| indy19 23.03.2019 09:09 |
I want to ask what might be a sensitive question of you long-term fans. I admit that while I saw Queen in the Summer of '82, as an American, I didn't get exposed to them a lot when I was a kid. I just listened to Radio Ga Ga etc when they came out, and frankly I wasn't THAT impressed by THAT song. But I was a fan, and I gotta admit that my Queen obsession of the early 80s languished a bit through the later '80s as I was growing up and doing all the stuff you do in order to survive school and academics, etc. So as the years went by and I went back to Queen and started listening, I realized that melodically, they sounded like very few others. But it was really their lyrical output that caught me and got me back. One of my things is I love just reading lyrics, and as I read FM's (and when I say FM I don't want to neglect the other band members, but I want to ask this question about just his output for a reason) lyrics -- and I mean JUST the lyrics -- my question is if Phoebe says and the band says he never read ANY books (kinda unbelievable but okay), how did he pen these words?! It just doesn't compute. I mean, I know Phoebe says he struggled at the task, and that he played Scrabble, which apparently helped, but all that still doesn't make 2+2 = 4. His lyrics were not only erudite at times, but they were complex and masterful. What did he actually, secretly read?!?! Do any of you have any comments or secrets to spill here, or should I just fuck off? |
| Sheldon 23.03.2019 09:18 |
I find your question very similar to something that I once pondered over in another thread. If he "never" worked out, how come he made very decent push-ups? |
| andres_clip 23.03.2019 09:19 |
He went to boarding school and college. That's my guess. |
| indy19 23.03.2019 09:32 |
Sheldon wrote: I find your question very similar to something that I once pondered over in another thread. If he "never" worked out, how come he made very decent push-ups?So, basically, we've been hoodwinked ;) ;) |
| indy19 23.03.2019 09:35 |
andres_clip wrote: He went to boarding school and college. That's my guess.I guess he sponged up what he read in school and the official line was (and I think I heard him say this in an interview) he hated boring himself reading books. I just wish I knew what he loved reading when he did actually read. |
| mooghead 23.03.2019 10:38 |
You can study language and writing without having to actually read novels. You imply that reading = creative literacy. Not necessarily. |
| master marathon runner 23.03.2019 12:49 |
Freddie was extraordinarily receptive to all that was going on throughout his life. Every experience and observation was stored away. Genius. |
| love2spin 23.03.2019 13:45 |
I also wondered about Freddie's reported adversity to reading - especially in the context of Tim Rice's comments that Freddie was extremely well read and very knowledgable in so many areas. |
| bucsateflon 23.03.2019 14:02 |
andres_clip wrote: He went to boarding school and college. That's my guess.bingo! |
| master marathon runner 23.03.2019 15:35 |
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| master marathon runner 23.03.2019 15:38 |
'Fairy Fellers Master Stroke' is a great example of how receptive Freddie was. Taking in the minutae of Dadd's painting and coming up with his masterpiece, in fact a masterstroke ! |
| Star* 23.03.2019 16:19 |
Freddie was a very educated and intelligent man, and as you know he did pen the greatest song ever in Bohemian Rhapsody, and more Queen gems, so just because he had apparent lack of interest in reading is not odd, he was a busy man and never got time to snuggle down with a book! Freddie's number one priority was to make Queen the greatest band the world will ever see and he did achieve that. |
| mika251 23.03.2019 17:01 |
My assumption is that Freddie was little bit hyperactive. So it was impossible for him just to sit and read as it was boring for him. it doesn't mean he didn't absorb information by some other way. Peter Hince mentioned he also loved crosswords. There are many ways how to develope language skills. Reading is probably the easiest one but not a single option. |
| matt z 23.03.2019 17:15 |
Sheldon wrote: I find your question very similar to something that I once pondered over in another thread. If he "never" worked out, how come he made very decent push-ups?He was svelte and he also lifted and bent many a man |
| kosimodo 23.03.2019 17:42 |
Bring out the charge of the love brigade There is spring in the air once again... It is something else then i love you, yes i do.. |
| The Real Wizard 23.03.2019 20:07 |
master marathon runner wrote: 'Fairy Fellers Master Stroke' is a great example of how receptive Freddie was. Taking in the minutae of Dadd's painting and coming up with his masterpiece, in fact a masterstroke !True - in 1973. A decade later he was pretty well a completely different person. |
| indy19 23.03.2019 23:38 |
The Real Wizard wrote:In what way? Could you please elaborate?master marathon runner wrote: 'Fairy Fellers Master Stroke' is a great example of how receptive Freddie was. Taking in the minutae of Dadd's painting and coming up with his masterpiece, in fact a masterstroke !True - in 1973. A decade later he was pretty well a completely different person. |
