Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody is considered the first music video. When the song was released in the UK in 1975 the band were on tour abroad and couldn't make it to Top Of The Pops each week when it reached no.1. No-one imagined the record would be so successful (at nearly 9 minutes long it was considered un-radio-friendly and the record company assumed no radio station would play it), and that is when they recorded the video to be played in their absence. Although it looks crap today, at the time it was revolutionary and people couldn't get enough of it. The first video played on MTV was Video Killed The Radio Star (by The Buggles) but not until Michael Jackson's Billie Jean was MTV taken seriously, and seen as an alternative to radio. Until then, music videos consisted mainly of bands grinning at the camera from exotic locations (hands up Duran Duran) or performing badly in a 'captured-on-film' moment. Of course, when Michael Jackson released Thriller (the single) and it's accompanying video/mini-movie (the most requested video of all time) did MTV become the most popular way of discovering the new (certainly in the 80's). I can't imagine that Peter Gabriel's So would have sold in the quantities it did were it not for the video to Sledgehammer. Since then music video has become an art in it's own right, and you only have to watch the work of Michel Gondry (DVD available - The Work Of Director...) to see how imaginative and important the promo video has become. A long way from the fractals of Bohemian Rhapsody.
Queen went on to enjoy the video, and it's interesting to note that when they released 'I Want To Break Free' with its Coronation Street based video, in which the band are all dressed in drag and Freddie Mercury is doing the hoovering, their success in America came to a halt, as American so called sensibilities couldn't cope with 'men' dressed in frocks.
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