I'm On A Queen Kick

I'm really into the band Queen at the moment. I'm not really sure when it started but it's been going for a while.

I mean, I have always loved Queen, it's not a new thing. I have loved them since I was a kid. There is Bohemian Rhapsody, of course. Doesn't everyone get to them through Bohemian Rhapsody. But it was really Killer Queen that first introduced me to them. 

I was kind of friends with a couple of the older gay kids at school. There were a couple of them and it was fair to say they were a couple of, what’s the expression, a couple of flamers. Bruce and Andrew. Bruce was really into Killer Queen, and he got me into the song. 

For some reason, Bruce and I just clicked, as they say, despite our couple of years age difference, which is probably greater when you are at school. I always found him funny and interesting. It’s true to say, that without it ever being mentioned, Bruse was the first person to recognise the gay in me and who accepted it without reservation.

Bruce would eventually introduce me to his younger brother Adam, who also turned out to be gay, when Adam also started at our school, some two years after me, with whom I would become great friends, until years later Adam screwed me over potentially financially over a house we bought together, although in the long run it turned out to be good for me.

Andrew would go on to move in with one of our teachers from school, well after he had let the school himself.

Bruce would become a hairdresser of some note with a formidable reputation. I would meet young gay guys who at some stage in their life did hairdressing apprenticeships would speak of Bruce with equal parts trepidation and awe. I’d laugh at their reaction, seriously, Bruce? My lovely friend. But there were enough of them to indicate the fierce work reputation was probably true.

Bruce had a salon in Fitzroy and we would see each other in the street from time to time. I would suddenly hear, Christian Fletcher, in his slightly nasally feminine voice and it would then just be me and him on the oval at school more years before than I care to remember, laughing and chatting as though no years had passed.

We had a teacher at our school who molested all the gay kids, it would seem, and who would eventually be sentenced to 15 years jail for his misdeeds. The before mentioned Andrew’s little brother Steven, who also turned out to be gay, was one of the teacher’s victims. I was caught up in that, it is true, to say on the periphery. I have written about it elsewhere. Bruce was the first person to bring charges against Peter Morrison and when they looked as though they had failed to bring him to justice, despite all of his success, Bruce killed himself.

Whenever I hear Killer Queen, I can’t help but think of Bruce.

But just recently Queen is all I want to listen to. Their songs are great. 

It started a few weeks ago when I happened to hear the song Cool Cat. I'd never heard that song before, and it just got me on a Queen kick.

Another song I love, amongst so many songs that I love, is You Don’t Fool Me, a song that has a very unique history. A song Freddie sang but never heard.

Freddie is just such an amazing singer. Everything he sings.

Brian and Roger sing too.

And all four of them write the songs.

They are a unique rock band with a unique sound.

And, you know, one of the great tragedies of modern music is that the greatest rock singer to ever live is dead, and he left us at a young age cheating us all out of his greatness long before his time should have been up. Even people like Axe Rose acknowledge Freddie was the best. As good as Adam Lambert is, and Adam Lambert is great, he is still not as good as Freddie Mercury.

Queen are even credited by some with the first precursor to speed metal and thrash metal with the song with Stone Cold Crazy.