The Day I Met the Queen

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

The first time I heard the song of the British rock band Queen was in Paco, Manila in 1980. I was in second year high school  spending my vacation in the jungle asphalt of the Metropolis with my air force’s father who was in his furlough.

“Turorum-tum-tom turo-ro-rum tutom! “Turorum-tum-tom turo-ro-rum tutom!” low riffed by the four strings bass guitar of John Deacon, the composer, who would start the song while the hard beat of the sticks to the drums of Roger Taylor accompanied the “Turorum-tum-tom turo-ro-rum tutom!” that made them stimulate my mind.

"Ansarap naman niyang beat," I quipped to myself.

Then lead singer Freddie Mercury deep throaty flirty-growl and high-pitched voice opened the vocal with:

Steve walks warily down the street

With the brim pulled way down low

Ain't no sound but the sound of his feet

Machine guns ready to go

Are you ready? Hey, are you ready for this?

Are you hanging on the edge of your seat?

Of course I did not know yet the names of the lead singer, lead guitarist Brian May, bass guitarist, and the drummer of the rock band created in London in 1970.

The song caught me with its funk rock beat of the bass guitar, drum, and its boogie styled melody.

I later learned that the song, Another One Bites the Dust, was the Billboard hit, Grammy Award Nominated for Best Rock Performance, and winner of the American Music Award for Favorite Rock Single Nominee.

According to the tall long haired Brian May, the song was hammered through the genius of Mercury even if the tune was the creation of Deacon.

“A fantastic bit of work from Freddie really. I mean, I remember Deacie having this idea, but Deacie doesn't sing of course, so he was trying to suggest to Freddie how it should be and Fred just went in there and hammered and hammered until his throat bled, making... you know, he really was inspired bit and took it to a new height, I think,” May declared in an article’s Queen Absolute Greatest Narrative.

One year from that Paco's encounter with the Queen, I was jolted from my seat when a  third year high school classmate in a protestant school in Mindanao played that song, in a class break, in his cassette player.

When the long shock haired Melvin Santander showed to me the case of the tape, I looked with curiosity the black front design of the album where the fabulous four sitting and clad on black leather jackets and coat that dominate the album’s design.

At the back of the tape it showed the following songs at Sides A and B that I could still, Holy Molly, sing now with gusto whenever I heard them.

 They are Bohemian Rhapsody, Another One Bites the Dust, Killer Queen, Fat Bottomed Girls, Bicycle Race, You're My Best Friend, Don't Stop Me Now, Save Me at the Side A’s part.

Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Somebody to Love, Now I'm Here, Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy, Play the Game, Flash, Seven Seas of Rhye, We Will Rock You, We Are the Champions at the Side B’s part.

As obviously seen, the first song of that album was Bohemian Rhapsody.

Teenagers who spent their idle time in 1980s, where YouTube, FaceBook, Instagram whatever were still Greek, would just play and replay the song and sang it with their lungs out the lyrics “Galilio, Galilio, Magnifico O-O-O or the ballad ” Mama, just killed a man…”.

 We did not know then that the “lengthy” six minutes song is a masterpiece, a global treasure son of a gun that was voted The Song of the Millennium in 2000, and was recorded in the Guinness Book of Records as the No. 1 song of all time.

Before I will discuss why Bohemian Rhapsody was the best and unique, to those who are not familiar with the song you can play the video here below so you can appreciate the seemingly nonsense I am mouthing here, teh he, as the article you read progresses.

Probably you heard already the song after you heeded my request to hear the music first before we plow on with this article.

Now let’s continue!

Rhapsody was not your regular song you read on the Jingle Magazine or Ultimate-Guitar.Com. 
It’s structure is not the typical Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus, or Verse-Chorus-Bridge.

It was revolutionary work of art, far better than those created by the Revolutionary Communists in our country, composed by  Mercury in 1975 for the album’s A Night At the Opera.

It was an opus because not only of its mind blowing melodies but it’s structure are divided into five different genres. They were A Capella – Ballad – Opera – Hard Rock - Coda.

Here how the five structures play with some of the lyrics I provided under them.
 Read or sing them as you browsed.

A CAPELLA

Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide,
No escape from reality.

BALLAD

Mama, just killed a man,
Put a gun against his head,
Pulled my trigger, now he's dead.
Mama, life had just begun,
But now I've gone and thrown it all away.

OPERA

I see a little silhouette of a man,
Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?
Thunderbolt and lightning,
Very, very frightening me.
(Galileo) Galileo.
(Galileo) Galileo,
Galileo Figaro
Magnifico-o-o-o-o.

HARD ROCK

So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye?
So you think you can love me and leave me to die?
Oh, baby, can't do this to me, baby,
Just gotta get out, just gotta get right outta here.

CODA

Nothing really matters,
Anyone can see,
Nothing really matters,
Nothing really matters to me.

You can appreciate the song above further after the Coda when you saw Roger Taylor smashed with a mallet the huge gong whose sound reverberated before the more 75, 000 spectators at the 1985 Live Aid Concert at Wembley Stadium in London  (another 100,000 fans at the John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, United States)  and more than 1.9 billion of television viewers who saw the mother of all concerts then as shown in the flick’s Bohemian Rhapsody. The movie is still being shown in theaters all over the country.

In my next column, I will write how the genius Mercury and the other members of Queen created the musical  magnum opus’ Bohemian Rhapsody.

I hope this article helps educate you about music.


READ MY OTHER ARTICLE:

Mitoy Dreams Joining Queen

(You can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)