**Mon 26 Sep 11**
'BEING IN QUEEN WAS A PRIVILEGE'
TELEGRAPH
26 September 2011 by Christopher Middleton
As drummer Roger Taylor hints that Queen may re-form for the Olympics, he talks about why he so fiercely protects the band’s legacy.
Roger Taylor in his oufit from the video for
"It's a Hard Life' in June 1984
If things had worked out differently, Roger Taylor could have been a well-off Surrey dentist with perfect hearing. Instead of which, he’s a well-off Surrey rock star with defective ears. Four decades of belting out anthems as a member of Queen have left their mark.
Bohemian dynasty: Roger Taylor with
third wife Sarina and children Tiger Lily,
Lola and Rufus
“It’s happened to a lot of my contemporaries, especially drummers like me,” he says. “I am a little deaf now. Without my hearing aids in, I miss a lot of peripheral sounds. I had tinnitus, too, for a while.”
Proof of just how long he has been bashing drums (both ear and snare) is supplied in 40 Years of Queen, a lavishly illustrated new book of photographs, posters, memorabilia, gig tickets and scribbled song lyrics. A grainy black-and-white snap shows an angelic-faced Taylor at 15, drumsticks poised over cymbals. He was something of a veteran, having formed his first band at the age of eight (the Bubblingover Boys) and his second when he was barely 13 (the Cousin Jacks). He still had some way to go, though, before he became a full-time musician. He won a choral scholarship to Truro Cathedral School (his adult voice spans three and a half octaves), then secured a free place at a public school, Truro School, after which he started on a path towards dentistry at the London Hospital Medical School.
“The idea of having proper qualifications had been very much ingrained in me,” he recalls. “My father had a steady job for the Potato Marketing Board and the family emphasis was on getting to university. The only reason I chose dentistry was because my biology teacher said it was well paid.”
Not quite as well paid, perhaps, as the career he did pursue. Watching him leaf through the book, you wonder how he feels seeing his past transformed into a sort of set text.
''Mixed feelings,” he sighs. “There is a sense of melancholy attached to seeing images of yourself from a different era, especially when you see a picture… Wow…” He breaks off, gazing at a photograph capturing the end of yet another epic Queen extravaganza, featuring a bare-torsoed Freddie Mercury, legions of arm-waving fans, and industrial-sized clouds of dry ice.
“That must be Buenos Aires,” he muses. “Oh, here we are in America; that’s Andy Warhol taking photos of us. Actually, there are quite a few pictures I haven’t seen before; Brian [May, Queen’s guitarist] is quite a hoarder – he’s been holding on to this stuff for years.”
He remains upbeat about the whole Queen experience, and proud that the band [including bass guitarist John Deacon] never went through the kind of self-destructive internal arguments that saw off so many rivals. “The thing that kept us together was that we all had a job to do and we all felt part of the creative process. I know that drummers tend to be the butt of a thousand jokes, usually from the uninformed and untalented, but I always felt I had an important role.
“To me, the drummer is the driver of the whole thing, the conductor. Freddie’s job was to provide the unusual, to be the front man, to deliver the music. There was never any question of resenting him – I could never have done what he did. He had this zeal, this passion, this energy. He not only created his voice, he channelled it quite brilliantly.”
That’s not, of course, to downplay the vocal contributions or song-writing talents of the other members that gave their work such a unique sound.
“It was serendipity,” says Taylor. “We had this very unusual blend of voices, and we made the most of it. That said, it meant enormously long and boring hours in the studio, recording vocal parts again and again. We were very painstaking and technically minded, and particularly conscious, in the early days, of how long it was taking, because studio time cost something like £30 an hour, which was a fortune back then.”
There were, however, plenty of recreational moments; the band even once employed someone full-time to pep up their parties.
“We had a man whose job was to find unusual people,” recalls Taylor. “In America, he hired a guy whose thing was to lie on the ground, covered in these great, big cold meat collations that Americans love. He would be completely covered by meat, then he would shift and make the meats move. The idea was to freak people out, and at $125, he was good value, I thought!”
But while there were “moments of over-indulgence”, he did not become one of rock’s long list of casualties. “It’s a dangerous path, no question about it, and a lot of people fall by the wayside. But I always had an inbuilt sense of survival. I remember every so often thinking: 'Now that’s enough.’
