Through Chrissie's eyes

The success

I had just gotten home from work, lying on the sofa in the living room to try to recover my energy when I heard Brian open the door with some anger. I sat down slowly, getting ready for the worst.

"Where are you coming from, Bri?"I looked at him, confirming my suspicion of him being angry and tried to deduce the reason "and what happened?"

"Ray Foster said he won't release "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a single!" He put a hand on his forehead and sighed "everyone decided we wanted Bo Rhap, but he preferred "I'm in love with my car"!"

"Oh no, now I understand why you're angry, and rightly so!" I shook myself a little at what Brian told me.

"But that's not all that happened" Bri said, calming down a bit. "We canceled the contract and ... Freddie broke the window of Foster's office throwing a brick!"

"What?" I don't know whether I should laugh or get worried "and how are things now?"

"John and Jim decided that we ourselves will release the album on our own" he didn't seem so sure of the decision "let's see what happens."

"We can only have hope" I tried to remain optimistic.

Freddie got Kenny Everett to release "Bohemian Rhapsody" on the radio, playing it almost uninterruptedly for several days. Criticism massacred the song, but the public had a quite opposite opinion. Bo Rhap has become one of the country's most revered songs for weeks.

This had happened to "Killer Queen", but with "Bohemian Rhapsody" was different, who liked it, was because people felt the same as I did when I first heard it. And like that, if there was anyone commenting on music, Bo Rhap was in the middle of it. You could heard the humming of "Mama, oo oo ooh", "Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, Figaro, Magnifico ..." and "Nothing really matters to me ...". Seeing all this repercussion, I realized that people didn't associate the song directly with Brian, John and Roger, but with Queen and Freddie.

That was until I see some students at school analyzing "Bohemian Rhapsody" and why it was so good. I listened to a student defending the guitar solos with all the strength, how important they were, which made me smile with pride of Brian. That was until she started describing my husband, his full name, his age, how he'd created the Red Special, and seeing how much she knew scared me a little. But this scare was no match for situations that were yet to come.

It was a Saturday morning when Brian and I were shopping for the month in the neighborhood market, no one ever recognized him there as Queen's guitarist,just as Mr. May, or Bri, famous there only for his big curly hair. We were in the hallway deciding what to bring when I heard a buzz on the other side.

"It's him, he is!" I'm sure ... " I heard someone say with enthusiasm.

"No, it can't be ..." another voice answered and I saw a movement around us "oh my God! It's him!"

And after that two boys came to meet my husband, excited, but holding on so they wouldn't be intrusive.

"Sorry, but you're Brian May, aren't you?" one of them asked as I pulled away.

"That's me" Brian tried to contain his embarrassment and just smiled sympathetically.

"Please, can you give us an autograph?" they asked and then threw a piece of paper and a pen into my husband's face.

He gave another unsightly smile and signed, while the boys filled him and Queen with praise.

"Thanks!" they said, and as soon as they appeared, they left.

"That was ..." murmured Brian and saw that he was looking for me.

I was kind of hidden behind a shelf.

"Yeah ..." I bit my lip, not knowing what to say.

"Um ... Unbelievable? Are you all right, Chrissie?" he asked.

"Yeah" I nodded several times "I just didn't know what to do, but they were polite and respectful, that's good ..."

"Yeah ..." Brian tried not to bother about what had happened and went shopping again.

I've tried to follow his example. In the following weeks, A Night at the Opera continued to gain prominence on television and in the magazines as well, which made the boys do countless photo shoots and interviews. Accompanying all this made me tired and worried.

It was customary for us to get magazines and newspapers that did stories about Queen, and of course I read everything, even though I knew that much of what the media perceived about them was what they inferred from what the boys showed.

It was then that I came across a story that almost killed me. It had the title of "Lucky girls: look who you wanted to be!" Only for this title I know that I shouldn't take it seriously, but as I read it, I became angry and heartbroken.

The writer told the reader about me, Mary, Dominique, and Veronica. There wasn't a lot of personal information about us, thank Gof, but it had some unfortunate and unfair descriptions. Mary was described as "a princess, with her perfect blonde hair, blue eyes, slim silhouette, and pale skin that matched the Queen's leader, but knew where her place was and didn't dazzle him." Veronica was "simple and discreet, as was the band's bass player, who could well be replaced by someone more talkative." Dominique was "the beauty who had managed to conquer Roger Taylor at the moment, as beautiful as he, but no one even knew until when this romance would last." And I ... Well, I "was very bland and more like a scared little bugger by the side of the cool Brian May, having nothing to do with him."

Without realizing it, I began to cry. I closed the magazine angrily, throwing it against the wall. I didn't want Brian to see me like that or even why I was like that. I took a deep breath, washed my face, and feeling the cold temperature of my wedding ring on my cheek, I remembered that no matter what others thought, Brian loved me, just as I was. Remembering his speech at our wedding day soothed me a little.

Queen kept busy with the A Night at the Opera release shows, and I noticed that they were a lot more crowded than they used to be 3, 4 years ago. Arriving at the venue was the easy part, as the boys were going a lot earlier to hit all the details, but to leave, it had become a real marathon with obstacles. Fans squeezed and ran over each other in the chance to talk to Freddie or get an autograph from one of the four. It was in such a tumult that I was scared.

I was hanging out with Brian hand in hand, past the crowd of fans contained by barriers, but somehow a fan came too close, and in the attempt to get close to Queen's guitarist pushed me. I stumbled, but I didn't fall because Brian still held my hand. I don't know how, because everything happened so fast, but I realized that the same fan grabbed my husband's shoulder and made a rip at his jacket.

Brian pulled me closer to him, hugging me, we were both scared.

"Are you okay?" he asked softly.

I just nodded, and I hugged him even harder. When we got home, I noticed an ugly scratch on Brian's shoulder.

"That fan could do that?" I asked, startled.

"It could only be her" he moaned in pain, "it's burning a little.

"Wait, I'll patch it up" I offered, worried.

I wiped the wound carefully and passed a balm, both me and him in silence, too frightened by what had happened, that we didn't even know what words to use to describe what we were feeling.

I was happy for the boys, for their music so criticized by some, to be so loved by others, but still, all those bad situations that happened because of Queen's fame, caused a terrible bad condition in me.