Queen

A few years ago a relative of mine who I've only seen very occasionally throughout my life asked me if I was still a Queen fan. I was somewhat surprised by this question given I was a Queen fan for around a year or so around 1991/92. Maybe I saw them more regularly in 1992 than any other year.

Queens Greatest Hits album is the biggest selling UK album of all time selling 7 million. That means over 1 in 10 people in this country own it, not to mention those who had a copied tape like I did. Their final concert with Freddie Mercury was in front of 120,000 people in Knebworth which came a month or so after they did 2 nights at Wembley Stadium. Even without Freddie Mercury they're still popular enough to play The O2. Yet even Brian May and Roger Taylor will tell you, they've never been a cool band to like.

I first knew Queen the band in 1989 when they had a hit with "I Want It All". I'd heard other songs of theirs before without knowing who it was, my music memories begin in 1987 so their prior hit "Who Wants To Live Forever" would have been just before my time. To this day, "I Want It All" is one of my favourite Queen songs and is arguably their heaviest hit. What I found quite baffling was seeing a rock band where only one member had long hair.

It was the death of Freddie Mercury at the end of 1991 though which turned me into a Queen fan. None of my school friends shared the same sentiment though, I was ridiculed by many for liking them.

During my time as a Queen fan I recall a school assembly where the teacher was talking about music. I don't know whether he was talking from the perspective of a school boy or teacher in the 70s, he seemed a bit old to have been a school boy then. He said all the kids were into the Bay City Rollers, they were the cool band. There was however one person who bucked the trend because he was into Queen. A bit like me in 1992.

The people I knew who did like Queen were older people which makes sense given they were around before I was born. In another school assembly the Deputy Head said he liked Queen which wasn't something I wanted to hear. What really made me feel embarrassed to be a Queen fan though was learning the organ player at church liked Queen.

Aside from establishing that Queen were uncool, what really stopped Queen from being my favourite band was asking myself the question: Is Queens music better than Guns N Roses music? The answer was no and then I became a Guns N Roses fan instead. At the time I didn't consider it a possibility to like both, so I now hated Queen.

These days you can simply categorise Queen as being Classic Rock which is a generic term. They never really fitted any specific genre. You could just about say that "I Want It All" is hard rock, but follow up "Breakthru" certainly isn't. Given they never stuck to one style, their music is a mixed bag. 

As we entered 1993 and I was into the more modern rock music I started having piano lessons, well Guns N Roses do have Dizzy Reed. My teacher was the daughter of the church organ player who was maybe 18 or so. Turned out she was into the more modern rock music too, but this time I wasn't put off because she wasn't as uncool as one might expect a church organ players daughter to be. I think there's a lesson to be learned here.