Queen Gave Me Permission to Be Weird

Before I Knew Who I Was, I Found a Band That Refused to Fit in a Box

I was a weird kid.

There. I said it.

Although I suppose these days I might have been considered interesting, eclectic, creative, delightfully nerdy or some other encouraging description designed to assure a child that being different is perfectly fine.

That was not exactly the messaging when I was growing up.

I was a little Black girl growing up Gen X who loved science fiction and fantasy. I wanted to talk about spaceships and time travel and dragons. I played Dungeons & Dragons. I studied the stars. I had a membership to the Smithsonian Institution. I was fascinated by Carl Sagan.

I read.

I wrote stories.

I created imaginary worlds.

And most of that was decidedly not cool.

There wasn't much conversation about diversity and inclusion where I grew up. There wasn't a ready-made community waiting to celebrate every wonderfully nerdy little corner of my personality.

Mostly, I knew I was different.

And other kids knew it too.

I was bullied. Teased. Sometimes beaten up.

So I learned how to keep my head down.

I spent a lot of time alone.

My friends became characters in the books I read and the stories I created. I could disappear into science fiction and fantasy because those worlds made sense to me in ways the real one sometimes didn't.

The funny thing is, I didn't even have a musical identity yet.

Actually, I don't think I had much of an identity at all.

I was still trying to figure out who I was.

Then Queen showed up.

I Didn't Fit in a Musical Box Either

I grew up surrounded by some extraordinary music.

I loved Earth, Wind & Fire. Stevie Wonder. Donna Summer. The Emotions.

That music was banging.

Then somebody introduced me to Led Zeppelin.

Wait a minute.

What is this?

I wasn't suddenly transformed into a rock-and-roll girl. I didn't abandon one kind of music for another. I was just curious.

That's something I've carried with me throughout my life.

I like what I like.

The problem was that when you're young, everyone seems determined to help you understand what you're supposed to like.

I hadn't figured out yet that I didn't have to choose.

Then my older brother David handed me an album.

I've talked about this moment before because it changed things for me.

The album was News of the World.

And let's remember who he was giving this record to.

Science-fiction kid.

Fantasy kid.

Spaceship kid.

Kid who stared at the stars.

And you hand that child an album with a giant robot wreaking havoc on the cover?

Sir.

You had my attention.

I needed to know what was going on here.

Then I played the record.

And down the rabbit hole I went.

Wait. Rock Music Can Do THIS?

Everybody knows some Queen songs.

“We Will Rock You.”

“We Are the Champions.”

“Bohemian Rhapsody.”

“You're My Best Friend.”

“Bicycle Race.”

“Tie Your Mother Down.”

Those songs are part of popular culture now.

But those weren't the songs that made me realize I had found something special.

I started going backward through Queen's catalog.

And that's where things got wonderfully strange.

“My Fairy King.”

“Seven Seas of Rhye.”

“White Queen.”

“Great King Rat.”

“The Prophet's Song.”

“Someday One Day.”

Come on!

These were song titles?

Where had these people been all my life?

Their early music wandered through fantasy, mystery, mythology, strange characters, kingdoms and enormous theatrical ideas. Songs could feel like stories. Albums could feel like places.

I wasn't just listening.

My imagination was going with them.

And suddenly the things that made me strange didn't feel quite so strange.

The Family Stereo

Of course, there was another complication.

This was before I could carry every song Queen ever recorded around in my pocket.

We had the stereo.

The family stereo.

In the living room.

That meant if I wanted to disappear into Queen's strange musical universe, I had to negotiate access to shared territory.

Homework done.

Chores done.

Nobody else using the stereo.

Nobody complaining about the weird music I wanted to play.

Then I could sit down with one of those glorious big black discs, put it on the turntable and listen.

And I didn't just listen.

I studied.

Queen gave you liner notes.

Lyrics.

Pictures.

Information.

I would sit there reading the words while the songs played, learning them and trying to understand them.

I was already a singer, although for a while I was mostly a singer in the dark.

I'd imagine myself performing. I'd sing quietly. I'd picture stages and audiences long before I had the confidence to step into that part of myself for real.

Music gave me somewhere to practice being someone I wasn't quite brave enough to become yet.

Then something miraculous happened.

Cassette tapes.

Now I could have the music in my room.

Oh, that changed everything.

I could turn out the lights, lie down and listen.

No audience.

No explanations.

No one asking why I liked this weird stuff.

Just me and the music.

And in that darkness, my imagination could go wherever it wanted.

And Then There Was Freddie

Freddie Mercury fascinated me.

