I’ve had problems finding the words for this blog. Normally when I’ve seen a show I write about it within a day or two, but I ended up in Padua as a result of some strange and painful circumstances which are not for sharing here. So I’m very late with this; please forgive me.
This last gig was never on my itinerary; Barcelona and the Isle of Wight were my “ration” this time, so I never thought I would be getting up at 4.00 a.m. on Saturday 25th June to fly out to Venice. It was all pretty unreal; early morning flight, figure out the Venetian bus system, figure out how to buy train tickets (and buy the wrong one), sneak on to a train and hope the guard didn’t find me and throw me off, meet the amazing Laura in Padua and get straight on another bus to Piazzola sul Brenta. It was early afternoon by then and killingly hot. The fans were already gathering outside the entrance, trying to keep out of the heat.
By the time we were let into the venue, it was early evening and lightning was flickering across the sky, reminiscent of Queen’s manufactured thunderstorm over Montreal in 1981. Some of us were praying for rain to relieve the heat by that time, but none came.
What an amazing place the venue was; a baroque palazzo a few miles away from the ancient city of Padua.
Pic credit: Nicky Marinucci
The central courtyard was huge and easily able to accommodate the stage rig and thousands of people. I was lucky enough to be in the Golden Circle, so was fairly near the front of this crowd.
Pic credit: Nicky Marinucci
And appropriately enough, the guys started with Flash and Hero, as they had done in Barcelona. I don’t know whether that was a last minute change from One Vision, but it certainly suited the weather conditions.
As ever, it was another stunning show. For me, the real highlights of it were:
The crowd. I really have never been in a crowd like this. They were beyond fervent; amazing. Most of them were of an age to never have seen Queen perform with Freddie, but they were note perfect, word perfect. They loved the music with true Italian passion.
Fat Bottomed Girls – they really went for this; it was excellent. And on this video you’ll be able to hear a few snippets of the crowd singing
Somebody To Love – it’s always amazing, but it was full of “last night of the tour” extras from everyone.
A Kind of Magic – we got the “dad dancing” routine from Brian and Roger again. I never thought I’d see them enjoying the music so much
Who Wants To Live Forever – I don’t know whether they will ever be able to do a set again that doesn’t include this song. They have honed it into something beyond a power ballad. It’s the most amazing song given a live treatment that it unlike pretty much anything else I’ve ever heard
Brian’s solo – with a bit of O Sole Mio incorporated in it. There have been quite a few “spot the tune” moments in his solos on this tour, and they have always gone down well with the crowd
This has been an incredible tour. I thought I was only going to see two shows so it was something completely unexpected to be here on the last night, even though I spent 22 hours awake on that day. The quality of the music has been astounding; once again, QAL have produced the goods – and more. They are complete performers; no detail is left to chance, every part of the set is carefully crafted and then know how to carry an audience through every second.
And again, this break is going to be just a pause; they are back in the Far East in just a few months’ time (although I somehow don’t think I will be flitting off to Hong Kong in September).
Pic credit: Nicky Marinucci
And this time it wasn’t only about QAL; it was about Italy; a place I’ve always wanted to visit but had never got to before. I was there for just under two days but wished I could have stayed longer. I could quite happily have never gone home.
In that short time, I met four wonderful Italian girls who looked after me and treated me as one of their own. Through you, I felt love and comfort – and learnt a few Italian swear words! I will be forever grateful to you, as you picked me up when I had fallen. Miei amici del cuore – Laura, Mary, Anna and Licia – casa mia e casa tua.
It was a first for me – and them. Although Queen had played at a number of one-day festivals, they had never done one of the big extended events, like Glastonbury or the Isle of Wight. As it happens, neither had I. I went along with more than a bit of trepidation; would there be mud? Would there be loads of fights? Would my long-suffering husband be able to cope with four days of continuous music, let alone a fourth QAL gig in less than 18 months?
But wait – there was Adam Ant, Status Quo and other help at hand….
To pass the time until Sunday night, I caught up with a number of other bands, some of whom have been on my bucket list for a while. These were:
Status Quo – Thursday night in the Big Top. I’m not sure why they weren’t on the main stage, as the venue was completely overcrowded. They were great fun and I think I knew every song they played
The Stereophonics – Friday night, main stage. These are a band that have seeped into my consciousness over the years, as I didn’t realise how many of their songs I knew. Really good set, despite the rain towards the end of it
The Who – Saturday night, main stage. One for the bucket list. Only Roger Daltrey and Pete Townsend are left of the original four, but they played their greatest hits and it was fantastic to hear songs like Substitute and My Generation live
Twin Atlantic – Sunday afternoon, main stage. Had never come across these guys but I thought they were pretty OK
Mike and the Mechanics – Sunday afternoon, main stage. Another one for the bucket list as I saw Genesis twice years ago, once with Peter Gabriel and once with Phil Collins. As I’d never heard Land Of Confusion and The Living Years live, this was a real treat. My only complaint was that their set was too short! What an exquisite guitar sound Mike Rutherford makes; it was a joy to listen to him
Ocean Colour Scene – Sunday night, main stage. They’re from Birmingham, just like me and again, this was another band whose music has seeped into my brain over the years. Good set and they were well supported by the crowd
Pic credit: Rolling Stone
And finally, after all that waiting, it was time for the main event. A black backdrop was taken away to reveal the new, eye-shaped Queen rig and the logo was dropped in front of the stage.
Then it started raining. Oh joy. All those jokes you hear about the British festival season coinciding with terrible weather? Yep. The thousands in the audience bravely put on their kagoules and rain ponchos, and got themselves another beer. We’re Brits, don’t forget.
In the last 15 minutes before the start, the excitement in the crowd was palpable. I got chatting to some of the people around me, most of whom hadn’t seen QAL in the flesh before. As the introduction to One Vision started, they were jumping and there was an enormous roar as the curtain was whipped away. There was an explosion of red and white – and that sound that can only ever be Queen; towering, brilliant and precise.
They moved quickly into Hammer To Fall and Seven Seas of Rhye, the song which started my love affair with Queen all those years ago. This was followed by the rapid fire of Stone Cold Crazy (and no, I don’t know how Adam gets the words out).
As ever, this was a beautifully crafted setlist; they always seem to have put their programmes together with the sort of precision that you would expect of a classical recital artist, but this technique works – it means that the audience are engaged throughout and eager for what’s coming next.
The first section was finished off with Another One Bites The Dust and Fat Bottomed Girls, which had the entire audience roaring along with it. Adam made his exit to change and we were treated to a rocking guitar interlude from Brian. There aren’t that many videos available on YouTube yet, but I’m sure this one from CarlaRose will give you an idea of the fantastic performance quality.
Play The Game has been a new addition to the set for the 2016 dates and it suits Adam brilliantly; you get to hear little touches of his excellent falsetto and it’s such a beautifully crafted song. From this it was into Killer Queen, which has become a real showpiece. After that, everyone was up and dancing for Don’t Stop Me Now (even my husband!).
As ever, Somebody To Love was stunning – it’s one of those songs that was made for Adam (even though I love the Freddie original, this live version is almost another song these days). He solidly hits a high F at the end (same note that I’m happy to sing as a mezzo soprano).
There was a well-earned break for Adam after this while Brian encouraged the crowd to sing along with Love Of My Life (admittedly, they didn’t need encouraging and as usual, everyone seemed to know the words). Roger joined him after this, presenting him with the Red Special and the two of them performed A Kind Of Magic. Roger still has a pretty reasonable voice considering he’s sung for most of his life and smoked for years. We also saw the extraordinary sight of the two of them indulging in a bit of “dad dancing”, which was picked up on the big screens. These two guys who have known each other for nearly 50 years have an amazing rapport and I think my heart burst into a million pieces.
