I have been wondering about this ever since I returned to Queen. Listening to Brian talking about writing "Too Much Love..." I suddenly am quite sure and aware that I am in fact cycling again. It is a weird phase now. I sleep very little and have some of the outward giddiness of hypomania, but it is as if I am fighting to hold on to that energy and craziness tooth and nail as I am inexorably slipping back the other direction into depression. It is maybe no big surprise then that I am back to Queen. The music has always been such a comfort, a friend that is always there, at least now that I have CD's and my computer to bring these voices back to me. The YouTube videos of songs I have never heard or heard of, and live performances that actually do sound at least as good as the studio versions, all this gives me little boosts that keep me less depressed, and listening to songs and interviews that bring back all that about Freddie and his death seems to be allowing me to attach my depression feelings to something external, something almost unbearably sad but at the same time not personal. It is truly painful for me right now to watch the last few music videos, especially "These are the Days of Our Lives" with that image of Freddie weak and nearing death, though I have seen it often enough the last time I was really 'into' Queen.
Maybe I ought to take to heart what I have been picking up through Brian May and May Sarton about how one can use one's mood disorder to the good. I will not resort to drug therapy, so I have to figure out other ways to deal with this. I have really latched on to this idea of making my mandolin electric, and maybe doing the electric double bass from my dreams too, and perhaps music is a channel I could benefit from. It seems rediculous that I at 30 could possibly have a career ahead as a musician, but so long as I can afford it, I would really enoy making and mixing my own tracks and putting together my own solo album. In my dreams Brian May is always involved in all this too, but that scene in Wayne's World with Alice Cooper comes to mind (We're not worthy! We're not worthy!)
It's a great dream, though. Brian May turns up at Dillards and is talking to Hayley at the fragrance counter, not that she is likely to know who he is, and that is I guess the point, cause she introduces me to him as a guy who might know what I am doing wrong with my pick-ups on my poor little mandolin, as he has built his own guitar. Why she is telling him all that about my project I don't know, but I guess I am having problems with getting the second and third pick-ups working and the music store people think I am crazy for wanting multiple pick-ups anyway. I chat with Brian briefly, trying not to be too self conscious and embarrassed, since maybe it is not Brian May, but simply someone else who looks and sounds like him and knows about building guitars, and then remember that I was getting change and really ave to go finish counting down my drawer so I can clock out on time. I pass him and Hayley again on the way back from turning in my bag, and Hayley, true to form for my usual experiences of walking home when there is weather of any kind, makes a big deal of my walking. Brian has been waiting for Anita, who is shopping with Mrs. Deacon, and she turns up as I am asserting that I will be just fine walking home in rain, that I won't melt, etc. She and Brian agree that I shouldnt have to walk home, and he insists on driving me home, ignoring my turning beet red at the thought of having to accept a ride from one of my rock heroes. He wants to see my mandolin, too. I am not sure how normal my idea is, really, but he thinks he might like to see it. So he gives me a ride home, and I show him my mandolin, and bring out my finished electric double bass, also with three sets of pick-ups, to show him that the arrangement itself has worked for me, if not on the much smaller mandolin, and he starts playing with my bass. We work on the mandolin a bit and he tells me he thinks he has something back at his hotel that might help.
The nex day, a day off for me, he shows up with the parts, and with John Deacon, who was bored and lured in by the idea of the electric double bass. Brian, John and I fiddle with the mandolin a bit more, both of them amused at my tuning it as an 8-string guitar, and then notice that I have been recording music, using my bass and the mandolin, and an electronic drum pad, with my voice. All the bits are charted out in a format remeniscent of a form I have seen on video of Queen's studio work, and while I am in my room for something, Brian starts listening to the trackon my computer. When I come back out he is talking with John about how it could be improved, mostly with adding backing vocals, which he has taken the liberty of singing and is in the process of layering in. I blush beet red again, of course. Brian May on my song! John is tweaking the bass line, and when they are done it sounds great and really rofessional, but not quite done. So Brian calls up Roger, who is also here, and he comes over, bringing along a few drums (bass, snare) and a few cymbals. An hour or so later we have a finished track, something I would enjoy listening to, though I still am uneasy about my voice being on a Queen track, especially the first ever Queen track since Made in Heaven to feature all the surviving members of Queen. The dream continues on, as Roger sends is producer friend an email with one minute of it attached, and gets a reply back by phone asking him if it is real, and when it would be ready for release as a sngle. Brian tells him that they think it is ready, but that it is my song, written and performed largely by me, and with the three of them only doing backing vocals, second percussion lines and a running bass line, at which point the producer guy realizes the significance of John's presence in the room. We are asked about a second track, a B'side, and John meanwhile has discovered another track on my computer for which I had written out a bass line that was too fast and comlicated for me to play, and has been playing it and tweaking it. By the end of the night we have, the four of us, recorded and mixed another track, from that bass line and my mandolin, extra percussion and voice, Brian and Roger's voices, and drum and guitar lines and solos from Brian and Roger. I think this is where I wake up, but there is a general impression that the story continues, and that the single is released and is ugely successful, to my extreme distress, as I still feel that it is rediculous that I could be the catalyst to bring John back into Queen, as the press insists, and that I could belong in the same studio or on the same stage as them. If I could shut up these common sensical voices and just enjoy the fantasy it would be a great dream, but I think a part of me wishes too strongly that this dream would translate to reality. Dumd and silly, I know, but there it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment