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It wasn’t so much that the questions were unexpected, or even that they were annoying, individually. But once they started they were absolutely relentless, and Brian was beginning to dread moments when Freddie could catch him alone.
Sometimes the questions were lighthearted.
“Have you been to space?” Freddie looked hopeful at the thought.
Brian laughed. “No, that’s actually a very complicated endeavor, and potentially costly for the environment. The energy costs are far too high for casual travel to be ethical.”
“Oh well that’s no fun.” Freddie was not pouting, but not doing so very loudly.
Sometimes the questions were profound.
“The world can’t have ended in nuclear holocaust, or I imagine that would have been your first priority,” Freddie said one day, after they’d seen Roger watching a news report on the demonstrations in Tehran. Brian had wondered if Freddie would ask about the Shah, but he seemed to avoid asking about anything too close to the present, or too close to home.
“No, not yet.”
“Not yet?” Freddie looked as if he wasn’t sure how worried he ought to be.
“The Cold War was not exactly followed by peace on Earth, and the nuclear stockpiles still exist.” Brian shook his head. “It could still happen, just as soon as people forget how terrible it is. And there have been major nuclear accidents, in Ukraine and Japan, that poisoned the land around them.”
“So maybe your other dreams could still come true, too.”
Brian rested his head on the wall next to him, recalling only a few, but terribly vivid images from the dream that inspired The Prophet’s Song. “I certainly hope not. The climate crisis is bad enough.” He sighed. “Anyway, those actually seemed like dreams, not just time passing and memory.”
Freddie did not look particularly reassured.
But most of the time, they just seemed like Freddie absently filling the gaps of his boredom, and it was wearing.
“Does your son take after the music side or the astrophysics?” Heaven knew what had inspired Freddie this time.
Brian looked up from where he was adjusting the connections on a new pedal he was hoping to use. “He’s a physiotherapist.”
He scoffed. “You mean to tell me he’s named after Jimi Hendrix, and he’s the son of possibly the greatest living guitar technician, and he does massage for a living?”
Brian straightened, offended on Jimmy’s behalf. “What of it?”
Freddie shook his head like he was dazed, said “I haven’t the faintest idea how to take that,” and wandered out.
They were working one evening on a song that was almost Fun It, but not quite, Roger in the main room with Deaky and Fred, and Brian at the mixing table with Roy Baker and Paul Prenter standing off to the side nodding appreciatively. When everyone paused for a breather, Paul turned to Brian.
“If you ask me,” he said, and Brian stood up.
“We won’t, but thank you Paul,” Brian said, and pushed past him to enter the main room.
“What ever did Paul do to get on your bad side, old man?” Freddie asked, looking past his shoulder. Brian glanced back to see Paul scowling through the glass, plainly offended.
Brian shook his head and picked up his guitar. Freddie raised an eyebrow, but stayed quiet while Brian complimented John on his playing.
Then he grabbed Brian’s shirt at the shoulder and dragged him over to the corner, saying “Scuse me, lovvies,” to Roger and Deaky while Brian voiced a protest.
Freddie turned Brian to face him and made a face of Well, get on with it. Brian sighed, and murmured, “It’s nothing he’s done yet. I know I’m being unfair.”
“Is it something I ought to prepare for?” Freddie was quiet too, but he crossed his arms and tapped his foot a little.
Brian rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Probably. Don’t fire him, or be careful about it, because he’ll sell pictures to the press.”
Freddie uncrossed his arms quick, his hands fisting at his sides, “Oh I’ll see him rot first,” he growled under his breath.
Brian huffed, “Oh, don’t, Fred, he hasn’t earned it yet.”
“You are entirely too precious, dearie, even a white knight has to be a little ruthless sometimes, or the dragons don’t get slain.”
Brian threw up his hands. “Look,” he whispered, then glared at Roger, who was watching them with interest. Roger laughed, then started playing some warm up drum rolls.
In a more relaxed voice, Brian said, “I admit, I’d be glad to see Paul’s back, but to be smart about it we ought to just help him find a better offer and let it look like his idea.”
Freddie rolled his eyes this time. “Always rescuing blue bottles, mother.”
Brian tilted his head to the side. “Of course I am, Freddiekins.”
“Oh don’t you dare.”
“Freddiepoo.”
