Mercury wasn’t too hopeful. He had witnessed Smile’s excitement at Lou Reizner’s earlier interest, but remembered all too well how that had worked out. With Queen, Mercury was looking for something more substantial than the hint of a promise. It was a wise attitude to take because there was no immediate phone call from John Anthony. Instead, what preoccupied everyone was simply how to survive.
Roger Taylor registered for a biology degree course, for which he would be eligible for a grant. In July 1971 he enrolled at the North London Polytechnic to study plant and animal biology. Brian May had been giving tutorials at Imperial for a small fee, and Freddie Mercury, in an attempt to shore up the often non-existent takings at the market stall, continued to seek commissions with commercial art agencies but hardly anyone responded to his efforts.
In these early days, bookings were as essential for the money as for the work experience and exposure. Their four-month rehearsal period, to integrate John Deacon into the band, meant that although the year was half over, they had only played a total of six gigs. But Roger Taylor’s Cornish connections came to the rescue again when he managed to arrange a West Country tour, this time involving almost as many gigs as they had played during the whole of 1970.
Kicking off on 17 July at the Garden in Penzance, the tour could hardly be classed as uneventful. Gigging through Wadebridge, Hayle and St Agnes, nightly rows with pub landlords over the volume at which they insisted on playing became a standard occurrence. The band had learnt to make sure they were paid before a gig, for fear of being deprived of their fee at the end of the evening. Their unconventional stage image – in particular Mercury’s penchant for ambiguously sidling up to May as he played on guitar – combined with their long hair provoked heated reactions from some locals, including servicemen from nearby RAF Culdrose. On occasions they had to make a swift getaway.
Being pursued by a car full of drunks psyched up for a fight was a hair-raising experience, while the buzz of outwitting them on the road could also provide an amusing anecdote later. None of this squared with Mercury’s vision for the future. That still lay in trying to persuade the music moguls that Queen was worth signing. When the tour ended with a gig at the Carnon Downs Festival, Truro, in late August, Mercury couldn’t wait to get back to London. There, May’s IC contacts remained good, and there were plans for another private show, in early October, this time to an invited audience from a selection of London booking agencies. So far, their gigs had been mostly in town halls, colleges and pubs, even young farmers’ clubs. Their goal was a foothold in the major venues, and that meant wooing the right people.
Mercury’s return to London brought a welcome change in his personal life. He and Mary Austin had been sharing a poky flat together again, close to Kensington market, but they had had plans to move on for some time. Tired of the nomadic existence of the past few years, living in varying degrees of discomfort, Mercury had decided to move upmarket, as much as he could afford. He still wished to stay in Kensington and had found somewhere he liked, as Ken Testi recalls.
‘Freddie went on to own some fabulous homes, but the first place he really coveted was a ground-floor flat at 100 Holland Park Road. It was more spacious than he’d known to date, but what he thought was bloody marvellous was the ritzy sound of the address. He loved that. It was very important to him, and he also recognised the benefits of having a good address.
‘There was a substantial front room, which thrilled him because it was the first place any of them had had where you could fit all the members of the band sitting down at the same time. As a result, a lot of discussion as to their musical future took place there.’ According to Testi, the new apartment also featured in small ways then in Mercury’s songwriting: ‘The opening lyric in “Killer Queen”, which speaks of a woman keeping Moet & Chandon in a pretty cabinet, referred to a beautiful cabinet Freddie was particularly proud of at that time,’ he claims.
A future connoisseur of the good things in life, exquisite furniture and art were always important to Mercury, even in the days when they were financially out of reach. But even then, in small ways, he managed to indulge his sense of refinement, as Testi recalls: ‘I remember being round for a meal one day, and Mary reverently brought out a few beautiful plates they’d bought from Barkers, and it may sound twee in this day and age but there was something very special in the care both of them took to make their flat a home. It had a sense of care and charm.’
