Queen. Musical marmite. I used to love them, although I didn’t remember that fact until recently when my friends over at Payola (Radio Cure) and Elephant Space Snowstorm began a series of posts reviving records that had lain dormant from youth. A Night at the Opera was the first album which sprang to mind when I reflected on my early musical influences, although Puff the Magic Dragon reared its embarrassing head in the process. For the moment, I don’t want to dwell on what I sought out when I acquired my financial independence, partly because so many of those early purchases cause me to flush at the thought of them, but on the tapes that were kicking around the house during my formative years. I remember excitedly stuffing the loosely wound cassettes into the hulk of plastic known as a Sony Walkman, only to be forced to fastforward and rewind before more than the first stunted notes of the first track made it to my ears so as to tighten the tape, rendering it audible, at least until the batteries I had stolen from various remote controls ran dry.
Freddie Mercury’s distinctive warblings and Brian May’s guitar crooning are hardly unfamiliar to the majority of listeners, but this album, despite its commercial success following its release in November 1975, has seemingly been usurped in favour by the so-called Platinum Collection comprised of the three volumes of the band’s greatest hits. Then, it was the most expensive album ever produced, and although I was wholly ignorant of this fact, to me it remained priceless. I can still remember first hearing the ominous and harrowing chords of ‘Death on Two Legs’ at full speed, before their impact skipped away into the deck-chaired, straw-hatted, slack jaunt of ‘Lazing on a Sunny Afternoon.’ When I reached ‘I’m In Love with My Car’ I always fast-forwarded over the seediness: it was too gruff and greasy. ‘You’re My Best Friend’ became an early favourite, as I bopped my headphoned head along to the beat, much as I do now when I think nobody is watching. What would once have been considered innocent enjoyment would now only be observed as pretention. I still can’t resist the ooooos. The next three tracks, ‘’39’, ‘Sweet Lady’, and ‘Seaside Rendezvous’, have never pleased me.
Once over to the B-side, there was another tape-winding session before the overly dramatic ‘Prophet’s Song’ that was often skipped over to hurry on to the subsequent track. My favourite: ‘Love of My Life’. It was, of course, a subject matter about which I knew nothing at age 9, but the tenderness and the magical, almost Disney-like opening soothed and saddened. Now, I understand. How could anyone resist such a beautifully phrased plea? Over, and over, and over again would I listen to it, tunelessly singing those words bearing somebody else’s meaning. Even the guitar solo couldn’t ruin it for me then, and it doesn’t now. When it finished, I wondered every time whether the harp meant that it had a happy ending. Now, I can recognise the lack of resolution, along with the repetition, in ending where it begins, a cyclical lament. Have you ever felt that? Of course, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ drew my attention, and prompted many theatrical antics during nights at the parodic opera of my imagination. I’m not sure that I even knew what the opera was back then. As an English girl, ‘God Save the Queen’ stirred up a great deal of patriotism paired with the insurmountable shame at not being able to remember the words.
Queen – ‘Love of My Life’
Rachel_E_Holmes