“I’ll murder you, you old bag.”
“You couldn’t do that to your dear old mum,” Brian said, and laughed when Freddie slapped his shoulder and turned back to join the others.
On another morning, a difficult morning really, when Brian complained about the poor quality of 1978 stationary bicycles in lieu of allowing himself to continue down the darker roads his thoughts were trending towards, Freddie thought to ask, “What’s the worst thing about growing old?”
“People assuming that being old is terrible.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No I don’t,” Brian said, already exasperated, “because I think you’re asking from boredom and you don’t have a particular aim or you’d consider that the answer might not be fun.”
“I’m at least a little serious and curious, so let me rephrase for you. Was it terrible growing old? Not being old, but getting there.”
Brian sat down. “For several years, yes. Everybody was dying,” and his voice wobbled a little. He cleared his throat. “Not just you. My father to cancer, my mum to an aneurysm, Cozy Powell who I was working with at the time had a car accident and died. And there are monsters out in the world that mean the big enemies: war, and poverty, and deterioration of the environment don’t ever seem to go away. The worst part of growing old was fear and loss, the same as it is for anyone living.” He sighed, “But I have to emphasize, there’s a lot that wasn’t terrible, and really there were immense blessings I couldn’t have expected.”
Freddie sat beside him. “Tell me about a few.”
“I finished my degree. I made friends with the people at NASA who were sending a probe to get pictures of Pluto. They let me put together the first stereoscopic image of Pluto that anyone had ever seen.”
Freddie laughed. “Well that’s probably not something I’ll do in my own old age, but thanks for the warning. How long until our ears are filled with you mumbling about your studies again?”
“Oh I absolutely refuse to get my doctorate again without a proper database search engine, so it’ll probably be 2007 again.”
Freddie blinked at him. “Wait, you finished your studies when you were… were you actually going to university at 60?”
“Just finishing my thesis.” Brian smiled at Freddie. “The research is mostly done, just not useful to anyone yet. But people do go to university late in life, to better themselves.”
Freddie looked thoughtful. “I don’t think it ever occurred to me to just go back to school when there was no need for it. On the other hand, performing music is what I do and I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
Brian smiled at that, and moved in a little closer. “Oh you could do any number of things. I’ve got three charities I started, which means political work unfortunately, and I’ve got a publishing company for stereoscopic photography...”
“That sounds like you.”
“...and of course I travel and I still tour with Roger and Adam in between it all.”
Freddie looked at him, surprised. “You said you and Roger worked with a singer, but I assumed you were producing him.”
Brian looked over at Freddie, surprised he hadn’t already explained properly, “No, people still want to hear Queen, even if all they can get is me and Rog. The music is alive, and they want to hear it live. And we’ve always done this for them, first.”
“So, what, you’ve become a nostalgia band that plays for retired folks on vacation?”
Brian shifted in his seat and faced forward. “No, well I think we nearly might have, for a bit, when we were featuring Paul Rodgers. But something changed when we started to play with Adam - he’s young for one thing, he was 26 when we started -”
“Good lord what must that have looked like?” Freddie’s face was a picture of disbelief.
“- and he has fun with it. He’s made it fun again. I don’t know how to explain it, but I desperately want you to meet him one day.” Brian turned towards Freddie again. “I think I always wished you’d had children, so I’d have just something left to... Adam’s not so much like you as like a son you might have had. Roger and I feel very lucky to have him.”
Freddie was silent, but his eyebrows spoke volumes.
It was a few days later when Freddie stormed into Brian’s room one evening and said, without precursor, “Why.”
Brian looked up from his book, his face a question mark.
Freddie rolled his eyes and shut the door. “You called him part of my legacy, what does that even mean?”
Brian put the book down. “You’re the reason he wanted to be a singer, and the reason he became one. Lucky for all of us, since Adam’s one of the best voices on the planet.”
Freddie frowned. “What exactly counts as ‘not exactly like me’?”
Brian shrugged. “Well, he never learned any instrument but his voice, but he owns the stage, dresses like a fever dream. Makes the girls wish he liked girls and I’ve seen him briefly wear a pair of knickers thrown on stage like a hat. I don’t know what to tell you ...he sounds like Aretha Franklin.”
