Love On the Brain (Corey Crawford)

38| Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Jessica

I haven't been on a vacation since I was in high school. I haven't left the country since my dad was still here with us. It's hard to take a break when your job is to study the mind and you can never really get away from that. It's not like I'm working with people every single day of my life but it's hard to leave Chicago knowing that someone might need you there. But this vacation was much needed and much appreciated as Corey and I could be away from all our problems. Famous people come here all the time to find what I see in this place and that is one of the greatest feelings in the world. To be at such peace with yourself and realize that love is what makes this world go around.

And after being able to see this beautiful city and all the cool things it has to offer we finally make it to part of the reason why we were here in the first place. We make it to the recording studio called Mountain Studio that Queen used for the latter days of their time to record and make music. We got to have a full tour of where Queen hung out and made music and I was kind of freaking out. Some of the greatest things to ever happen in music happened right here and I got to be a part of it.

"Wow.. I can't believe we're in here where Queen once made music. This is crazy" I admit as I look around. There was little notes stuck to the walls and no one around so I can soak up all the history.

"This place was defiantly build in the 80's" Corey admits as he looks around. This was built by Freddie and he was the most colorful and outspoken artist of his time. His best friends in the business were Elton John and David Bowie... and he was still the outrageous one.

"Queen is the greatest rock band there ever was, they took everything we thought about music and said screw it and recreated it to be whatever they wanted it to be. Their minds, they were all so different and that's what made this band so good. No one ever knew what to expect and no matter what they did it was always incredible. They shouldn't have worked out but they didn't care about what people said should or shouldn't happen. They knew in their mind that they had what it took to change people's minds and that's what they did. Music can be so powerful, and no one's music is more powerful than theirs" I insist.

"I have to be honest with you, before I met you I couldn't have named a queen song. Of course I knew their songs, We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions are sports anthems I've listened to since I was a kid and Bohemian Rhapsody is one of the biggest hockey songs next to Sweet Caroline. I always loved Another One Bites the Dust and I listened to Don't Stop Me Now a bunch as a kid. I just never realized that all those songs came from this one band. And that they had plenty more that are just as good" Corey claims.

"What's your favorite song of theirs now" I wonder.

"Crazy Little Thing Called Love" he claims and I smile big.

"That was Freddie's favorite song" I tell him.

"Really? That same guy who made a 6 minute song about a bunch of nonsense which just might be the worlds greatest song" he asks and I laugh.

"It's not about nonsense. It's about him. He started writing Bohemian Rhapsody when he was a little boy and until Queens Night at the Opera album no one got to hear it. But his mind worked differently than others, he was able to take what he heard in his wonderful mind and bring it out into the real world, and he was the only one strong enough to get people to listen" I smile.

"Why do I feel like this is about more than music" he asks.

"It's never just about the music. Think about it, why is Crazy Little Thing About Love your favorite song of theirs" I wonder.

"I don't know" he shrugs. "It's catchy and the lyrics are really good. It's something I can see us having our first dance to" he says.

"Music is great because you don't have to understand it to enjoy it. But the songs that you connect to, that you understand for reasons you don't know, those are so special" I insist.

"You're like a Queen song to me. Not a lot of people get you but you're well liked and well respected. I feel like if Freddie we're alive and you got to meet him he would have loved you" he claims.

"I would have been a puddle if I met him. When it comes to singing and songwriting only the great Michael Jackson is higher. But he was a great in his own sense, at one time Queen was selling better than Michael Jackson. And while both personalities are something out of the ordinary, Freddie's was a lot more relatable. Although a lot of people didn't agree with his lifestyle or his music he didn't give a shit. He never changed who he was because of what people said. You have to be so strong to go what he went through, what people put him through and still be able to stay true to yourself. I wish I could have a mindset like his" I say as I look into the recording booth. They had up a hologram of the band in there and it was interactive. You can play songs and listen to them talk about this place and what it meant to the band and their careers.

I see a button that said CLTCL and smile because I knew what that was. I press the button and Crazy Little Thing Called Love starts to play around us. It looked like the band was in there singing it and it was probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen. To feel like I was in the recording studio with Queen, well it was one of the coolest feelings ever.

"Care to have this dance" Corey asks as he sticks out his hand.

"Have you been drinking" I ask because that's the only time he will willingly dance.

"Not since before we got here" he claims.

"Are you sick" I ask and he chuckles at me.

"No. I just want to dance with my girlfriend to my favorite Queen song in their recording studio, that's all" he assures me. So I slip my hand in his and he pulls me close. I couldn't keep the smile off my face as he makes us dance close to the best of the music. I laugh loudly as he tries to make us dance around but I know for a fact we weren't doing this right. But it didn't really matter because we had this crazy little thing called love.