by Mark Blake
With Taylor’s drums now in London, they began rehearsing in any available space at Imperial College, including, says Chris Smith, ‘the broom cupboard’. ‘Brian had never met anyone before who could actually tune drums,’ recalled Taylor in 2002. ‘He wasn’t even aware that you could tune drums. Typical guitarist! But he and I clicked straight away. His playing was beautiful.’
The band adopted the name Smile, a Tim Staffell creation, which he immortalised with a self-designed logo of luscious lips and pearly white teeth. Imperial College’s place on the university circuit made Smile an ideally placed support band. But their guitarist’s academic career was still an issue. Tim and Chris had another year to complete at Ealing. Roger would drop out of his dentistry course, receiving the first half of his degree and appeasing his mother with a vague plan to take just a year off to concentrate on music. (He would resume his studies later, switching to biology at North London Polytechnic.) Brian, though, had now finished the final year of his degree, and wanted to remain at Imperial as a post-graduate to work on a PhD thesis on the movement of interplanetary dust. May’s future as an astronomer seemed assured: he had already spent time in Switzerland studying zodiacal light at an observatory hut, and, after graduating, had been invited to carry out astronomical research at Jodrell Bank Observatory at the request of the eminent astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell. As one of May’s professors explained: ‘Brian was first and foremost a bright physicist … There was no question of him becoming a rock star.’
His academic future may have been mapped out for him, but May was now a fixture in the audience at the Marquee, watching bands, especially their guitarists, and mentally taking notes. At least one prominent guitar player still recalls the lanky, busby-haired youth as a permanent presence at his gigs, approaching him after the show to ask technical questions about the equipment he was using. The conflicting influences in May’s life appeared almost side by side on 24 and 26 October 1968. On 24 October, Brian, watched by his parents, was awarded his Bachelor of Science by the Queen Mother at the Royal Albert Hall. Two days later, Smile played a gig at Imperial, opening for Pink Floyd.
Tim Staffell has always maintained that the Floyd show was Smile’s debut performance. However, Chris Smith, while agreeing that the group’s debut was at Imperial, believes it was supporting The Troggs. ‘We turned up and they were soundchecking,’ he explains. ‘If you’ve ever heard The Troggs Tapes [a bootleg recording of the band arguing in a studio], then that’s exactly what they were like. Also their drummer hardly seemed to play with both hands at the same time. I remember looking at the other guys, open-mouthed. These were pop stars. They’d done “Wild Thing”. We couldn’t believe it. Why are we supporting them? We could blow them off!’
The group also encountered another problem: Brian’s stage clothes. ‘Brian had the afro-type hair by then but he still looked very much the student,’ says Smith carefully. ‘He turned up for the gig wearing a bri-nylon shirt and one of those knitted string ties you’d have worn in 1964. Extremely square. So Roger took him back to his flat to change. But with Roger being much smaller than Brian, there wasn’t much in his wardrobe that fitted, except for this purple waistcoat … which he put over the bri-nylon shirt.’
As Chris recalls, Smile opened their show with a segment from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor played on his Selmer Capri organ. ‘Then Brian hit this huge guitar chord, Roger went into a drum roll, and we did this big vamp and straight into “Can’t Be So Bad” by Moby Grape.’ But it was their four-part harmonies ‘with Roger’s lovely tenor on top’ that shocked him. ‘I was surprised how good it sounded. Thinking back, you had it all there: Brian’s guitar sound and Roger’s drums. All you really needed was a smart guy to come along with some good ideas … Someone like Freddie.’
‘I guess Smile wanted to be heavy rock,’ said Tim Staffell. ‘But there was also a pressure to try and make it appear virtuoso.’ Staffell’s mention of this pressure summed up a potential problem with Smile’s music, for both him and their keyboard player. Chris Smith and his Selmer Capri would only appear with Smile on a few more occasions.
‘I loved the creativity of it, but musically it wasn’t for me,’ Smith offers. ‘Roger was a rocker, and I liked that, but he wasn’t into the blues. We’d be round his flat listening to the first Led Zeppelin album or Yes and I’d be thinking, “What happened to Muddy Waters and Otis Redding and Howlin’ Wolf?” In my mind, I had this idea of playing in a little Rolling Stones. I wanted songs about the blues and love and death. I liked the seriousness of that, and it was obvious Smile weren’t going to go that way.’