Freddie began to look incredulous halfway through, and when Brian finished he grumbled, “I’m fairly sure I’ve a right to be offended at the fever dream comment. Did I hear you right that the younger model is queer too?”
Brian nodded with a shrug.
Freddie looked at him quizzically. “Was that intentional?”
“Of course it wasn’t intentional, we weren’t looking for a singer!”
“You weren’t?”
“No.” Brian sighed, and patted the bedspread. “Stop standing judgement and get comfortable. I’ll tell you all about him.”
“You can’t be playing the same long guitar solos, old man. Your aged fingers would fall off.”
“Clocked in at twelve minutes for Red’s fiftieth birthday.”
“Brian. Darling. What the fuck. Are you writing symphonies next?”
Since they had bought Mountain Studios, earlier than they originally had, the band had become simultaneously more relaxed about using studio time efficiently and a little more driven to make the next album interesting. Brian recalled that Jazz had produced no extra material, no demos that didn’t make the album cut. But now they were just a little more free to wander in on their own, and to extend the date of finishing the album, they were spending a little of that freedom on things that didn’t need to be completed or perfect.
Brian found Freddie at the mixing desk one day with the pile of remembered lyrics Ratty had rescued from the bin, looking thoughtful. When he heard Brian enter, Freddie looked up, and gestured with one of the pages.
“Are you planning to abandon these entirely? You haven’t brought any of them to us, yet.”
Brian shook his head. “Probably not. They are part of my life’s work after all.” He sighed. “But rewriting them does feel strange to do. I already fought them out, with all of you, line by line. And you have a few of my old songs for this album already.”
Freddie leaned back. “The strangest part of this is how you have pieces of us we’ve never seen. I haven’t known you for your last forty years, but you have a dozen years of my music that I don’t.”
Brian hesitated, then said, “It’s yours, of course, only I suppose it belongs to a different you.”
Freddie nodded, slowly. “I can’t decide if I’m more curious or afraid to see what I might have done. It already feels strange to look back at myself in my twenties, how much stranger it should be to see a different me moving on past where I am and want to be.”
Brian leaned a hip on the mixing desk. “I feel less strange when I think of my old songs, all the old songs, as belonging to Queen, not to me. And it would be very strange to go the rest of my life without playing John and Roger’s best work - they gave us our best hits in America, and I’ve barely played a show without those songs ever since.”
“Surely you did some solo work.” Freddie began to look worried. “You must have done.”
“Yeah of course I did. But I’m no good alone.” When it looked like Freddie was going to refute it, Brian continued, “No, I gave it a good try, and it was fun in its way but you can hear the gaps where all of you might have been. Honestly, the same goes for your solo work and for Roger’s. We’ve done some good stuff on our own, but Queen’s the magic of it all, and… look, Freddie, we started crediting every song to the band after you and Rog started your solo stuff, and it solved a lot of problems. Just being me after that was ...I’m no good alone.”
Freddie was looking at him softly, but when he spoke, his voice was faintly challenging. “What songs did you write for me?”
“No, Freddie,” Brian answered quickly.
“It can’t have all been bad.”
“Freddie, I, they weren’t all solo work…”
“Oh, especially then,” he gestured, his right hand palm up, “You would hardly have given me your worst.”
“No, it’s,” Brian swallowed, “Freddie, they were my best, but -”
“There you are, Bri, I should like to know your best,” Freddie said, as if it was the simplest of things.
“No, Fred, no, it’s not fun, it’s not happy,” Brian said, his voice rising, “I can’t just ...Freddie, you don’t know what it’s like!” He was breathing hard, and his eyes were pricking with the threat of tears.
Freddie’s voice was suddenly firm, “I certainly don’t.” He caught and held Brian’s eye. “You have all of those pieces of me. I have none of those pieces of you.” More softly, he said, “I don’t know you, Brimi. Not like that.”
Brian looked back at him for several moments, then let himself collapse against the window between the main room and the mixing desk, and looked through it at the Red Special.
“Okay,” Brian said, and walked into the other room. Freddie followed him.
As he tuned his old lady, not so old at the moment, Brian explained, “It’s not just mine, we wrote this one together, and,” he took a deep breath. “And I’ve only played this with your voice, Fred, with you.”
Freddie sat on the piano bench, and nodded, and Brian’s fingers sang the first notes of Bijou.