Even in a band as wildly inventive as Queen, not every idea was greeted with enthusiasm. That was certainly the case when drummer Roger Taylor turned up with ‘I’m In Love With My Car’, his tongue-in-cheek ode to roaring engines and chrome.
The track, released in 1975 as the B-side to the monumental ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, has since become a cult favourite – but at the time, it caused serious friction within the group. In an interview with MOJO, Taylor admitted the decision to push the song forward created one of the band’s longest-running disagreements.
“Brian was like, ‘Is this a joke?’” Taylor recalled. “I said, ‘Look at all those people out washing their cars on a Sunday morning, lavishing attention on them – they probably love their cars more than they love their wives.’ It’s a valid lyric I think, but kind of tongue in cheek, too, obviously… cars and girls – what else is there?”
For guitarist Brian May, though, the idea that this playful track was earning as much as Queen’s most ambitious single struck a raw nerve. The royalties from a B-side were split the same way as those from the A-side, meaning Taylor’s novelty-tinged rocker made him just as much money as Mercury’s epic.
“We were aware of the injustice of ‘I’m in Love With My Car’ making as much money as ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’,” May told MOJO. “It was a real sticking point for the band and it’s good we got through it. I think our sense of humour saved us. How long did it take me to get over it? Oh, quite a while.”
Taylor, however, found endless amusement in the controversy. “He’s never forgiven me,” the drummer laughed. “And I’ve never stopped laughing about it!”
The lighthearted grudge even resurfaced in the 2018 biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. In one running gag, May’s on-screen counterpart groans about Taylor’s “frivolous” car ballad being placed alongside the band’s masterpiece. “There was a lot of truth in that,” May admitted.
Taylor also reminisced about Freddie Mercury’s songwriting brilliance, recalling how ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ was dashed off by Mercury “in the bath at the Munich Hilton” before being cut in a single take at Musicland Studios.
Finally, when pressed on his personal favourite, Taylor picked ‘Somebody to Love’: “That song is on another level. We became a rock band that could do gospel. People talk about Freddie’s stage antics or about his teeth or whatever, but he was fantastically gifted, a really unique, irreplaceable talent.”
In the same interview, it was also explored how Queen’s members often worked on one another’s songs – another cause for friction.
May claimed his role was to “make the melodies work better” on Taylor’s compositions, adding “it’s a humble task but that’s what I’ve done on Roger’s songs – add a bit of colour.”
Taylor, never one to mince words, pushed back: “Not really, no! I’d take issue with quite a lot of that. It’s a little bit, OK, so you’ve got a piano – now I’m going to come in and tune it. I don’t only think in barre chords – that’s a slightly arrogant statement to make. Brian’s a perfectionist and he will chase down the detail, but that didn’t mean I was going to let him f*** up my songs!”
