It is a glorious moment in the life of any music-loving parent when your progeny develop their own fierce musical tastes, and start looking rather askance at yours. My case may be extreme, as my two children have had to put up with my music for years. As previously mentioned in these columns, my tinnitus makes it all but impossible for me to work in complete silence, and I have become accustomed to playing up to a dozen CDs a day to get anything done. As a result, daughter (12) and son (10) find other people’s houses eerily quiet, even if someone is digging up the road outside and a Boeing 747 is strafing the rooftops. Maybe surprisingly, exposure to unceasing pop music has not put them off it for life. Instead, they seem to have noticed that I like A Certain Sort Of Thing.
Like all of us, I believe my own taste to be unfeasibly wide-ranging and impossible to pin down in a single sentence. But as I was listening to the Silver Seas the other day (a magnificently tuneful US pop group of the old school, in that every song sounds like a top ten hit from between 1968 and 1981, and would never get near radio play today), my daughter rolled in, and I said, ‘Isn’t this great?’ And she said, ‘Sounds like all your other records, Daddy.’ She meant no harm: it was merely a statement of fact, always the child’s most potent weapon. I put on some Abba and she was happy.
The most startling recent development chez Berkmann, however, has been the sudden blossoming of my son’s musical taste. Since babyhood he has always relished a tune, and often wanders into my workspace when something loud involving guitars is being played. What is it about boys and guitars? What is it about men and guitars? Try as you might to emphasise the civilised, intellectual part of your personality, sometimes only hard riffage will do. Noise, lights, guitar solos and, in later life, tinnitus: another small price we didn’t know we would have to pay.
The other day I put on some Dr Feelgood and I thought the boy’s eyes were going to pop out. But the band that really does it for him, at the moment at least, is Queen. Since the beginning of the year he has played the Greatest Hits more times than even I can bear. ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is the song he loves most in the world, followed by ‘We Will Rock You’, ‘We Are The Champions’ and, most tellingly, ‘Seven Seas Of Rhye’. I suspect that in his case Queen are a gateway drug to heavy rock in all its forms. Although it’s not my kind of music at all, I feel the burden of responsibility to introduce him to Led Zeppelin, the Sex Pistols, Nirvana, the whole ear-bleeding lot of it. Black T-shirts, regrettable haircuts and debatable personal hygiene are only a matter of time.
The continued potency of Queen’s music, though, never ceases to amaze me. Thirty years ago, when they were at their commercial peak, they were absurd, derided and laughably out of kilter with the times. I could no more have bought a Queen album than grown my hair like Brian May’s. But when the greatest hits came out, I snapped it up immediately, as did so many other people that it became the bestselling album ever in the UK. They were an albums band who, apparently by mistake, became one of the very greatest singles bands. Who else would release ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ as a single? Kenny Everett, famously, had to talk them into it.
As well as a mesmerisingly good frontman, and lots of tunes, Queen had an extraordinary stylistic boldness that wasn’t like anything else in 1977 and certainly isn’t like anything now. When, a few years ago, several young bands like The Feeling decided to raid Queen’s back catalogue for ideas, they sounded a lot like each other but not enough like Queen to make you really stand up and take notice. The fact is that even Queen didn’t always sound like Queen. ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ sounded more like Chic, and ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ was a tribute to Elvis. My boy loves them all. When I was walking him to school the other day, I said, ‘Watch out for the bicycle,’ and he immediately launched into ‘Bicycle Race’. On Highbury Corner. In the rush hour. The poor man on the cycle nearly drove under a bus.
Anyway, I have accepted the inevitable: A Night at the Opera is on order from Amazon. But I still can’t grow my hair like Brian May’s.
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