You've Got To Hide Your Love Away

I Wanna Be A Toy At Your Birthday Party....

September 1971

Roger's POV

It was Freddie's 25th birthday and we planned to party the night away after our performance at a new pub.  Quite a few friends were coming along and Mary, Freddie's girlfriend, wanted to buy some drinks after the show.

We took the stage at 8pm and played for about an hour.  We were excited to perform tonight as we had changed our setlist and for the first time we were only doing original material outside of our encore numbers.  The song we hoped to wow the audience with was a new composition from Freddie.  It was called 'Liar' and we had worked on this song for a while.  I love the different sequences to the song and enjoyed how challenging it was to keep up.  One of the best parts was convincing Deacy to join in on the back up vocals.  He had a fine voice for filling out backing vocals.  You couldn't get him to believe this.  Since he didn't sing with the proficiency of Freddie  or myself or Brian, he was convinced he sounded awful.  Freddie worked with him during practice a lot and finally coaxed him into sharing a short vocal sequence with him towards the end of the song.  Deacy would complain he felt naked and exposed standing at the microphone by himself.  We hoped he wouldn't lose his nerve when we actually performed.  It was now or never. 

I started on my drum intro to 'Liar and we launched into the song.  The energy from the guys was fantastic!  We sound so tight and I can see the crowd close to the stage reacting to the number.  We work through the song and my nerves quelled up when we reached the portion where Deacy is supposed to join us.  I was excited for him to be part of our vocal sound and watched him as I played.  I got nervous as he seemed agitated standing at his new microphone stand.  It was close to Freddie starting the new lyric and just as I thought Deacy was going to bail on us, he walked up to Freddie as he stood at the front of the stage.  I was floored as I watched him lean in to Freddie's shoulder and make contact with him as Freddie starting singing.  Freddie seemed to sense what he needed and leaned back with his microphone at the moment Deacy was to join in.  They made it look completely relaxed and part of the show as John shared the microphone in response to Freddie's call out.

'Momma....I'm gonna be your slave....'

'All day long....'

I had the biggest grin on my face watching those two.  Deacy is an amazing bass player and has great musical sensibility.  His skill in electronics is unbelievable.  We couldn't have found a better player for our unit and I need to make an effort to get to know him better.  Freddie sure has taken him under his wing and helped him with confidence.  This performance shows his efforts are paying off.

We finished the song to great applause and it was cute to watch Freddie make a fuss in thanking John for his contribution to the number.  Deacy blushed at the extra attention and moved back on the stage.  He turned around to compose himself and I winked at him when he looked up at me.  He gave me his gapped tooth grin.

We topped the night off with Freddie camping it up on a few show tunes and wrapped up the show.  The pub response was tremendous and we went to the backroom to clean up with big smiles all around.   I was relieved I didn't have to tear down my kit after the show.  Since it was Freddie's birthday, the owner said I could get it the next day.  We chatted about our performance as we toweled off and got dressed.  Freddie and John finished and left the room.  I threw my towel on the dirty pile and cursed myself as I tore through my bag looking for my clean dry shirt. 

"Fuck!"  I muttered under my breath.  I had gone through the bag and my shirt wasn't there.  I felt an arm come around behind me and saw a shirt dangling in my line of vision in Brian's hand.  I took it from him and he leaned in and kissed my neck.