This page contains any more thoughts I have about my life, and Queen...

Queen Win UK Hall of Fame Award - November 2004

Queen win UK Hall of Fame Award for best Seventies Group. (Yes, I did vote for them, of course!!!) Roger commented on the stiff competition – Led Zeppelin, for example – and yes, Roger, where the **** were The Who?? (I want to know, too!!!) Or should I say, 

'I really wanna know....'*

*The Who (Who Are You?)

Pictures: Roger and Brian

receive the award from Justin and Dan of THE DARKNESS,

Roger speaking, then Queen playing 'We Will Rock You' and 'We Are the Champions', sung by Paul Rodgers.

Picture Source: www.roger-taylor.net. Press picture from www.brianmay.com

 Your mother's eyes

from your eyes

cry to me

Brian May  (’39 - A Night At the Opera)

(The following relates to my personal story - scroll down to 'Killer Queen')

Music is a very evocative thing. It often brings back the memories of the time we first heard a particular song – or of a significant moment in our lives when a song was being played. In reality, Queen’s early songs still remain a part of my teens – nothing changes something so deeply rooted – but the difference now is that I have come to terms with the events of those months prior to, and since, 1977 in a way which I had clearly never done before. Up to recently, I had never really examined that time – there was a practical need to get on with life – I was young, and I wanted to enjoy myself – and felt at the time that the way I should do that was to put it all behind me as much as I could. In a way, I was right to do this – but a deep sadness remained within me and the group whose music had been so much a part of me, allowing me carefree interludes from mum’s illness,  was caught up in it. I was, over the years, aware that there was something I should address, but didn’t have the capability to do it somehow. When I finally did so, 25+ years after the events themselves, it was all still very painful, but I’ve made that journey – it was a journey I needed to make – and I now view things positively. In saying that, I wish to emphasise that I never viewed Queen’s music in a negative light, because the quality of it spoke for itself, but I’m aware that my reactions to it weren’t what you’d call ‘normal’.

In many ways, these reactions remain intensely personal, and I know I’m not alone in that. But the fact that this all happened in my teens explains a great deal - people may have a difficult adolescence for various reasons – but I look back on the fact that mine was, in a way, cut short – or had to finish abruptly.

I remember the time I was put on valium in the later part of 1977 through to 1978 as a real low point. Being on valium at 15 was hitting rock bottom as far as I am concerned – mental lip synch.

However, I now look back on the time when I was a fan of Queen in their early days with the confidence that they were ‘with me’ at the time when mum’s failing health meant that I had to cope with a lot more than my peers had to cope with. Furthermore, I recently read that the group would have gone under if ‘A Night At The Opera’, their fourth album, had not been successful. So I see now that I did my small bit by contributing to the success of that album at the time, and in that way ensured that we are still enjoying the array of songs they produced then, before and since, and that people are still writing and talking about Queen today. In truth, I’ve always been a Queen fan.

'After three albums, people thought we were driving around in Rolls-Royces already'.                                        

Brian May

It has also only been recently that I have started to draw a parallel between my mother’s passing and Freddie’s. The reasons for doing so seem to grow in my consciousness all the time – so I feel I’m right in doing so. First and foremost, they are two people who’ve both been very influential in my life. They both died young from an insidious and weakening illness. Personality? One overwhelming similarity was their shared ability to connect with others – I remember a schoolfriend remarking ‘Your mum knows everyone around here!!!’ (excursions to the shops or lessons were sometimes delayed by very lengthy chinwags with someone we bumped into!!!).

The fact that I’ve only just managed to work all this out and tie it all together is partly because I needed the maturity to do so, and partly because the deaths themselves happened at times immediately preceding very significant events which required my focus on other things – after my mother’s passing, it was my first public exams and the start of an academic life which only finished seven years afterwards. With Freddie’s, it was the birth of my daughter - only a month after the Tribute Concert – and the start of caring and taking responsibility for this precious young life during those early years.

