The Week in Queen (6)

There’s a profound amount of overlap between Queen’s discography and Hollywood movies. This shouldn’t be particularly surprising, given Queen’s inherent theatricality, but it’s widespread enough to be noteworthy (or at least as noteworthy as the frequency with which I still hear Queen songs on the radio and other accidental sources to this day). The overt connections include music which Queen wrote specifically for certain movies, multiple songs for the original Highlander film and basically the entire soundtrack for Flash Gordon. On the one had the existence of the Queen Flash Gordon score makes me wonder why the trend of allowing elite rock bands to compose the backing tracks for films, especially action sci-fi films, never quite caught on; on the other hand, Flash Gordon as rendered by Queen might have simply been lightning in a bottle.

And then there’s the occasional song here and there co-opted as part of a film’s soundtrack, like “Bohemian Rhapsody” in Wayne’s World or “Don’t Stop Me Now” in Shaun of the Dead. Or, perhaps a little more obscure, “One Vision” in Iron Eagle. Wayne’s World was fortuitously timed to be pitched directly at me and my cohorts, since we were seniors in high school when the movie was released and both able and eager to drive around in one of my friend’s cars re-enacting the “Bohemian Rhapsody” sing-along headbanging scene. But Iron Eagle may have been even more of a perfect direct hit on our young minds and hearts, as it came out six years earlier; seventeen-year-olds may be impressionable fad-followers, but eleven-year-olds can tap into their own kind of unfettered crazy when something gets its hooks in them.

You may have never seen or even heard of Iron Eagle, so I will do my best to bring you all up to speed: it is a child’s wish fulfillment fantasy in the immediate wake of Top Gun mania. It is about a high school senior who is an Air Force brat, whose dad is shot down over a hostile Middle eastern country, and when the US Government makes it clear they are not going to risk an international incident, the son and his plucky fellow brats, along with one grizzled AF vet with a heart of gold, come up with a plan that involves sneaking around the base, obtaining classified information, falsifying flight plans, and getting the kid and the vet airborne in two armed-to-the-teeth F-15s to go rescue the dad before he is executed and give the Gulf bad guys a major black eye in the process. Cue explosions, rock and roll, and God Bless America. It also has a weirdly star-studded cast (including Lou Gossett Jr. as the grizzled vet). I haven’t watched Iron Eagle in decades but I would sit down for a viewing in a heartbeat if the occasion came up, even though I am positive the film is pretty terrible. I would probably even cheer along again.

“One Vision”, if I remember correctly, gets played through in its entirety in the movie, during a sequence where the high school senior, Doug, is using a flight/combat simulator on the base (it’s technically only for pilots but since he’s Colonel Masters’ son he gets to sneak in and use it whenever he wants). I distinctly remember (again, this was a 1986 flick) that Doug had a large Walkman and a Velcro belt he used to strap the tape player to his thigh while he was using the simulator, which to my sixth-grade eyes was totally badass. Doug hops in the simulator, fires up “One Vision”, goes through a mission program, and gets shot down right as the song reaches its final notes. The sequence, like the movie overall, is fairly dumb yet also an exhilarating thrill. And it burned the song into my brain, as did the video for the song on MTV, which of course made liberal use of footage from the movie, as those synergistic pairings used to work back in the day.

You’ll notice “One Vision” hasn’t appeared in any of my weekly trackings, and I doubt it ever will. It isn’t considered one of the everlasting hits, much as Iron Eagle has been relegated to the discount dvd bin of history. But I have a soft spot in my heart for it, from back when I was young enough to think that fighter pilot was the coolest job in the world, even though it was so simple any moderately industrious teenager could handle it.

And here's the week that was!

Monday: Borderline Queen-free? Gruden didn't namedrop his favorite song during the MNF broadcast, but at one point I could hear "We Will Rock You" echoing across FedEx Field. I suppose if I counted three seconds worth of a song heard before I swatted the snooze button last week, I can count a good ten to fifteen seconds here.

Tuesday, 7:00 am: "Fat Bottomed Girls" on 102.7 Jack FM as I was driving the kids to daycare.

Wednesday: Queen-free.

Thursday, 7:50 pm: "Fat Bottomed Girls" on Big 100 FM, heard through the wall playing in the little girl's bedroom as I was putting the little guy to bed. Also, about half an hour earlier as I was still in the little girl's room and settling her down with a little walkin' and rockin', Big 100 ran an ad for their next Live In Concert program for this coming Saturday night, with Queen as the headliner. The ad contained snippets of live versions of "We Will Rock You", "Another One Bites the Dust", "Bohemian Rhapsody", and "We Are the Champions" (in that order, lest you think I'm arbitrarily splitting up the natural "WWRY/WATC" pairing). I doubt I will tune in, personally, but I'm duly reporting the incident.

Friday, 4:50 pm: "Under Pressure" on 102.7 Jack FM as I drove home from the train station.

Saturday, 12:20 pm: "We Will Rock You"/"We Are the Champions" on Big 100 FM during the little girl's naptime.

Sunday: Queen-free.