’s rock royalty was cemented from then on.
“It’s incredible how much happened to Queen in 1974,” guitarist Brian May reflected to Mojo. “When I see the footage of us from those shows now, I see so much confidence and adrenaline and I think, ‘My God, we were such impatient boys’.”
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