The Works

Here I stand

Look around around around...

But you won’t see me.

Now I’m here….

Now I’m there….

I’m just a….

Just a new man

Yes you made me live again….

(Now I'm Here) Brian May

This is my personal account relating how the influence of ‘We Will Rock You’ - the musical - started me on a cathartic 'journey' with Queen’s music which finally dispelled a 25-year-old ‘cloud’…

Somebody to Love

That's my mother. It's back to the summer 1977 when she was forty-nine and I was fifteen.

Whatever this world can give to me

It's you, you're all I see......

Whenever this world is cruel to me

I got you help me forgive.....

You're my best friend - (You're My Best Friend) John Deacon

She had been ill, with cancer of the colon, for some months. Up to that time, she had been an active, energetic woman who was never ill. She did so much for her children - my elder brother and me. Her mother also lived with us and our father. Our home in north east London suburbia was not always harmonious but we had everything we needed and my mother was the rock of our household. One early August day that year, I returned from a holiday to the news that she was dead.

(For more about my mother, those days and other thoughts: 'No-One But You', below).

Stone Cold Crazy

My family and I were torn to pieces. But I was taking my 'O' levels the following summer and getting good results would be my epitaph to my mother. She felt she had missed out on her education and pulled out all the stops to ensure that I had the best schooling possible.

And life goes on

- Without you... - (No-One but You) Brian May

So I had to get on with life, but at a price. I started to have sleeping problems so I went to the doctor and was prescribed valium. I was never offered counselling – but only this powerful, addictive drug, which seemed to be handed out like smarties in those days.

Well, I got really good exam results, but in the process I had become a zombie. It was then, at the age of sixteen, that I made a solemn vow that I would never touch any such tablets again. Any problem I might have in my future life, I thought, I would find another solution. It was a sensible resolution made with the determination of youth and the power of experience. I have therefore always stuck to it.

But in the grief, anger and guilt that I felt in my bereavement, I sacrificed something most dear to me on the altar of these feelings: I threw away the things that had mattered so much to me and had brought me so much joy - my collection of Queen LPs, (which consisted at that time of the first four). There was such a finality to this action; I think that I was feeling then that things could never be put right again, but that somehow doing this would help.

The slate will soon be clean

I'll erase the memories..... (Save Me) Brian May

For me, Queen's music became embedded in a deeply painful time - later I would come to understand that this itself showed that the music was my great love...

I Can't Live With You (but I can't live without you)

I had been a fan of Queen since they broke on to the UK charts with the words

Fear me you Lords and Lady Preachers

I descend upon your earth from the skies… (Seven Seas of Rhye) Freddie Mercury

If there ever was a group started out as they meant to carry on - the words were typical of their flamboyant and confident style, tinged with the exotic feature of a lead singer born in Zanzibar. As I was a drummer and vocalist in a school band, my favourite was Roger Taylor. I was an enthusiastic member of the fan club, through which I had started corresponding with a Japanese girl.

After my mother's passing, I felt that the thing that made me feel most happy didn't belong in my world of sadness. It was not a constructive way of going about things, but I was young and had nobody to whom I could articulate my feelings. So that's how an estrangement from the music began - both self-imposed and long-lasting.

It's important to remember that I never stopped listening, though, and I continued to hear Queen's music through airplay.

Everything I had to know

I heard it on my radio - (Radio Ga-Ga) Roger Taylor

Of course, pop groups have always had a tendency to come and go, but I had chosen one that stayed around. Over the years, Queen continued to entertain so many people who were enjoying the music the way it was intended to be enjoyed. As for me, even as the years passed I was afraid about becoming involved in it again. I was something of an extreme person - an 'all or nothing' - I knew that owning any of the newer stuff would put me on a road back to the earlier songs and I really didn't want to uproot those memories. It was fear, then, that kept this going, and I was more secure in this little 'no man's land' I had built around myself as a defence against unearthing my pain.

However, even if I didn't feel I could stay close to the music, it continued to follow me, often with a resonance of its earlier meaning in my life. For instance, I had completely forgotten, until recently when I saw the video on the 'Greatest Hits I' DVD, how the song 'Save Me' spoke so many volumes to me back in 1980.

Save me, Save me, Save me

I can't face this life alone

Save me, Save me, Save me

I'm naked and I'm far from home - (Save Me) Brian May

Later on I travelled - I heard 'Under Pressure' as a student in China (see 'Under Pressure') and 'I Want to Break Free' whilst roaming around in Spain in 1984. Throughout the eighties, the group's appearances became less frequent - but were still triumphant - I saw the 'Live Aid' concert on TV in 1985, and remember 'One Vision' being released in the wake of it.