Finally, there is the parallel of my feelings about my mother and those of the other three members of the group over Freddie. They likened his parting at the time to losing a member – in fact the ‘greatest and most beloved’ one - of their family. Roger Daltrey also mentions this analogy in the Tribute Concert documentary. He talks of the spirituality of being in a group making music together, and of the death of his fellow band member, The Who drummer Keith Moon, (an event which I remember well from my schooldays). In the case of Queen, they had been together for so long – Roger Taylor talks in the Tribute Documentary of the fact that they could even anticipate what another person in the group would be thinking, and this isn’t surprising to me at all. In fact, when I was writing the ‘Innuendo’ page, the thought occurred to me that, by this time, it was no longer a question of living in each other’s pockets – they must have been living in each other’s souls.

Conversely, when Queen were so much a part of my life in the seventies, the length of time we’re talking about is short. However, it was long in influence due to my age and circumstances. This is borne out by the long time it has taken for me to overcome the effects of those tragic events. I couldn't have done it without the music and I couldn't have come back to the music without making the journey back - that's how intertwined the two things were, even after all those years.

So, now, every tribute to Freddie has become, for me, a tribute to my mother, and vice versa. Even in the shot of him bowing out of the last video, ‘These Are The Days of Our Lives’ saying “I still love you”, I hear my mother talking as well as him. God bless both of them for what they did, and are still doing.

You don’t realise how much you come to rely on someone until they’re not there…so you have to re-adjust and it takes quite a while…

Brian May (Tribute Documentary Interview)

  27 November, 2004

On 2 December 2004 between 7 and 9 pm, BBC Radio Kent broadcast the ‘Evening Show South’ doing a Queen ‘special’. This included interviews with Carl Johnston, producer and director of the Bohemian Rhapsody documentary, Jacky Smith, who runs the UK-based fan club, and Dan Carter, from Kent, who performs in the musical.

I e-mailed the show, and as a result, the site Now-im-here.com was mentioned in a very positive way (although the URL wasn’t given) by Sue Dougan.

Her co-presenter, Steve McCormick recorded me singing a line of Bohemian Rhapsody down the 'phone as part of the show’s 'version' of it.  Please see below for transcripts of two of the interviews.

 The following is the transcript of my few seconds of fame:

Sue Dougan: 'We’ve got Alison from Medway tonight who’s sent us an e-mail and she’s actually  charted her own personal memoirs about Queen on her own website which we’re going to take a look at in a minute, Alison.. which looks actually pretty good, by the way!!!

She says 'I’ve put together all my thoughts about Queen based on this website which I’ve loosely named after the 1974 song ‘Now I’m Here’ which was a great favourite of mine as a teenager’'.

Well, some of this is paraphrased but it’s more or less what I wrote and in any case an accurate picture of the facts – except I wouldn’t LOOSELY name anything after anything – either it’s named after something or it’s not!!! 

I sang ‘Anywhere the Wind blows, doesn’t really matter to me, to me…’ for the show's 'own version' of Bo Rhap.‘With apologies to Queen fans everywhere’ said Sue Dougan, when introducing it…(excuse me I AM one!!!) and suggested that none of us should give up our day jobs!!!  

Back in the summer when I decided to set up this site, the main purpose was to tell my personal story about the meaning of Queen’s music to me. It would be quite different from most other stories, and I felt driven to do it, even though it meant publicising a lot of things I was once reluctant even to talk about.

Once I’d got my story down, I felt emotionally drained, like an empty vessel waiting to be filled up.

Other things have been written about on this site around that story; they are still relevant. Among them, the cancellation of the 46664 gig in Benidorm in the summer was a huge disappointment but I couldn’t dwell on it. I’d imagined that if I ever got to experience a live concert concerning the remaining members of the group, the first time I made it, it would be Queen - the two of them. Things didn’t work out that way and, on December 6 – (or 7, as it was by the time he came on stage) it was Roger alone that I got to see. I’m so grateful for that, and, as the venue was small, and I could get quite close to the action.

