Читать книгу Somebody to Love - Matt Richards - Страница 21

While attending the MIDEM Festival at the beginning of 1973, a music networking event in Cannes, Roy Featherstone, a top executive at EMI (the label who had already turned down Queen in the US when they were offered as part of a package) happened to hear the demo tape of Queen. Liking what he heard, he got in touch with Trident immediately and requested a meeting with the band. In the meantime, Queen had accepted their first recording session with the BBC for their Radio 1 programme, Sounds of the Seventies. They wouldn’t get paid for the session but the publicity and exposure were priceless.

Ten days later the sessions were broadcast on Radio 1 and such was the response from the listening public to the songs ‘My Fairy King’, ‘Keep Yourself Alive’, ‘Liar’ and ‘Doing Alright’ that EMI decided to speed up the process of signing the band. As a result, in March 1973, EMI, the company who had turned the band down once already, finally signed Queen to their label. A month later, Jack Nelson had persuaded Jack Holsten of Elektra in the US to sign Queen. Suddenly, the band had a recording deal that covered not only the UK and Europe, but the US too.

However, the first single released on EMI wasn’t a Queen single, but a song Freddie had recorded during some downtime at Trident Studios while Queen were recording their album. Engineer Robin Geoffrey Cable had been working in an adjoining studio on his own version of The Beach Boys’ ‘I Can Hear Music’. Before long he had cajoled Freddie into providing the vocals and soon Roger and Brian were joining in on drums and guitar. The recording lay dormant for a few months before Cable persuaded EMI to release it. Unable to use the Queen name, EMI decided to spoof Gary Glitter, who was extremely popular during that period, and so named the ‘artist’ Larry Lurex. The single flopped, however, failing to chart in the UK and reaching 115 in the US.

Two weeks later, on 16th July 1973, Queen’s first official single, ‘Keep Yourself Alive’, written by May, was released. However, with Radio 1 turning down the song on five occasions and mixed reviews from the music press, the single was largely ignored and flopped on both sides of the Atlantic. In doing so it became the only Queen single never to chart in the UK. With such a disastrous debut single, it was vital that Queen’s album was a success.

Released on 13th July 1973 the album, titled Queen, received varying reviews. Rolling Stone said: ‘There’s no doubt that this funky, energetic English quartet has all the tools they’ll need to lay claim to the Zep’s abdicated heavy-metal throne, and beyond that to become a truly influential force in the rock world. Their debut album is superb.’¹ New Musical Express, however, called it a ‘bucket of urine’. To Queen’s disappointment, initial sales were very slow, which only increased Freddie’s anxiety as, unlike the others, he had no university education to fall back on. One of Freddie’s old college mates, Chris Smith, still bumped into Freddie occasionally on the bus in London and recalls his concerns as the album limped along in the lower reaches of the charts: ‘Fred was getting a bit desperate,’ Chris remembers as Freddie would say, ‘ “God! I hope this band takes off. I don’t know what I’m going to do if it doesn’t. I don’t want to end up working in an art studio.” ’²

But, as had happened before and would happen again, the stars aligned for Queen. An unmarked white label copy of the album found its way onto the desk of the influential TV producer Mike Appleton. He was responsible for the BBC music programme The Old Grey Whistle Test – after Top of the Pops the highest-profile music show on BBC television. He put the record on and listened to the first track, ‘Keep Yourself Alive’, but with no identification on the vinyl and no accompanying press material he had no idea of the record’s identity nor that of the band who had created it. Eager to showcase the song on The Old Grey Whistle Test, Mike commissioned Phil Jenkinson to edit some surreal compilations of old film footage to accompany the song and, consequently, a cartoon from F.D. Roosevelt’s presidential campaign from the 1930s was shown as the song received its first television airplay on 24th July. The following day the BBC received many favourable phone calls about the track, as well as ones from irate Trident and EMI representatives. It was unexpected, but welcome, publicity for Queen.

By the end of summer 1973, Trident had invested £62,000 in Queen (almost three quarters of a million pounds in 2016), but hadn’t much to show for their investment. Their only single had failed to chart and their debut album wouldn’t even enter the charts for eight months, and then only peaking at number 37 on its first brief chart run. To address this and to give the band some more publicity, Trident hired the band a publicist, Tony Brainsby. He had seen them play live and was convinced they had talent. Upon meeting them, he quickly became accustomed to their personalities, especially Freddie’s: ‘Obviously Freddie stuck out the most. He was such a raving poofter, I couldn’t believe my eyes at our first meeting. He was dressed in red velvet skin-tight trousers, had black varnish on his fingernails, long hair and of course all those teeth – he was extremely touchy about his teeth. He was strong-willed, nakedly ambitious but also very charming. In those days Freddie was an inwardly very aggressive and angry man in the sense that he knew he should be a star and wasn’t yet. It’s not a side of him that he allowed too many people to see, but it was definitely all the way through him. He felt that stardom was his by rights and he was extremely frustrated at the time it seemed to be taking for him to reach it. In my view, he was very much the fight in the band.’³