| indy19 24.03.2019 00:53 |
Thanks for all the answers, people! I'm going to respond to some of them in this one post. I hope that's ok with you all? It might be easier so I don't spam. -- @andres_clip -- I understand that, and in fact, having gone to a similar school while I was growing up in India (for 10+ years), I also get the fact that those schools give you a fairly good grounding in literature and the arts, but it still doesn't quite compute as I've heard that he began to fall behind and actually failed the Class 10 exams, and then had to do catchup learning for his A-levels in the UK. @mooghead -- I'm not talking novels, per se. I'm talking just reading. From my research, I get the idea that he didn't read at all. And this is from people who were almost 24/7 with him like Phoebe and Jim. The only possibility is that by the time they were spending time with him, he was already at the stage where he wasn't reading much anymore... just playing scrabble and doing crosswords, etc. @master marathon said -- "Freddie was extraordinarily receptive to all that was going on throughout his life. Every experience and observation was stored away. Genius." THIS. It makes the most sense. He learned from life, from talking to people, from observing, from perceiving, and thinking, and letting his experiences inform his creativity. I sometimes wonder what his MBTI indicator would be. Maybe ENFP... he wasn't judgmental at all, I think. @love2spin -- do you have a link to that Tim Rice quote? I'd love to take a look. @matt z -- haha. :p |
| Wiley 24.03.2019 02:33 |
The erudite Freddie that wrote those masterpieces in the 70s was very different from his 80s counterpart. His lifestyle changed, his friends, acquaintances, his priorities, his music. Maybe his reading habits too. Just listen to his output post 1980. He wasn't writing about fairy fellers and the king of Rhye anymore but rather more universal topics like love, heartbreak, loss, having fun and the like. |
| Seed_Of_Rhy 24.03.2019 13:28 |
he was very humble, timid person in the more than first half of his life. So when he changed lifestyle in the end of seventees, his then nowdays cravings, desires, circumstances etc. started to reflecting in his lyrics. Look - the noticeable changes in themes of his songs started circa times of "Jazz". Then it goes more and more rapidly But it's still wonderful - how did he manage not to touch a theme of AIDS openly or at least hint it somehow! For a man who already got a mortal desease it's a courage of courages... |
| KT2 24.03.2019 14:37 |
I’ve literally just joined to say this, so be gentle with me please! I think he probably picked it up the same way he picked up a lot of his musical influences: radio. I have friends whose first exposure to Tolkien and Douglas Adams was from radio adaptations, and there’s still plenty of radio adaptations of classic literature being made. I bet they listened to BBC world service at his boarding school - for the accents, if nothing else. Obviously I have absolutely no evidence to back this up! |
| indy19 25.03.2019 05:36 |
Wiley wrote: The erudite Freddie that wrote those masterpieces in the 70s was very different from his 80s counterpart. His lifestyle changed, his friends, acquaintances, his priorities, his music. Maybe his reading habits too. Just listen to his output post 1980. He wasn't writing about fairy fellers and the king of Rhye anymore but rather more universal topics like love, heartbreak, loss, having fun and the like.I never even thought about this. Well, to be honest, I wouldn't say that... it's an interesting turn of events, though. A man who consciously controlled his life and output for a certain result. Did he always say he wrote for love? Or was that just after 1980 etc? Your response makes me want to listen from the beginning all over again. Thanks for the heads up! |
| indy19 25.03.2019 05:38 |
Seed_Of_Rhy wrote: he was very humble, timid person in the more than first half of his life. So when he changed lifestyle in the end of seventees, his then nowdays cravings, desires, circumstances etc. started to reflecting in his lyrics. Look - the noticeable changes in themes of his songs started circa times of "Jazz". Then it goes more and more rapidly But it's still wonderful - how did he manage not to touch a theme of AIDS openly or at least hint it somehow! For a man who already got a mortal desease it's a courage of courages...Thanks for adding your voice to what the others are saying about what seems to me to be a fork in the road he took circa 1980. I wonder if during those walks he took toward the end by the duck lake... if he pondered any of this. |
| indy19 25.03.2019 05:43 |