Tim Staffell remembered Smith being asked to leave Smile in February 1969, shortly before their gig at the Royal Albert Hall: ‘We said, “Chris, we’d rather do tomorrow night as a trio,”’ he told Record Collector magazine. Smith disputes this: ‘I saw Brian on Elsham Road and said, “I’m not coming back to the band.” I dare say the writing was already on the wall, but I don’t remember being sacked.’
On 27 February, Brian returned to the Albert Hall, minus the Queen Mother, but with a Smithless Smile. The concert was a fundraiser for the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child, compèred by DJ John Peel. As the show had been organised by Imperial College, Smile blagged their way second from the bottom of a bill, below Spooky Tooth, Joe Cocker and headliners Bonzo Dog Band, fresh from their recent hit, ‘I’m the Urban Spaceman’. Going on before Smile was Free, a new blues-rock group featuring lead singer (and future Queen collaborator) Paul Rodgers.
Smile got off to a shaky start when Tim Staffell dashed to the front of the expansive stage only to discover his bass guitar lead was too short. Having accidentally unplugged himself, it was left to Brian to play the opening chord. The trio muddled on, though, playing their own heavier, vamped-up versions of folk singer Tim Hardin’s ‘If I Were a Carpenter’, Sonny Terry’s ‘See What a Fool I’ve Been’ and Tommy James and The Shondelles’ ‘Mony Mony’.
In the meantime, Peter Abbey, a friend of Taylor’s from his dentistry course, had been appointed as the band’s manager. Abbey passed a tape on to John Anthony, then working as an A&R man at Mercury Records. Anthony had previously been the in-house DJ at the Speakeasy, a rock stars’ watering hole on London’s Margaret Street, immortalised on The Who’s Sell Out album with the lyric ‘Speakeasy, drink easy, pull easy …’ He had also compèred one of Led Zeppelin’s first tours.
‘My boss at Mercury was Lou Reizner, who was this big Chicago records mogul,’ says Anthony. ‘At the time Lou had David Bowie, Eyes of Blue, which became Man, Peter Hammill and Terry Reid. When I started working for Lou, the first person through the office door was Roger’s friend from his dental course, with a tape of Smile.’
Through March and April that year, Smile played three gigs at PJ’s in Truro, a club owned by Roger’s friend Peter Bawden. The Taylor connections had been enough to secure weekend gigs at the club and elsewhere in Cornwall; shows that were sometimes billed as ‘featuring the Legendary Drummer of Cornwall, Roger Taylor’. As Chris Smith remembers it, ‘When Smile did those gigs as a three-piece in Cornwall, I think they got used to the idea of being Cream.’
John Anthony accompanied the band to one of the gigs in Truro. ‘Unfortunately, it ended with me getting into a fight with the locals,’ he admits. ‘I was the music business guy down from London with long hair and the alien clothes, and these guys started hassling me, standing on my feet …’ A fight broke out on the dancefloor, with Anthony leaping into the back of the band’s van to escape and fending off his attackers with a mic stand. ‘After it was all over, we drove back to London. I said I’d get them some studio time.’
In April, Lou Reizner saw Smile in concert in London and offered them an on-the-spot one-single deal for the US only. ‘It was a toe-in-the water contract,’ recalled Tim Staffell. ‘Just Mercury putting out a small amount of dough to see what happened.’ Two months later, Smile were summoned to London’s Trident Studios to record the
single, with John Anthony producing. ‘What I saw in Smile was a sort of “Led Yes”,’ he offers, ‘because they had Yes’s harmonies and Zeppelin’s big riffs. I was sure they would do something but not in that incarnation. To be honest, I wasn’t sure about Tim Staffell.’
Brian’s decision to quit 1984 had been partly driven by a desire to write his own material. Tim Staffell shared this ambition with him and had been making a concerted effort to write since the previous summer. Smile’s set now included 1984’s one original ‘Step On Me’, and two new compositions ‘Earth’ and ‘Doing Alright’ (which would end up on the first Queen album). With lyrics influenced by his passion for science fiction, Staffell would later be dismissive of his early work, describing it as ‘pretentious guff … cobblers’.
‘“Earth” was a good song,’ insists Chris Smith. ‘It was the era of the moon landings, so that was very much in the ether. I remember Tim telling me that he’d written the song about being given the choice to go to space in a rocket ship, but the catch was you could never come back to earth. I remember he said, “If I had the choice to go and not come back I’d take it.” I said, “No thanks, Tim, I’ll stay here.”’