After the father and son drum battle, Adam was back on stage for Under Pressure and there was a huge roar from the crowd at the picture of David Bowie on the screen. Crazy Little Thing Called Love has become a semi-acoustic number for this tour, and it works well, but we were taken swiftly back to full powered Queen with I Want To Break Free, which again had the audience dancing. Earlier in the day, I’d spotted a number of people in suitable fancy dress for this, including toy vacuum cleaners! I’m not sure how they managed amongst the enormous crowd though.
I Want It All has also become a standard item in QAL sets; it’s loaded with typical Queen bombast, punctuated with smoke guns and massive guitar riffs. In sharp contrast to this, Who Wants To Live Forever became a moment of comparative stillness, marked out as a tribute to the deaths in Orlando, Florida the previous night. Always stunning, it seemed to move to a new level here on the Isle of Wight. The lasers seared into the darkening sky and the crowd were rapt.
(Video from GlamBecks becksie1’s YouTube uploads)
Again, that superb setlist planning came into play as Brian’s guitar solo began in that same reflective mood, moving through Last Horizon before it exploded into the very familiar sequences of Brighton Rock.
We were nearly at the end; they’d been on stage for the best part of two hours and into the final sequence of the main set. We rushed through Tie Your Mother Down and into Bohemian Rhapsody, and I swear that every single person in the crowd sang along – even the ones who weren’t regular Queenies. For music fans though, it’s become a universal anthem over the last 40 years. If you don’t know it, you’ve obviously lived on another planet since 1976.
Radio Ga Ga has moved into the final slot, with the fans at the barrier getting an opportunity to greet Adam as he jumps down from the main stage. The lasers showered the night sky again as the audience clapped along. There was a brief break, then everyone was back on stage for the standard encores of We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions. The gold confetti exploded everywhere, we heard Brian’s version of God Save The Queen – and then it was over.
Pic credit: the extremely talented Helen Bovill!
Two hours of amazing music had sped by; they were as breathtaking as ever and they seem to find ways of improving on every single gig.
I talked in the Barcelona review about Queen producing “total music” and this is just what they do. No aspect is neglected; everything is picture perfect and planned down to the finest detail – and it shows in the finished product, the performance.
In all of their incarnations, Queen have always strived to be bigger, better than everyone else around. They were truly head and shoulders above anyone else on the Isle of Wight festival lineup, and I heard “regulars” saying that they were the best they had seen in the 10+ years since the revived festival started in 2002. The people who were Queen newbies were blown away and I overheard many conversations on the long, long walk back to the car park.
Once again, QAL have conquered and they’ve done it with the music, and the love of the music. The joy travels all the way from the front row to the people at the back and it’s impossible not to be caught up in it. The only problem is dealing with the addiction, the desire to experience it all again.
It’s been a while. Sorry, this crazy little thing called life keeps getting in the way, but QAL are back, so how could I not write about them?
Queen in their various incarnations have repeatedly been one of the best concert experiences for so, so many people over the years. There are the oldies like me, who’ve been around almost since the beginning, ranging all the way through to the younger fans, some of whom don’t even remember Freddie being alive. The QAL experience must be particularly special for them, plus of course, all the Glamberts who were either Queen fans in the past, or have picked up on this fandom as well.
If you’re a football (soccer) fan, you may well have come across the expression “total football”. Ironically, it’s most often been applied to FC Barcelona, who are probably the finest club team in the world. They don’t just play football; they live it, working towards the perfect application of the game. By the same token, Queen do “total music.” I’ve seen them more than I’ve seen any other band and every experience of them has been different. Each time seems to surpass the last, for one reason or another, and there is something irresistible about this music; it keeps drawing us back for more as each time they head out of tour, it gives us yet another chance to live it all again.
Not only was this near the start of the “third age” of QAL, but it was also my first venture into the world of gigs on the European mainland. Surprised? It’s a long story, but this blog is about the gig, not me. It somehow seemed appropriate to go and see them in Barcelona, a place I’ve always wanted to visit, as well as a name that Freddie immortalised in song with Montserrat Caballe.
Pic credit: from official video
The Palau Sant Jordi is at the top of a very steep hill, next door to the Olympic Stadium; what a great place for a concert, looking down on the huge city spread out around us. It rained unexpectedly during the afternoon so those in the queue got a soaking for their trouble, as well as it being rather unseasonably cold for Spain. A couple of hundred hardy souls had been there since the morning, but despite not getting there until rather later, I had a good sight line on the floor at the right hand side. It made a nice change not to have a bunch of giants obscuring my vision; the curse of the small(ish) person.
And what a night it was. Queen have always used the maxim “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing” and as ever, they were completely true to their words. This was two hours of total music – and total sensory overload.
We had been promised some changes, and we got them. The opening sequence has been reworked; the “Flash” theme and The Hero, rapidly followed by Hammer To Fall, one of my all-time favourites. There aren’t that many videos online yet from Barcelona, but thanks to Marc Valiente for uploading this one:
The visuals have also had a makeover; the “Q” is new, improved and lighter for easier transportation. Lasers have been added to the already impressive lighting rig to show off QAL in all their impressive glory.
But, let’s cut to the chase. This isn’t just about the details, it’s about the big picture; why people keep flocking to see this remarkable liaison between old-time rock n’ rollers and a guy who started off in music theatre and then ran into them on a US talent show. The opening show in Lisbon on 20th May was exactly seven years to the day that Adam sang with Brian and Roger for the first time; what a fine coincidence, and what a huge distance has been travelled since then.
Pic credit: Me!
Brian has said many times that they weren’t actively seeking a new singer, but Adam happened and there they were, QAL unexpectedly rising from the ashes. Now utterly seasoned at working together, the shows are well-planned, slick, produce music of an impossibly high quality and take the audience through every mood that music can induce. They are masters at constructing a setlist; Queen’s output encompasses a huge variety of styles, which admittedly helps, but it’s obvious that a huge amount of thought goes into putting a programme together.
It’s difficult to pick out the best moments because the standard these guys produce is so consistently high, but for me, the highlights were:
Hammer to Fall – it would have been even better to hear the full-length version, but it’s one of the songs that I really wanted to hear Adam sing with Brian and Roger – and they didn’t disappoint. It was classic Queen – that overwhelming, all-encompassing sound
Somebody To Love – Adam was born to sing this – it’s stunning every time I hear it, and I love the “live” arrangement of it, which is quite different to the original recording. It’s got gospel; it’s got pzazz; it’s got top notes and it’s got a great melody lines. One of Freddie’s all-time classics
Who Wants To Live Forever – if anything, I think this has got even better since the UK/Europe tour last year. The visual impact of the song has been reworked and the whole thing is breathtaking. As I’ve said before, this isn’t just a power ballad, it’s an operatic aria; it’s difficult musically and emotionally and they nail it every single time
Brian’s guitar solo (you knew I was going to say that, didn’t you 😘). OK, this is about instinctive musicianship. When you stand up to do a guitar solo like that, you might have a rough framework in your head, but not every single note, and if you’re a fan, you’ll know that each one is slightly different. As I expected, there was a little snatch of Barcelona worked into it, as well as the more usual themes from Lost Horizon and Brighton Rock. Brian’s solos contain elements of rock, jazz and modern classical music, and it takes the “instinctive” music gene plus an amazing mind to play like that. During the solo, he was whisked into the heavens among some stunning astrophotography
I Want It All – this is another song that seems to have improved with live performance. Of course, this is one of the post-1986 songs that Freddie never got to perform live, but it’s a fans’ favourite and a real Queen anthem. It suits Adam’s voice to a tee; there’s plenty of opportunities for drama and there is that magic moment for “it ain’t much I’m asking” that everyone seems to love
Thanks again to Marc Valiente for uploading this:
There were many, many other magical moments during the set; the appearance of Freddie during Love Of My Life and Bohemian Rhapsody and Adam’s utterly cheeky rendition of Killer Queen, where he has progressed from a chaise longue to a throne. There was a deafening cheer at the start of Under Pressure when a photo of David Bowie flashed up on the screens and a lovely moment when Roger solemnly presented Brian with the Red Special just before the start of These Are The Days Of Our Lives. Roger also proudly introduced “his boy Rufus” at the end of the drum battle and we were treated to an updated, acoustic version of Crazy Little Thing Called Love. There’s also a particularly honourable mention for the inclusion of Play The Game, which worked beautifully.
