by Broooklyn » Wed Sep 24, 2014 8:25 pm
I came along late. It was early 1992, pre-Freddie tribute @ Wembley, and a friend of mine wanted me to get the song 'We Will Rock You' for our sports league we played in at the time, so we could play it at the appropriate times. I asked him who sang that song, and he said Queen, and I simply said, ok, I will look for it. I knew nothing at all about the band. I honestly and very naively thought they were a "One hit wonder". Later that same night, I made a plan to go to a record shop to find the cd that had the song, but never got around to it.
Fast forward a few weeks and suddenly BOOM Bohemian Rhapsody was all over the place and getting ALOT of video and radio airplay. Too much in fact. I hated it. I took note that it was sung by Queen on the video channel, and that reminded me about the whole WWRY song that I never got around to getting. So, that night I finally went looking. They did not have anything but 'Classic Queen' and a couple of their albums; none of which had WWRY on it. I was aggravated. So, since I was there I picked up a 'Firehouse' cd, and then decided..."Fuck it, I will get Classic Queen, because I knew of Bohemian Rhapsody, even though I hated it.
Fortunately enough for me, I did. I did not pop the cd in the machine until after said friend of mine told me about the tv coverage of the Freddie tribute concert. He was not a big Queen fan, but liked some of their songs, so we watched it at my house. I found that I did in fact know some of their other songs, but just never knew who sang them. That inspired me to put on Classic Queen the next afternoon.
The listen started off slow, because I had never heard the songs. I was immediately in love with Freddie's voice, but I was not too keen yet on the songs I was listening too. Half way through my first listen, and skipping Bohemian Rhapsody still, I started liking some of what I was hearing, but still was not sold. Who Wants to Live Forever was the first track that started to really warm me to them, but then came The Show Must Go On. The fucking Holy Grail of songs in my world now...and BOOM! Awestruck. I sat up after it was over and said out loud..."WTF was THAT!" and I replayed the track for another hour at least in succession. That was it! I needed everything Queen. By the end of the year, I had all of the cd's, and album vinyl's and was collecting 45's in the city and just started getting some imports via my mom and pop shop record store in the city I visited.
The rest was history. =)
---