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MY LIFE WITH QUEEN

One day in 1974 I was reading the paper and it said that "the Queen" was going to be on Top Of The Pops. Obviously this was a bit of typical puerile stupidity on their part. The Queen wasn't appearing on Top Of The Pops.

Queen were.

And they did. Seven Seas Of Rhye was their first hit, and I quite liked it partly because of the fun outro. Music had joy in it, back in the day.

The likes of Slade and Wizzard and Gary Glitter didn't take it all too seriously. They were all regulars on TOTP and it was a lot of fun.

Queen were on again a little while later with their follow-up, Killer Queen. Everyone liked that. Their lead singer was weird, exotic, almost Oriental-looking with big white teeth. He fitted into the now jaded Glam Rock aesthetic but with an edge, and more class than all the others.

I was listening to the radio the following year and I heard this strange record going "Mama Mia! Mama Mia!" and I thought what the fuck? That ain't Abba!

Then I heard the whole thing, Bohemian Rhapsody in its entirety, all five minutes and fifty-five seconds of it, and I was hooked for life. Queen were like a breath of fresh air, a sparkling gem amid all the Osmonds / Bay City Rollers / David Essex dross that was stinking up the airwaves. I set about investigating their back catalogue.

Someone taped their latest album A Night At The Opera for me. My mate Bernie had Sheer Heart Attack, so I got a copy of that too. Once I'd saved up enough pocket money I went out and bought Queen II. From this album, The March Of The Black Queen has consistently remained in my top three for nearly half a century.

That Christmas Eve, Queen's concert at Hammersmith Odeon was transmitted live on The Old Grey Whistle Test. I took an audio recording of the show on my little portable cassette recorder. The quality was pretty dismal but I played that tape to death and learned it all by heart. In the intervening years it's been repeated over and over again by the BBC, always in a savagely truncated form. It was finally given an official full-length deluxe box set release in 2015 under the title A Night At The Odeon, forty years after the initial live broadcast.

In the scorching endless summer of 1976 Queen announced that they were going to play a free concert in Hyde Park. I wasn't going to miss that. So I set off early in the morning of 18th September with a mate from school (whose name escapes me) after a fry-up made by my sister. We got to Hyde Park and sat on the grass with 150,000 other fans and stared at the empty stage. There was a middle-aged couple sitting behind us who may or may not have been Brian May's parents. A young hippy who looked like Jesus wandered through the crowd giving out cherries.

The first band of the day was Supercharge. Their lead singer was a big fat guy who came on stage wearing a leotard like the one Freddie wore. Next was Steve Hillage, whose endless noodling bored me to tears. Then it was Kiki Dee, who was in the charts at the time with her duet with Elton John, Don't Go Breaking My Heart. She performed the song with a cardboard cut-out of Elton, with the audience singing Elton's lines (Elton was actually present backstage at the time, but didn't appear on stage as he didn't want to steal Queen's thunder).

Then at dusk Queen finally came on with a blinding flash and blew me away. They opened with Procession and a clip from Bohemian Rhapsody and went straight into Ogre Battle.

"Welcome to our picnic by the Serpentine!"

By now, everyone had got to their feet and moved closer to the stage. I got separated from my mate. I didn't care. All my attention was focussed on the band.

The best bit was Freddie, solo at the piano, performing the as yet unreleased You Take My Breath Away. That was amazing. A flawless performance that's included for posterity on the 2011 re-release of A Day At The Races.

They finished with In The Lap Of The Gods... Revisited but didn't play an encore: apparently the show was running late and the band had been threatened with arrest if they went back on stage, due to the huge numbers of people out there in the dark.

My first ever concert experience was absolutely euphoric. It was like losing my virginity. I was still on a high as I drifted away in the dark to get the tube home.

Their next album, the first new one to come out after I became a fan, was A Day At The Races. I got the LP for Christmas, some two weeks after its release, but by some careful snooping I'd found it hidden in my mum's bedroom and played it a couple of times beforehand. When I finally got my hands on it, I played it to death.