“As for feeling self-important, well, if you have any sense, you know that all the attention you are getting is not so much down to you, it’s down to the position you hold. Basically, you are surrounded by people whose living relies on you being well enough to perform.”
Surely, though, looking back at all these images of bright lights, limousines, police escorts and adoring crowds, he rather misses that attention?
“I’m lucky really, in that I do get it every now and again,” he smiles. “We [he and Brian May] started doing gigs as Queen with Paul Rodgers (the former Free and Bad Company vocalist), and three years ago we played Karkov, in the Ukraine, in front of 350,000 people in Freedom Square. I think that’s the biggest live audience ever.”
Cue another dramatic photograph of a jam-packed square, with fireworks exploding overhead. And there will be more to come: last week Taylor told Rolling Stone magazine that he will be auditioning musicians for a new Queen touring tribute band. He also raised the possibility that Queen’s surviving members may reunite for a one-off concert at the London Olympics.
In between these events, Taylor spends time at his home studio working on songs at what he cheerfully acknowledges to be a slower pace than in the past. His commitment to the Queen legacy is as fierce as ever: he vetoed 40 Years of Queen being serialised in, or sold to, any publication owned by News International. This stems back to intrusive pictures taken by The Sun in 1991, showing Freddie Mercury, ravaged by Aids and near the end of his life. The indignation still burns bright in Taylor’s eyes.
On a gentler note, he has five children between the ages of 11 and 31, of whom the eldest is a doctor and the middle one, Rufus Tiger, is a drummer. They are the product of two different long-term relationships, the first of which ended, rather than began, in marriage to Dominique Beyrand (reportedly to protect the birthright of the children who had been born during their seven years together). He moved in with Debbie Leng a month later. He married again last year, to his long-term girlfriend Sarina Potgieter. But while happy to discuss his rock career, he is less happy to talk about marital matters.
To be fair, though, Taylor never seems to have been keen on mixing work and family life.
“When the kids were little, I didn’t take them on tour much, because it’s not the ideal place [for children]. But when Rufus was bit older, I took him to the Reading Festival, to see my friends the Foo Fighters, and Muse, and that really inspired him.
“I have to say, he’s a fantastic drummer, too. I taught him a little, but the rest he’s done for himself. He’s played on gigs with Brian and me, and now he’s going on tour with We Will Rock You [the Queen musical].”
As for his own ambitions, there are not many mountains left that he wants to climb, apart from a vague desire to dispel the notion, rife both in print and online, that he has a double-barrelled surname.
“There is no hyphen in Meddows Taylor,” he insists. “The Meddows part is just a family middle name that my sister shares with me. “That said, there’s not much I can do about it and, after all, trying to get rid of a hyphen is a bit of a trivial goal, isn’t it?”
So there’s no part of him that wishes he had carried on studying at medical school?
“Absolutely no way at all!” he laughs. “Being a dentist would have been hell. Doing what I’ve done has been a privilege.”
'40 Years of Queen’ by Harry Doherty (Goodman) is published on Oct 3.
The story of Queen's iconic frontman, who promised the world 'I will be a legend'.
Freddie Mercury performing with
Queen in Stockholm in 1985
Photo: REX FEATURES/Ilpo Musto
Adorned in crown and gown, Freddie Mercury strutted across the stage in front of 120,000 fans screaming their appreciation of rock’s greatest showman. He was working the crowd as adroitly as ever, lapping up the adoration that cemented his legendary status. It was August 1986 and the concert at Knebworth Park in Hertfordshire was the culmination of Queen’s phenomenally successful 26-date sell-out stadium tour of Europe.
Their set had been as theatrical as ever. 'This will make Ben Hur look like the Muppets,’ drummer Roger Taylor had boasted. But as Mercury exited, he wished the crowds, “Goodnight and sweet dreams”. Nobody guessed that this was to be Queen’s last live performance.
In the months of silence from the band that followed, the press began to hone in on the health of Queen’s lead singer and speculate that he had Aids, a disease that carried an almost certain death sentence then and would trigger a frenzy in the tabloid press.
