Queen

[poliphilo]

Music is the most insidious of the arts. The one that burrows deepest, the one it's hardest to shake. If I hate a painting I can forget about it; it doesn't insist on wallpapering my inner world. I'm not obliged to constantly replay the plots of bad novels. Pickled sharks and poems by Ted Hughes don't go round and round in my head the way Bohemian Rhapsody does if it first gets a grip. I like Queen about as much as I like Hirst and Hughes (which is to say not much) but I carry their collected hits around with me, like a box of runny gelignite, ready to be touched off at the slightest jolt. "Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, Figaro."

I was watching a documentary about them last night. Every time one of their songs struck up my brain did a little squeal and started singing along. Brain, I hate you!

I have a certain regard for Freddie. Offstage, as filmed interviews made plain, he was a sweet, mousy little guy with a Simpson's overbite. You wanted to take him home to your mum and have her knit him a sweater. How did that wholly unremarkable person become the priapic rock god of our dreams? Oh the transfiguring, Dionysiac power of art. 

Comments

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

His later stuff is more comprehensible than the early - anything after "Crow" e.g. Season Songs, Return to Elemet, Moortown, you might like better. His personal life is very troubling. I blame Robert Graves, whose "White Goddess" caused Hughes to seek out deeply troubled women - and make them worse. From his letters there is no doubt he tried to help Sylvia, but she needed more help than he could offer, and he gave up and went off the rails too easily in the arms of other women. Impulsive and priapic - and genuinely pagan.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Oh- and then there was his friendship with the Queen Mother.....

I read some of the poems about Plath he published at the end of his life. I found them flat. I thought they'd have gone without remark if it hadn't been for the celebrity factor.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

He had an overdone respect for Royalty. I think he saw them as to do with the Matter of Britain. And Birthday Letters was more of a psychological cleansing (or excuse-making) than a creative act. He'd never really told his side of it. But such a lot he left out!