By now I was a member of the fan club, and used to ring them now and again to see if there was any news about forthcoming releases (the music press were always a few days behind). I'd sometimes pop into their offices at South Audley Street if I happened to be in the West End, always hoping there'd be one or two band members present. There never were. One day I was up there with my mate Mark and we casually asked the fan club secretary if there were any plans to re-release I Can Hear Music, the pre-Queen single Freddie had recorded with the engineer Robin Cable and released under the name Larry Lurex in 1973. She said no, but she had a few copies for sale. Were we interested?

Hell, yeah! It was a one-sided white label seven-inch single, a test pressing as it later turned out. I was disappointed that the far superior B-side Going Back wasn't included, but it was the elusive and rare Larry Lurex so I had to have it. We got one for our mate Andy too. 75p each. Bargain!

My copy disappeared into the ether decades ago, but Andy still has his. And apparently it's one of the most collectible Queen items (second only to the 1977 Bo Rhap blue vinyl single) and sells for an absolute fortune.

[Whilst visiting and working in the West End in the late Seventies I went past Trident Studios in St Anne's Court, off Wardour Street, many times without really realising its significance. Standing opposite Dark They Were And Golden-Eyed, a fantastic science fiction bookshop (where I acquired loads of quirky unofficial Tolkien stuff when Tolkien fandom was an underground movement rather than a multi-million-dollar industry), this was where Queen recorded their first three albums. Elton, Bowie and The Beatles had recorded there, too. Further on from the studio, towards the Dean Street end, was a tenement brothel where the ladies would sit by the open windows and call out to you as you walked past.

Of course, it's all gone now. Dark They Were closed in 1981 and there are shops and offices where the ladies of the night used to ply their trade. Trident is now a post-production facility.]

My second experience of Queen live was at Earls Court with Mark and Andy, high up in the balcony, miles from the stage. I snuck my little Kodak 126 camera in with me and succeeded in getting a series of very muddy, very distant images of the massive crown-shaped lighting rig. At one point Freddie was performing You Take My Breath Away at the piano when, at a particularly quiet part of the song, someone knocked over the drum kit (at least, that was what it sounded like). Freddie looked startled for a moment then, like the total professional he was, continued as if nothing had happened. This was followed by a performance of White Man that was powerful enough to blow your bollocks off. Freddie: "This is a real bitch of a song that's really fucked up my voice."

For the encore, Freddie strutted on stage in a shimmering silver leotard that sparkled like a glitterball. A brief but brilliant segment of Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting was included in the rock'n'roll medley.

Later that year I went on holiday to Italy with my family. When I returned home on Saturday 8th October there was a postcard waiting for me from the fan club.

My postcard is long gone. This is someone else's that I found online.

I read the first couple of sentences and thought "oh! fantastic! I'm gonna be in a Queen video!" but then as I continued I realised that the event had come and gone and I'd missed it by two days.

Mark and Andy were there. They said the band ran through the new song - We Are The Champions - a few times so the audience would be familiar with it for the recording, and after three takes played a surprise fifty-minute concert. What a unique experience, that I missed out on by two fucking days.

Empire Pool, Wembley was a much nicer venue than Earls Court. I got to see Queen there three nights running in May 1978. On this tour they opened with the fast full band version of We Will Rock You and included the brilliant It's Late, which for many years was my all-time favourite Queen track, in the set. The low point was probably Get Down, Make Love, but the gigs were brilliant. Electrifying.

Following this tour they released the Jazz album, which was a bit disappointing. For the first time, there were more duds than gems on a Queen album. The only track I really liked was Jealousy.

I was in the HMV shop in Oxford Street one day in 1979 and there were three or four copies of Live Killers for sale, autographed in gold ink by all four members of Queen. I didn't buy one because I'd already got a copy of this (disappointing and lacklustre) album. I wish I had. They go for between five hundred quid and a grand these days.