The band and its entourage were told to say nothing. Mercury had long had a turbulent relationship with the media. In the summer of 1977, when punk rock – the antithesis of everything that Queen as a group represented – had hit Britain, the music press had seen the band as legitimate targets for criticism, citing elitism and grandiose ambitions. Mercury was having none of it. After a show that year at Madison Square Garden in New York on the US tour to promote their album A Day At The Races, he went up to the music journalist Harry Doherty, patted his bum and announced: “Sorry, darling, I’ve decided not to do interviews anymore.” This was a promise he more or less stuck to.
Despite giving very little away, he continued to enjoy a high profile because of Queen’s global success and his own never-knowingly-underdressed style. For millions, Freddie epitomised the identity of Queen. So much so that it occasionally caused tensions with the other three members of the band. “Of all the bands around at the moment, we’re one of the most equally interdependent and that’s our strength in the long run,” guitarist Brian May once remarked of those early days, referring to the focus on Mercury as their frontman. “The press can take it too far. A lot of them are only dimly aware that the rest of the group exist.”
After the Knebworth concert, though, it was different. For once Mercury wanted to keep out of the limelight. He had indeed been diagnosed as HIV positive, something he had shared with the band, but was determined to carry on working for as long as possible. 'We lied because we wanted to protect him,’ May reflected later.
The four members of Queen – Mercury, May, Taylor and bass John Deacon (or Deacon John as Mercury had persuaded him to bill himself on an early album because it sounded more interesting) – had come together at the start of the 1970s and grown into one of the most successful rock bands ever. Their Greatest Hits remains the biggest selling UK album of all time.
Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara on September 5, 1946 in Zanzibar, a British island colony off the coast of Tanzania where his father, Boni, was a civil servant. At his very English boarding school in India, Farokh started calling himself Freddie, developed a fascination with Elvis Presley and formed his first band, The Hectics.
After Zanzibar’s independence from Britain in 1963, the Bulsaras emigrated and settled in Feltham, west London. In 1966 their son enrolled on a graphic illustration course at Ealing College of Art. London then was the flower-power capital of the world, the coolest place to be, and he loved hanging out at the fashion stalls in Kensington Market. But he was single-minded in his ambition – to be a singer and frontman of a band. At one stage he changed his name to one more befitting a rock star, Larry Lurex, on a cover version of the Beach Boys’ classic “I Can Hear Music”.
At art school he befriended Tim Staffell who, knowing Mercury could mimic Jimi Hendrix’s vocals, invited him to a rehearsal of his own band, Smile. Mercury got on well with the guitarist and drummer: Brian May and Roger Taylor. By the end of 1969, the three were sharing a flat in Barnes. Mercury persuaded May and Taylor that he would be the perfect frontman for Smile, but that they needed a new name. They came up with The Grand Dance (from a C.S. Lewis book) and Rich Kids, neither of which met with Mercury’s approval. It was he who, despite their initial misgivings, talked them into adopting Queen.
The band took to Mercury’s honest feyness, unsure whether his gay front was just that or if he was bisexual – he certainly dated girls – or androgynous. For his part Mercury relished the confusion he provoked. When it came to the band’s first promo photos in 1972, they dressed themselves esoterically, swathed in feather boas, and surrounded by antiques and a host of goods from Kensington boutique Biba, where Mercury’s then girlfriend, Mary Austin, was a manageress. Mercury was soon enlivening the mix even more by experimenting with make-up, painting his fingernails black – or, on stage, white.
He subsequently referred to Austin as “my common-law wife” and wrote the song “Love of My Life” about her. For her part, she described Mercury as “my eternal love”, but their six years of living together ended once Queen had found fame. “I want to pack in as much of life, having a good time, as I can,’ Mercury liked to boast, echoing the lyrics of “Don’t Stop Me Now”. That included relationships with men and women.
The band’s first album in 1973, simply called Queen, barely registered in the charts, but by the autumn of 1975 they held the number one slot for nine weeks with Mercury’s groundbreaking hybrid composition, 'Bohemian Rhapsody’, almost six minutes long, with challenging lyrics and an accompanying film that launched the era of the pop video.