Of their relationship at this time, he adds, ‘They were nice together, very much a couple. Somehow one always felt that them being together was appropriate. When Freddie later ended up with a helluva profile internationally, I always felt for Mary and still, she went with him to award ceremonies, and was always a foil for all the talk when Freddie himself was into denial.’
Mercury was now concentrating once more on the band’s progress. Their showcase gig was a month away, but he guarded against raising his hopes too high. A recent development, though, held much more promise. It involved Terry Yeadon, a friend of May’s, who was to provide Queen with their first real break.
In the autumn of 1971 Terry Yeadon was involved in setting up De Lane Lea, a recording studio in Engineers Way, Wembley. He had known Brian May from his Smile days, and in 1969, as maintenance engineer at Pye Studios in London’s Marble Arch, he had worked informally with the band, recording a couple of acetates of ‘Step on Me’ and ‘Polar Bear’. After that they’d all lost touch for a couple of years.
‘By this time Geoff Calvar, a disc-cutting engineer, and I were putting together this new complex in Wembley,’ says Yeadon. ‘There were three studios, and we had a problem with isolation between them. We were carrying out tests like firing pistols in one studio, while taping in the next to see if it picked up the noise. And we’d just come to the conclusion that we really needed a rock band to play loud, when out of the blue Brian appeared saying that he was in a new band with a new singer and a full-time bassist. Like when he wanted me to record Smile back in the sixties, this time he was hoping that I could record Queen. This was right up my street, so we made a deal. They played as we tested, and all the while they had a few demos cut!’
Mercury was ecstatic. It was the perfect opportunity – not only to record using state-of-the-art hardware free of charge, but also to audition informally through their continual live testing sessions at the studio. It was an informal platform for introductions to the moguls of the music business. Record producers and engineers were invited along daily to De Lane Lea to view the new facilities.
Producer Louie Austin was in charge of their sessions, and although they had to work around lots of hitches, in the end it proved worthwhile to listen to their first professional demo of four of their own compositions, ‘Liar’, ‘Jesus’, ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ and ‘The Night Comes Down’; the first two of which were Mercury’s work.
Of these sessions, Terry Yeadon particularly remembers Mercury’s impact: ‘Even then Freddie struck me as being larger than life. He obviously thought of himself as the leader of the band but wasn’t big-headed about it. He was just such a personality that in a short space of time he kind of bowled you over. He knew exactly what he wanted career/music-wise and was equally determined to get it. Ultra confident in what they were doing would about sum him up, and the thing I couldn’t help being aware of was that his confidence spread to the rest of the band. Queen were so sure that it was going to happen for them, which was unusual in my experience.
‘Of course age-wise they weren’t so young compared to other bands, certainly if you compare them to bands nowadays, and that was bound to factor into it too.’
Let loose in a professional recording studio, Mercury was in his element and not discouraged by all the technical teething problems. ‘There are always problems with new studios, and we’d often have to do it all over again but that was never a problem with Freddie,’ says Yeadon. ‘He had remarkable patience for our troubles. He’d say, “It’s OK, we’ll just do it again.” In fact I�
�d go as far as to say that I think he revelled in it because it gave him the chance to perform again.’
Yeadon’s choice of the word ‘perform’ was significant: ‘That was the thing about Freddie. A studio is a cold, almost sterile environment, in which people usually just get on with it. There’s no audience, and the crew are too busy working to give you any feedback, so it’s not a place to put on an act. But still, Freddie performed. It was almost as if he literally couldn’t sing a song if he didn’t do all the actions to go with it. He was very much a showman even in these circumstances.
‘They were a little rough at the edges, but that was to be expected, yet Queen was very much there and had been already there before Freddie joined them, with Brian’s guitar playing and Roger’s drumming to a large degree responsible for the sound, but Freddie unquestionably put the cream on it.