Even two hours was too short and time flashed by to We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, the inevitable end, the post-gig heartache and the craving for more. The smoke guns fired and we were showered with gold foil. It snaked and circled down among us, probably imprinted with traces of the music that we’d been bombarded with. There’s some in my handbag to keep the memory alive.
Pic credit: Sergio Cayuela
At least it’s the start of the tour and there are more live streams to come – and of course the Isle of Wight festival for those of us in the UK. Queen are alive and well – Don’t Stop Them Now.
Since last Christmas, there seems to have been an ever longer and depressing list of celebrities who have passed away. It started on December 28th with Lemmy of Motorhead and since then the bad news has come thick and fast; David Bowie, actor Alan Rickman, Glenn Frey, Keith Emerson and now Prince. Even BBC News published an article today about how many celebrity deaths there have been this year.
Their logic is that time is simply starting to run out for the Baby Boomers – those who were born after the end of the Second World War. As the risk of death starts to rise slowly after the age of 50, some of them (even in these days of better medicine) have reached their allotted span. Not a comfortable thought, but time passes for all of us, no matter how much we may try to cheat it. Celebrities are not immune, indeed some of them have lived fast and died young. An untimely death always seems doubly cruel; that individual is snatched away in the prime of life when there is so much more they could have done.
But why is there these outpouring of grief following a celebrity death? Are they the actions of sensible, rational people?
It’s been summed up beautifully by @nadiaakatherine, who wrote this:
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These reactions aren’t new; they’ve been happening for nearly a century now. The first really notable outburst at a celebrity’s death was the mass hysteria following the untimely passing of actor Rudolph Valentino at the age of 31 in 1926. An estimated 80,000 people attended his funeral and a number of women committed suicide as a result of their grief.
Mass hysteria?
Naive, childish overreaction?
That’s the quick, dispassionate answer, but it’s much more complicated than that. First of all we need to go back to when celebrity began and look at how media has changed the world around us.
It could be argued that the age of celebrity started much more than a hundred years ago; there were 18th century opera singers who led the life of today’s rock stars and were feted wherever they went, but they were limited by the audience they were able to reach. There was no mass media of any sort until we had movies and recordings. These innovations made celebrity a much bigger deal and meant that artists could reach an impossibly larger world with their talents. And that larger world was closer to us than ever before; it wasn’t just a matter of a once-in-a-lifetime experience seeing someone on a stage and trying to hold that in memory. Artists became stars; fans could queue to see a film again and again, and recorded music was available in bars, cafes and eventually their own homes as gramophones became more affordable.
Add TV and radio to this later in the 20th century, and celebrities were in our homes every day. Music seems to have an even greater grip on most of us than film and TV; songs worm their way into our brains and become the soundtrack of our lives. Often our earliest memories include music; listening to a car radio going to school, playing a radio or records while doing homework, dancing at the school disco, going to concerts and festivals. Music becomes part of makeups, breakups, weddings; the good times, bad times and sad times.
This soundtrack becomes ever-present; we could all write lists of songs that we associate with certain times and events. When I saw QAL twice last year, the most affecting number for me was Days Of Our Lives, as it was accompanied by a video of Queen through the years, and I’d been with them for all of that time. It was my life I was watching too, and that’s an emotional thing.
Because music gets woven into the fabric of our existence, it’s inevitable that it touches us when “our” artists die. I remember one of my schoolfriends being utterly heartbroken at the death of Marc Bolan, my own disbelief at the murder of John Lennon, and of course, the profound sadness at the tragic and very sudden death of Freddie in 1991. We become close to artists through their art and when they leave us, there is a hole in our lives where they once were. The soundtrack gets broken and someone who has been with us is torn away.
Yet, they leave their music and their talent behind and with that, they are frozen in time for us, forever perfect. We can listen to the recordings whenever we want, watch the videos – as long as we can bear the thought that they are no longer with us. They have helped us feel happy so many times, that if we let them go, that happiness will be gone forever. The grief process can be the same as losing a family member, and take years to recover from.
Pic credit: wikipedia.org
In the last few years, the new age of social media have changed the dynamics of grief again News is instant; on platforms such as Twitter, we are all broadcasters and our thoughts and reactions are out in the world instantly. We can see a story develop in front of us, share it and add to it. Importantly, we can join with like-minded people and know that we are not alone in feeling the way we do.
I think the important thing here is to acknowledge that grieving for something or someone that has touched our lives is not unnatural. We need these connections in our lives to help us make sense of everything, to make us fully human. The philosopher Erich Fromm said “To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness.”
Therefore, as in many other parts of life, there is no gain without pain. If we reach out into the world, it is inevitable that there are things that will hurt us, even if that something is a person we have never met. We need heroes; we need role models as they give us something to aspire to. But it hurts when they die.
Tonight, there’s a new Starman in the sky. I woke up very early this morning to the BBC informing me that David Bowie had passed away, just a few days after his 69th birthday and the release of his album Black Star. Needless to say it was a shock; he’d been ill with cancer for 18 months but very few people outside his immediate family and friends seemed to know about it. It was obviously the way he wanted things to be, and it’s a mark of the extraordinary man that he was.
Born David Jones in London, he studied art, music and design at school, and became interested in acting early on. In fact, he performed as an actor before he made a breakthrough as a musician. His musical career spanned over 50 years and in that time he moved through a staggering number of musical styles. I knew him best from the days of Hunky Dory and the Ziggy Stardust period, when he moved from that super-androgynous figure from the album cover to one of the creators of glam rock.
Pic credit: RCA Records
For me, the masterpiece from this album and still my favourite Bowie track ever is Life on Mars. It has puzzling, bizarre words, but the thing that grabbed me were the arresting harmonies. Bowie had a strange but very distinctive voice – you couldn’t ever say that he had the awesome pipes of some of the rock frontmen, but he had a large range and his vocal tone was instantly recognisable; after all, that is what will make a musician stand out from all the others.
(video from AllTheLoveGoneBlack’s YouTube uploads)
As Ziggy, he admitted later to being completely taken over by the character and used to give interviews in his stage persona. After Ziggy came the Thin White Duke and an altogether more disturbing image. But Bowie moved on, from style to style, through glam to funk, pop, dance and experimental music in the “Berlin” period that wouldn’t have been out of place with some of the avant-garde classical music of that time.
He rode the changes of the New Wave and moved into more straightforward pop music. In 1981 the Queenies will know well that a chance encounter led to Under Pressure, a number one hit and that amazing video which cut together explosions, silent movies and newsreel clips of the Wall Street Crash
(Video from TVC15’s YouTube uploads)
He also experimented with electronic music, releasing five albums between 1992 and 1999. His musical output dropped just after the start of the 21st century when he took an extended period off following heart surgery. Almost out of the blue, he released an album in 2013 and then a mere two days before his death, BlackStar appeared with its dark and arresting themes, none more so than the shockingly beautiful Lazarus, his final goodbye.