Later that year they released Crazy Little Thing Called Love. I gave it a listen. "That's fucking crap," I spat. "The worst thing they've ever done. The final nail in their coffin."

You could say it grew on me after a while.

Queen went on tour at the end of the year. It was called the "Crazy Tour", as they were playing small venues. I got to see them three times that year, first at the Lyceum in central London on 13th December - fantastic, me and Kate were right at the front! The following day I was so hoarse from cheering and singing my lungs out that I was sent home from work by a manager who thought I was suffering from a bad throat infection.

The following evening it was the Rainbow in Finsbury Park. But the best was yet to come: their gig at the Tottenham Mayfair (formerly the Royal nightclub) five days later remains the best concert I've ever been to. A full account of this concert is elsewhere on this blog.

A year later, another tour, to promote the albums Flash Gordon and The Game. Two nights at Wembley Arena (formerly the Empire Pool) this time, 9th and 10th December. I woke up on the morning of the 9th to the devastating news that John Lennon had been murdered. That took the shine off the prospect of going to see Queen.

I still went. I was in the balcony, with a side view of the stage. At one point in the concert, with no announcement or fanfare, they played Imagine. Just Freddie and Brian. Freddie had the lyrics on a sheet of paper. It was the best moment of the whole evening.

My enthusiasm for Queen nosedived in the early Eighties after the release of Under Pressure. I didn't bother buying Hot Space until a few weeks after its release, and then only after I'd heard Back Chat. Bowie had replaced Queen as my favourite, and I just wasn't interested any more. Consequently I didn't bother to see them on the 1982 tour: the closest venue was Milton Keynes Bowl, and it just wasn't worth the effort.

Next time around, for the tour promoting The Works in 1984, they played Wembley Arena again so I grabbed a couple of tickets. Me and my friend Claire were in the balcony again for this show. At one point I mentioned how brilliant it would be if Bowie would appear with them to perform Under Pressure, but Claire pointed out that as the date was 4th September, it would more likely happen the following evening, on Freddie's birthday (it didn't).

Queen's "show-stopping" appearance at Live Aid (13th July 1985) has gone down in history as one of the greatest rock performances of all time, but at the time it was hard to figure out why: to an experienced fan like me, it wasn't really anything out of the ordinary. They were always that good. Usually they were better. But it was a revelation for the general public who'd seen them as some kind of novelty act or bunch of glam-rock throwbacks, and as a result they gained millions of new fans. I watched it live on the BBC that Saturday, recording it on VHS and - in stereo!!! - on cassette from Radio 1.

I missed the Magic tour, their final tour with Freddie as it happened. Following their Live Aid appearance, everyone wanted to experience them in concert so the shows got bigger and bigger. Wembley Stadium and ultimately, Knebworth Park. It was essentially a greatest hits show, with the band playing mostly their hit singles with little room for the deep cuts which were much more appealing for veteran fans like me.

I watched the Wembley Stadium concert on TV though, and they were on top form. The broadcast and subsequent home media release successfully capture the essence of the atmosphere you'd feel at a Queen concert.

As the Eighties faded away the AIDS crisis became more and more prevalent. The vindictive gutter press gleefully jumped on the bandwagon and harrassed any gay celebrity they could think of, including Freddie. Following his gaunt and frail-looking appearance at the Brit Awards in February 1990, they quite literally hounded him to the grave. For over a year these vultures were camped outside his home, hoping for a scoop and a hysterical headline, and every time he emerged into the outside world there were intrusive and sensationalised pictures of him all over the papers.

Not surprisingly, the vile S*n was the biggest culprit.

I thought: "you fucking wankers." - Roger Taylor on the British press

Like most fans, I was in denial. I didn't believe he was ill. I couldn't bear to believe it. There were repeated rebuffs from the Queen camp - "Freddie's fine, he's as fit as a fiddle" - that we latched on to. This became harder when the videos for I'm Going Slightly Mad and Headlong were released. Freddie did look ill.

