Queen

My good friend Lora McQueen has written me about attending a Queen concert last night. Of course, Freddie Mercury is long gone, so the vocalist is former Bad Company frontman Paul Rodgers. But her email has me thinking about Queen songs, and I realize that they are touchstones to my adolescence.

I can distinctly remember the first time I heard Bohemian Rhapsody. I was in our living room in the house on Cherry Hill. We had a stereo/radio and I was listening to the countdown of the top hits, probably on CKLW, which was a station out of Windsor, Ontario. I remember hearing the song and being quite excited about it, as I hadn't heard anything like it before. I was a big Beatles fan, but even the Beatles hadn't combined operatic vocals with heavy metal. At that time I didn't own too many rock albums, but I remember going to the record store, where new releases were piled onto a table in front, and there was the white cover of A Night at the Opera.

The album was great, and Queen never exceeded it, but they came close. A Day at the Races, the follow-up, was one of the first records I bought after moving to New Jersey. I think I heard Somebody to Love for the first time on a juke box at the Super Scooper, a long defunct ice-cream parlor in Ringwood.

News of the World was a highly anticipated album for me and my brother. I remember the first time I heard We Will Rock You/We are the Champions. I was listening to WPLJ while lying in bed at night. I was half-asleep, and upon awakening thought I dreampt it. The DJ had mentioned the album title, News of the World, but that was kind of a title that I could have made up in my subconscious. Sure enough, that was the title.

Jazz was Queen's next album, which I think I received for Christmas in 1978, when we were visiting my grandparents in Florida (my brother might have received it). It had a couple of memorable songs, such as Bicycle Race and Fat-Bottomed Girls, but it wasn't the same anymore. Queen slipped out of my roster of favorite bands. But gosh some of their songs do take me back. Everybody in my junior high liked Bohemian Rhapsody, even the head-bangers. I remember talking to someone who said, "Even Harline likes it," referring to David Hartline, a brutish kid who favored heavy metal. How could anyone dislike it?