November 24, 1991, Part 1: As It Began

I remember the day I became a Queen fan. 

I’d always been aware of Queen on the same level I was aware of Led Zeppelin or The Rolling Stones or Black Sabbath or Pink Floyd — bands with deep libraries from their tenure on the world stage who had been around long before I caught up with popular music. The number of classic rock standards the band was been responsible for leaves no option other than their inclusion as part of the cultural wallpaper: “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” “Another One Bites the Dust” “Bicycle Race,” “Killer Queen,” “You’re My Best Friend,” to say nothing of “We Will Rock You,” “We Are the Champions,” or “Bohemian Rhapsody.” It would be impossible to listen to an eight-hour shift of classic rock radio without hearing at least one of their songs. 

It was summer of 1984. I was hanging out with a few friends in the senior hallway at our high school while summer marching band practice was about to begin. We were a month shy of starting our junior year, and even though we were responsible enough to commit ourselves to being voluntary participants in summer marching band, we weren’t committed to participating all that actively in rehearsals, especially when there was a new crop of sophomores in the drum section who were more than capable of keeping a beat on a snare drum, bass drum, or cymbals, which frankly covers 87% of what drummers have to do in marching band. From our perspective, it seemed like a much better idea to hang out in the hallway and fulfill the time-honored tradition of drummers not taking things too much seriously. The director knew we’d be there on performance day and would supply the A game since we’d known the songs for two years, so he wasn’t that concerned about how much practice we were doing. Plus there was a flute player I was working really hard to impress because a mutual friend was making rumblings about setting us up; when you’re seventeen years old you solidly believe that the best way to impress a girl is to make a complete ass of yourself. This was something that came very naturally to me at seventeen. It didn’t occur to me that if I was goofing off in the hallway I wasn’t in the band room with her, but again — seventeen. 

We were taken with the acoustics of the empty high school hallways, and were talking loudly to test the echoes. This evolved into shouting, which evolved into singing. And what song would be better to sing loudly when you’re testing the echo factor of an empty high school than the operatic chorus of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” 

We didn’t have the song memorized by any stretch, but like I said, Queen was part of the cultural wallpaper, so we knew enough snippets to bounce off of each other and fill in the blanks fairly well. It was just an excuse to be goofy (seventeen), but by the time we were done I had enough of the actual song stuck in my head that I was starting to think about it in ways I hadn’t considered before, realizing that not only was it weird but complex and melodic, and it rocked — at least parts of it did. 

If something like this occurred to me now, I’d either look up the song on iTunes or YouTube. Back then these weren’t options. You had to own a physical copy of the single or the album if you wanted to hear it at your leisure. I did not have these choices available to me then.

Or so I first believed. 

For about a year after my cousin Paul had graduated from college with his psychology degree, he lived with my family so he could job hunt in the Cities. It’s due to that time that, even as close as I am to my cousins on that side of the family, Paul has always been the one most like an older brother to me.

He ended up staying longer than he had planned and eventually abandoned his job search to pursue a further degree for a career in education. (He was just hired as an elementary school principal in Arizona this year.) When it was time for him to relocate a new apartment, he packed his clothes, his books, his Baltimore Colts insulated mug, and a good part of his record collection.

But not all of it. For reasons that only fate itself will ever understand, he left behind his copy of “Queen’s Greatest Hits.”

It wasn’t long before I dug it out and gave it a good listen — not just Bohemian Rhapsody (track 2, side 1) but the whole thing. It was an astonishing collection of songs. Too often a greatest hits album ends up being little more than a cash grab with an opportunity for the artist to dump on some newer “bonus tracks” that they had stored away, enticing the super-fans to spend their money on songs they already owned. But Queen’s Greatest Hits, at least the original 1981 version of it, really laid out for the world just how great of a band they were. I was surprised to discover I already knew almost all of the hits, and quickly took to the newer one they’d tacked on at the end — a duet with David Bowie called “Under Pressure.” I think most people are probably familiar with that song by now.

I’m sure I had been sucked into one record and tape club or another at this time, so I slowly began my collecting my way through their back catalogue. I studied the liner notes of each album added to the collection, learning the lyrics as closely as I could, paying attention to which member was credited with writing which songs and eventually seeing stylistic patterns. Freddie Mercury was theatrical and bombastic. Brian May was either lyrically literate or had heavy guitar riffs, or sometimes both. It was easy to tell when Roger Taylor wrote a song because it was usually one of the token ones from each album where he took over lead vocals. The only one hard to spot was John Deacon, since he didn’t write as many but still manage to craft some pretty big hits.

“The Works” had been their most recent album, so it was one of the first I added. I heard “Radio GaGa” enough times on my own clock radio to feel connected to its message, which proved to be all too prescient as we all try to find our ways through the I-Heart-Radio landscape that America has become. Every song on the album was strong, with “Hammer to Fall” building up to be a favorite. Enough of a favorite, in fact, that I just interrupted writing this to get up and listen to three different versions of it: The original studio version from “The Works,” the live version with Freddie from “Live in Wembley ’86,” and the version with Paul Rodgers stepping in to sing lead vocals for their post-millennial “Return of the Champions” tour.

Other albums came along. “The Game” was one of the first I bought since the biggest hits of the day were on it. The Flash Gordon Soundtrack came soon as well; eventually the movie became such a “so bad it’s good” favorite of mine that I own on Blu-Ray even today. “A Night at the Opera” of course, because if you’re going to paint yourself as any kind of a Queen fan you damn well better have the album that gave birth to “Bohemian Rhapsody.” I bought “Jazz” at The Last Place on Earth in Duluth, back when the drug paraphernalia it sold was confined to the back wall of the store instead of the dominant portion of the inventory. Try to imagine my surprise to find a fold out poster of the event that inspired the song “Bicycle Race” tucked in the sleeve. Look it up if you’ve got an internet connection and don’t mind having a panoramic NSFW moment.

My mind was sufficiently blown by that. Again, seventeen years old. 

(continued tomorrow....)