At Trident, Smile cut the single, ‘Earth’, with a B-side of ‘Step On Me’ (also squeezing in a recording of ‘Doing Alright’). It was set for an August release. In the meantime, though, it was back to Cornwall for another run of Smile shows. Smile’s entourage for the summer trip had expanded to include Peter Abbey, van driver Richard Thompson, roadie Pete Edmunds, and, for less obvious reasons, Freddie Bulsara.
On 21 July, astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. ‘We all crowded round the TV at Roger’s mum’s to watch it,’ recalls Richard Thompson. Winifred Taylor had agreed to accommodate the touring party for some nights, and found Roger’s dandyish friend Freddie a source of endless fascination. Despite being bussed around the country in the back of a van, Fred managed to maintain impeccable sartorial standards. Said Roger Taylor: ‘My mother could never work out how Freddie’s trousers had such a perfect crease in them.’
Back in London, Smile signed to the Rondo Talent Agency on Kensington Church Street. While overshadowed by other Rondo clients such as Nick Drake and the fledgling Genesis, the connection at least meant more bookings. Through the remainder of the summer, the trio would gain valuable experience opening for The Climax Chicago Blues Band, Family and others, and 1984’s rhythm guitarist John Garnham caught them in concert. ‘They were supporting a group called Timebox who had a song called “Bake Jam Roll in Your Eye”, absolute crap title and song,’ he laughs. ‘Smile came on and did this wonderful slow, heavy version of “If I Were a Carpenter.”’ As a roadie for Smile at a gig at Watford College in October, Garnham was even more taken: ‘They were better than Taste [the headliners]. That was the time I thought, “Yes, they’re on to something here.”’
Garnham wasn’t alone. From their first gig, Smile had acquired an ardent if not uncritical fan in Fred Bulsara. ‘I think Freddie was there in the wings when we first played,’ says Chris Smith. ‘After the gigs, he’d be like, “You know that bit where the drums come in? Well, why don’t you do this instead?” He was full of suggestions, full of ideas. I said to Brian, “Fred is desperate to be in this band, you know”, but Brian was like, “No, no, no, Tim is the lead singer. He’d never wear it.”’
Brian May has no recollection of Fred’s stints as a 1984 roadie. Instead, he remembers first meeting his future singer at a Smile show. ‘I don’t know if it’s accurate or not but in my mind’s eye I remember him very much dressed like a rock star,’ he said in 2005. ‘But the kind of rock star you hadn’t seen before – really flamboyant and androgynous. He was flicking a pompom around and being very flippant, saying, “Yes, it’s wonderful, it’s wonderful, but … why don’t you present the show better, why don’t you dress like this?” He was full-on from the very beginning.’
‘He came over with Tim one day,’ recalled Roger Taylor. ‘And he just became one of the circle. He was full of enthusiasm – long, black, flowing hair and this great dandy image.’
Photographs from Ealing in 1968 support Paul Humberstone’s memory of Freddie as ‘not being particularly flamboyant’. Mark Malden also insists that during his time on the fashion course, Freddie was shy and never once mentioned wanting to become a musician. But Freddie’s defection to the graphics course marked a change in his behaviour and ambition. In his final year at Ealing, Fred’s crisp shirts and neat Levis were swapped for knotted silk scarves, satin and, as one contemporary remembers it, ‘velvet, lots of velvet’. That year, another graphics student, Tony Catignani, had acquired a bespoke black satin coat. ‘One of the girls on the fashion course made it for me,’ says Catignani now. ‘It looked like a long undertaker’s jacket. Fred had his eye on it, and I swapped it with him for an LP.’
After a shopping trip to Carnaby Street, Chris Smith sauntered into college wearing a pair of newly acquired bright red trousers. ‘And there was Freddie, feet up on the desk, wearing snakeskin boots and these crushed velvet trousers, just like Hendrix, reading Melody Maker. He saw me, glanced down and didn’t say a word. I’d been aced again.’
In contrast, Smile still dressed down in split-knee jeans and scoop-neck T-shirts. Onstage, they adopted the standard pose of staring at the floor and concentrating on the music. Said Brian May: ‘The fashion then was that you had to wear jeans, and you had to have your back to the audience. Freddie had the idea that rock should be a show, which was a pretty unusual idea in those times.’
