Severely partial questions, read carefully.
If there is any band that changed the trajectory of my life, it must be Queen.
When I was 14 years old, I found a record with a very compelling cover in the "Ten Yuan San Zhang" area of a pirated audio-visual store in my hometown-Queen Greatest Hits II, a selection of Queens in the 1980s. When I got home and put it in the disc player, the first song that rang was "It's Kind of Magic". A kind of magic. I've been enchanted ever since.
At that time, I had just transitioned from Hong Kong and Taiwan pop music to European and American music. Before Queen, the only rock band I had heard was U2. Queen’s songs are very fascinating, and they are very friendly to people who have never been exposed to rock music, which is why they have a good mass base. I have studied violin for 14 years and have been influenced by classical music. Queen's complicated and gorgeous arrangements are simply tailor-made for me.
Strangely speaking, the music, film and literary tastes that people develop during adolescence are often shaped like this.
Although the band Queen is well-known in Europe and America, in the third-tier small town more than ten years ago, it still meets the demand of a junior high school student. After entering the adolescence period when I was forced to talk about sorrow for new words, what I fear most is not the failure of entering school and the battle of wits and courage with parents and teachers, but the same as others. Find an outlet and tell yourself "I am different", and the ordinary life will have the motivation to go down.
And Queen gave me this exit. With them, there are weapons to fight academic pressure and self-doubt.
At the beginning, I could only appreciate the melody, but didn't understand the meaning of the lyrics. When the Internet was not developed, the information in this area was very limited, and I still follow a band whose lead singer died a year before I was born. I bought a pirated copy of the "Oxford Advanced Dictionary" and compared the lyrics while looking up words and translating them. Why do you know that it is a pirated dictionary? Because one or two lyrics have been translated, my fingers will turn black due to poor quality ink... This should be the first translation attempt in my life. Later, after translating and publishing books, working in foreign media, and now taking a translator for dinner, it all began with this mighty star chase.
All four members of Queen have participated in songwriting. The guitarist Brian May is a sour, dead man. When writing lyrics, he can quote Shakespeare and religious symbols. Studying the lyrics he wrote is very helpful for enriching English vocabulary. Big words such as "prophet", "innuendo", "estranged", etc., are all I learned in Queen's lyrics. (I wonder if anyone knows the word "estranged" because they like gunflowers?)
As a fan girl, I was not writing novels or copying Queen's lyrics in class. After school, I rode a broken bicycle that rang everywhere except for the bells, listening to Queen's songs and rushing around the city. My favorites during this period are their several albums in the 70s, "A Night At the Opera", "A Day at the Race", "News of the World" and "Jazz". There is a song in "Jazz" called "Bicycle Race", which starts with the brainwashing cycle "I want to ride a bicycle or ride a bicycle", which is very suitable for BGM when I ride a bike and climb hills.
In my freshman year, I met a group of like-minded fans in Queen’s Baidu Tieba, and I felt like I finally found an organization. Also in this year, I became the master of Queen Bar. Because of the lack of Chinese resources, everyone has been working tirelessly on the Internet to dig for resources, the development history of the band and the lives of its members. That year I wrote the Baidu Encyclopedia of Queen and lead singer Freddie Mercury. The rhetoric was extremely piled up. At that time, the title of the introduction to Queen was "Bright Flowers That Never Withered". Although I will be embarrassed to have a cancer attack now, I still think it's cute when I think of my passionate Amway behavior.
In addition, I also translated the subtitles of the documentary Days Of Our Lives filmed by the BBC for Queen. I don’t want to release the resources, so I put an external subtitle: http://sub.eastgame.org/archives/14805
I also turned over the subtitles of the 1992 Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, which was found on the hard drive someday and reposted. (This performance was crowded with stars, and they sang Queen’s songs one after another. The appearances include Led Zeppelin, Metallica, David Bowie, Gun Hua and other big names. But many people sang it, and the ones who sang well think that only George Michael, Seal and David Bowie. Of course Bowie sings Under Pressure, not a cover. Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin didn't think he sang well, and some songs were blocked from being included in the DVD~)
During this period, I actually liked Queen's albums "Sheer Heart Attack" and "Queen II" released before "A Night at the Opera" ("Bohemian Rhapsody" from this album). "Queen II" was released in 1974 and is a concept album that is as complete as David Bowie's "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust" and The Who "Tommy". Later, I saw an interview saying that guitarist Brian May’s favorite is this one. The four-person classic close-up in the MV of "Bohemian Rhapsody" is also from the cover of this album.
There are so many Queen female fans, mainly because the four talents of the band are brilliant, their looks are amazing, and the education level is high-Jack Su is a gold medal with Chinese characteristics.
Of course, the lead singer Freddie Mercury has the most fans. It is interesting to say that when I first learned of his gay status and died of AIDS, I struggled with this point. After all, he was not civilized when he was 14 years old. Later, I quickly figured it out. The logic is very simple-since my idol is gay, what do I have to say about this group?
