Читать книгу Somebody to Love - Matt Richards - Страница 20

Brian May was also keen to take the plunge, desperate for something to happen with Queen. He had called an old acquaintance, Terry Yeadon, that autumn. Yeadon had worked with Smile a couple of years previously and was in the process of opening a new recording studio complex in Wembley, called De Lane Lea. He was looking for a rock band to test the facilities when Brian rang him. It was the perfect opportunity for Queen: they could be guinea pigs for the studio and, as recompense, would receive a professionally produced demo, recorded with some of the most state-of-the-art technology available. The studio’s in-house producer/engineer, Louis Austin, oversaw the recording sessions and Queen, already exhibiting signs of the professionalism that they would eventually become known for, arrived in December 1971 with a complete set-list, determined to make the most of this opportunity.

With three different studios in the recording complex to test, the band found they were shunted from one studio to another. It was hardly the ideal circumstances in which to record, but the four members of Queen knew how important this studio time was to them and were fully committed to the process. ‘They were very fussy,’ Louis Austin recalls. ‘Their songs were done one by one. They would carry on until they thought it was right. It sometimes took a very long time, but they put up with so much shit too, during that time.’¹

Terry Yeardon recalls Queen at the studios during that period: ‘They were a little rough at the edges, which was only to be expected, yet Queen were very much there and had already been there before Freddie joined them, with Brian’s guitar playing and Roger’s drumming being, to a large degree, responsible for the sound. But Freddie, unquestionably, put the cream on it. He was just larger than life, and with such a personality that he kind of instantly bowled you over. Even in the most sterile environment of a studio, Freddie was very much a showman. It was almost as if he literally couldn’t sing a song if he didn’t also do all the actions to go with it.’²

Queen managed to record five original songs at De Lane Lea and Freddie had composed three of them: ‘Liar’, ‘Jesus’ and ‘Great King Rat’. It was during the recording of ‘Liar’ that a debate began over songwriting credits. ‘Liar’ had actually begun as a song from Freddie’s Wreckage days called ‘Lover’ and was co-written with Mike Bersin. But following concerts, rehearsals and the recording process at De Lane Lea, the whole of Queen had provided some input and so they all wanted some ownership of it, as Brian May remembers: ‘“Liar” was one of the first songs that we worked on together, and there was a moment when we discussed if we should all be credited in such cases. Freddie said, “As far as I’m concerned the person who wrote the words has effectively written the song.” It may not have been the most logical solution, but it was a workable rule which we used virtually unchanged right up to the last two albums, when we decided to share everything regardless of origin.’³

Freddie was already putting his stamp on Queen, not only as a songwriter, but also as a leader. He was the frontman on-stage, and his demand that the person who wrote the lyrics essentially wrote the song shows a man who wanted to be the frontman behind the scenes as well. Again, given his perceived intellectual inadequacy, these demands may have been an attempt to justify himself within the group; if he couldn’t compete with Brian, Roger and John intellectually, then he could at least surpass them artistically. As Freddie said: ‘I’m the only one in the band from the artistic field. The others are all scientists.’⁴

Queen left the sessions with a high-quality demo reel that they hoped would attract some attention from record companies. Financially, all four band members were getting increasingly desperate and Freddie was relying on any money he could earn working at Kensington Market supplemented only by whatever Mary earned. To make matters worse, the band had one solitary gig lined up for the first part of 1972, at Bedford College, which was organised by John Deacon and attended by only six people, and this lack of exposure threatened to undo all of the hard work Queen had done over the previous months slogging around the concert circuit gaining valuable exposure.

One of the producers passing through De Lea Lane as Queen were recording was Roy Thomas Baker. One of John Anthony’s partners in the newly formed Neptune Productions, he was immediately impressed when he heard ‘Keep Yourself Alive’, so much so that he asked to take the demo away with him. Another figure keen on the sound of Queen was Ken Testi, the original Ibex manager, who was back on the scene in London, eager to carve out a career for himself in music management. Testi trudged around the A&R departments of major record companies on behalf of Queen and managed to get a few appointments for Freddie and Brian to accompany him to try to get a deal for the band.

Despite Freddie’s confidence and the professional demo, no one they met would commit to Queen, including EMI who, years later, would sign them as part of a multi-million pound deal. That was until Charisma Records made them an offer of £25,000, the equivalent to roughly £230,000 at the time of writing, an astronomical sum to four struggling musicians in London. After sleeping on the offer, Queen stunned Charisma by turning it down citing reasons as diverse as not wanting to play second fiddle to Genesis (who were also on the label), needing a substantial investment to upgrade their equipment, which wouldn’t be covered by this figure and, perhaps most tellingly and illustrative of their blind faith and confidence in themselves, they felt Charisma were not one of the major labels of the music industry.