Mercury had what he longed for, and embraced the rock 'n' roll lifestyle that came with success: the outrageous parties, crazy costumes and OTT way of living. He threw black-and-white drag balls, hosted an open-air party in Ibiza for 1,000 friends and was quoted claiming that “I’ve had more lovers than Liz Taylor”. Stories of his excesses were, inevitably, exaggerated. Reports of leather-clad dwarves serving trays of cocaine at a Queen party have been repeatedly denied but that doesn’t stop them being retold.
With the Queen II album sleeve in 1974, the band set out their sartorial stall. Mercury dressed flamboyantly and augmented the music with dramatic lighting, flash bombs and dry ice. As their popularity grew, so, too, did their production values. Huge customised sound systems, expansive lighting rigs, vast screens, an arsenal of pyrotechnics and extravagant costumes designed by the likes of Zandra Rhodes turned shows into dramatic theatrical events. 'I won’t be a rock star,’ Mercury once boasted. 'I will be a legend'.
Sometimes his taste for the high life could cause problems with the others. In early 1982, when the band was in Germany recording Hot Space, released to a muted response from critics later that year, he took over the top floor of the Munich Hilton for his entourage. Their drinking and clubbing were impinging on work, drugs were very evident and there were arguments – not the usual ones with a creative outcome. May in particular is not fond of reminiscing about those times. “We all got ourselves into deep water in Munich,” he has lamented, “including Freddie”.
But there was another side to Mercury. Away from the band, he acknowledged he was a far more introverted individual. 'When I’m performing, I’m an extrovert,’ he once said, “yet inside I’m a completely different man’. He remained close to Mary Austin and became godfather to one of her two sons. “I have built up an immense bond with Mary,” he said. “She has gone through just about everything and always been there for me.”
As a songwriter, Mercury developed quickly, penning many of Queen’s early hit singles. He also recorded two solo albums. Mr Bad Guy (1985) showed off his versatility and growing fondness for dance and disco music. Barcelona (1988) was all about his love of spectacle and was a genre-straddling collaboration with Spanish opera singer Montserrat Caball. The pair was due to sing the album’s title track at the opening ceremony of the Olympics in the Catalan city in 1992, but it was not to be.
The Miracle, their thirteenth studio album, was released in May 1989 with an eye-catching sleeve that used state of the art image manipulation to combine the four faces of band members. There was no customary Queen tour to accompany it. Mercury did, however, break his 'no media’ rule to conduct an interview with Radio One. He explained that the band wanted a break from the set routine of “album – tour – album – tour”. Elsewhere questions about his health and Aids persisted, and were faced down. “He is healthy and working,” Roger Taylor told one reporter brusquely.
At the Brits ceremony the following February, when Queen were given an award for their Outstanding Contribution to British Music, the band turned up, soberly dressed in suits. Mercury accepted the award but it was May who spoke “on behalf of the group”. It did not go unnoticed that Mercury was looking decidedly gaunt.
Privately he was more candid about his health but insisted, “I don’t want people buying Queen music out of sympathy”. He was determined to leave as much music as he could for posterity, relocating to the tranquil surroundings of Lake Geneva, close to Mountain Studios where Queen worked their recording sessions around him. “Strangely,” Taylor said later, “it was a very happy album to make. The method allowed us time to work on the material and make it stronger”.
Innuendo was released in February 1991. The two major highlights on the album were poignant for quite different reasons. “The Show Must Go On” had, as a subtext, Mercury saying: “I will get through this, no matter what.” It vied with the heartbreaking “These Are The Days Of Our Lives”, written largely by Taylor, which was to take on an unbearable emotional significance in the months ahead.
When it came to making the promotional video for the latter, it was impossible to hide the fact that Mercury was desperately ill. The video was shot in black and white, which helped diminish his appearance of extreme frailty. A proud and brave man, he still gave his all in the performance, turning to bid fans what seemed a wistful farewell and speaking the lyrics 'I still love you’.
Innuendo was in the bag but Mercury told the band that he wanted to start recording again and “keep working until I ****ing drop”. In the studio two or three days a week, depending on his health, new tracks were laid down, including “A Winter’s Tale”, “You Don’t Fool Me” and “Mother Love” . It was following the release of “The Show Must Go On” that confirmation came at last of Mercury’s failing health.