It turned out to be a logical scenario. Once I’d said in my original story that he was my favourite, I felt I couldn’t leave it at that and I should write about the teenage ‘crush’ as well. Then, in turn, I started to re-examine what I’d latched on to about him back then in terms of his personality. I came to see that it must all have had a great impact on me at that formative and difficult stage in my life – I’d never given the matter much thought at all before. I guess I saw in him something of a reflection of myself and the way I’d like to be. At the same time, there are areas where my opinions differ from Roger’s. I think diversity is a much-needed breath of fresh air because it can pool together the best in different people. This is shown in the grouping of Queen themselves, whose chemistry was vital over and above strong individual differences.

Now it’s time to look forward to the New Year and the next stage of this story, which is a journey without end. I’ve recently become aware that I’d never been able to see a way of changing things – I’d even thought subconsciously that I could never be involved in Queen’s music again in the way I would have hoped. It’s difficult to describe how that came to be and how it lasted so long. Some things just get suppressed to an extent that it’s not possible to appreciate that there can be a way out – which brings me to the story of the musical, I guess. What the musical did was present the great array of songs to me on a ‘platter’  - Queen’s music, my great love, I’d taken with me to another place, but not beyond reach – and that’s what makes it so special.

31 Dec 2004

Long Away

The Promise:

You are mine – I possess you. I belong to you forever….

I never went back before

I was just moving on

Never looked at the track before

That I had been on -

The Tragedy:

There’s no living in my life anymore

The seas have gone dry and the rain stopped falling

Please don't you cry anymore
Can't you see
Listen to the breeze, whisper to me please
Don't send me to the path of nevermore…

On a shelf I placed what I’d left behind

Bits of a jigsaw in each song

More arrived on that shelf in my mind

As the years brought new ones along

The Wilderness:

Living with painful memories
Loving with all my heart…

I'm having to learn to pay the price
They're turning me upside down
Waiting for possibilities
Don't see too many around

I’ve been long, too long away

Now – it’s true - I’m back to stay

Not lost forever but retrieved

I move on again now I’ve grieved

The Homecoming:

Made in heaven,

I know that it's true
Yes it's really meant to be
Deep in my heart…

Wait and see, it was really meant to be
So plain to see..

yes it was meant to be.

31 Dec 04 

Quotes are from the following Freddie Mercury lyrics: 

Seven Seas of Rhye 

Nevermore 

Made in Heaven 

Made In Heaven  

©2004 Now-Im-Here.com

05 Feb 05: Brixton Lottery: I’m A Winner!

 It’s taken a while for the significance of this to sink in. In 1977, as a member of the fan club, I might have been among the audience who enjoyed the concert at the time of the making of the ‘We Are The Champions’ video, but circumstances would never have allowed it. This song is particularly worth mentioning here, because of Freddie's words:

‘I’ve paid my dues time after time

I’ve done my sentence but committed no crime’.

I’m sure that I considered seeing Queen in when they did the Magic Tour – as it turned out their final as a group of four – in 1986. Still, nine years is not long when such a  loss happened while you were still growing up. Queen were in a personal place inside, locked in that immaturity – a dormant part of me that couldn’t be awakened, and not to be shared with so many people in a packed stadium. 

I had already bought a ticket for Wembley in May. But by winning a ticket for the March concert in Brixton, I feel a wrong has been put right. It’s an exclusive concert, like that one in 1977, and I’ll be there where I should be – with other Queen fans. (I’ve been, and still am, a fan of other groups but I’ve never been the member of any other fan club – Queen were and are my only real no. 1s). So there’s the justice that I can reclaim this thing that should have been mine once and that I belong again – I’m not on the periphery any more.

So Brixton will be for mum, and Wembley for Freddie. Both concerts will be for me, and for Queen, and for Vicki Moore, who in Heaven knows what an inspiration she was to me.

1977 – Mum’s passing then fourteen years to 1991 – Freddie’s passing. 

