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“What next?”
Brian asks, not because he doesn’t have any ideas of his own - he does, and plenty of them - but because it’s an unwritten band rule that the writer of the song gets final say. And with this song, this thing, it’s Fred who’s at the wheel, skilfully pulling the strings like a virtuoso. This is his brainchild they are meticulously putting together, his baby. Bits and pieces of the melody and lyrics have probably been kicking around in his mind for months if not years.
Brian knows what that’s like. Only too well. He knows what it’s like to wake up with the fragments of a dream echoing around the chambers of his mind, words begging to be jotted down on paper and put to music, a story needing to be told at all costs. And Freddie has a story to tell with this thing, oh boy does he ever. What form it will end up taking, no one knows exactly, but it’s going to be something for the books for sure. It's going to be big. It's going to be bold. And above all it's going to be Queen. Freddie has promised them that much. And so Freddie's word is law, the band - including Brian - toiling in the studio day after day to please him, no matter how outlandish his instructions may seem to just about anyone else.
An operatic section, Fred? Love it. More harmonies? Sure thing. More falsetto? More overdubs? More rock ‘n roll? You got it.
Standing in the dusty sunlight streaming into the studio, Brian sees Freddie beaming at him from the other side of the glass, conveying a message that doesn’t require the pushing of a button. Fred’s happy. It’s all coming together well. A good day’s work, darlings.
Recording isn’t always this effortless and jolly an affair, however. God, no. They butt heads over creative differences and general assholery more often than not, and some days Brian would like nothing better than to wring his bandmates’ necks when they’re being dicks, even Roger. Especially Roger, sometimes. From where he stands, Brian has a clear view of the other two sitting behind Freddie, Deaky reclining as he takes a brief rest from operating the knobs of the recorder and Roger moodily smoking a cigarette, looking like he has the biggest hangover in the history of rock music.
(Of course, Brian knows that can't be the case, as they’ve been living like monks here at the farm - unless Roger has found some local pub to sneak off to that he hasn’t told the others about. No, everything they do here serves the music they are so hungry to bring into the world, too much coffee being the only vice they allow themselves to indulge in.)
Brian brings the trusty sixpence he holds between his fingers to the strings, ready to strum them confidently and coax the Red Special to life. Make the old lady sing the way she does only for him.
Wouldn’t it be nice if this turned out to be the record to finally launch them into stardom? The one he could take home to his Dad and say, “See, pop? I didn’t give up a career in physics for nothing. This is a piece of music history, and we created it.”
It isn't the first time he's sent this hopeful prayer into the cosmos. He is also far from the first rockstar to have these lofty aspirations, to reach for heights that, for all too many musicians before him, proved elusive in the end.
And yet. And yet. He cannot deny the thought stirs something in him, a gentle vibrato at his deepest core. He nods at Freddie and RT. At Deaky, who reaches out to press record while Roger lets out the biggest and most unflattering yawn.
His little band of misfit brothers, he thinks in a rare moment of tenderheartedness, storming the windmills of the music industry as brazenly as Don Quixote. But unlike that famous story, Queen's is still being written. Which means anything is possible, really.
“Right,” he says. “Let’s do this.”