(Video from DavidBowieVEVO uploads)
And Bowie wasn’t “just” a singer. He collaborated with many other musicians, including that Christmas hit version of Little Drummer Boy with Bing Crosby, probably one of his most surprising offerings. He was also a songwriter, played several instruments, an arranger and producer. He had a substantial acting career, appearing in more than twenty films. He’s probably best known for The Man Who Fell To Earth and Labyrinth, but he also played the role of Pontius Pilate as The Last Temptation of Christ. His talents didn’t stop there; he was an accomplished painter and also collected post-modern and impressionist art.
He won awards for music and acting, and even one for being “Best Dressed Man”, but turned down a CBE and a knighthood. from the British government, stating “It’s not what I spent my life working for.”
David Bowie was an innovator, a ground-breaker. He pushed the boundaries of music, dramatisation, gender and sexuality. He was unique and we will probably never see his like again.
(video from queen + adam lambert unofficial’s YouTube uploads)
I think for a lot of Queen fans in the UK, this represented a massive moment in keeping the band alive. Although Brian and Roger had been working with Adam since the MTV music awards appearance in 2011, the collaboration wasn’t well-known over here – and Adam Lambert certainly wasn’t. Some UK fan club members and others got to see the 2012 London gigs, but these were more like experimental performances to see if QAL could work on a bigger scale. Other than that, Queen in the UK had been fairly quiet for some time, so the 2015 dates came as a big surprise.
I suspect that a lot of us had bought tickets on trust, or out of curiosity – or as in my case, without thinking to check out YouTube. There were also a lot of us who hadn’t seen QAL’s brief appearance on X Factor a few weeks previously, so NYE was something of a revelation and it set off a mad roller coaster ride that has lasted for 365 days and is going on into 2016.
What a year it’s been for me – for all sorts of reasons. Rewind to 31st December 2014 and this blog didn’t exist – I’d been thinking about blogging again for a while (I did it a few years ago), but it was going to be an anonymous autobiography and nothing to do with music at all.
Then QAL happened in January and February and I ended up colliding with Queenies and Glamberts in a big way, first of all on Twitter and then on Facebook and various fan forums. Very soon after, I started writing and found I had to learn quickly – you guys are knowledgeable and sharp-eyed and I knew immediately that there was no way I could rely on BS to get me through. I needed to know what I was talking about and make sure I’d done my research carefully.
So I’ve read, listened, watched hours of YouTube footage, analysed Adam’s vocal technique and compared the way that trained and untrained voices work. I’ve dissected performance skills and also watched – very carefully – how fandom works. What a fascinating lot you are. This has involved many, many late night chats, watching fan reactions on Twitter (special mention to Alex Morner, the Crown Prince of Flail for causing my phone to explode a number of times), chasing around on the internet for online streams of gigs and being awake at 4.30 a.m. to make sure I didn’t miss out on Rock In Rio.
Pic credit: gallery4share.com
A year down the line, I’m still an insomniac, I’m most of the way through a novel and I’m hopefully going to be embarking on a PhD in Fandom and Fan Culture in the not too distant future.
I’ve also met some truly amazing people – online and in real life too. I’ve rubbed shoulders with superfans, the barrier boys and girls who will queue from the early hours for one of those elusive front row places. I’ve also come across “fan experts” who know more details of their idol’s life than they do themselves (big shout out to @mmadamimadamm for her encyclopaedic knowledge). I’ve seen what an amazing thing fan solidarity can be, but on the other side of the coin I’ve seen more than a few fan battles.
But it’s all fascinating and one of the reasons that I’ve decided to make it a study. Why have the actions of the two remaining active members of Queen caused such a storm amongst a section of their fans? Is it because Freddie died rather than decided to retire? Is it because our brains are hardwired by recorded music and another voice just sounds “wrong”? Or on a more basic level, is it because some of us are more willing to accept change? These are some of the questions I’m hoping to look at as part of my research, and of course I’m going to be looking for people to help me out with this.
Pic credit: @scubadan21
As well as raising all these questions (and more!) in my mind, during 2015 I’ve also seen and heard some truly astounding music and I’m one of the many Queenies who is incredibly grateful that I’m still able to do this. For me, there is no substitute for live music; even the most perfect recording doesn’t have that special something.
And the show is scheduled to go on – for next year at least. So far a number of festival and one-off arena gigs have been announced for QAL and I suspect there may be more. 2016 would have been Freddie’s 70th birthday, it’s 40 years since Hyde Park and 30 years since Knebworth. That’s a lot of anniversaries to be marked. I’m off to the Isle of Wight festival in June and I’m going to do my darnedest to see if I can get to one of the other arena gigs as well – all in the object of research, of course.
Pic credit: @IamjustMissy (with thanks!)
Even all these years down the line, Queen (with Adam Lambert) have proved that they can still pull in crowds. One of the things that has amazed me this year is the realisation that Queenies aren’t just the old-timers like me; the band have been around for such a long time that there are plenty of fans who were born after they stopped touring in 1986, and even after Freddie died in 1991. I’ve also discovered that some of the Glamberts were Queen fans as well, while others have got into the music through Adam.
I’m sure that while the fans are still there, Brian and Roger will want to carry on performing for as long as they’re able. One of a musician’s most basic drives is to stand up there and perform; often it’s more about this than about the ideas of fame and fortune. You feel you have something to say musically, so you get on and say it as well as you can. Also, because of the quality of Queen’s catalogue of songs, they don’t have to be restricted to a “greatest hits” set; there is so much more that they could look at using and it will be interesting to see if there is a new setlist for 2016.
I’ve looked back and now I’m looking forward. I’m hoping it’s going to be a great year.
The 24th of November is upon us and social media has been full of tributes to Freddie today, the 24th anniversary of his untimely death. There have been so many column inches written about him over the years that it’s difficult to think of something new to say.
Pic credit: reddit.com
All these years later we are still here celebrating his life with joy, or looking back upon it with deep sadness that he left us too soon. Seeing the reactions on Twitter and Facebook today, I’m left in no doubt that Freddie is still loved by millions and the sense of his loss must be even more acute to those who were close to him.
He was a gigantic stage presence and left a remarkable musical legacy behind him in the music he wrote for Queen, his solo songs and the collaboration with Monserrat Caballe.
But that isn’t all, by any means. A few months ago I wrote about why performance is the final piece of the jigsaw and Freddie is the perfect example of how a good performer becomes an incredible one. When he stepped out on to a stage, he owned it and it was almost impossible to look at anyone else. Even in an arena packed with over 100,000 people he reached everyone and made them feel part of the show.
Pic credit: rsvlts.com
Live Aid was an outstanding example of the way Freddie could work a crowd. The audience on this day weren’t even a “Queen” crowd and the band had wondered what the reaction would be to their set. Brian referred to him as their secret weapon and he wasn’t wrong; the response was immediate and overwhelming.
(video from My Fairy King’s YouTube uploads)
And of course, Freddie had that unique voice, that enormous range with the capability to produce a strong falsetto register too. There have been many great rock singers since the 1960s but there are few who could cover so many different styles of music in the way that he did. Queen’s music often defied categorisation; was it rock, pop – or something else? From the high camp of Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon to the classical structure of Innuendo, every album is packed with a range of musical styles and it was the sheer versatility of Freddie’s voice that made it possible.
I’ve watched the Wembley tribute concert many times and it never ceases to amaze me how other world-class singers found themselves doing battle with those vocal lines. Queen songs are difficult for many reasons; as well as the obvious challenge of the range, there are those shifts in style and often a harmonic complexity that you wouldn’t normally associate with rock music. And of course, you have to say something with the song; to just stand there and sing the words would be a travesty. This is the art of the frontman and Freddie had nailed this from early on in his career with Queen.