KT2 wrote: I’ve literally just joined to say this, so be gentle with me please! I think he probably picked it up the same way he picked up a lot of his musical influences: radio. I have friends whose first exposure to Tolkien and Douglas Adams was from radio adaptations, and there’s still plenty of radio adaptations of classic literature being made. I bet they listened to BBC world service at his boarding school - for the accents, if nothing else. Obviously I have absolutely no evidence to back this up!Oh, I'm sure he did. I grew up in India until I was 15, and went to pretty much a similar school as Freddie did from when I was 4 till 15, and the education is very, very British mixed in with a healthy amount of respect for Indian holidays and culture. But I'm sure he read copiously during those early days and listened to a lot of stuff on shortwave radio including BBC and also perhaps Voice of America. Re the accent, I don't think it was BBC which did that. The accent he uses is the exact accent I had when I came to the States. It took me quite a few years to convert to an "American" accent, and even now if I get angry, the clipped quality comes right back. It's what in India gets called "the convent/missionary school accent." |
| daylelong 22.01.2020 12:36 |
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| matt z 23.01.2020 03:02 |
Damned BOTS! This is a pretty good topic. One can make assumptions but once again Peter would probably be more in the know. Maybe FM watched plenty good British docs and the like. Hired Tour guides in Japan etc. Pinging info back and forth in conversation may have been a recreational study of sorts He must have read to keep up with his art and Japanese fascination |
| brENsKi 23.01.2020 15:00 |
The Real Wizard wrote:I think a lot of that is "almost" down to songwriting being a "new interest"...in much the same way we're all interested in something new. Difference with song-writing, is after those first handful of LPs, the reality of the "job" set in.master marathon runner wrote: 'Fairy Fellers Master Stroke' is a great example of how receptive Freddie was. Taking in the minutae of Dadd's painting and coming up with his masterpiece, in fact a masterstroke !True - in 1973. A decade later he was pretty well a completely different person. What started off as fresh and interesting soon jaded him. Queen - just like all other major bands at that time; Zep, Purple, Floyd, Who, Eagles etc became established in the same routine "treadmill": Write > Record > Tour > Write > Record > Tour > Write > Record > Tour > ad nauseam. Think about it, in "normal jobs" if we get fed up we can try to find another job. In song-writing, it's very different - you can't leave being in a band to go and be a decorator "just like that". So I suppose the lifestyle makes it too tempting "tread water" and hope the punters don't notice. At that point writing songs becomes boring for two reasons: >> it's just like any other job - working in a shop, building houses, making cars, selling insurance - the routine irks >> you actually start to run out of "new" things to write about - a lot of what you write touches on familiar subjects "love" "breakups", "world events" "war" etc There isn't much in Freddie's canon; composition-wise that can touch his lyrics from 73-76. However, (IMO) it's ironic that, Freddie produced three of his writing masterpieces WIAWI, IGSM and Innuendo- when he was unwell. Though, how much of "Innuendo's" lyric is Freddie's or Roger's I don't really know. I think, that by '82 - they were all struggling, lyrically. For every piece of poetry created, there was another "paint by numbers" one. Also, he probably was well-read - but probably not so much after college. Those early albums were full of "inspired" stuff. Fairy King more or less lifts a verse from Robert Browning's Pied Piper of Hamlyn. |
| dudeofqueen 23.01.2020 16:52 |
brENsKi, ree: >IGSM Hardly a masterpiece. The bulk of the lyrc for that song is taken from generic phrases used in common parlance that he borrowed and knitted (albeit cleverly) together: missing one final screw not in the pink one card short of a full deck not quite the shilling One wave short of a shipwreck not my usual top billing really out to sea knitting with only one needle driving only three wheels Had he invented the phrases then, yep - absolutely a work of genius, but...... |
| brENsKi 23.01.2020 17:17 |
dudeofqueen wrote:brENsKi, ree: >IGSM Hardly a masterpiece. The bulk of the lyrc for that song is taken from generic phrases used in common parlance that he borrowed and knitted (albeit cleverly) together: Had he invented the phrases then, yep - absolutely a work of genius, but......I think you miss the point. Since the dawn of language, "everything" derived from somewhere else. The collection of idioms and phraseology are not the genius, it's the lyric itself - in much the same way that Browning is lifted for "My Fairy King". IGSM is (IMO) lyrical genius for three reasons: >> Lyric writing is not simply "the collection of words" - it's the combinations, the poetry and the flow. >> Real lyrical genius, is the ability to take common phrases and put them into verse "like they belong". Freddie went a step further - he took a collection of "madness idioms" and made them work together as poetry. >> More lyrical genius? writing the whole thing in the style of another classic lyricist - Noel Coward, and making the whole thing sound like something Coward "could" have written. |
| Vocal harmony 23.01.2020 17:49 |