‘A lot of bands came through De Lane Lea, and I guess there were bigger-named bands who should’ve impressed me more, but I don’t know, there was always that something about Queen. They appeared as a unit right from the start. They’d been through their changes and were absolutely set, and you knew it.’
Unfortunately Yeadon’s belief in Queen’s prospects wasn’t shared by the booking agents who attended their showcase gig at Imperial College on 6 October. Fired up by their sessions at De Lane Lea, Queen performed well, but once again no bookings came of it. Ken Testi, who was still working on their behalf, experienced the same negativity when he approached two professional acquaintances: ‘I knew two bookers who worked for separate agencies and I used to pester them to death to book Queen. One was Lindsay Brown and the other was Paul Conroy who I shared a flat with for a time. Principally, they worked for their agencies but when the occasional support slot became available they did indulge me a few times, which meant a lot to Queen’ He goes on: ‘One day I took a Queen demo tape to let Paul and Lindsay listen to it. Afterwards, they went off to a bedroom for ten minutes to discuss it privately. When they returned, I said: “What do you think, then? Great, huh?” For the life of me, I couldn’t imagine anyone thinking anything else, but Paul’s reply was: “The last thing the music world needs right now is another Led Zeppelin.” He added as he handed me back the tape: “I don’t think they’re going anywhere. Sorry.”’
Ken Testi did not give up, and in addition to Queen’s work at De Lane Lea he encouraged them to record other material to give him more to work with: ‘I was very frustrated that they were going nowhere fast,’ he says. ‘A friend of Roger’s had a reel-to-reel facility, and, as he was going away for a while, he told Roger that they could use his flat to record themselves. Which they did. The only thing was because it was done this way we didn’t have anything on which to play it ourselves, but this is the tape we took round the record companies.’ According to Testi, much of their first album release was on that tape, although clearly later rerecorded. When Ken Testi went knocking on doors, Freddie Mercury often went with him.
Despite the discouragement, Mercury was still so determined to break into the rock world that he had time for little else. Next door to De Lane Lea was Wembley Stadium. Although staging regular rock gigs in outdoor sports arenas was a long way off, his urge to perform in such a venue before crowds of fee-paying fans was growing stronger. The other band members felt the same, to the extent that Brian May viewed his trips to Tenerife with less enthusiasm, and Roger Taylor gave up the market stall. Freddie Mercury drifted into a collaboration with Alan Mair, whose boot stall was on the corner of their aisle. This had its perks, as Ken Testi and Geoff Higgins both recall.
‘Besides boots,’ Ken Testi says, ‘Alan also sold canvas trousers which were tight, slightly flared and very popular. I remember Freddie beating a terrific discount out of him for a pair on the grounds that he worked the stall too.’ His days studying the Bombay traders had obviously not been wasted.
Geoff Higgins has a different tale to tell: ‘On his first morning at the new stall Fred discovered that by shifting the till a fraction, he could see directly into the ladies’ changing room of the shop opposite. He’d spend all day spying on women undressing and trying on clothes and not a soul suspected a thing.’
By the end of 1971 the major triumph was that Queen still had the run of De Lane Lea studios. Several producers and engineers had looked over the recording facilities, but nothing had come of it. Working on the theory that the next man through the door could be the one to give them their break, Mercury considered their continued presence there as a vital key to their success. His faith proved justified in late December when John Anthony and Roy Thomas Baker came to see what facilities the recording studio had to offer.
Record producer Anthony had, of course, promised to call them months before, while Baker was then staff engineer at the influential Trident Studios. Distracted by Queen’s performance, they found themselves mesmerised by Mercury and when the session was over spent time chatting to the band. To Queen’s delight they took away a demo tape to play to their boss, Norman Sheffield, who was co-owner of Trident with his brother, Barry. Sheffield, however, wasn’t sufficiently impressed to give more than an expression of interest. This was naturally deflating, and as Brian May recalls, ‘Once again we heard only a deafening silence.’