The whole frontman thing is an interesting subject on its own and a band can live or die on the quality of the man (or indeed, woman) who is the one with the microphone. Before Queen, particularly in the world of rock music, there wasn’t an awful lot of engagement with the audience at all, but they seemed to invent a whole new experience with their “more is more” philosophy. Freddie was their driving force, the channel for the music, and he stepped on stage as a larger-than-life character who was born to entertain.
Pic credit: Queen Official
Freddie the man was much more of an enigma; his partying lifestyle was legendary and ultimately the cause of his death, but behind all this was someone who was reserved and often self-deprecating. He also seemed to have a sense of his own mortality; during an interview some time before he contracted HIV/AIDS, he was asked what he would be doing in 20 years’ time. His immediate reply was, “I’ll be dead, darling;” he couldn’t have known at the time how prophetic these words were.
This sad day has come round again and next year it will be a quarter of a century since his passing. Freddie’s voice and performances are perfectly frozen in time for us by the technologies of recorded music and video. His spirit is still with us in this way even though he is long gone.
But Queen – and the music – still survive. Not long before Freddie died, he said “you can do what you want with my music, but don’t make me boring”. I think Brian and Roger have taken him at his word; the songs are still performed today, by Queen, covered by countless others and of course, they were woven into the We Will Rock You story. Queen will never be boring; the music is too vibrant, too varied for that. And the man who once laughed himself off as a “musical prostitute” was at the heart of it all.
Sorry guys, it’s been a little while since I last got here. I’m up to my eyes with other writing at the moment, but I haven’t forgotten about the people who call in here for a read. I am going to be writing a lot about fandom in the fairly near future, but for now there is a follow up to my tale of meeting Dr Brian – and this is about a hardcore fan’s very special adventure. This is a long read, so get the wine, or the chocolate, or the cookies.
Shar is one of my fellow admins from the QAL Fans United 2 group on Facebook. We’ve never “met” in real life as I’m a Brit and Shar lives in New South Wales in Australia. However, we have got to know each other over the last few months and our small group of admins have managed to egg each other on to achieve our dreams. We also very enjoyed living through each others’ experiences.
Like me, Shar is a long-time Queenie and was a huge fan of Freddie, and also like me, she was devastated when he died. How could we go on? This is her amazing story, in her words, with a few little comments from me.
Pic credit: liveaid.free.fr
“Having loved Queen from a wee age, and absolutely adoring Freddie throughout my life, it seemed when Freddie died, the music didn’t; but I never really “fangirled” anyone since that horrible day in November when we lost Freddie. To me, the whole era with Paul Rodgers just didn’t exist, as to me he did not fit in with the rock royalty that are Queen. So I skipped that phase completely. I never really got into American Idol thing at the time, so I think it was fate that I just happened to flick through the channels when there was nothing else on TV. I saw this young guy; black hair, quite plain, about to sing for the judges. Adam Lambert was his name. He seemed a little cute, and hoped to God he could sing. Then there was “that” question, “what are you going to sing for us?” To which he replied “Bohemian Rhapsody”. I thought, oh Hell, please don’t make a mockery of it like so many had before!! He had me at “Mama”….. This guy was good. Poor Freddie could rest easy as he didn’t have to start spinning in his grave.
I watched. Week after week that spunky young guy come onto the stage and give it his all. I didn’t care that he came second; he sang We Are The Champions with Queen and made a great job of it. He was always a winner to me.
Out came his first song, his first album… He did his Glam Nation tour which came to Australia. I painfully slept out overnight to get tickets, only for the third person in front of me to be the last one to get them before they sold out!!! I could have died right there and then! I followed Adam, his music, what he was doing, who he was doing… (even!). I came across other Glamberts who kept telling me that he was an amazing and awesome guy.
Then it happened; Adam began appearing with Queen, here a little, there a little. I was totally blown away how much he just fitted in with Brian and Roger, and of course, doing the Queen catalogue which had only ever been done before by our Freddie!! I hoped and prayed that this could be the start of something Amazing! AND IT WAS!!! Queen + Adam Lambert began touring together. America, Asia, and OMG…..
On the 5th May 2014, The announcement was made that Queen + Adam were heading Down Under!! My phone and Facebook had never seen so many text messages or notifications as that day, because everyone I knew, who knew me, wanted to tell me it was happening! I GOT MY TICKET, I was in Heaven; this, was what euphoria felt like – my idols, with my idol, and I was going! I think I cried through half of the concert, seeing Brian and Roger, seeing Adam, and seeing my first love, Freddie, on the big screen. And boy, Adam certainly made that Queen catalogue come alive. For 3 weeks after the concert, I cried. I was so emotional. I’d actually seen Queen, and Adam.”
Pic credit: masslive.com
My path must have crossed with Shar’s a little while after this, as I turned up on the Facebook group while QAL were touring Europe. We’d obviously been hooked by those live performances in exactly the same way and thought that the combination of Adam with our old Queen heroes Brian and Roger were a match made in Heaven. Extraordinary things started to happen…
“I think a whole new meaning of fangirl happened right there, as I was hooked on Adam so much more having seen him live, sing Freddie’s songs; I was just head over heels for the guy. I was 45 years old and acting worse than I probably ever did in my teens. I still fangirled over Freddie, but my spark had ignited and became a flame for this Adam Lambert!
Fast forward a year, and life really hasn’t been the same. Adam finished the QAL tour, for now and then there was the excitement that something new was coming? This was answered when The Original High was released on 17th April 2015 – a different, more mature Adam (but he still sounded like sex on a stick). Of course, this new album had to be promoted; whispers became promo events, which became appearances and this is when my life changed forever.”
This is where our Admin brotherhood moved up a gear; Adam was coming to Australia and there were opportunities – golden ones – for Shar to meet her new hero. It was time for a bit of encouragement and enabling…
“MEETING ADAM….
The internet is a wonderful thing; there are Glamberts all around the world and they’re a mine of information about Adam’s activities; every radio interview, every TV appearance. I saw some of my online friends meeting him for real; I wasn’t jealous – maybe just a little bit envious, but I wanted so badly to meet him for myself and was terrified I would never get the chance.
Then, a Sydney Radio Station held a competition, Adam Lambert was appearing at the Red Room there. A fellow Glambert, (Granbert??) and I had made a pact. If she won, I went, and vice versa. So for two whole weeks, we rang and rang and rang to no avail. But I didn’t give up. Adam was going to be in Sydney, I was going to stay in Sydney and find him, just to hug him, no matter what.
And more than this, I wanted Adam to sign my arm, so I could run to the nearest tattoo studio and get it tattooed over. That was number one on my bucket list! I sent an email to Nova FM, the guys running the competition, and asked if Adam would be doing any interviews for the Red Room, as I told them my dream to have Adam’s autograph on my arm to have it tattooed.
I never got a response.”
Pic credit: pantip.com
“But then, the unimaginable happened. Nova, the radio station, was giving away more tickets, just for the Adam Lambert show in Sydney. This was it – my opportunity was not dead yet. At 9am sharp the lines were open and the first caller got the Golden ticket.. I felt like Charlie trying to get into Willy Wonkas factory!
I dialled the number as quick as I could, and it rang. The voice on the other end asked who they were speaking to? I couldn’t even get my name out properly, before stuttering, “Have I won?” The DJ told me I was the first caller, and I began hyperventilating; I screamed at my hubby that I had won, and I was going to see Adam – OMG!!
