Love Story of a Different Kind

Entertainment books? Film production books? Love story book? These are the usual subjects (key words) of my posts because, being honest, this blog is about marketing my books.

3 Covers

3 Covers

Not today.

I am an eighty-three year old man who was trained as a classical singer/musician. I made a living as such for fifteen years before moving into film production. I toured and recorded as soloist with both the Norman Luboff Choir and the William Hall Chorale, sang at the Metropolitan Opera and on Broadway.

My wife, Elizabeth, is younger but not by a lot and she was also trained as a classical singer and also made a living in that world for most of her life. She performed at Lincoln Center and toured with the NYC Opera and sang leading roles in concert and with the San Francisco Opera and on Broadway.

I can’t speak for Elizabeth about this but I was never into the popular music of “my time”. When I was in high school and college during the 1950s my contemporaries were listening to R & B while I was listening to Stan Kenton, Buddy Morrow, Shorty Rogers and Dave Brubeck (not to mention Mozart, Handel and Honneger). This taste has stayed with me through the years.

In the summer of 1966 my friend Jeff Siggins called one night and said that I must immediately come down to his Great Jones street (that’s the name of the street, “Great Jones”) loft. Upon my arrival he handed me a lit joint and ushered me to a comfy chair which was situated directly beneath a very large loudspeaker mounted in the ceiling. (Stereo was just beginning to happen.) He then began to play the Beatles’ latest album, Revolver. As the first few bars of George Harrison’s Taxman entered my consciousness my attitude toward the Beatles was transformed. I suppose the expression “blew my mind” is such a cliché because it’s so often the apt way to describe an experience. It certainly applies in this case. Until then I had not even given the Beatles and their ilk a second thought. And I never did become a fan of Rock in general but the next few Beatles albums and another band Jeff was to introduce me to the following spring, The Mothers of Invention, would become all time favorites.

Other than that Elizabeth and I were never into Rock except for The Beatles and a few songs from The Doors and Procol Harum. (I don’t consider The Mothers to be rock.) Until we saw the first trailer for Bohemian Rhapsody neither of us had ever heard the name Freddie Mercury and only knew Queen as the name of some British rock band we’d knew nothing about. We had, of course, heard bits of We Will Rock You and We are the Champions but had no idea who had written or who was singing these anthems.

Well, my friends, that has changed – in a big way.

Our curiosity about Freddie and Queen was piqued by the movie trailer so we looked them up on YouTube, watched their Live Aid set and several other videos of their performances and were mesmerized. There was something compelling about this band. The emotional intensity combined with the surprising musical sophistication and complexity of their music became a near obsession. Both of us were hooked.

About a month ago (early March ’19) we finally got a DVD of Bohemian Rhapsody from Netflix. We have screened it four times, watched two documentaries about the group and seen their Live Aid performance multiple times. We have both become devotees of Queen and – given our background and musical taste – this seems somewhat inexplicable.

My analytical mind wants to delve into this compulsion because of its seeming inexplicability and yet I choose to simply enjoy.

For Elizabeth’s birthday I got her the DVD of the movie. Can one wear out a DVD? If so I’ll need to get her another one in six months.

By the way, if you’re interested you can get my books here.

 

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