I was getting on with life, and was preoccupied with forever doing different things. And as for Queen, I suppose I came to resemble someone who's adhering an ancient taboo when it's scarcely remembered why it was imposed in the first place.

I have no heart, I'm cold inside

I have no real intent - ( Save Me) Brian May

A few years later I saw Brian on TV talking about 'I Want It All' and then there was also the unforgettable 'Invisible Man' video of 1989.

By this time, I had met my husband-to-be and things were looking good. I remember marvelling 'Crumbs, are that lot STILL around?' As the years had passed, I had come to think less and less about my history with Queen's music. I consider myself quite an adaptable person but frankly I had got stuck into a rut which had its roots in that momentous tragedy of my teens. And then, eventually, another tragedy struck - the world lost Freddie. Someone with so much talent dying so young!

I had spent the latter part of 1990 and the beginning of 1991 living in Germany. It's quite coincidental that, in the course of a 'phone conversation I remember having with my brother during that time, he mentioned that one of the tabloids had poked its cameras at Freddie on a London street and displayed pictures of him looking very ill. My brother was quite upset at this invasion of privacy and wanted to talk about it. I agreed with him that it was very wrong:

..they're gonna turn our lives into a freak show - (Scandal) Freddie Mercury

I remember seeing, during visits home, the video of 'I'm Going Slightly Mad' and then later 'These Are the Days of Our Lives', and it was clear to see how ill Freddie was. So the news was not unexpected when, on the day before his passing, the official announcement was made that he had AIDS, and calling on people to fight it.

For me, it was no longer just a case of my being detached from the music - the music itself would be lost to me too. But another event was about to change my life forever - by this time, I was expecting my daughter - becoming a mother would inevitably push anything else to the periphery of my mind.

No use in sitting and thinkin' on what you did

When you can lay back enjoy it through your kids - (These Are the Days of Our Lives) Queen

I watched the Freddie tribute concert on TV the following year and that was it. If anything, it was time to draw a line under it all. There was a whole new life to lead now...

So that's how it came to be that it wasn't until the new millenium and the advent of the musical 'We Will Rock You' that I returned once more to Queen's music. It was all about nostalgia - not as we now use the word - but in its original meaning; 'a longing for home'. What 'home' meant to me was an inner peace - a place where I felt I had finally sorted things through. That's how the journey of self-discovery began...

I guess I'm learning

I must be warmer now

I'll soon be turning

Round the corner now

Outside the dawn is breaking

But inside in the dark I'm aching to be free... - (The Show Must Go On) Queen

Breakthru

I acquired the first Queen albums I had owned in a quarter of a century - 'Live Magic', 'Platinum Greatest Hits' and 'Queen Rocks', (later on also 'The Miracle') and spent time over several months listening to them. Despite the long time lapse, I found that some of the songs still held deep associations with my mother's death. I had, after all, placed a big 'full stop' after those earlier, joyful times when I had been such a fan.

In my tangled state of mind

I've been looking back to find

Where I went wrong

(Too Much Love Will Kill You) Brian May/Frank Musker/Elizabeth Lamers

In particular, after seeing the musical for the first time, I came to realise that those two most uplifting anthems - 'We Will Rock You' and 'We are the Champions' of the finale were, despite the long time lapse, still buried somewhere within the mind-numbing narcosis in which I had first heard them; the originals had been released late in 1977 when I was taking valium.

God knows I want to break free...

(I Want to Break Free) John Deacon

It's probably hard to imagine the beat of 'We Will Rock You' inside a 'cotton wool' head, but it's unreal. Up till then, I had always looked upon this 'valium' episode in my life as a necessary evil, and a consequent backdrop to my refusal take any kind of 'conventional' sleeping tablets, even when I suffered from insomnia later on. But now I began to understand that the de-sensitising effects of the tablets at such a difficult time had been longer-lasting on an emotional level than I had ever realised. I'm so glad that the drugs never became more than a temporary solution. If I had become addicted I'm sure it would have wrecked so much for me.

So, despite my love of the musical, I would finish up going through more soul-searching before I could go back to see it for a second time, because this time I wanted to be involved in those rousing songs like other people in the audience were.

I'm walking a fine line

Between hope and despair

You may think that I don't care -

But I travelled a long road to

Get a hold of my sorrow - (I Can't Live With You) Queen

Looking back, I guess that up to this point I had not been ready to make such a journey. It had been a long time, twenty five years since it had all happened - that was a landmark in a way. I had been getting on with my life - by 2002 I was forty. That is a significant age, although I didn't think so at the time, and I'd also had to get through the more recent 'baggage' - my marriage breakdown, an unsatisfactory work situation and the stress of getting used to lone parenthood. It was now the right time - the catalyst was there - and I was at last able to listen again.

