You Are Freddie

On Hearing Bohemian Rhapsody for the first time

It’s the summer of 1975.

You are eleven years old.

It’s 6pm on a Sunday.

You turn the dial to LW and tune in to DJ Tom Brown who has a top 20 music charts program on crackly BBC Radio 2.

Then you hear Bohemian Rhapsody for the first time.

You are electrified.

🎶 Mom-ma Just killed a man 🎶

Every time you hear it playing afterwards you rush downstairs to the hall and turn the dial up to full, pressing your cochlea against the speaker grill, facing it, straining to hear the full force of every note, every word as Freddie shook the very heavens.

You learn all the words. You screech your renditions into the isolated hills and valleys where you live.

🎶 So you think you can love me and leave me to die-ie-ie 🎵

You know this is the best song ever written. You ARE Freddy Mercury and you don’t even know his name yet — you’ve never even seen him.

But you heard his music, his words, his voice and they changed you forever.