Another fourteen years to now, 2005, and God willing, a balance is restored. 

www.queenonline.com

Time is but a paper moon…

Brian May, Teo Torriatte

 www.paulrodgers.com

So dear friends your love is gone
Only tears to dwell upon
I dare not say as the wind must blow
So a love is lost, a love is won

Go to sleep and dream again
Soon your hopes will rise and then
From all this gloom life can start anew
And there'll be no crying soon

Brian May, Dear Friends (Sheer Heart Attack)

 18 Feb 05: 

 I've been on something of a 'roll' since last summer:

Since I started this site, seen Roger sing and play live, joined the fan club, had two letters appear on Brian’s site and booked the fan club convention and a ticket for Wembley, as well as winning in the Brixton lottery! Wow!

25 Feb 05:

 Bob Harris, Bohemian Rhapsody Documentary

26 Mar 05: 

http://www.brianmay.com/downloads/greatestgigsch4_091105.mp3

 The spontaneous way in which the tour came about arose from a gut feeling – the nature of it has been the renaissance of the group and their music after Freddie. Roger has expressed his surprise at the reception they’ve received and Brian says that he’s pinching himself every morning. My involvement in it also came about spontaneously and nobody can say that, when I saw the chances that came my way, I didn’t seize them with both hands! 

Since getting hold of the DVD, I’ve recognised some members of the crowd – members of the ‘John Deacon Freundeskreis’ in their yellow T-shirts, Sarah, Jamie, and…Michelle, with elation etched all over her face. It’s clearly not just the Queen songs that we can love now – but the Free/Bad Company songs – and I unapologetically single out ‘All Right Now’ When I was a teenager, this was a song that everyone knew. But now it sounds greater than ever to me! ‘Feel Like Makin’ Love’ was also a song I knew very well from that time, too!

 I read that Roger sang ‘I Was Born to Love You’ at one of the Japanese concerts. I think that the following lines from it fit particularly well to my feelings about the tour:

 ‘I’m caught in a dream

And my dream’s come true’

27 Nov 05

"It's so good to know there's still a little magic in the air
I'll weave my spell"
                                                                    Brian May, 'Brighton Rock'

Hyde Park crowd: paulrodgers.com

"O lady moon, shine down a little people magic if you will..."
                                                                                                                    

Brian May, 'Brighton Rock

Every time I have written something for the site, it's been a case of 'carpe diem', because I've had different feelings as time has gone on. When you write something down, it's out, and, to a certain extent, lost to you. With regard to the tour, it has been like a new beginning - a new animal, but as Roger said, with a lot of the old animal there too! Just as it was in the seventies, I was there at the start!

11 Jun 06

The machine of a dream, such a clean machine
With the pistons a pumpin', and the hubcaps all gleam
When I'm holding your wheel
All I hear is your gear
With my hand on your grease gun
Mmm it's like a disease son
I'm in love with my car, gotta feel for my automobile
Get a grip on my boy racer rollbar
Such a thrill when your radials squeal...

Roger Taylor 'I'm In Love With My Car'

For a short time in my teens, we had a car which mum drove. It was a blue Vauxhall Viva like this one:

She passed her test fourth time - I think that was in 1975 - but we only had use of it for a few months.

31 Dec 06

If life is a poem, these are the lines which rhyme. If life is a puzzle, these are the pieces which fit the gaps. If life is a journey, I have now found the landmarks. I think about how it took so long to face the music – I can hit on some reasons why this all happened when it did. But, above all, the timing meant that I found myself on a parallel journey with the group of my teens in their own revival. How apt - after all, they'd made a journey with me once, a long time ago...

The result was that I finished up in a place I never expected to be in – particularly one day in early December last year, when, a stone’s throw from my old school, I had a meeting with Brian which turned up an extraordinarily special moment. I knew that morning that I had to go. But now I also know that, although on the face of it a 44-year-old teacher was meeting a 59-year-old rock musician of world fame, whose attention she'd gained by doing a few translations, inside it was really that 70s schoolgirl meeting that young innovative guitarist whose group had recently arrived on the scene and had got her attention. How ironic too, that she'd just started learning German, and he'd not long given up studying for his doctorate in astrophysics...*

That’s the crux of my message;  my Queen story is unique – not that everybody else hasn’t got a unique story, too – but in the sense that my life was just starting and so was the group’s.  So maybe it’s particularly appropriate that I’m dealing with their legacy, which now seems to have become far more important than the events of their heyday.