Because of this, I read the popular science book "Their World" co-authored by Li Yinhe and Wang Xiaobo that year, and values are also on the road of spiritual white left. Later, when I was working, my friends of the opposite sex around him were nine gay men, and I wonder if it was destined.
(I wouldn’t say how many Queen’s fanarts I read on the Internet in high school.)
Freddie is an artist, a rare rock vocalist in decades, but most importantly, he is a brave man. To love hard, to sing hard, to work hard, to do everything is moths fighting the fire, jumping, leaving no room. More than 20 years after his death, his personality charm can still impress countless people, which is also very understandable. He and Kurt Cobain are opposite. The latter hates life and rushes to die; he loves life so much, but in the end he has to leave early.
Guitarist Brian May, Ph.D. in Astrophysics at Imperial College, made the electric guitar himself. On the surface, he is a shining schoolmaster/rock star. In his heart, he is a man of endless chanting, with a vomiting desire to express himself. He has a long-established personal blog called Brian's Soapbox. On the blog, he will often reply to fan emails. Around the age of 16, I wrote several emails to him, and he personally replied twice!
For a 16-year-old fan girl, what could be happier than receiving an email from an idol? This is incomparable to winning the lottery!
Two replies from Brian
Bassist John Deacon, a typical example of making a fortune in a muffled voice. The only person among the four who can't sing is him, but he has written many top brainwashing songs, such as "Another One Bites the Dust" and "Under Pressure", which he wrote. With a background in electrical engineering, he has personally built many of Queen's effects and amplifiers. Together with Brian May, two men of science and technology, he set up the equipment configuration of Queen. Among several people, he has the most financial savvy, and he takes care of the finances of the band.
After Freddie's death, John retired to the forest. In addition to his participation in the recording of the song "No One But You" to commemorate Freddie in 1997, he disappeared. After many years, someone asked about his recent situation on Brian May's blog. He bubblingly said: "I'm not dead yet! I will retire at home and count money every day. :)"
Drummer Roger Taylor, one of the most beautiful musicians in rock history. Roger is a Barbie doll with a metallic voice, and several hard rock songs as the lead singer are very exciting. When he was young, Yan Qing brought down sentient beings, took the girl he had gotten to the next, and he also had the experience of taking his current girlfriend to a party and meeting two ex-girlfriends one after another. In the MV of "I Want to Break Free", he dressed up as a cute blonde girl. After filming the MV, he went directly to the bar with the look of a cute girl, and the big guy, please drink.
Roger Taylor, the female gangster in I Want to Break Free
In 2016, Queen performed in Shanghai. I followed Tie Bar and a group of friends shamelessly squatted in the open-air lounge of the hotel where they were staying, and finally got a glimpse of Roger Taylor's face. Although there are already more than 70 people, but still! Yes! very! handsome!
In Queen’s Baidu Tieba, I met a few friends whom I have been in contact with since then. When I was in high school, I couldn’t buy mouthpieces in the small town I was in, only pirated copies with few sources. Tieba had friends who lived in Guangzhou, and frequently bought Queen’s mouthpieces and mailed them to my high school; there was also an ID called " My friend of the "Royal Beauty", when I met her, I was a freshman in high school and she was in graduate school. Later, I went to work in Beijing and finally met, so I became a close friend. This kind of friendship created by the same friendship is still very precious when you think about it.
When I listened to Queen, it was not long after the online download of MP3 was just emerging, but I always wanted to collect the mouthpiece, but I couldn't find it. Later, when I participated in independent enrollment in my senior year of high school, I went out of the small town for the first time and arrived in Beijing. No one of the mouth-to-mouth strongholds I saw in rock magazines before was missing, and I had to go back in despair.
Later, the self-enrollment failed, and the college entrance examination also failed. Volunteers were filled in the northernmost provinces, and majors were adjusted. For me, a southerner, it is no different from sending out the frontiers. When I was in my sophomore year, I went to Beijing for an internship like an escape, and I was full of Queen's "I Want to Break Free".
When I went to foreign media to apply for a job, I was asked several times "How did you learn your English?", my answer was "Because I like Queen's songs, I started to learn by myself". Later, the owner of a newspaper was also a fan of Queen, and he hired me with a big wave.
When I was in high school, I set three ideals in life-watching Queen's scene; working and living in Los Angeles; being a writer.
When Queen premiered in Shanghai in 2016, I flew back to China and realized my first dream.
Then came to the United States. Before moving to Los Angeles and finally realizing my second ideal, I struggled to find a job in San Francisco and worked as a real estate agent for a year or two.
When life is suffering and there is no way out, I will remember that Freddie Mercury immigrated to the United Kingdom from India at the age of 17, and could only work as a mover at London Heathrow Airport. Soon after, he got acquainted with a band called Smile, and met the band's guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor.
He didn't know what the road ahead would be. But he understands that his life will be very different.
If you like it, pay attention~
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