“First there came rock groups. And lo, they were good. And then came Queen and the world trembled. For Queen are not just a group, they are a way of life, an institution, and they have a place in the national heritage of treasures,” said journalist, Chris Welch.

The British music press treated Queen’s music roughly most of the time. Instead of appreciating their national treasure and try to make the best out of it, they reviewed their albums without even listening to them, always in a deprecating way.

Freddie just burnt their reviews the moment he received them. After all the harm and gratuitous insults these people had inflicted in the past, it was too late to redress the balance now.

“If the clipping was from a British publication, it went straight onto the fire, the American and European clippings, he kept.

Of course, serious journalists, like Maura Sutton, singled out Freddie for particular praise, and also hit out at the British music press for its continuous persecution of him: ‘Freddie Mercury has always attracted the greatest amount of flak from critics too busy to acknowledge the fact that he’s one of the greatest rock vocalists ever!’ This review excited Freddie the most,” said Peter Freestone. 💛