As Brainsby’s relationship with the band grew, he became increasingly intrigued by Freddie: ‘He had many stylish little quirks that would stick in your mind. He’d paint the fingernails of just his right or just his left hand with black nail polish. Or he’d just varnish one little finger. He’d say “Darling!” or “My dears!” every other sentence, and his camp delivery was highly amusing and very endearing. He was great to have around. Never a dull moment. The girls all loved it when he came into the office. At the time, of course, he was living with Mary. To start with, his sex life was a complete mystery to us all; we could never quite fathom it. He certainly never spoke about it.’⁴

By this point, August 1973, Queen were back in the studio recording their second album. Once more, Roy Thomas Baker would be the producer and he found a band still eager for perfection and desperate for a hit single: ‘Singles are important to us and to have a hit now would help the band. We’ve more to offer than bands like The Sweet, we’re not just pop, because our music covers a wide area,’ Freddie said.⁵

Freddie composed six of the 11 songs on what was to become Queen II, including the entire second side of the album, which became known as ‘The Black Side’ (instead of having the standard ‘Side 1’ and ‘Side 2’, this album had a ‘Side White’ and a ‘Side Black’, with corresponding themes such as emotional songs on the white side and dark, fantasy themes on the black side – Freddie’s side). The songs Freddie composed included ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’, which would eventually become Queen’s first major hit single.

The recording process allowed them the chance to work on complex tracks utilising layered vocals (which would become a trademark), harmonies and instrumentations. ‘Queen II, by virtue of the band’s incurably experimental tendencies, was a spectacle in the De Mille sense of the word,’ wrote Daniel Ross. ‘Everywhere your ears look, there’s a sound you can’t explain. It is myth, it is opera; it is a contest of bravado and a constant display of dashed-off genius.’⁶

Freddie’s compositions on the album showcase his burgeoning writing range: from the heavy thrash sound of ‘Ogre Battle’ to the intricate medieval fantasy-based lyrics and harpsichord underscored ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke’. The epic composition, ‘The March of the Black Queen’, proved to be a song too complicated to ever be performed live, a pre-‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ if ever there was one, and it hints at Mercury’s operatic influences, gained initially through exposure to the records his parents would play during his childhood.

But for all Queen’s intricacy and complexity in the studio, it hadn’t escaped anybody’s attention that the band had only played four gigs in the year up to that point. The previous year had seen them play just five gigs and the band were in danger of losing the devoted live following that they had built up over a number of years slogging around London, Cornwall and the north of England. Trident, too, were keen for Queen to re-establish their live presence, especially as they would soon have a second album to promote and so, following a BBC Radio 1 special recorded at the Golders Green Hippodrome on 13th September and two smaller gigs in Frankfurt and Luxembourg – Queen’s first foreign concerts – the band embarked on a major UK tour supporting Mott The Hoople. Their support slot was paid for by EMI, the first time the company had paid for a band to have a support slot, and it didn’t come cheap at a reputed £9,000 (£76,000 in 2016), but they knew that the audience on the tour was the perfect audience to be exposed to Queen’s music and Freddie’s flamboyant performances.

The 24-date tour began on 12th November at Leeds Town Hall following two sell-out warm-up gigs at Imperial College London. The second of these shows was reviewed under the title ‘Queen’s Loyal Subjects’, and within the glowing review Freddie’s own performance was highlighted: ‘Their leader Freddie Mercury pranced about the small stage, waving his mic both violently and sensually as they performed numbers from their first album. The funniest moment was undoubtedly the first encore – Freddie’s “Big Spender” was done à la Shirley Bassey, and thus was outrageously camp.’ To conclude, the writer Rosemary Horide observed: ‘If Queen are this good on the tour with Mott The Hoople (which they start next week) Mott had better watch out. Queen could turn out to be a bit more than just a support band.’⁷

On 21st November, Queen supported Mott The Hoople at Preston Guildhall and in the audience was a 16-year-old Marc Almond: ‘I went on my own as none of my friends really liked or got Queen,’ he remembers. ‘I liked Mott The Hoople but Queen were much more exciting and Freddie was much more alluring. They were going through their Black & White phase. Freddie was a great showman and I was intrigued by the way he used half of his microphone stand like a sword or a phallus. He was skinny and pirouetted and posed a lot like a ballet dancer. As they were the support act they didn’t seem to have a lot of extravagant lights and not even a great sound, just lots of smoke. Yet for all Freddie’s performing skills and showing off, they were a definitive four-piece band: Brian’s guitar with its distinctive sound, Roger’s flamboyant drum playing and harmonies and John Deacon’s solid bass. Freddie was a star but it wasn’t the Freddie show.