Now back in London at Garden Lodge, his Georgian house in Kensington, he was being cared for by his partner Jim Hutton [a hairdresser he’d met at the club Heaven in 1985] and by Mary Austin. Mercury was in pain, suffering mild fits, with his sight failing. He told his friends that he would no longer be taking his medication and set about putting his affairs in order. Journalists and photographers were permanently camped outside his door, on the lookout for anything that would give the game away. They never got it.
On November 23, Mercury released a statement saying he had AIDS. He had, as he wished, had the final word. At 7pm the next day he passed away peacefully at the age of 45.
Long expected, his death was still a devastating shock for the tight-knit Queen circle. May, Deacon, Taylor and band manager Jim Beach issued a poignant statement: “We have lost the greatest and most beloved member of our family. We feel overwhelming grief that he has gone.” In his will, Mercury left the bulk of his estate to Mary Austin including Garden Lodge where she continues to live.
The surviving members of the band re-released “Bohemian Rhapsody” with “These Are The Days Of Our Lives” as a double A side single with the £1m proceeds going to the Aids charity, Terrence Higgins Trust. It topped the chart, making “Bohemian Rhapsody” the first recording to go to No. 1 in the UK charts twice.
Adapted by Peter Stanford from “40 Years of Queen” by Harry Doherty (Goodman), published on Oct 3 but available from today for £26.00 plus £1.25 p&p from Telegraph Books Direct on 0844 871 1515 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk - or you can pre-order through AMAZON.
Queen 40th anniversary: 10 things you never knew
10 juicy Queen facts, from Brian May's stints as a maths teacher to Mercury's curious involvement with David Bowie's boots
John Deacon, Freddie Mercury, Roger Taylor and Brian May in 1976
Photo: MARTYN GODDARD / REX FEATURES
Freddie Mercury earned £5 a session as a nude life model, while studying at Ealing art school in the mid-60s. He posed after hours for the college’s evening class, spending the money he earned on a pair of Levi’s.
While waiting for Queen to get their big break, guitarist Brian May taught maths and science at an inner-city comprehensive. Pupils at South London’s Stockwell Manor secondary school remember “Mr May having the same haircut as he does now” and “playing the guitar in the staffroom at lunchtime.”
One of Queen’s first bass guitarists, 17-year-old Douglas Bogie, was fired after playing just two gigs with Queen in 1970. Tracked down by the author after almost 40 years, Douglas admitted that he was “let go” for showing off too much and trying to upstage Freddie Mercury.
The original working title for Queen’s massive 1975 hit Bohemian Rhapsody was The Cowboy Song. Freddie Mercury had written the line “Mama, just killed a man …” while still at art college in 1968. Struggling to compose any music to go with it, he used to sing the lyrics while playing the theme from The Beatles’ A Day In The Life on the college piano.
Every member of Queen has written a hit single, even their drummer Roger Taylor, who composed Radio Ga Ga and A Kind Of Magic.
The original title for Queen’s 1984 hit Radio Ga Ga was Radio Ca Ca after the popular French children’s expression for excrement. Queen changed the song’s title but still sang ‘Ca Ca’ on the recording itself.
In 1969, Freddie Mercury fitted David Bowie for a pair of boots during his day job working on a boot stall in Kensington Market. Twelve years later, the pair enjoyed a UK Number 1 hit with their collaboration Under Pressure.
The song We Will Rock You does not actually contain any drums. That famous rhythm came from the sound of band, roadies, engineers – and even their tea lady, Betty – stamping their feet in London’s Wessex Studios.
In 1970, Queen drummer Roger Taylor turned down an offer to join Genesis. Phil Collins was hired instead.
Before playing Live Aid, Queen timed their rehearsals down to the last second, and arranged a medley that allowed them to cram six of their greatest hits into their allotted 17 minutes.
Extracted from 'Is this the Real Life? The Untold Story of Queen' by Mark Blake (Aurum, 2010)
Queen stole the show in front of a worldwide audience of two billion
at Live Aid.
Freddie Mercury and Brian May on stage at Live Aid
Photo: FROM '40 YEARS OF QUEEN' (GOODMAN)
Forty years ago this month, Queen made their first recording at the De Lane Lea Studios in London, laying down five tracks that were then touted around major record companies. Only one, Charisma, showed interest, but the band rejected a contract because the money wasn’t good enough. They had to wait two more years before they found a home for those tracks on their first album, Queen, which launched an era of genre-breaking music and stadium extravaganzas. In an exclusive extract from a new book to mark the anniversary, the band’s most memorable live performance is celebrated...