‘The moment we made a demo we were aware of the sharks,’ said Freddie. ‘We had such amazing offers from people saying, “We’ll make you the next T-Rex,” but we were very, very careful not to jump straight in. We went to probably every record company before we finally settled on one. We didn’t want to be treated like an ordinary band. We approached it that way because we were not prepared to be out-of-work musicians, ever. We said, “Either take us on as a serious commodity or don’t take us at all.” ’⁵

It was an astonishing show of confidence by Freddie and the band, and one that always had the potential to backfire. They had exhausted almost every record company and yet turned down the one major offer they had. All they could do in the short term was go back to gigging around London.

Meanwhile, Freddie spent his days working in Alan Mair’s shop and any spare time was spent starting to experiment with the way he looked on stage. One of the people he worked with on Kensington Market was Wendy Edmonds, and she recalls the lengths to which Freddie would go in early 1972 to stylise his on-stage appearance: ‘Freddie knew how to sew. He was pretty good so, for example, he’d at least sew on sequins himself. Then I made him these wrap-around tops to wear on-stage. He was very specific about what he wanted and he’d ask me to copy things. So he had these little women’s ballet tops, crossover things, and he’d give me the stretch velvet and say “Can you copy this?” ’⁶

Behind the scenes, without Queen knowing, Roy Thomas Baker and John Anthony were becoming excited by the demo of ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ that they had in their possession. They took it to Norman and Barry Sheffield, two brothers who had opened Trident Studios in the heart of Soho and who also operated a management company. Norman Sheffield found the tape interesting but wasn’t prepared to commit to signing them immediately. However, he was persuaded to go and watch them play live to see if that might sway his decision.

Accompanied by his brother, Norman travelled to the next Queen gig, which happened to be a hospital dance being held at Forest Hill Hospital. Unbeknown to the Sheffield brothers, Tony Stratton-Smith of Charisma Records had also turned up as well, convinced he could get Queen to change their mind and sign with Charisma, the band having previously rejected his £25,000 offer.

Aware of what might be riding on their performance, Queen performed their set perfectly and the Sheffield brothers were thrilled by what they saw, remembers John Anthony, who had joined them at the gig: ‘We watched the gig and Barry couldn’t believe it when they did Shirley Bassey’s “Big Spender”. Straight away, he was like, “Right, we have to sign them!” ’⁷

A couple of weeks later, Queen walked into Norman Sheffield’s office at Trident Studios in Soho to negotiate a deal, having totally dismissed Charisma. To Norman, the four band members were an intriguing mix: ‘Roger Taylor was a really good-looking kid, with long blond hair and charm. Brian May was tall, with a mane of curls and a little introverted but clearly very intelligent. The bass player, John Deacon, was also quiet. I could tell right away that the fourth member was going to be high maintenance. He [Freddie] was charming, acted a bit shy and reserved at times and spoke in quite a posh, mannered voice. When he relaxed he had a very sharp sense of humour and spoke at a hundred miles an hour. Freddie apparently had a girlfriend but we were pretty certain he was gay. I agreed to offer the Queenies, as we christened them, a loose kind of arrangement. There were times when the studio was “dark”, usually at 2am. So we said: “We’ll give you this downtime in the studio to see what you can do.” ’⁸

But even at this early stage, despite a contract being on the table, Freddie and the rest of Queen were keen to have some control over the negotiations. They weren’t simply prepared, as they had shown with Charisma, to agree to the first thing on offer and so negotiated three separate agreements to cover publishing rights, the recording deal, and the management contract. Trident agreed to their demands and even bought the band new instruments, a brand new PA system, and found them a manager, Jack Nelson. But for the time being the contract remained unsigned, and would do so for another seven months.

Freddie himself was keen for the agreement with Trident to be exactly what they wanted: ‘It’s not just a question of having a recording contract and that’s it, it’s not all going to be peaches and cream. You have to keep in check all of the things that are going on. Talent isn’t just about being a good musician, these days. It’s about being aware. It’s vital to do the whole thing properly. Talent is not just writing good songs and performing them, it’s having a business brain, because that’s a major part of it – to get the music across properly and profit from it. You use all the tricks of the trade and if you believe in yourself, you’ll go all the way.’⁹

Part of the Trident deal was that Queen were able to use the prestigious Trident Studios to record tracks for their debut album, for which Trident would secure recording and distribution deals with a major label. But the downside was that the band could only use the studios’ facilities during what is known in the industry as ‘Dark Time’, that is when no other artists were working in the studio and, unfortunately for Queen, the studios were so popular that this generally meant they could only get in during slots starting at 11pm or 2am.