‘I was so exhilarated by Queen’s show I didn’t stay long for Mott – besides, I had to get the last bus back to Southport. Queen eclipsed Mott as something different and new. Freddie was the new “Star on the Block”.’⁸

In December, Queen supported Mott The Hoople for two nights at London’s Hammersmith Odeon. It was a concert attended by the DJ, author and broadcaster Paul Gambaccini who, after witnessing Queen’s performance that night, would echo Rosemary Horide’s comments: ‘I went to the fabled Hammersmith Odeon gig,’ recalls Gambaccini, ‘where they were supporting Mott The Hoople and I thought these guys are not going to be second on the bill for long.’⁹

Despite all of this, Queen were not making any headway in the charts. ‘We did a few gigs on our own, some small gigs,’ recalls Brian May. ‘Then went onto support Mott The Hoople and went around the whole country getting some really good reactions. Thinking, “Yeah, we’re finally getting somewhere”, and all the time watching the single and album and nothing appeared anywhere in the charts.’¹⁰

Following four smaller gigs to finish the year, Queen entered 1974 not knowing what to expect and wondering whether this would be the year they finally got their break. Their debut album hadn’t set the charts on fire (in fact it wouldn’t reach its chart high of number 24 until February 1976 on the back of the success of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’) while their first single, ‘Keep Yourself Alive’, had failed to even chart. The significant backing from Trident demanded that Queen have success and there was only so long before Trident would switch their allegiance to another band. None of Queen had made any significant money from their efforts – their salary was just £30 per week and they needed a hit. And they needed it fast.

Booked to headline the Sunbury Festival in Melbourne, Australia, in February, Queen’s beginning to the year started in disastrous fashion. Brian May suffered an infection in his arm following inoculations to visit Australia and became seriously ill, so much so that, for a while, it was feared that he would lose his arm as gangrene set in. With Brian barely recovered, Queen left the UK for Australia on 28th January, taking with them their own lighting rig and crew, but from the word go, the trip appeared jinxed. As well as Brian still recuperating, local Australian technicians were angered that Queen had brought their own crew. And local bands were mystified why a relatively unknown British band were headlining the festival instead of one of their own. In addition to Brian’s illness, Freddie had also developed an ear infection that required medication and meant that he was drowsy and couldn’t hear properly.

Being true professionals, Freddie and Brian took to the stage in Melbourne with Roger and John, but only after a significant delay – they required night to fall in order for their extensive and expensive lighting rig to provide optimum lighting. Consequently, the Australian crowd, already annoyed at having a Pommie band headlining, grew increasingly angry at the delay. Queen were doomed the moment they walked on-stage, and matters only grew worse when their elaborate lighting rig failed halfway through the set.

The following day the Australian press slated the band, so Queen decided to cancel their next show and fly straight back to the UK at their own expense. Naturally, this retreat only provided the Australian press with more ammunition, but Freddie had already told the crowd that, ‘When Queen come back to Australia we will be the biggest band in the world.’ That moment seemed an awfully long way off in February 1974. The Australian tour had been an expensive fiasco and the release of the single ‘Liar’ in the US had also been an unmitigated disaster when it sank without a trace.

But the break Queen needed arrived on 18th February 1974, thanks indirectly to an artist they’d go on to share a number one single with in 1981 – David Bowie. Bowie was scheduled to appear on BBC TV’s Top of the Pops on Thursday, 21st February 1974 to perform his single ‘Rebel Rebel’ but had to pull out at the last moment, prompting the show’s producer, Robin Nash, to hastily seek a replacement. He called Ronnie Fowler, then head of promotions at EMI. Fowler had a particular fondness for Queen, especially their planned new release, ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’, and suggested they fill the gap. Nash was only too happy to have secured a band and two days later, on 20th February, Queen prepared to appear on the show.

In the mid-1970s Top of the Pops would regularly get audiences of 15m. For Queen, this exposure would be invaluable, an incomparable showcase for them and their new single. None of the bandmates had a television at this point and so, on the evening of Thursday, 21st February, Freddie, Brian, Roger and John all ventured out to a local electrical goods shop to peer through the window at one of the televisions on display and watch themselves perform on Top of the Pops for the very first time.

Keen to exploit this fortunate break, EMI rushed out a single release of ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’ two days later and within weeks the song had broken into the UK Top 10. With a running time of less than two minutes 50 seconds, this intricately woven song begins with a distinctive arpeggiated piano before the other instruments roar into the main body of the song. Composed by Freddie, he was asked in 1977 what the meaning of the lyrics were: ‘Oh gosh! You should never ask me that. My lyrics are basically for people’s interpretations really. I’ve forgotten what they were all about. It’s really factitious, I know it’s like bowing out or the easy way out, but that’s what it is. It’s just a figment of your imagination.’¹¹

In the same interview, Freddie is asked whether he has a surrealistic approach to composition, but he preferred to call it ‘imaginative’: ‘It all depends on what kind of song really. At that time I was learning about a lot of things. Like song structure and as far as lyrics go, they’re very difficult as far as I’m concerned. I find them quite a task and my strongest point is actually melody content. I concentrate on that first; melody, then the song structure, then the lyrics come after actually.’

With ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’ becoming a hit and entering the UK Top 10 singles chart, Freddie finally felt confident enough to concentrate solely on music as a career. Despite being the composer of this Top 10 hit, royalties were not yet coming in, and it would be some time before they did so, but as far as Freddie was concerned, he had hit the big time.