The official Queen Podcasts started well with 2 podcasts covering an interesting interview with Roger Taylor.
However, the third was an interview with Greg Brooks that told us nothing new about his job as archivist but confirmed a few things we suspected about his personality.
As we have seen on this forum, his own self-importance shines through.
Firstly, even before the interview proper had started he has to get in that he is abused by Queen fans and has even had death threats.
20% of a 29 minute interview is then given over to non-Queen related personal interests, grudges and self-aggrandisement.
A passing reference to 'Greg' in a Tori Amos song becomes 'a song about him'. Not one he likes to talk about you understand but nevertheless he tells the non-story on a podcast!
What the crikey this has to do with Queen is baffling but it seems he wants us to know that he is so influential and important that stars write songs "about" him.
The line in 'Pretty Good Year" is...
"And Greg he writes letters
And burns his CDs"
In fact he goes on to say that it was written after he met her (following a piece he had a part in writing about her) when he mentioned his CD collection.
Well, this doesn't appear to tally up with Tori Amos's account. Tori herself is quoted as saying....
"I got a letter from a guy named Greg. He's a fan, and this letter just happened to get to me, because a lot of times I don't get them. But he's from the north of England and he drew this picture, a self-portrait of himself. It was a pencil drawing and Greg had glasses and long hair and he was really, really skinny. He had this drooping flower in his hand. And he wrote to me this letter that touched me to the core about how at twenty-three, it was all over for him. In his mind, there was nothing. I was just telling Greg's story.
-Tori Amos - -from the book In Their Own Words:Songwriters Talk About The Creative Process written/compiled by Bill DeMain.
Sound like the Greg we know? Skinny? Mmmm, maybe once?
How about this....
"Like Pretty Good Year, for example, I got a letter from a guy named Greg in England. This one got to me - it missed getting to me for, like, three months. And I took this letter, and I opened my bag two days later, and I read it. It was a picture of - he had drawn himself. It was a pencil drawing. Greg has kind of scrawny hair and glasses, and he's very skinny and he held this great big flower. Greg is 23, lives in the north of England, and his life is over, in his mind. "
[Tori Amos, Hot Press, 02/32/94]
Mmmm.
Another eye opener is his pop at an old co-worker. Apparently he worked for Jeff Wayne (War Of The Worlds) for a while. A new guy started working for Jeff and he and Greg didn't get on (I wonder why?).
So Greg launches into a diatribe about this guy calling him "an idiot" when the guy isn't there to tell his side of the story. i wonder what adjectives he'd use to describe Greg?
This, by the way happened about 10 years ago and he still feels the need to have a pop about a workplace disagreement a decade later.
Apparently Greg and Jeff no longer talk to each other.
splicksplack