Live Aid, on July 13, 1985, was the greatest live concert ever staged and a day that no one who saw it will ever forget. Apart from the audiences at the transatlantic events (72,000 at Wembley Stadium in London; 99,000 at the John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia), it was estimated that another two billion people in 60 countries watched it on television. There was one thing that everybody agreed on: Queen’s mind-blowing 20-minute set stole the show.
Competition was fierce: the “global jukebox” charity event, to raise funds to help victims of a devastating Ethiopian famine, also featured U2, Sting, Mick Jagger, Dire Straits, David Bowie, The Who, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan. And, for once, it was a gig that Queen had practically no control over. They would be using the same sets, lights, backdrops and sound system as all the other artists. However, they seized on the day as a chance to show that they were about more than just pyrotechnics, timing their rehearsals down to the last second. “Our opportunity to show that it’s the music first and foremost,” as guitarist Brian May put it.
Queen wanted to do Live Aid because of the cause, but also because they relished the chance to pitch themselves against other bands: “Everyone will be trying to outdo each other, which will cause a bit of friction. It makes me personally proud to be a part of it,” said lead singer Freddie Mercury.
The band did not ask to open or close the show. Instead, they cannily requested a 6pm slot – prime time in the UK and, five hours behind, perfect for the US audience before there was any danger of viewers lapsing into big-band fatigue. Their set squeezed six of their best-known hits into 20 minutes, shortening some of the songs until it became almost a seamless medley. Bohemian Rhapsody preceded Radio Ga Ga, Hammer to Fall, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions.
Careers in dentistry, astronomy and fashion were all on the cards for Queen before rock'n'roll united them.
Queen dress up for the filming of the video
for their hit It's a Hard Life in 1984
Photo: REX FEATURES/Mark Mawson
Queen’s debut album, released in 1973, was a statement of intent. It was called simply Queen and featured on the cover a live shot of lead singer Freddie Mercury in a typically dramatic pose. Rolling Stone magazine greeted it as a “sonic volcano”.
Yet it barely registered in the charts, causing guitarist Brian May to fear that Queen had missed the boat. They had been gigging as long as Roxy Music and had seen David Bowie become Ziggy Stardust, but couldn’t match up to that success. May’s worries were to be proved groundless, however. Just over two years later, with 'Bohemian Rhapsody’ at number one for nine weeks, Queen were rock history in the making.
But how had the band come together in the first place? At the start of the 1970s, Zanzibar-born Farrokh Bulsara (Fred to his friends) was learning the intricacies of graphic design, alongside running a fashion stall at London’s Kensington Market. In Teddington, Middlesex, Brian May was discovering the secrets of the universe via his growing interest in astronomy, and going on to study physics and infrared astronomy. Originally from Norfolk, Roger Meddows Taylor (as he was then known) had relocated to the capital, where he was studying dentistry. Meanwhile, Leicester-born John Deacon had begun an electronics degree at Chelsea College.
They all, though, had one obsession in common – a love of rock’n'roll. The extravagant, effete Bulsara had designs on becoming the singer and frontman of a band. May had played in bands since school. Taylor had taken to the drums after his father bought him a kit as a Christmas present in 1961, and formed “the top band in Truro, Johnny Quale and The Reaction”. And, at an early age, Deacon had built what become known in Queen as the 'Deacy amp’ from a circuit board he discovered in a rubbish skip and a spare bookshelf speaker box.
They began to form in 1969 when May put together a new band, Smile, and advertised for a “Ginger Baker/Mitch Mitchell-type drummer”.
This ticked all the boxes for Taylor. The two were then introduced by a mutual friend to Bulsara, whose sartorial flamboyance was even greater than their own.
Not a lot was happening for Smile and May was seriously looking at an academic career until Bulsara persuaded them that he could be the rocket that propelled them. And not to skirt the issue or play down his role, he had a name for the band: Queen.
Deacon saw an early Queen gig but thought nothing of it until he met May and Taylor at a disco in January 1971. Chat led to an audition at Imperial College where May was studying and he completed the line up as the bass player.
