Songfacts®:

• According to the 2001 census, Elstree, in North London/Hertfordshire, had a population of 1900, less than a fifth of the size of the average British town. Its name though is world famous, because it was home to the fledgeling British cinema industry. A studio was founded there in 1914, and it has been at the center of the British film (and later TV) industry ever since, though in 1980 when this song was released, it was in a period of decline. Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" was one of the many music videos to be made there. The BBC would eventually become the biggest name at Elstree. Running to 4 minutes 33 seconds, this nostalgic ode was written by Geoff Downes and Trevor Horn. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England
• In the book MTV Ruled the World - The Early Years of Music Video, keyboardist Geoff Downes, who worked for the Buggles as well as Yes and Asia, talks about their place in the early video music wave: "You'd spend six months making an album, and then you'd spend a day on the video. At the time, no one really knew the impact of videos' connections to records. Radio was still very strong at the time. No one ever thought that radio would really be usurped. So I think you could do these promotional videos later in the day, kind of a postscript to making the album. We had the album, The Age of Plastic, and that's how we saw the band, a product of a technological generation. So the idea of the plastic, the man-made fibers, was very much included in the nature of what we were trying to provide."