TURN BACK THE TIME, BABE. BOOK 2. KINGS WILL BE CROWNED (ENGLISH VERSION)

A LOVE I DARE NOT NAME

I didn't want the way the things were going but being guest made of stone, as Fooling said, required certain skill which I might lacked. Anyway my role forced me to make choices, to take up a stance, to take risks, put me on the edge. Whenever I tried to be a guest made of stone I saw myself swept away to Mercury magma till I was deep into it.

In that advance of the record to the press they made an audition of a rough recording session of The prophet's song. It was still remixing at the Sarm studios and owed to its complexity was the last song in which they were working, in three studios at a time to fulfil the delivery deadlines.

There was a not very numerous selection of journalists chosen carefully by John Reid. Freddie hadn't yet friends among the press but he wouldn't last long. Of course they would be just a few. The negative critics would always surpassed the positives ones.

The English people we are very jealous of our fellow citizens's success. Instead of taking pride of it, we tend to suspect of a meteoric rise. We tend to put in question the quality of a band whose leader was so charismatic that they must turn him into whatever they felt like it. Being a punch bag was a good idea. They couldn't forgive his obvious originality, they insisted over and over again he was a wannabe of Jagger. It always seemed to me the press attitude was something tremendously ridiculous and out of proportion and above all with Freddie.

Thanks to the newly reading of such an amount of negatives critics, Freddie was inflamed. In those first steps of his success, most of the interviews focused on him. He was the main point of media interest and Deacon, such a private person, it suited him fine but Queen was a band full of explosives egos. There was competitiveness in every aspect and so much Roger as Brian wanted to make sure they also took part and had something to say. At first everything was new. Quickly the whole band would hate the attention of the press and the difficult art of giving interviews.

Brian was the least attacked of the four. His prodigious way to play the guitar with an unique style and the songs which he wrote so far, surely won goodwill from the more into rock music journalists. Roger and John were regarded as mere spectators although they both already wrote and did it quite well. And lastly Freddie was the target of their critics. It was a simple anecdote that he had such a singular voice and was very talented as writer and composer. It was capital picking on him because his clothes, his crotch, his strutting, his outrageous sentences.

John Reid was an expert in throwing parties for the press and knew superbly the impulse that required one band's career. Queen had an explosive material in their hands and Reid the required weapons to make a name for them in the most efective way.

Of course it had been a blessing finding him. On the way to Roundhouse studios the atmosphere in that limo was clearly electric. I sat by the window to avoid becoming crashed by two centrifugal forces as Freddie and John. But I had David just in front of me who threw me disdainful glances.

- I would like to make you clear that, Freddie. Be careful when you talk to the press.

Reid was scolding him as usual. Their relationship was very peculiar. The Scottish manager was crazy in love with him as everybody else who was around him but at the same time he drove him at the wall with amazing ease. And Reid got mad at him often.

He got ready some lines in a perfectly ordinary way and he hurriedly snorted them. Freddie stared at him, pouting, like a spoiled child.

- Won't you invite us? -he complained-. That's very unusual in you.

- You don't deserve it -John declared ignoring him and offering me the little hand mirror with the shining white lines lined them up nicely-. Here, magical cook.