Don't know if we already have seen this recap by fan Marisa from Brazil. While we w-a-i-t!
marisa @marisa_965 20m20 minutes ago
The day I met Adam marisa965.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/the-day-i-met-adam …
marisa965
The day I met Adam
It all started with a tweet. LOL, not really, it started with an e-mail. Last May, I sent an e-mail to the record company asking for a phone interview with Adam. My idea was to offer the interview to a Time-like magazine in Brazil, so they could publish it in their cultural section when the album The Original High was released. I told the record company I had interviewed Adam before, when FYE was released, so that helped. Long story short, that interview never happened. I thought I had lost my chance.
Of course, as soon as I learned that Adam was coming to Brazil with Queen, I started talking to the record company again. At the same time, I contacted the promoters of the festival. At that point, my goal was to interview not only Adam, but also Brian and Roger. Unfortunately, after a long wait, I was told that my only chance to interview them would be at the press conference in Rio. I couldn’t go to Rio on that date, so that was never going to happen. I did my best to hide my disappointment and spent my time translating the tweets of my friends who were there…
I knew I couldn’t get anything else from the promoters, but the record company was still a possibility. So I kept in touch with them, hoping for another chance. Then, one day before the Sao Paulo concert, I got an e-mail. They told me Adam might be able to talk to me in Rio. I was so happy I thought I might explode. I told Open2it and Boicantspell about it and we celebrated like crazy. I was going to talk to him! It was happening!
The next day, I went to the concert with the happiest thought in my mind: I would see him on the stage, and after that I would be able to talk to him about it! What could be more perfect? We arrived very early, at 8am. There were only a handful of Queen fans there. We quickly became friends with them and spent a great time in the line, just talking and exchanging stories.
Two hours before the concert began, they begin soundchecking. It was a thrill to hear them rehearsing, but everything was calm – until they started rehearsing Ghost Town! I was so out of my mind, I could barely breath. I started screaming ‘THEY ARE REHEARSING GHOST TOWN!” Some fans joined me and we just stood there, mesmerized. Adam was wailing! Brian was playing the whistling part in his guitar! And then it hit me: “OMG I have to tell everyone!” So I started tweeting like crazy (as you know). I was so happy at that moment, I thought nothing could ever bring me down. As it would turn out, I was wrong.
A few minutes after they stopped playing, I got a text from the record company. “Sorry, Marisa, the interview was canceled.” I couldn’t believe it. It was too much. How much of a roller coaster can you take? I felt…empty. After a while, I asked my friend Boicantspell to leave the line with me and go to some place quiet. When we were away from the crowd, I started crying. She cried too. We hugged. I felt so devastated about the whole thing.
It took me a while to recover. But then I started thinking: “OK, you’re going to watch him on that stage, you’re gonna be in the front row, it’s gonna be amazing. Can’t you just be happy about that?” Yes, my mind answered. Yes, I could. I told my friends that I was OK and got into the line again. The concert, of course, was out of this world – but I’ll tell you all about it on another recap.
Next day was Thursday, the day of our trip to Rio. We were supposed to leave my house and go to the airport at 11:30 am. At 11 am, the phone rang. It was the record company. “Marisa, we have an opening. Can you be at the Copacabana Palace at 16:30 pm?” When I put down the phone, I started jumping up and down. Yes!!! I was going to do it!! And then I just got into maximum speed! We were running late, and I still had to change my clothes (no way I was going to interview him in shorts and a t-shirt!), call the magazine, call the cab, go to the airport, think about the questions… But none of this mattered, because I WAS GOING TO INTERVIEW ADAM!!! Life doesn’t get any better than that.
While we were on the plane, I wrote down my questions. I always have a thousand things I want to ask him, so that was not a problem. The problem was: I only had 15 minutes, so I had to be strategic. I needed to talk to him about Rock in Rio, but I wanted to include some solo career stuff as well. In the end, I divided the questions in three parts: Rock in Rio, Queen, solo career. I wrote 5 questions for each part, knowing I would not be able to ask all of them. But now I had a map. I had a plan. Everything was right with the world.
As the girls took their cab to the hotel, I took another one, to Copacabana Palace. Everything felt unreal. What was my life? When I arrived there, there were so many fans in the front! I just went straight to the entrance and asked for my contact. They took me to a hall where other journalists were already waiting. I just had to wait for my turn. Of course 4:30 pm turned into 5:50 pm, and of course it didn’t matter. I would wait my whole life if I had to. The problem was, waiting was making me incredibly nervous.
It was not the first time I interviewed someone I admired, so I used a technique I had learned before. “Take long breaths! Concentrate on the work and forget about anything else. You did hundreds of interviews before. You know how to do this. Just focus on that.” “But it’s Adam!”, my brain screamed. “So, yeah, it’s Adam. Take it all in, so you can flail about it later. But right now, be a professional. You can do it.”