Despite Freddie’s grand designs for Smile, he was still without a band of his own, and his frustration was growing. Mark Malden’s brother, Aubrey, was on the graphics course at Ealing and was also social secretary of the Student Union. ‘Fred hung around any band that we booked for the college,’ says Aubrey now. ‘He was always around the guys in 1984, but we booked Free to play the rag ball at Ealing Town Hall, and I saw Fred deep in conversation with their guitarist Paul Kossoff. It was around this time that he started telling us that he was going to become a pop star. Of course, we all laughed.’
Chris Smith had seen Fred playing the college piano many times. ‘He had this staccato style. It was like Mozart gone mad.’ He also discovered how quickly his friend could memorise a piece of music and play it. Though Fred was still cautious about his abilities. ‘When there were other musicians about, he could be quite humble,’ says Chris. ‘It was often, “Oh, you play, you’re better than me.”’ Tony Catignani adds, ‘I remember he was often missing from lectures. The tutors were like, “Where is Freddie?” And you’d always find him in the common room playing the piano.’
Before long, he struck up the courage to start singing. Fred sat opposite Tim Staffell in class, and the pair, sometimes joined by Chris and Nigel Foster, would practise harmony vocals, often to the amusement of their classmates. ‘We enjoyed it, we encouraged them,’ claims Renos Lavithis. ‘They’d sometimes get guitars out and play. We used to tease Freddie, “Look, you’ll be famous one day.” You could tell he was stuck between wanting to become an illustrator and wanting to be a musician.’ Tim maintains that it took time for Fred to find his singing voice; Chris Smith insists that he was ‘nailed to the wall’ the first time he heard Fred sing. Paul Humberstone vividly recalls a ‘falsetto voice that really did sound like Mika, that guy who’s on the radio now’.
According to Smith, though, while Fred could play piano and had started singing, it was still a source of annoyance to him that he couldn’t write a song: ‘Brian May and Tim Staffell had written a proper song, “Step On Me”. It sounded like a song The Beatles would do. Freddie and I didn’t know anyone that had written a song. That was something the gods did, not mere mortals. That was when Freddie said, “Maybe we could do that.” He couldn’t approach Tim because Tim was in Smile, and he didn’t know Roger and Brian well enough yet, so he came to me.’
Back then, Chris was ‘vaguely interested’ in songwriting, but remembers
Fred being passionate about it. ‘I had the keys to the music department, so we’d meet there sometimes. Freddie would turn up with these scraps of songs that he’d put together.’ Away from the college Tony Catignani was invited to Gladstone Avenue and recalls Freddie ‘tinkering around on the piano, always humming a tune and trying to write songs. It was in his blood.’ It was around this time that Catignani caught a glimpse of Freddie’s passport. ‘He’d listed his profession as “musician”,’ laughs Tony. ‘I said, “Why have you got that in there?” He said, “Because I am going to get into music and become a musician.” Looking back, Fred had this incredible energy. Sometimes it was as if sparks were coming off him – “Let’s do this! Let’s do that!”’
Sparks flew again when Freddie started writing songs. In June 1967 The Beatles had released Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. With tracks such as ‘A Day in the Life’ and ‘Within You, Without You’, they had expanded the horizons of what constituted pop music. ‘So Freddie started linking these different scraps of music together,’ says Chris Smith. ‘We used the link in “A Day in the Life” – “Woke up, fell out of bed” – as we found you could link any two piece of music with that.’ But it was still an arduous process and Freddie would sometimes lose patience. ‘Fred would get annoyed with himself. Some days he’d have his heads in his hands, despairing, “Why can Tim and Brian do this and we can’t? … Why am I so crap?”’
On other occasions, though, his enthusiasm would prove infectious. If there wasn’t a guitar to hand, Freddie would drag Chris to a music shop on nearby Ealing Broadway: ‘We’d go there at lunchtime, and Fred would just take a guitar off the wall and start playing it, showing me what he’d just written. They got fed up with us because we were in that shop every week, playing their guitars. Then we’d buy one plectrum and leave.’
The Bulsara/Smith songwriting team came close to finishing just one composition. Intriguingly, Chris remembers it as a piece called ‘The Cowboy Song’. The opening line was: ‘Mama just killed a man …’ Seven years later, those words would form the opening line of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. Smith: ‘When I first heard “Bohemian Rhapsody”, I actually thought, “Oh, Freddie’s finished the song.”’