While Queen were recording at night, during the day Trident were trying to secure recording and distribution deals for the band, but nothing was forthcoming. Even in the US, Jack Nelson’s attempts to get Queen a deal with EMI were scuppered when, about to make an offer, EMI backed off after they learned the band had to come as part of a Trident package with two other acts, Mark Ashton and Eugene Wallace. ‘It took a long time, and it was a very frustrating time, because we made a load of demos and the record companies all went, “not bad, but come and see us in a couple of years,” ’ recalls Brian May. ‘We felt like we were getting nowhere.’¹⁰

While the band recorded in the early hours and pored over the contracts during the day, their regular live gigs ground to a halt. Following their March concert at Forest Hill Hospital, Queen would not play again ‘live’ until November and would only play two more gigs in the whole of 1972. John Anthony wanted them to lay low and then come back with a sound that could enable them to play bigger venues.

‘Why bother with tiny clubs?’ he said.¹¹

At the outset, John Anthony agreed to produce the recordings with Queen and Roy Thomas Baker, but Anthony was forced to leave the process when he was diagnosed with an illness, leaving Roy to cope with the eager – and stubbornly knowledgeable – musicians by himself. ‘They turned out to be every bit as good – and demanding – as we’d anticipated,’ Norman Sheffield, head of Trident, recalled. ‘Things had to be one hundred per cent right, otherwise they wouldn’t be happy. They’d spend days and nights working on the harmonies. Arguments would start about the tiniest little detail. They’d start screaming, shouting and chucking things. Sometimes it would blow over in a few minutes, but at other times they would stew on it, not talking to each other for a day or two. They’d always sort it out, however. It wasn’t personal; it was about the work.’¹²

While Queen were infuriating everyone at the recording studios, Trident were still seeking a recording and distribution deal for the band. But the news coming back from Jack Nelson’s discussions with record companies in the US wasn’t encouraging: ‘They all told me that Queen just weren’t going to happen,’ Jack said.¹³

Throughout the summer and autumn of 1972, Queen spent the early hours recording their debut album. All the tracks were written either by Brian or Freddie. While Brian’s songs were more conventionally structured, Freddie’s compositions were naturally eccentric, as Brian remembers: ‘Freddie wrote in strange keys. Most guitar bands play in A or E, and probably D and G, but beyond that there’s not much. Most of our stuff, particularly Freddie’s songs, was in oddball keys that his fingers naturally seemed to go to: E-flat, F, A-flat. They’re the last things you want to be playing on a guitar, so as a guitarist you’re forced to find new chords. Freddie’s songs were so rich in chord structures.’¹⁴

‘I have no set rules for writing a song. It’s haphazard,’ Freddie would say. ‘Some songs come faster than others. I never sit down at the piano and say, “Right, I’ve got to write a song now.” No. I feel a few things out and get some ideas about them and then I begin. It’s hard to explain but there are always various ideas going through my head.’¹⁵

Away from songwriting, another idea swirling through Freddie’s head around this time was to create a logo for the band. He had already spent considerable time designing the look and style of the band onstage, now Queen needed something identifiable, an emblem that was distinctly theirs. Convinced there was no one else in the band who could do this – he was the only artist in the group, after all – Freddie created an impressive crest based around the zodiac signs of the four band members. Atop the ‘Q’ was a Phoenix, the bird of classical Greek mythology. As well as the crest representing each member of the band, it also imparts a sense of royalty and a majestic bearing, resembling closely the British coat of arms, a fact presumably not lost on Freddie.

In September 1972, Queen finally signed the contract with Trident, which resulted in the company paying the four band members £20 each per week, about £240 at the time of writing, as well as trying to get them the best recording and distribution deal for their Trident recordings. Jack Nelson was continuing, without much success, to get an overseas label interested and, by now, Roger and John had finished their studies and Brian had abandoned, at least for the time being, his PhD thesis at Imperial College. Suddenly, they were all in the same boat as Freddie: depending upon Queen for their livelihoods. But Freddie was concerned that they might be old-fashioned and out of vogue before they had even begun: ‘There was a long gap between actually forming Queen and having a recording contract. That’s why we were so concerned about people saying, “Here comes Queen, glam rock is in, and they are following the tradition.” We never copied anyone. We were into glam rock before groups like Sweet and Bowie, and we worried that we might have come too late. Our way was to put together a different kind of theatrical music.’¹⁶

Despite the tracks for their debut album recorded and in the can, nothing seemed to be happening for Queen. All four bandmates were beginning to get increasingly frustrated. Brian May recalls, ‘going on the number 9 bus up to town every day with Freddie to pummel the company into doing something because we felt that the album had gone cold. Groups like Nazareth were all over the radio and we couldn’t get our foot in the door.’¹⁷

Trident set up two showcase gigs for the band, inviting executives and A&R reps from as many record companies as their contacts book allowed. The first gig, at The Pheasantry Pub on the King’s Road, was plagued by problems with the PA equipment and no offers were forthcoming. The second gig, supporting Sparks at The Marquee in London on 20th December 1972, showcased their growing confidence and charismatic energy. Their set was well appreciated by the crowd, but despite an increasingly dynamic show, they remained unsigned.

However, 1973 would see the fortunes of Queen begin to turn.