Suddenly, a diary of Adam’s appearances in Sydney came up; he was going to be everywhere in Sydney. With my trusty laptop, I began an endless barrage of emails to everywhere Adam was going to appear. Can I see him, can I get audience tickets? In each and every one of those emails, I explained I wanted this tattoo so bad, but not ONE of those people replied. So, where to go from here? I had the encouragement of people in my Facebook group, telling me never to give up, go get my dream. I have them to thank for a LOT (True, Kym!)
I began to call the television stations. Can I get tickets to the audience? Then, a lovely girl at one of the stations obliged, and I got tickets to Adam’s appearance on the morning show. Result!
Just three days before I headed to Sydney, I hear that I’m going to see Adam at the Red Room, AND in the studio of channel 10 for the morning show. My God, my head was spinning. I couldn’t think straight, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. Then, while I was in the car park at the local shops I got a call from a guy claiming to be PR for Nova, the radio station where I had won the tickets. He asked me if it true that I wanted Adam’s autograph on my arm to get it tattooed? I said of course and he asked if I would come into the studio to talk to Fitzy and Wippa (the DJ’s) about how Adam crazy I was, and if they could arrange the autograph, would I get it done live on air in the studio?
I was absolutely up for this but I started asking if this was a prank, or whether he was for real? He said it was all above board and to come in at 9am on the Thursday morning. At that point he told me that the autograph would be on a piece of paper, signed by Adam. Me, being me, said I wanted proof it was his. He asked me to TRUST them, and said it would all be above board.
Hello insomnia – my mind could not turn off the fact I was getting Adam’s name on my arm.
Pic credit: gallery4share.com
Thursday morning came; Maureen and I made our way to the studio. We were led into their boardroom, where we sat for what seemed to be at least an hour. Ben, the PR guy came and said he had to shut the door as Fitzy and Wippa were on air, and any noise from outside could affect the taping.. To which I turned to Maureen and said that’s shit, don’t they have soundproof glass?
Eventually, Ben came in, asked how I pronounced my name, and handed me a mic. Maureen was led down the corridor a little, and I was directed into the studio with Fitzy and Wippa. As he opened the door, I looked up, and THERE HE WAS! My dream had been handed to me on a plate and I felt like the luckiest person in this whole wide world.
‘Hi Sharlene’ he said – and with those words everything bad in my life was null and void. There was Adam Lambert looking directly at me, with this beaming smile that could melt a zillion hearts… I “think” I said OH MY GODDDDDDDDD…. Before my knees buckled and I fell flat on my arse!! Everyone in the studio oohed and aahed, we all laughed and Fitzy picked me up off the floor. Did I faint; I’ve no idea.”
(video from Fitzy and Wippa’s YouTube uploads)
“Adam got off his chair, came over to me and asked if I was ok? He then put his arms out, as I was still in shock, covering my mouth, trying so hard not to cry. As he hugged me, and wow, did he hug me; I placed my hand around his neck, so I could feel how soft his beard was for Marianne (another one of the QAL2 admins – we were on a mission!), trying to smell him (as that’s what everyone says? What does he smell like?) kissed him on the cheek, and then hugged him so tight.. He smelt fresh, like a summer breeze fresh?
He then pulled the chair out for me, and as I sat down, he touched my shoulder and asked again if I was OK. I was just about able to tell him I was fine.
We were on air now; Fitzy and Wippa welcomed me to the studio, and asked what it was about Adam I loved so much? I said that for every moment in my life, there is an Adam song. When hubby and I argue, its “Waddaya want from me?” and when I walk down the street and I’m feeling great, its “Strut”; he thought that was sweet. I just couldn’t get my head around what was going on in that radio studio – but my smile still stayed on…
Fitzy pointed out that I already had a tattoo which says “anyway the wind blows”. Adam thought this was cool and gave me a high five. I told him I had loved Queen all my life, and when Freddie died, the music wasn’t the same until he had come along to sing with Brian and Roger as QAL. At this, he reached over, touched my arm and thanked me. All the time I was sitting there, he just kept smiling!
The DJs also asked about my Adam mementos; I have pillows, photos and posters; my hubby refuses to have these above the bed because his name is Andrew, and he’s threatened to kick me out of bed if I say the wrong name during an intimate moment. He laughed really hard at this.
Pic credit: Fitzy and Wippa
Then Fitzy asked if I wanted Adam to sign something, and I pointed to my arm. They handed him a pen and he gently and slowly signed his name on my arm. Wippa (the other DJ) and Adam had a chat about him being asked to sign other strange requests to sign other parts of fans bodies…
There were two other guys in the studio; I assumed that they were maybe members of Adam’s band, but they were introduced to me as people from Bondi Ink, a famous tattoo shop in Sydney. I was asked if I was ready to be inked and he gave me another high five.
Adam led me over to the corner and I sat down with him beside me on a stool as the tattoo artist go to work. I sat there staring in complete disbelief. Then he got his phone out and took a photo of me getting the tattoo – so somewhere, I’m on Adam’s phone – me! While the tattoo was being done, he asked several time if I was OK and whether it was hurting. It honestly wasn’t; I think he’s the best anaesthetic I’ve ever had in my life.
We also chatted about the QAL Fans United 2 Facebook page (great plug Shar!), the people on there who inspired me to never give up on meeting Adam. The group is also where I had met Maureen; she was brought into the studio and just kept hugging him! So I dubbed her the Granny grab, and everyone, including Adam had a good laugh at this.
When the tattoo was over, he said it was nice work and asked if I liked it? I told him I had dreamt about this for so long; he touched my arm again and said I was too sweet!
Maureen and I were asked if we could wait outside while they did a bit more of the interview, and Adam said he would come out for some photos as soon as he was done. I hugged everyone in the studio, and thanked them from the bottom of my heart for giving me this unbelievable once in a lifetime dream.
Pic credit: Fitzy and Wippa
“Waiting outside the studio, I was shaking my head in disbelief. How on earth had I been lucky enough to have this experience? I think Maureen was in shock too as she was stressing about her hair. The people at Nova kept asking to see the tattoo, saying that I must really LOVE Adam!
The interviews finished; Maureen asked Adam to sign her CD, and I asked someone if they could take a pic of me with him. I was sure I was about to go into cardiac arrest standing next to him. We chatted about the Red Room and The Original High; I told him I had one unopened copy and the one from iTunes. He laughed at this and said I was dedicated.
I joked that I was really glad I hadn’t had to resort to buying chloroform so that I could kidnap him to meet him; he had a cheeky grin at this and said he was very grateful.
It was time for Adam to move on; he thanked me for being a fan and said he would see me later at the gig and again in January with the TOH tour. I said I would make it to as many of the gigs as I could. I got another huge hug and started to cry . When we got to the foyer, Adam was in the lift, and before the doors shut, he said “Bye Bye Sharlene” and waved to me…..
I don’t know how the hell I made it outside, or into the taxi to go back to the motel. I rang my hubby, and he was so happy for me, saying I deserved this moment, and to take it all in.
That night, at the Red Room, during Adam singing, Waddaya Want From Me” he came and stood in front of me and sang, “thanks for loving me, coz you’re doing it perfectly”….. Right then and there, I cried my eyes out! Here he was, Adam Lambert, singing to me.
It didn’t end there though…
The next day at Studio 10, sitting in the audience, the interviewer said to Adam, we saw this morning that an Aussie fan had your autograph tattooed on her arm? Adam explained what had happened and some of my fellow Glamberts who had been at the Red Room pointed out to him that I was there. He came straight over and spoke to me, then I was asked if I would continue liking Adam, or whether it was just as phase (as if!). I said that I would always love him.”
