The Demo Site

Upon bringing my 15 year old son to school this morning, I cued up the after mentioned music and relayed the following information to my boy.

"I remember the first time I heard it, I literally got goosebumps."

I was 17 years old and I fell in love with that voice, but the dilemma, oh the dilemma. This was so different! Maybe too different, what would happen if my friends heard me listening to this?!

I might get my a** kicked for listening to this!

This was not what we were listening to, we were all about the Stones, Foghat, and bands like Molly Hatchet, but we'd be ostracized for listening to a guy singing ...opera, or at best opera-rock.

Everyone I knew was buzzing, OK, it was the 70s, so that's no surprise, but I mean we were all talking about that insane new sound. The sound we all loved and wanted permission to love, the sound of Freddy Mercury and Queen!

Bohemian Rhapsody, what a song! The best thing that happened to me that week was realizing all my friends were listening to Queen and digging it just as much as I was.

We'd laugh and make fun of Freddy and the guys, but we were dancing on the inside.

We'd come to reason that 'sure he's got that sweet lilting opera voice' but the lyrics and tone of the chorus more than made up for any sissified innuendo that they could project. We could live with some sissy if we got great lines like " So you think you can stop me and spit in my eye. So you think you can stomp me and leave me to die? !" And of course, Freddy could also sing in a hard rock voice as well as anyone else.

Brian May would wail on his guitar pulling out sounds that contemporaries were only able to achieve with keyboards at that time.
I'd later found out when I saw an interview, that Brian and his dad made that guitar by hand and it was the only one he ever played.
What a wonderful thing to have a parent so supportive of a music career.

My son is playing bass, now and I hope that I can back him up like that.

Queen played and sang the way into the hearts of audiences all over the world.

Although I've never heard anyone credit them for this, I think it was really the beginning of public acceptance of gays. He was a brave guy to sing the stuff he sang, and go out on stage in front of the world and call himself a Queen.

Would that we had more heroes like this, not afraid to show the world who they are, the world would be a better place.

I was lucky enough to see them once in the 70s at the Providence Civic Center, and the live show was unmatched by anything I'd ever seen to this day. You got the feeling you were part of something big, really big.

I think I'll go for a search on the web now and see if I can find what Brian May and the rest of the band is up to.

Mr. Freddy Mercury, you left this world too soon, may you rest in the riot that you loved.

Mystery Link