‘Wayne’s World’ Car Scene Almost Used a Guns N’ Roses Song Instead of Queen
It's hard to picture the car scene from 1992's Wayne's World without Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" playing. But if Saturday Night Live head and Wayne's World producer Lorne Michaels had his way, Wayne and Garth probably would've been headbanging to a Guns N' Roses song in the movie instead.
That's what Wayne himself, actor-comedian Mike Myers, explained to director David O. Russell (The Fighter, Three Kings) at the first Netflix Is a Joke Fest in Los Angeles on Wednesday (May 4).
Before that, Myers shared the same story on the April 27 episode of the podcast Fly on the Wall With Dana Carvey and David Spade. Carvey plays Garth in Wayne's World.
Here's what happened. When writing Wayne's World, which emerged from Myers' SNL skit of the same name, Michaels tried to persuade the star to use a Guns N' Roses track for the now-famous headbanging sequence instead of the 1975 Queen tune. Presumably because GN'R were more current than Queen in the early '90s.
"Lorne kept putting under [my office door] the Billboard Hot 100 and it was all Guns N' Roses, Guns N' Roses, Guns N' Roses," Myers recalled to Russell, as Consequence reported.
However, the Wayne's World creator stood firm that "Bohemian Rhapsody" worked best in the scene. Myers said he told Michaels, "I love Guns N' Roses. I don't have a joke for Guns N' Roses."
It was probably for the best. On top of that, Queen singer Freddie Mercury approved an early cut of the Wayne's World car scene with "Bohemian Rhapsody" in it just before he died in late 1991. (The movie emerged in February 1992.) Mercury loved the scene, as Queen guitarist Brian May once revealed.
"I took it 'round to Freddie not long before he went," May told Myers in a celebrity video panel in 2020. "[I] showed it to him, because you said you wanted to have that approval. And he loved it; he just laughed and laughed. He was very weak, but he just smiled and laughed. How wonderful is that?"
Watch the scene below.