“Since then, I heard an interview Adam had done after my day in the studio with him, and he was asked was it true that a fan was tattooed in front of him. He called me an ‘amazing fan’ which were just about the best words I have ever heard.
As I am typing this, the tears are rolling down my face Kym, as this experience is just the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me, apart from being married and having my kids.
This was such a happy, yet emotional roller coaster, I don’t think I ever want to come down xxxx”
Like I said at the start, this is an amazing story – a five-star, solid gold fandom experience. I suspect they don’t come much better than this. I’d like to thank Shar for sharing her story for my blog as it’s great to hear other experiences of being a fan. It’s a unique and unforgettable experience meeting your hero and of course she will have that tattoo for ever.
Good on ya Shar – I’m glad we managed to enable you a little bit, but I’m sure you would have made it anyway.
I don’t feature my own adventures on here very often as I generally like to write about things objectively. But there are some times when that just goes out of the window and you have to give a very personal viewpoint. I’ve never been an autograph hunter, or a conventional fangirl. Come to think of it, I’ve never been a conventional anything. But maybe there are just times when you need to get out there and meet one of your heroes, whoever they are.
Since I started doing this blog a few months ago, I suspect now you have all worked out that I am a longtime admirer of the amazing Dr May. As I’ve been a Queenie since the days of Seven Seas of Rhye, I’ve been with him for the long haul. There are many reasons for this; he’s an incredible musician and songwriter, an astrophysicist, an animal rights campaigner, an activist who wants to change the political structure of the UK, an author and much more. He’s also pretty damn gorgeous.
Pic credit: brianmay.com
Those of you that I “know” via Facebook and Twitter will be well aware that Tuesday 30th June was Asteroid Day and the premiere of the movie 51 Degrees North. I’ve been tweeting about it a lot as Brian composed the film score and was going to be one of the VIP guests at the premiere. I’d bought my tickets for this several weeks ago and was to be meeting up with two others from the QAL2 Facebook group, one of whom had come all the way from Kansas.
This event was an opportunity for me to pull together a number of my interests; if you’ve followed this blog through from the start you might remember that I’ve had an amateur interest in astronomy since I was very small. I was one of those kids that followed the space race and asked for astronomy books as birthday presents. Sadly I was crap at physics, so ended up being a muso that liked astronomy and science, not the other way round.
Pic credit: astronomy.com
So, what is Asteroid Day? It’s a recently instituted event that was the brainchild of a film-maker rather than a scientist. The young and talented film-maker Grig Richters was deeply affected by a BBC documentary called Asteroids: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. He also came up with the Asteroid Day declaration which you can find at http://www.asteroidday.org/ – sign up!
Briefly, asteroids are those millions of lumps of variable-sized rock floating around in the solar system. While we have managed to track most of the larger ones, there are hundreds of thousands of smaller ones out there that could do us considerable damage. The declaration wants to push national governments and scientists into increasing the detection of them one hundred fold. The thinking behind this is that the more of them that we know about, the better we will be able to keep tabs on them and defend ourselves against them in the years to come. As asteroids have caused at least one global extinction, this is pretty heavy shit and we absolutely must protect our beautiful and unique planet.
51 Degrees North came about as an artistic expression of the scientific realities about asteroids – that one could hit us again. The treatment of the subject moved away from the standard “disaster movie” recipe and was a combination of close-shot drama, interaction with social media, drone shots of London and CCTV footage showing London’s reaction to an imminent asteroid strike. I’m not going to issue any spoilers as I think this movie needs to be seen, so hunt it out when it is widely released, or buy a copy.
Pic credit: brianmay.com
To greet us, London was as hot as Hades, so this poor, fragile Brit was desperately trying to find ways to keep cool. This wasn’t helped by the evening not starting awfully well; the VIP event seemed to collapse under poor management and got abandoned. Unfortunately the VIP guests weren’t aware of the problem until it was too late. I’m just going to draw a veil over this part of the evening to avoid my own irritation about it.
I met up with some hardcore Queenies who were also sitting on the front row and after a few preview trailers, Brian introduced Grig Richters and the film. Following that, there was a panel discussion featuring a panel of eminent astronomers, including the Astronomer Royal, Lord Rees, plus Dr Brian and Grig Richters. They talked about some of the wider issues surrounding Asteroid Day and then asked for questions from the floor.
Now, I have to confess that under these sorts of conditions I am incredibly competitive; I really can’t help it. I love being around academics and the opportunity to interact with these guys was irresistible. I’d done some homework about the asteroid threat and the available technologies to deal with them, so my question was about NASA’s current options of the use of nuclear weaponry and the latest research into tractor technology that could be used to destroy or deflect an incoming asteroid. I even got in a quip about us not being able to rely on Bruce Willis or the Starship Enterprise.
Pic credit: @AsteroidDay
They seemed to like it, as I got great answers from two of the professors. For me, the panel session was over far too quickly as I could have listened to those guys discussing astronomy for hours. The rest of the panel left for the after-show party and Dr Brian became the centre of attention as it was obvious there was a lot of his own fans in the audience. So it was time to join the queue, despite being boiling hot and in severe need of the bathroom. Sometimes you just have to stick it out to get what you want.
Dr Brian was a perfect gentleman with the people waiting to speak to him; he was presented with a beautiful book by some of the guys who had collected together pictures of the QAL tour and seemed really touched by this.
Then suddenly I was the next person and I was astonished that the first thing he said was to thank me for the great question I’d asked the panel! I hadn’t expected that at all. Also, I took the rare risk of getting in front of a camera; I avoid them like the plague usually but this is all part of the memory. Shame my hair was a bit of a mess…
Me – purple hair and all, with the lovely Dr Brian
I was lucky enough to get a minute or two to chat with him, and I was able to tell him that I was the person who’d played Lucy on the radio a few days ago (my Twitter and FB pals will know about this, as it caused quite a few tweets over the weekend. I do community radio and on our Saturday afternoon show I put Lucy on the playlist. The lovely @foxvegas tweeted the news to Dr Brian and he’d picked it up. I’m pretty sure we were the first UK station to play it, which was something of a coup). He remembered that instantly, which also surprised me, so he must have been really pleased the song had got some airtime. He was holding my hand at that point, which was incredibly distracting!
Dr Brian asked me what I thought of Adam’s voice and was very quick to tell me what a marvellous singer he thinks he is; he really lit up when he was talking about him. I also had the opportunity to tell him that I write this blog and that I’ve always loved Queen’s music because I have a classical background. I wish I’d had more time to speak to him, but I think I managed to cram quite a bit in.
And what was it like to meet my own particular hero? It was a hell of an experience. Dr Brian is very attentive and listens intently; he engages with every single person he speaks to and is completely charming. He has an astonishing aura; when he is playing or addressing an audience he is truly dazzling and when you stand next to him, you become aware that he is a beautiful soul. You feel as though you are the only person in the room when he speaks to you and he is a perfect gentleman. The great thing for me was that I was completely in the zone, so I’ve got a really clear recall of it. I was coherent and articulate; I didn’t get an attack of the wibbles – I was just so pleased to meet him at last I think I was determined to enjoy every second of it.
Pic credit: The Guardian
Queen have been the days of my life; I’ve followed them for over 40 years and their music has seen me through so many things. I saw them in Hyde Park in 1976; I’ve tracked them through hit records and not-so hit records, the triumphs and the tragedies and more recently, the phoenix rising from the ashes in the form of QAL. Brian has been the core of Queen’s sound and is one of its originators. He’s written some of the songs I love most of all, and his many other interests show what an entrancing and astonishing individual he is.
This absolutely was something on my bucket list; for years I’d never considered that I would ever get a chance to meet one of my rock heroes; I’m not the type who is tenacious enough to hang around stage doors for hours, but Asteroid Day was a unique opportunity for me and I’m so glad I went for it.