The new band set about putting theory into practice with intensive rehearsals. Taylor arranged for them to decamp to a distant Truro cottage for five weeks as the four were honed, via a few local gigs, into one identifiable sound with huge, layered harmonies behind a thunderous hard rock sound, and a subtle pop nuance.
Back in London, other careers put to one side, they played a series of low-key gigs, all in preparation for a crucial showcase gig in front of record company A&R men at the legendary Marquee Club in Wardour Street. The performance was not the unqualified success they had hoped for, and only one company saw through the fog of disarray. EMI offered an advance of £300,000 and signed the band on a long-term deal. Queen were up and running.
Released on July 6, 1973, the first Queen single “Keep Yourself Alive”, failed to bother the chart compilers. The album came out a week later. It earned good, bad and lukewarm reviews in equal measure, an early indication of the confused response that Queen would receive from reviewers over the years, which prompted a degree of bitterness towards music journalists. Their aura of superiority acted as a shield; they knew they were their own best critics.
On the credits on the back of Queen was the infamous boast “… and nobody played synthesizer”. On early albums, Queen were proud that they did not use electronic keyboards; that they were a true rock band in the vocals/guitar/bass/drums tradition.
Their second album, Queen II, released in 1974, produced their first hit single, “Seven Seas of Rhye”. Their appearance on Top of the Pops was a lucky break. They got on because David Bowie was unavailable, but the impact on sales of both the single and the album was immediate. Queen II peaked at No. 5 in the UK.
Next came 1974’s Sheer Heart Attack, first and foremost a thrilling rock album, which showed that they could deliver tracks with immediate impact. It was a Mercury song that saw Queen break down whatever popular resistance they still faced. “Killer Queen” swung like a pendulum musically and lyrically, with references to Mot & Chandon, Marie Antoinette, Khrushchev, Kennedy and “dynamite with a laser beam”. As a single, it rose to No. 2 in the UK charts, as did the album, supported by a sell-out tour.
The rest of Europe followed. The all-important American market was now also bowing before them, but it was A Night At The Opera in 1975 that finally made their name as a global force. When Mercury first put pen to paper to write those immortal first words, “Mama, just killed a man …” he couldn’t have had any idea that “Bohemian Rhapsody” was rock history in the making. This was certainly true of their record company, EMI, who forcefully resisted Queen’s overtures to release the track as the lead single from A Night At The Opera.
Mercury had been teasing the song out of his system for some time before presenting a jumbled jigsaw-like version live on piano to the band, painstakingly explaining what would go where. It was when he announced, “That’s where the operatic bits go, darling …” that they really sat up and took notice, unsure of where it was all leading.
The studio technology of the 1970s was being stretched to the limit: “I’m really pleased about the operatic thing,” Mercury told me. “I really wanted to be outrageous with vocals because we’re always getting compared to other people, which is ridiculous. Somebody suggested cutting it because the media reckons we have to have a three-minute single, darling. That’s ridiculous too. There is no point in cutting it. If you want to cut 'Bohemian Rhapsody’, it just doesn’t work.” He was determined and he had the entire band on his side. “Bohemian Rhapsody” was released at its full length on October 31, 1975 and entered the British chart the following week at No. 47. At this point, the record took on a life of its own. Three weeks later, the song hit No.1, where it took up residence for an astounding nine weeks.
There have been many questions asked on what the song is about. For his part, Mercury never explained it. The rest of the band was as evasive on the subject, although May felt that the song contained oblique references to Mercury’s personal traumas. He would eventually take the story of the song to the grave, leaving everyone to make their own interpretation – exactly as he would have wanted.
1974 : Queen koncert, Queen II turn, Town Hall, Cheltenham, UK.
1974 : A Queen fellpett a Top Of The Pops msorban, a Seven Seas Of Rhye dallal.
1975 : Queen koncert, Sheer Heart Attack turn, Sunshine Speedway, St. Petersburg, Florida, USA.
1975 : Freddie hangszl problmi miatt elmaradt a Queen koncert, Winter Haven Florida Citrus Showcase, USA .
1993 : Brian koncertje, Beacon Theatre, New York, USA, Back To The Light turn.
AJÁNLOM AZ OLDALT
Roger Taylor in his oufit from the video for
Freddie Mercury performing with 
Queen dress up for the filming of the video
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