It was a normal morning in my normal teenaged life. I was getting ready for school and was all surly for two reasons. A. It was seven in the morning. B. I was getting ready for school. Although that didn't really take very long because I had long ago ditched the Poison hairdo, so all I had to do was put on some jeans and a t-shirt and make a giant cheese sandwich for breakfast.
As always, through the daily ordeal of waking up, I was listening to Z-Rock. (You know Z-Rock! The station that made me discover that I loved Queen thanks to a Brian May interview!) That morning, Z-Rock had some sad new for me. Eric Carr had died. I didn't even know he was sick! The DJ was glum as he announced that not only had Eric Carr died of lung cancer, he didn't even smoke. What a bad morning.
I shut off the radio and went to make my sandwich and wait for my carpool. Meaning, I was waiting for two of my sulky wannabe artist friends to come pick me up for school. They arrived, I hopped into the backseat of the car, and leaned forward to address the sulker in the driver's seat. Before she had become a full-blown Birkenstock-craving, Pixies-listening, beauty school-bound Smiths fan, she had been metal. She knew who Eric Carr was, and I thought sure that she would join me in mourning a drummer.
Sulker #2, the passenger sulker, wasn't metal at all. She was into XTC and They Might Be Giants. But that was fine, it's not as if the death of Eric Carr was deeply traumatic for me. One person in the car who would know what I was talking about would be quite enough.
But things didn't go as I expected.
Me: (addressing Sulker #1) "Did you hear that Eric Carr died?"
#1: "Really?"
#2: "Freddie Mercury?"
Me: "What?"
#2: "That guy from Queen, right? They showed him on the Today show wearing a jumpsuit."
#1: "That's him all right."
I leaned back in my seat.
I don't remember what I said.
I don't remember the rest of the drive to school.
The next thing I remember is weaseling out of my first hour class with a really weak excuse. I don't even remember what the excuse was, but I do know that it was very thin. Even so, I somehow convinced my bunghole teacher that my need to leave was legitimate. I went to the school library, got the morning's newspaper, and found the obituary.
I read it, tore it out of the paper (and felt like a thief, but this matter was urgent) and I still have it to this day. Well, half of it. It got torn in a drawer at some point and I don't know where the other half currently resides.
I don't remember the rest of the day at all.
In fact, I don't really remember the rest of November. Wait. 1991? That was the Thanksgiving my dad and I spent watching a Mystery Science Theater 3000 marathon on Comedy Central. My kitten stole a turkey wing off my plate of leftovers when we were engrossed in Pod People. I remember that.
I also remember spending a lot of time lying on my bed, listening to Innuendo. Innuendo had been my number one record for five months, but once Freddie died, it became a different album. It was much more somber than it had been. And could I ever again listen to The Show Must Go On without getting that knot in my stomach? (Memo to teenaged me: No.)
And I remember finally understanding one of my mother's peculiarities. For years, my whole life even, whenever the Rolling Stones would come up in conversation, my mother would say that it was never the same for her after Brian Jones died. She never hesitated to mention how sad she had been. And I never failed to roll my eyes. I just didn't get it. Turns out she wasn't peculiar after all.
I just didn't understand until I lost my rock star. My rock group was no more. At least her Rolling Stones were able to carry on, but my band was gone forever. I was fairly new to the world of Queen, but I was already an enthusiast. Okay, I was already a stark raving nut. I went to sleep every night with Sheer Heart Attack playing. Non Z-Rock time was Innuendo time. And I was already so thoroughly into Queen that I was frequently mocked by my peers for having such an unfashionable favorite band.
That's what I mostly remember about the months following Freddie's death. Arguing with classmates, particularly a certain nasal voiced dink in my chemistry class. Ah, chemistry class. It had once been a magical happy place. It was the last hour of the day. It was where I befriended NoK, and we would spend our time sitting in the back, discussing just how hot David Bowie is. And then Freddie died, and chemistry was my most dreaded time of day, because every day, that same dink wanted to pick a fight about Freddie Mercury.
I won't go into the details of his Freddie slandering, but I'm sure you can figure out what a baseball cap-wearing, beer-drinking, sports-loving, gone-hunting, blond boy from suburban Minnesota had to say about the nature of Freddie's illness. Fortunately for me, I was the teacher's aid, so I never got into trouble when I cursed an extremely loud teenaged Freddie-defending blue streak.
But my life went on. I did things like obsessively watch the Queen footage I had taped one fabulous night on VH1. (The Magic Years, plus an hour of My Generation hosted by Brian May. All Queen videos!) I collected Queen records and taught myself how to play Bohemian Rhapsody on the piano. (No, not by ear. By the sheet music from Guitar For The Practicing Musician.)
And then along came Wayne's World. I spit in the eye of all those who mourned Freddie once they had seen Wayne's World, or the Bohemian Rhapsody video that was intercut with footage from Wayne's World. These people came to the funeral late. Don't be telling me that you love Queen and then admit that you have never heard Tenement Funster, okay? The world is much less colorful and far less talented now that Freddie Mercury is dead. Mourn the man properly, or don't mourn him at all.