Freddie

For people that know me it’s no secret I’m a huge Queen fan.
Every time we visit London it’s always on the way back that I think “Oh I would have loved to visited Freddie’s house”, it sounds very weird but for me Queen has been a guide line throughout my life, their music has always somehow highlighted important moments. During our marriage for example “teo torriatte” was played (still one of the best Queen songs in my opinion) and on the birth card of our son Brian we used the text “It’s a kind of magic”.

I’ve seen The Cross, Brian May and Queen with Paul Rodgers live but never Queen with Freddie, actually I even saw Smile live during a christmas party in London many many years ago. So to make a long story short, when teaching the seminar in London last week I realized that I was very close to Freddie’s house and we decided it was this time that we really were going to visit it.

 

Now sometimes you expect a lot, and to be honest I did.
In my opinion Freddie is without any doubt one of the best Rock performers ever and Queen has made it’s mark in music and is still going strong today, just listen to any sports event and you will hear “We will Rock you” or “We are the champions”, and also in modern day music I hear many references to Queen music. When Freddie died the whole wall at his house was covered with texts and letters remembering/honoring Freddie. One would expect that this would have been saved for the future… with that idea I visited the Garden lodge…

 

Much to my “horror” surprise there hardly is anything left. The house cannot be seen from the road (which is not a surprise) the door is however still there but it is clearly cleaned often because even the carved in texts are all gone, next to the door there are plastic plates to prevent people from using graffiti or writing texts on the wall. Now don’t get me wrong, I knew there wouldn’t be an amusement park with Freddie roller coasters, I even knew there was no statue…. but what I did expect was that at least that wall would have been “saved” for future generations. Although I was somewhat disappointed I still felt good that I finally visited the home and of course took some images of what was left, although it was not much it still showed that Queen and Freddie are still very “alive”.