Bruce Gowers, the award-winning director behind an extended listing of music movies, together with Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” has died at the age of 82.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the director’s passing was confirmed by his household. Gowers loss of life was reportedly resulting from issues from an acute respiratory an infection.
The English-born director acquired his begin at the BBC, first working as a manufacturing assistant and cameraman earlier than working his approach up the ranks.
In the Nineteen Seventies, he made a reputation for himself within the burgeoning music video trade. His 1975 video for Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” proved groundbreaking. The clip — which juxtaposed footage of the band’s members set towards a black background with efficiency clips that includes Queen wearing white — turned iconic.
Watch the Music Video for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’
Historically, the “Bohemian Rhapsody” would later be extensively considered the primary true music video, proving the medium might function a significant advertising and marketing instrument for bands, and not directly serving to usher within the MTV era. Still, it was removed from Gowers’ solely work.
The director would staff up with Queen on a number of extra movies, together with these for “You’re My Best Friend” and “Somebody to Love.” His additional work included included music movies for a number of the greatest names in music historical past, together with: The Rolling Stones, Genesis, Rod Stewart, the Bee Gees, Journey, Alice Cooper, Styx, John Mellencamp, Rush, Toto, Kiss, Prince, Santana, Huey Lewis & the News and Michael Jackson.
Gowers’ music video output started to gradual within the mid-‘80s as he turned his attention towards live television work. Over the next two decades, the director would helm a long list of comedy specials from such stars as Billy Crystal, Robin Williams and Rodney Dangerfield. It was Gowers who directed Eddie Murphy’s Delirious, considered one of many biggest comedy specials of all time.
Watch the Music Video for ‘1999’ (Directed by Bruce Gowers)
Gowers additionally continued working alongside musicians throughout this era, as he directed many televised live performance occasions, together with Paul McCartney’s MTV Unplugged (1991), the Rolling Stones’ Bridges to Babylon (1997) and Fleetwood Mac: The Dance (1997).
Gowers’ talent with stay occasions transferred to awards exhibits, the place he directed and/or produced such lauded occasions because the Emmys, the Billboard Music Awards, the MTV VMAs, the ESPYs and the People’s Choice Awards. He additionally directed 234 episodes of American Idol, spanning the singing competitors present’s first 10 seasons.
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