I think everyone should try to meet one of their heroes; it’s good for the soul. It’s thoroughly uplifting and it doesn’t really matter whether it’s someone who is a worldwide hero, or just your hero; they could be a rock star, a politician, a teacher or a religious leader. Bob Dylan described as hero as “someone that understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom” and I think that suits Brian perfectly.
It’s just good to be able to acknowledge your own particular hero as someone who’s an inspiration to you – and to thank them for whatever reason it is. So if you get the chance, do it; don’t pass it up. But enjoy it; it shouldn’t be traumatic – so take a piece of advice from Adam and “be in the moment”, that way you get enough adrenaline to put you in a good place but you don’t get overwhelmed and go into a meltdown. Plan out what you’re going to say, smile and say it. It’s actually remarkably easy.
So this is for you, Dr Brian. Thanks for punctuating my life with incredible music and for being such a wonderful soul.
Important note: I’ve commissioned two new pieces of fanart for this blog entry, from my lovely friends @IamjustMissy and AMB. Please don’t share them elsewhere without acknowledging their work, or cropping off their signatures.
Pic credit: fanart by @IamjustMissy and AMB – with thanks! 🙂
I often get my writing ideas when I’m either driving or walking; I think it must be something to do with movement helping my little brain work faster. Anyhow, I was musing on a comment that I’ve seen all over the internet about Adam’s voice – that he “transports” people, or “takes them to another place” when he sings, and also that once they’ve heard him, they simply can’t get enough. So, is this because he has the voice of an angel?
(video from istaykool’s YouTube uploads)
Adam’s voice often has a pure, beguiling and angelic quality; when he performed Mad World for American Idol he used a slender head voice for most of the song, giving it a silver tone throughout. Although there were added stage effects from the lighting and dry ice, there was little movement and the whole picture was still and ethereal. I’m aware that throughout his journey on AI, there was criticism of him being theatrical (including for his interpretation of this song), which I struggle with. Music should be theatrical – it’s about giving the audience an experience that moves them!
Sometimes voices are truly unworldly – readers who have seen the sci-fi movie The Fifth Element (I’m sorry, I’m a sci-fi nerd for my sins!) may remember the Diva Song, a combination of opera and dance music sung by a blue alien. The song is actually a combination of a nineteenth century operatic aria by Donizetti and a specially composed section by Eric Serra. This version of it was taken from a live performance by the music theatre Evgenia Laguna. It’s all sung by a real human voice, except for two very short sections where the voice is digitised; the first is at 4’21” where it wasn’t possible for a human voice to produce Eric Serra’s notes at that speed, and another at around 4’31”, but I think this was to get a specific sound effect rather than because it wasn’t possible for the voice to do it.
(video from Evgenia Laguna’s YouTube uploads)
Then at the other end of the spectrum, we have people who have voices that can do the entire colour spectrum, who are both the archetypal angel and the dark angel.
When Adam uses the dark side of his voice, like for Whole Lotta Love, this doesn’t engage only the “beautiful angel” aspects of it; this is the whole instrument with hormone-provoking cutting edge added. Interesting also for this performance at the Kradison his jacket has angel wings on the back of it!
(video from All things we love’s YouTube uploads)
The crowd reaction speaks for itself; sometimes it’s difficult to pick out the voice from the screaming, but I’m sure you get the overall picture. We can get an adrenaline rush and chills from both types of music, but it’s the reactions that are incredibly interesting.
The music we truly love can have magical, even spiritual effects on us. It can lift mood, give us solace, make us calm and induce strong physical sensations. Centuries ago William Congreve (not Shakespeare!) decided that music had the power to “soothe the savage breast”.
Now for the scientific part; all of these reactions – and more – are the result of a sneaky substance called dopamine that is produced in our brains.
Dopamine is responsible for a lot of things; it provokes feelings of ecstasy, it focuses our attention and it is a very real contributor to romantic love. When you even look at a photograph of the object of your desire, it lights up the part of the brain that releases dopamine.
Pic credit: @IamjustMissy
Dopamine provides the energy, arousal and focus that are a part of love. It is also a major player in addiction; dopamine levels rise on exposure to cocaine, nicotine, morphine and pretty much all other addictive substances. It seems fairly logical that this is how we can get hooked on one particular type of music – or one voice.
You may or may not be surprised to know that this same “reward” reaction is triggered by music; the rush of dopamine through our bodies give us those all-too-familiar chills when we hear music that we love. If it’s a piece of music that we know, we get them in anticipation. We can even get them when we think about a piece of music that gives us chills. If it’s a piece of music that we don’t know, the chills can overtake us really abruptly and be a genuine shock – that sudden, crashing glory note can send us into ecstasy and dopamine overload.
Lots of us (as many as 90% at times) get chills when listening to music, which puts music on the same level in our brains as love and addiction. And this is a real, visceral reaction. I can sit here now and think about the introduction to One Vision, and because of the way memory works, the chills explode instantly.
Oddly, sad music is more likely to give us this sort of reaction, and that then turns the experience of listening to sad music into an uplifting one in that odd way that pain and pleasure can mix. This must be why so many of us have loved sad songs for decades as ultimately the music itself is a reward.
Another interesting thing is that people who are more open to new experiences are more likely to get chills when listening to music. There might be a correlation coming here for the people who have thrown themselves into the QAL experiences and loved it – they decided that they were open to hearing something different and so made themselves more receptive to the brain’s pleasure mechanisms. That’s some reward.
Pic credit: fan art by NoSkerdykat
When that voice – the one that triggers that sensory overload seems to provide an infinitesimal range of experiences, then it can truly become addictive. You want that Original High again and again, so you will seek out the music any way you can; at least in the age of YouTube there are plenty of options available for those desperate for a fix. The reaction is always more intense with a live performance, so it’s easy to work out why there are fans who will be desperate to go to several concerts in a tour, and then become quite depressed when they can’t get that hit again.
The good news is that on the whole music addiction doesn’t seem to have the destructive effects of substance addiction. It doesn’t tend to put people into rehab (unless of course, you know differently!) and it’s freely available, courtesy of the world wide web.
But there are other elements that add to the basic reaction the voice; for Adam’s fans, it’s his constantly-changing image, the androgynous elements to it – he will wear leather with lace, eyeliner, he’s emo boy, rock boy, the camp Killer Queen and the elegant rock god who slays us with WWTLF.
Pic credit: fan art by @IamjustMissy and AMB – with thanks! 🙂
The final garnish is the unpredictability of his behaviour. Even though I’m a late starter, it didn’t take me long to figure out that there is Angelic Adam and Wicked Adam – hence the angel images which have popped up in today’s blog.
We’ve seen that Angelic Adam sings flawlessly, looks beautiful and is effortlessly elegant. But Wicked Adam is something else; Wicked Adam is the one that kisses Tommy, gets off the stage in Sydney to kiss a perfect stranger in the audience, licks fans’ phone screens, smiles sweetly at his fans and then twerks them into a frenzy. At the Nottingham QAL gig, it’s caught forever on YouTube that he spots a cute guy in the audience who is treated to a special dance:
(video from Glamberlicious’ YouTube uploads)
It’s completely outrageous – and Adam knows it, as he wheels away to giggle to himself about it and get smirked at by Brian. Don’t forget that Freddie’s 92-year old mom was in the audience on this occasion!
Wicked Adam is most definitely part of the addiction – for anyone open-minded, there’s always an extra rush at the performance that pushes the boundaries. This is the thing that pushes the fan to want more, to hear more, to see more – and definitely to need the cataclysmic rush of live performance.
My Badass Alter Ego 