Perennially optimistic, Ken Testi focused on doing the rounds of record company A&R departments, although it often wasn’t easy to get past the front desk. Testi admits, ‘I tried making appointments over the phone first, but I’m talking severely crude method here, and I largely got the brush-off. But we kept at it, and eventually some did agree to see us.’ Testi’s detailed diary for this period stands as a record of the companies he contacted: Polydor, MCA, Decca, CBS, Island, A&M among others. ‘It was a thankless task,’ he recalls. ‘I’ve a list of the names of those people who told me Queen were no good.’ But not everyone in the industry thought so, and early into the new year one label declared an interest.
Tony Stratton-Smith was head of Charisma Records, and after listening to the demo, he decided he liked what he heard. Almost at once he offered to sign Queen, but astonishingly they turned him down. ‘Charisma wanted Queen,’ Ken Testi confirms, ‘but they were a small outfit, and the funds on offer were not great. I think it was that, more than anything. The band felt they could benefit from having big muscle behind them, and although they thought Tony was a nice guy, he didn’t have the resources available to the major labels. Also, Stratton-Smith’s one big involvement was with Genesis, and Queen feared they would always play second fiddle.
‘They were still confident, even when turning Tony down, that it would happen for them. That was one of the things I found so attractive about them. They were waiting for the right pieces to fall into place, and it was just a question of time.’
On 10 March, Queen were to play a one-hour support session at King’s College Hospital Medical School in Denmark Hill, south London, a gig that had surprisingly come courtesy of Paul Conroy. ‘That’s something I’ve never forgotten,’ Ken Testi explains. ‘Although Paul had said he had no confidence in Queen, he and Lindsay were still good enough to toss work their way when they could. It was Paul who helped me get them the King’s College gig, which, funnily enough, was the one that showed Queen off to the record companies properly.’
Planning ahead for this show, on a page torn from a memo pad, Mercury drew up a playlist of eleven songs, the last two of which, ‘Jailhouse Rock’ and ‘Bamalama’, reflected his continuing affection for rock ’n’ roll. On the reverse he had asked Testi to draw him a map of how to get there. With a pathological distaste for using public transport, he hoped to cadge a lift in a car rather than spend money on a taxi; the fee for the night was only £25, split among the four of them.
Representatives from several record companies turned up, and this time a handful of them showed interest. According to Testi, however, the night was marred by the arrival of Tony Stratton-Smith: ‘Even though Queen had turned him down, I think Tony thought he was still set with them. Whatever it was,
unfortunately there was a row between them.’ The murmurs of encouragement were an improvement on previous showcase gigs, but there was still nothing definite.
The first six songs that featured on Mercury’s playlist that night would end up on Queen’s debut album more than a year later. Thoughts of cutting that first album now occupied much of Mercury’s time. Trident’s tentative expression of interest was tantalising, but before committing himself, Norman Sheffield wanted to see the band perform live. Queen had one solitary gig ahead of them, coming up soon at London’s Forest Hill Hospital, and Roy Thomas Baker promised that he would urge one of the Sheffield brothers to attend. In the end it was Barry Sheffield who was persuaded to come, and although it must have been a nerve-racking night for the band – their first real chance of a break – Queen gave it everything they had.
Mercury had been working at strengthening his interaction with an audience. As Terry Yeadon had observed, in a studio setting with no soundboard, he still had to perform. With the crowd just feet away from him, the desire to attract their attention, and hopefully their appreciation, had been an overriding factor for Mercury from the start. It would continue to form an integral part of his stagecraft all his life.
That night, for once, everything fell into place. Ironically, at recent showcase gigs at IC, they had primed their friends to give them a rapturous reception, and nothing had come of it. At Forest Hill, while a core of their acquaintances came to support them, the audience was not a bunch of hand-picked conspirators – and this was the crowd that brought the house down. Barry Sheffield was so impressed that he offered Queen a contract with Trident Audio Productions.
Freddie Mercury: The Biography Page 6