Breakthru these barriers of pain

Breakthru to the sunshine from the rain - (Breakthru) Queen

When I did, I came to feel that I'd spent the years in a dream. I hadn't been 'alive' to the music - that would have meant approaching it as a diversion or even an escape from my problems. I'd done the reverse in a way - it was kept at something of a distance. I was conscious that It felt safer that way.

Those days are all gone now but one thing is true

When I look, and I find I still love you - (These Are the Days of Our Lives) Queen

The pain of losing a loved one is an expression of love, just as love was expressed in joy when the person was alive. There was a parallel in the way I had treated Queen's music. I know I never ignored it - instead it appeared that the songs, over the years, had finished up in a place where they were veiled in my feelings of grief, under which lay a deep love. When I re-discovered them there, it was not just a case of becoming re-united with 'old friends'. I then had to re-claim them for myself, for the present, and re-affirm my love for them, and that's how a long-forgotten confidence was restored. In this way the songs were no longer time-bound, but had formed themselves into a special 'soundtrack' to my thoughts, my feelings, my life.

So through all those years Queen's music was being released I didn't have their albums to play at home, I didn't hear them play live. It's a source of regret and it's certainly not the way Freddie or the rest of the group meant it to be for the fans. But I now I've come to think 'so what' - I have the music back now, and that's such a joy - I went to see the musical again recently and this time I felt free to enjoy the finale. Fantastic!

It's late, but not too late - (It's Late) Brian May

What I went through all those years ago was utterly devastating and it's not right to pretend otherwise. Youth can show resilience, but what happens in youth can leave its mark. You can lead a full life, you can be flying in all directions, you can have a strong faith and yet still not be truly at peace with yourself.

I'm holding on to life with you
'Cos life without you just won't do - (Driven by You) Brian May

These Are the Days of Our Lives

The best analogy I can think of by way of explanation is this: You lose someone so close so young, then your house is in darkness. After a while, the lights start to come back on one by one. But still one small light deep inside remains dim. You know you should get down to fixing it but it's a lot of trouble and you think you can see well enough without making the adjustment. However, when something finally forces you to get the light working properly again, you stand back and realise that the whole house never looked quite right until then.

Surrender your ego, be free, be free to yourself - (Innuendo) Queen

So is it just that a set of songs once made me feel that way, and now they make me feel this way, and everything's okay? Well, that's nice, but not much of a story. One day not long ago a close friend asked me a challenging question: 'Did you really mourn your mother properly?' I was aghast - there had been times when I felt I'd been to hell and back - and wasn't it a gratuitous question after all this time anyhow? Then I had flashbacks of the palace roof and the concert itself - what HAD happened that day of the highlights that had never happened before and had started to change everything?

I had to be honest - nobody had come to that bereaved teenager and told her how to mourn. Or even said that feeling pain was okay. At that crucial time, I was back at school in a month, full speed ahead with my life - my exams- almost became a junkie in the process, and somewhere along the line, jettisoned my Queen albums because somehow or other it was necessary. In these recent months when my daughter's not been around, I've played the songs and cried my eyes out...If there's one word for what I have now that I didn't have before, it's exoneration.

There have also been tears of another kind - tears of laughter at those seventies pictures in the Greatest Hits I DVD - the way they used to look! I knew when this happened that there was no going back - at one time, looking at those pictures would only have meant one thing - evoked one memory.

It may appear that I remember those events of twenty seven years ago as if it were yesterday – sometimes it seems that it was. Furthermore, treatments and technology may have moved on, but cancer is still affecting people now, just as much a nightmare as it was for me then.

Life can throw up all different kinds of problems, but it's the quality of personal relationships that matters most of all. We should remember that friends can be the most helpful people.

It's not easy love, but you've got friends you can trust

Friends will be friends

When you're in need of love they give you care and attention

Friends will be friends

When you're through with life and all hope is lost

Hold out your hand 'cos friends will be friends - right till the end - (Friends Will Be Friends) John Deacon, Freddie Mercury

When I lost my mother, I lost someone who could never be replaced in my life. She lives on in my heart. Fourteen years later, we lost Freddie. He could never be replaced within Queen, although his legacy lives on; that is, his contribution to a group of four human beings. The four heads together on ‘Queen II’ in 1974 eventually merged into the four-heads-in-one of ‘The Miracle’ in 1989. En route Queen hopped on to lot of people’s life journeys - I’m just one of them - and mine was a story I wanted to tell.

AND THERE YOU HAVE IT...

- (I'm Going Slightly Mad) Queen

Now I'm here

Think I'll stay around... (Now I'm Here) Brian May