At 5:30 pm, they called me. We got into an elevator, and then I was in a corridor and I could hear Adam’s voice inside one of the rooms. After a few seconds, someone opened the door, and there he was, looking magnificent and tall and thin and beautiful. He was talking to someone and giving him his whole attention, as he does.
When I finally entered the room, I thought they would introduce me to him. Instead, someone held my hand and led me through another door, into another room. Once there, they told me to sit and wait, because I was next. I was left inside a standard room, with a giant bed and chairs. Just an empty one. I seated on one of the chairs and tried to breath again. Just how surreal was that? I could hear Adam’s voice in the other room. I could hear him laugh! Craziness.
Fianlly, after ten minutes, it was my turn. I swear I could see the knob moving in slow motion. Then they were signaling me to come in. He looked at me, shook my hand and said “Hi!”. I looked at the most precious face in the whole planet and told him I had interviewed him once, a long time ago, by phone. “Nice!”, he said, looking at me with those bright green eyes (they looked very green to me). Then I told him that, this time, I was writing a feature for a Time-like magazine, and he seemed to like it. “Cool!”, he said. Then he sat on the white sofa while I turned on my recording device. He looked so relaxed, his legs crossed on the ankles, one arm on the back of the sofa holding his head, the other on his thigh. I looked at him and was shocked to realize that yes, it was the same face I had seen in so many pictures. “Or course it is!”, my brain supplied. But, at the same time, it was completely different, because it was REAL. And OMG, it was so very BEAUTIFUL. No one should be allowed to look like THAT. I could see he had some make up on, probably for television – just a little foundation and mascara. His sleeves were pulled on, so I could see part of the tattoos…
Just be a professional, remember? “So, what are you thinking of Brazil so far?” His first reaction was to talk about the sun – of course he wanted it to be hot in Brazil! And then he started talking about how friendly everyone was, and how amazing the first concert in Sao Paulo had been. I couldn’t resist. “I was there!”, I said. “You were?” And then he was talking about how passionate the audience was, and how much positive energy he had felt. It was the perfect time to bring out Ghost Town, so I did. “How did you decide to play it?” “It was Brian’s idea!”, he said, beaming like a kid with a new toy. “I thought it would be cool to bring the two worlds together”. How much do I love that he’s so articulate and clever! He always has the perfect answer! Then we talked about Brian and Roger, about Rock in Rio, and about leaving his old record company. “During that time, the biggest lesson that I learned was to not be fearful about my career and the future of it. Just have faith that there will always be something to work on, there will always be some project around the corner.” So. Much. LOVE.
During the whole interview, he was so thoughtful, sweet, funny, charming, articulate, sensitive and caring. My favorite part? When I made him laugh. It happened twice, actually. First, when I told him he had taken on the most difficult job in the whole world (replacing Freddie Mercury). And later, when I told him there was nothing obvious about his career – from AI to number one in the charts too Queen to Glee… “I think I’m lucky that I got all those chances. And I don’t know what’s gonna be in the future. For a while, I was a little more anxious, and now I’m in a place that I’m just relaxed and having faith that it will all…unfold.”
One of my favorite writers (you know who you are) once said that you couldn’t look at Adam’s eyes for too long, or you might get lost into them. That, my friends, is a fact. I mean, I remember the way he looked intensely at me, all the fucking time. But yeah, sometimes I had to look away, because it was just too much. His eyes are like those giant laser beans that hold you in place and then penetrate your soul. If you don’t protect yourself, God knows what might happen…
After a while, I knew I was running out of time, so I asked him my last question, about Ghost Town. And then, for some reason I can’t explain, I decided to tell him him about something odd that had happened at the end of the Sao Paulo concert. Some guy I had never met just came out of nowhere and hugged me, screaming: “Best concert of my life!”. When I told Adam that, he did that “Awwwwwww…” thing that we love so much. And then he turned the conversation to his favorite subject. “There were a lot of cute boys there too. Good-looking crowd!!! I was like: ‘Oooooh, hey handsome!'” OMG the way he laughed when he said that??? It was everything!
And then it was time to go. But, before I left, there was one last thing I wanted to do. As I took my purse, I said: “Did you know that, in Sao Paulo, when we say goodbye, we kiss on the face once? And in Rio, we kiss twice?” “Oh, really?”, he said, giving me his best smirk ever!!! (“I know what you’re doing, girl!”, that smirk said.) And then he was crossing the room towards me, and then he was putting his hands on my shoulders, and then he was kissing me in the face, once, and twice, while doing this very exagerated noise! God!
I’m so glad that I can still remember everything. His eyes. His smile. His smirk. And that thing that’s impossible to define, because it’s so him. I would call it “his presence”. When Adam is there, he is completely there. You can feel it in your soul. And now, after I told you all this, I feel like I’m reborn again. Because that’s what he does. He gives us life, then leaves us breathless, then gives us light and love and grace all over again.
I just love him.
Let's celebrate the music together!
Somebody get this person an extra power pack please!