Sunday, 24th November 1991, the headlines screamed: FREDDIE: "I'VE GOT AIDS". Just after 7:00 the following morning, Monday 25th, I was woken by my girlfriend rushing into the bedroom declaring "Gary! Freddie Mercury's died!"

They make his life a misery and hound him to his death, then pretend they care. Fucking wankers.

Monday morning. That was a very hard day to get through. At work, there was wall-to-wall Queen on the radio. The jokes started up already: rotten seamen, etc. I was so stunned that I could hardly concentrate on anything else. Queen had been a more or less constant presence in my life from adolescence through to my thirties, and now that was suddenly wrenched away.

That evening, the other half was out so I had the flat to myself. I got a few beers in to toast Freddie and settled down to watch the tribute shows on TV. I was able to keep it together until the premiere showing of Freddie's final video, These Are The Days Of Our Lives. He looked so ill, so thin and frail, so sad. What he must have been through, how he must have suffered. It was hard to believe that was actually the same man on the screen. I sat there and cried my eyes out.

Bohemian Rhapsody got a re-release and became Christmas number one again. John and Roger and Brian announced a tribute concert that would take place the following Easter. A plethora of cash-grab tribute books and magazines were rush-released; I bought them all.

The tribute concert took place at Wembley Stadium in April 1992. I went with a mate from work, Allan Harvey, but we got split up in the 72,000-strong crowd before the concert began (echoes of Hyde Park). The concert itself was a mixed bag: some genuinely emotional moments, and a hell of a lot of shite. Roger Daltrey and Robert Plant were just fucking terrible. Paul Young was OK. Bowie's performance wasn't exactly inspiring: he seemed to be making an appearance for the publicity, rather than to pay tribute to Freddie. And his "Lord's Prayer" moment made me (and the rest of the world) lose the will to live.

Elizabeth Taylor made an appearance, giving a speech about the AIDS crisis (man in crowd: "Get 'em off!" Liz: "I'll get off when I'm finished!"). Elton John gave a solid performance of The Show Must Go On and duetted with the notoriously homophobic Axl Rose on Bohemian Rhapsody. The climax of the show, featuring Liza Minelli (one of Freddie's favourite performers) trying to sing We Are The Champions was just plain embarassing.

The highlight of the show was, without a doubt, George Michael. He gave a fantastic performance of Somebody To Love, '39 and, with Lisa Stansfield, These Are The Days Of Our Lives; as live performers go (those that I've seen, anyway) he's second only to Freddie. I still think this was the only part of the concert that stands up to repeated viewing.

Three years later Made In Heaven, Queen's posthumous fifteenth and final album, was released. This was ingeniously cobbled together from bits and pieces Freddie had recorded before he got too ill, outtakes from previous albums, and a couple of re-worked Queen versions of Freddie solo tracks. Despite a couple of crappy fillers (My Life Has Been Saved, indeed) it was their best album for years. I bought it on the day of release and sat there that afternoon getting hammered on Tungsten lager and listening to these precious sounds.

These days "Queen" (minus John) are still touring with American Idol contestant Adam Lambert as their frontman. I'm not really interested. I'm not a fan of Lambert, I don't like the Broadway-style approach the band take these days, though a few people I've spoken to have said it's a good show. I'm content with the eleven Queen concerts I attended in the Seventies and Eighties with Freddie Mercury at the front of the stage (even though the last one was over forty years ago).

It's fairly safe to say Queen have stood the test of time. They're still immensely popular some fifty years after their first release, even though increasingly these days their fanbase weren't even born when Queen were in their heyday. Those of us who experienced Freddie Mercury on stage are beginning to die off now. But Queen still keep bringing joy to new ears, and I'm quite confident that their body of work will still be appreciated in another fifty years.