I couldn't have explained all the reasons when I was young.

I'm not sure I can explain all of them now.

I just know that he did.

What I could understand was that Freddie seemed completely unwilling to apologize for being Freddie.

He walked onto a stage and occupied it.

There was no shrinking.

No hiding in the corner.

No apparent request for permission.

You could love him.

You could hate him.

You could think he was brilliant, outrageous, ridiculous, magnificent or all four at once.

He was still going to walk onto that stage and be Freddie Mercury.

For a kid whose survival strategy frequently involved keeping her head down and trying not to attract attention, there was something almost incomprehensible about that.

I didn't know how to do it.

But I loved watching someone who did.

Maybe that's part of why I became such a fan.

Maybe some part of me recognized freedom before I knew what to call it.

They Even Had the Right Name

And then there was the name.

Queen.

Yes, I got teased about that too.

People had opinions.

People always have opinions.

But I loved the name.

A king?

Fine.

A queen?

Now we're talking.

There was something wonderfully over-the-top about calling yourselves Queen and then making music big enough to live up to it.

They weren't trying to make themselves smaller so everyone would be comfortable.

Neither was the music.

Rock.

Opera.

Ballads.

Fantasy.

Heavy guitars.

Layered harmonies.

Theatricality.

Humor.

Drama.

Beauty.

Whatever they wanted to try.

Queen didn't fit neatly into a box.

And slowly, I started wondering why I was trying so desperately to fit into one.

The Weird Girl

The bullying didn't suddenly stop because I discovered Queen.

I didn't wake up one morning filled with unstoppable teenage confidence.

That's not how this works.

I was still awkward.

Still nerdy.

Still the girl who wanted to talk about books nobody around me was reading and television shows nobody wanted to discuss.

I still liked science fiction.

I still liked fantasy.

I still looked at the stars.

I still wrote my stories.

I still sang.

But something had changed.

I began to feel a little less apologetic about it.

Yes, I was a Queen fan.

A serious one.

I knew the albums.

I knew the deep cuts.

I knew the lyrics.

I belonged to the Royal Family, as Queen fans were called.

And I was proud of it.

Maybe being different didn't have to mean something was wrong with me.

Maybe I could simply be different.

That's a surprisingly powerful realization for a kid.

Before I Knew Who I Was

Years later, after I began seriously studying singing, I learned to listen differently.

I learned to analyze music.

To think about phrasing and interpretation and what a song was actually trying to communicate.

And I started understanding something I'd felt long before I had language for it.

Songs can find us.

Fans say it all the time:

“Their music speaks to me.”

It sounds like the ultimate fan-girl declaration.

But there's a reason people have been saying some version of it for as long as we've had music.

Sometimes another person's art reaches something inside you that you haven't figured out how to say yourself.

Queen's music was full of imagination and defiance and enormous declarations. There were battle cries buried in there. There were songs about standing up, carrying on, believing, loving, dreaming and refusing to disappear.

I needed some of that.

I needed the fantasy too.

I needed permission to close my eyes and go somewhere enormous.

Most of all, I think I needed evidence that you could be unusual and still be magnificent.

Queen didn't make me cool.

Thank God.

I probably would have been terrible at it.

They didn't make the bullying disappear.

They didn't magically give me an identity.

What they did was much quieter.

They helped make being me feel acceptable to me.

The science-fiction girl.

The fantasy girl.

The singer.

The writer.

The kid staring at the stars.

The kid inventing worlds because sometimes the imaginary ones were easier to inhabit than the real one.

The girl who didn't fit neatly into anybody's category.

Maybe she didn't need fixing.

Maybe she needed room.

And somewhere between those enormous black records, the liner notes, the cassette player glowing in my darkened bedroom, Brian May's guitar and Freddie Mercury refusing to make himself smaller for anybody, I started finding some.

Queen gave me permission to be weird.

Eventually, I learned to give that permission to myself.

And somewhere along the way, their music helped me understand something else:

If I could learn to love the strange, creative, complicated person I was becoming, maybe I could become my own best friend.

And when your heart finally has a safe place inside yourself...

there's a lot more room for love to get in.

Long live the weird kids.

And long live Queen. 🎸❤️

**

Thanks for taking this trip back with me.

What do you remember? Did you have a Tower Records, or was there another record store that became your musical hunting ground? Tell me about the album you searched forever to find, the discovery you never expected, or the record you still regret putting back.

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Until next time...

Keep the memories alive.Keep the stories coming.And whatever you do... turn it up.

— Dr. AY Heath (Angel)

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