^^^ this. Even someone with the lyrical skills if Neil Peart sometimes borrowed lines or phrases. Admittedly his ability to write strongly never seemed to deminish. But the point about the writing process becoming like any other job is quite true for a lot of people. |
| Vocal harmony 23.01.2020 17:49 |
^^^ this. Even someone with the lyrical skills if Neil Peart sometimes borrowed lines or phrases. Admittedly his ability to write strongly never seemed to deminish. But the point about the writing process becoming like any other job is quite true for a lot of people. |
| runner_70 23.01.2020 18:26 |
dudeofqueen wrote: brENsKi, ree: >IGSM Hardly a masterpiece. The bulk of the lyrc for that song is taken from generic phrases used in common parlance that he borrowed and knitted (albeit cleverly) together: missing one final screw not in the pink one card short of a full deck not quite the shilling One wave short of a shipwreck not my usual top billing really out to sea knitting with only one needle driving only three wheels Had he invented the phrases then, yep - absolutely a work of genius, but......I think these lyrics describe his state of health in disguise |
| brENsKi 23.01.2020 19:05 |
runner_70 wrote:I think these lyrics describe his state of health in disguisein a very clever way, to boot! there's a "dementia" undertow to the lyric. Talking about the taboo as if it's all a big joke - when really, the underlying illness (causing the fogginess) is what's really being alluded to. It gives the song strength in depth. @dudeofqueen - the genius also lies in the opening lines (none of which are common phrases/parlance: When the outside temperature rises And the meaning is oh so clear One thousand and one yellow daffodils Begin to dance in front of you, oh dear Are they trying to tell you something? this is Freddie's own way of explaining "Spring Madness" - alluding to the listlessness some feel with the arrival of warmer weather. the genius is that this opening is his feeder line for rattling off a load of madness idioms. I feel the song (lyrically) is genius, but slightly off topic (as the thread is about lyrics) there's also the melody which has some very discordant / unusual arrangements. genius too. The madness thing is offset by some beautiful harmonies straight out of ADATR's Somebody To Love, GOFL and YTMBA. Those harmonies should NOT work with that melody, but they really do. |
| runner_70 23.01.2020 19:30 |
brENsKi wrote:Amazing song and video. Legendaryrunner_70 wrote:I think these lyrics describe his state of health in disguisein a very clever way, to boot! there's a "dementia" undertow to the lyric. Talking about the taboo as if it's all a big joke - when really, the underlying illness (causing the fogginess) is what's really being alluded to. It gives the song strength in depth. I feel the song (lyrically) is genius, but slightly off topic (as the thread is about lyrics) there's also the melody which has some very discordant / unusual arrangements. genius too. The madness thing is offset by some beautiful harmonies straight out of ADATR's Somebody To Love, GOFL and YTMBA. Those harmonies should NOT work with that melody, but they really do. |
| Veyeynae 23.01.2020 19:35 |
heard a lot about Freddy Mercury's language skills. Someone doubts credibility, someone just accepts that information. |
| runner_70 23.01.2020 19:39 |
Veyeynae wrote: heard a lot about Freddy Mercury's language skills. Someone doubts credibility, someone just accepts that information.Who's that Freddy guy? |
| Iron Butterfly 24.01.2020 12:07 |
runner_70 wrote:Yes, sadly underrated.brENsKi wrote:Amazing song and video. Legendaryrunner_70 wrote:I think these lyrics describe his state of health in disguisein a very clever way, to boot! there's a "dementia" undertow to the lyric. Talking about the taboo as if it's all a big joke - when really, the underlying illness (causing the fogginess) is what's really being alluded to. It gives the song strength in depth. I feel the song (lyrically) is genius, but slightly off topic (as the thread is about lyrics) there's also the melody which has some very discordant / unusual arrangements. genius too. The madness thing is offset by some beautiful harmonies straight out of ADATR's Somebody To Love, GOFL and YTMBA. Those harmonies should NOT work with that melody, but they really do. |
| MyHumanZoo 24.01.2020 19:23 |
We do know from books on Freddie that he spent lots of time studying catalogs on art, and in preparation for auctions of art and furnishings and such he spent time researching things. That is where his knowledge came from, at least in the 80s as he was working on Garden Lodge. So when it came to art and decorating Freddie did read and do research, he just didn’t sit down and read fictional books, etc. Also, on I’m Going Slightly Mad, it is detailed in a few interviews with Peter Straker and Peter Freestone (Phoebe)...Freddie was having trouble with some phrasing and rhyming for the song and came home and asked for their help. There was a rollicking (yes...drinks involved!) multi-hour session where they all came up with different phrases for going mad, which is where these came from. So even that was not all Freddie! |