 It’s not enough in life to notice the signs – you also have to read them, understand them and act on them  In the end, I think that moving on truly means accepting that you never will move on.

 *Last week it was announced that, after taking it up again, Brian had finally gained the PhD he'd abandoned for a career in music back then!

Was this story a conspiracy of the dead? Mum, Freddie, and later Vicki?  There are many unions of place and time. The seeds of Queen's collaboration with Paul Rodgers were planted in the week I started this site, when Paul and Brian played together at the Fender Stratocaster anniversary event (September 2004). Then there was the first group performance the week of Vicki's passing (November 2004 - see the top of this page)  which took place only round the corner from the hospital where my mother passed away.. 

Was I kidnapped one early December morning in 1976 on the podium in Moorgate, on my way to school, the tune of 'Now I'm Here' in my head, to be placed in a time machine and transported exactly 30 years into the future, overshooting its mark by a mere 0.7 of a mile, to meet its writer? I would just have completed my first term of learning German - the reason he already knew about me through the translation of Queen-related items. How does translation link in with all the writing I have done? As I was reading about the skill of translating, emphasis was placed on the fact that translators are also writers - so obvious a fact that it is easy to miss. 

When performing Bohemian Rhapsody in the Queen plus Paul Rodgers concerts, the video at the very end shows the mid-70s Freddie immediately followed by the dying Freddie of the 'These Are The Days Of Our Lives' video. It is a poignant juxtaposition - Freddie at the start of his career and then at the end of it - except that it is not the end, of course. The Freddie of my teens juxtaposed with my dying mother - as I wrote before - Freddie saying 'I still love you' is her speaking, too. Then there's the 'eye' video accompanying 'Bijou' - Mary Austin spoke of Freddie's 'third eye'. 

In 2002, I started to digest as much information as I could about the band. One of the things that struck me was that Roger, my teen fave, had written songs about topics that also greatly concerned or interested me too - Neo-Nazism, international friendship or issues, the power of the media. Then, more recently, to find that Roger is still the outspoken, funny person he had been in my teens. 

The 'Cosmos Rocks' tour had a 'Berlin Blast-Off' for its German leg. I stayed with a friend in Pankow. On the morning of the concert, I saw a sunflower growing tall and strong in a garden there. After the concert, I saw a poster advertising a Udo Lindenberg concert. In Berlin, the past is ever before me, and the music, part of my past, came and joined it. It is as if the history of Berlin has a parallel with the history of my own life - the wall I built around myself - the wall of pain, forgetfulness and avoidance. 

I should return to Berlin every now and then, just to check that the Wall is not there any more. I cannot move around the city without making reference to it, though. 

Then the next place I came to on the tour - Glasgow. Why did I book to go there? I had originally intended to go to Gdansk but it was called off. Is it because they both begin with a 'G'? I had toyed with the idea of attending the concert before Berlin, in Riga, and started reading about the city, interested to know that there is a legend about it never being finished - rather like this website! But at the Glasgow concert I learned of another coincidence - as if I did not have enough already to link the group back to that time in my life - that Brian's mother was born in the same place that I spent the very last summer holiday I had together with my mum - Pitlochry. We never usually went to Scotland for our holidays - in fact, the only other time I know that we did was ten years before that - when I was four, when I have a clear memory of hearing a foreign language for the first time - that being Gaelic - an influential happening for a future linguist! 

Freddie, Paul - does one exclude the other? The end of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' in the current concerts gives them alternate lines. Very different in their voices, their singing style, their way of presentation. Queen in a different form. I am my mother's daughter - - through me you know about her. my life has taken a very different course from hers, but one day, two months ago, she was there. Exactly 30 years after a day she never lived to see - the day I received my 'O' level results - she was with me when I opened her granddaughter's fantastic GCSE results and read them aloud  for them both to hear. 

I will finish on a passage I find particularly relevant, from one of my favourite authors, which sums up how I, too, have accepted all the coincidences and patterns as part of my life: