Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury (16 page)

While Freddie and his friends were genuinely delighted when she took up with Piers Cameron and became pregnant by him with the first of their two sons, none was surprised that the affair did not last. “That she remained part of The Real Life is undeniable,” said Evans. He had hoped Mary would remove herself “from what I always considered the unhealthy clinging-on to a situation that could only ever compound the initial grief and heartbreak, from which it is obvious that she had never recovered.”

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It’s very difficult to put your trust in others, especially with the kind of people that we are. We’re very highly strung, very meticulous, and fussy. What we went through with Trident took a lot out of us, so we became very careful and selective with the kind of people that worked with us after that, and became part of the Queen unit.

Freddie Mercury

Queen’s sessions have always benefited from technology. In the very beginning, on that very first record, they were gifted downtime at Trident Studios. So they were in the unique position of having A-list studios right at the start of their career. They were able to use the very latest equipment available, which was sixteen-track at the time. A band often develops their sound in the studio, where they can take advantage of the multitrack guitar techniques that are prevalent in a lot of rock music. Having that studio time meant that Brian May could take it to the next level. That was really important for them.

Steve Levine, legendary record producer and owner, Hubris Records

N
ineteen seventy-one
was almost over and still Queen were going nowhere fast, despite performing as many gigs as Brian’s and John’s academic timetables would allow and despite the assiduous
efforts of all concerned to get them signed. As Brian remarked, “If we were going to drop the careers we’d trained hard for, we wanted to make a really good job of music. We all had quite a bit to lose, really, and it didn’t come easy. To be honest, I don’t think any of us realized it would take a full three years to get anywhere. It was certainly no fairy tale.”

Said Freddie, “At one point, two or three years after we began, we nearly disbanded. We felt it wasn’t working, there were too many sharks in the business, and it was all getting too much for us. But something inside kept us going, and we learned from our experiences, good and bad.”

On another occasion he would contradict his earlier assessment with the declaration: “There was never a doubt, darling, never. I just knew we would make it. I told everyone who asked just that.”

Roger also remembered those days with optimism.

“For the first two years nothing really happened,” he agreed. “We were all studying, but progress in the band was nil. We had great ideas, though, and somehow I think we all felt we’d get through.”

*   *   *

Queen had work to do. Confident in their talent as musicians and convinced they blended well as a group, they continued to badger every record label in London. They also played live at every opportunity, accepting all the college gigs they could land. Some were well attended, others less so. Tony Stratton-Smith head of the Charisma label, showed early interest in Queen and made them the substantial offer of £20,000. They could have done worse than sign with the football-mad Brummie, an eccentric after Freddie’s own heart. A heavy-drinking, racehorse-owning, homosexual former journalist, Strat had narrowly avoided death in the 1958 Munich air disaster, which claimed twenty-three lives including eight of Manchester United’s “Busby Babes”; he had decided at the last minute to cover a World Cup qualifier. In the late sixties he became a rock manager and label owner, operating out of a tiny office in Soho’s Dean Street. He signed Genesis in 1970 and backed the Monty
Python albums, as well as Peter Gabriel, Lindisfarne, Van der Graaf Generator, Malcolm McClaren, and Julian Lennon. Adored by his artists, Strat was “the man who made dreams come true.”

Queen were not to be wooed by the late, great Strat—even though they were made for each other. Queen suspected they would always play second fiddle to Genesis, according to rumor. Figuring that, if they were worth twenty grand to Strat, they must be worth more elsewhere, they used Charisma’s offer and enthusiasm to attract interest from other labels.

“The moment we made a demo, we were aware of the sharks,” recalled Freddie in 1974. “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. Literally, we went to about every company before we finally settled. We didn’t want to be treated like an ordinary band.”

“We’re basically very big-headed people,” Brian later admitted, “in a sense that we’re convinced of what we’re doing. If somebody tells us it’s rubbish, then our attitude is that the person’s misguided, rather than that we are rubbish.”

“We aimed for the top slot,” Freddie would explain. “We were not going to be satisfied with anything less.”

Queen did not think that they were good, in other words. They
knew
that they were.

What has elsewhere been reported as a chance meeting with John Anthony, in those days one of London’s brightest young record producers, was in all probability less happy accident, more a typically Freddie deliberate confrontation. Well known around Kensington and Chelsea for his diverse musical and sartorial influences, Freddie continued to dress up in exotic garb and cruise “Ken High” and the King’s Road on Saturday afternoons, usually after having sweet-talked a pal into minding his market stall. He would swan about in his element, spouting to all who would listen about his idols—at that time Liza Minnelli, the Who, Led Zeppelin, and David Bowie’s Ziggy. He justified the outrageous
amounts of time he spent on his increasingly eccentric appearance with the retort “you never know who you might meet.” Freddie meant to be noticed, and by someone in particular.

His perambulatory perseverance paid off. John Anthony and Freddie came face-to-face eventually during a typical weekend strut. In no time, Freddie had charmed an invitation to bring the band to Anthony’s apartment in order to discuss their career.

This was some coup, given Anthony’s reputation. A former London club DJ at venues such as the Speakeasy, the Roundhouse, and UFO, Anthony turned to producing after recording demos for Yes in 1968. As an associate of Strat’s, he had worked with Genesis, Van der Graaf Generator, and Lindisfarne. His mantra for making records was “There’s one right way to do an album, and four hundred wrong ones.”

The encounter resulted in Anthony persuading Barry Sheffield, coowner with his brother Norman of Trident Studios, to join him at a Queen gig at Southeast London’s now defunct Forest Hill Hospital on Friday, 24 March 1972. Until then, the Sheffields had only heard Queen’s five-song demo but had never actually watched them perform. Barry wanted to see for himself what they were like as a live act before committing his company to a deal. So impressed was Sheffield by Queen’s performance that he wanted to sign them on the spot—especially after their camp rendition of Shirley Bassey’s immortal “Hey Big Spender.”

“Trident was the best studio in the world,” said John Anthony, “which was why it was booked twenty-four hours a day.”

The Sheffield brothers had recently launched a subsidiary of their company, called Trident Audio Productions, with a groundbreaking master plan to sign acts, put them in Trident’s own state-of-the-art studios, then negotiate pressing and distribution deals with mainstream record companies for the actual recordings. Although aware that beggars could not be choosers, this was not what Queen had been looking for. The Sheffields were a pair of clever and canny businessmen who had shivered many a timber in their time. Acutely business-minded, they sat bouncing ballparks at the band until their eyes glazed. What
Queen failed to spot among the small print was that the prospective deal was not exclusive, but a package, involving two other unrelated acts: Irish singer-songwriter Eugene Wallace and a group by the name of Headstone. Equally alarming were the Sheffields’ references to managerial control. What they were offering—a one-stop management and recording deal in which Trident would manage, produce, record, and song-publish Queen, as well as negotiate a record company deal on their behalf—was not common practice. All Queen could see were conflicts of interest. Despite their insistence on subcontracts for each aspect of the deal, Queen remained unsettled by the thought of Trident controlling every facet of their career.

They took their time before signing the contract, dithering for almost eight months, until November 1972, during which time they played not a single live show.

“I told them to lie low,” explained John Anthony. “I wanted them to concentrate on getting their sound together, and then they could come back and play bigger gigs.”

Given that no one of significance really remembers, the reasons behind their prolonged procrastination remain unclear. There having been no drawn-out legal wrangles, perhaps the band were up to their old tricks again, wielding the Trident offer to attract better ones. If they were holding out for a more lucrative deal from the Sheffields, they were disappointed. What Queen eventually signed was a poor excuse for a contract. They would not discover for quite some time how unfavorable it was.

In fairness to Trident and the Sheffields, their reputation was sound. Not only did they run one of the finest studios in London, used regularly by A-list artists, but they were not known for dishonorable business dealings. Having invested time and money in Queen, they expected and were entitled to a return. Only Brian would bring himself to acknowledge their contribution to Queen’s success in later years. The rest of the band didn’t want to know by then.

As Freddie would say after the eventual demise of their relationship
with Trident, “As far as Queen are concerned, our old management is deceased. They cease to exist in any capacity with us whatsoever . . . we feel so relieved!”

To the outside world, the deal seemed too good to be true: the best recording studios in the world giving an unbroken band use of the studios and all facilities. Queen could record their entire debut album under the wing of producers John Anthony and his friend Roy Thomas Baker, who would then do the legwork and tout it around the labels. Not as good as it looked: the band, already humiliated by the fact that no record company seemed interested, would now suffer the indignity of having access to a recording studio only during “downtime,” when it was not required by paying clients such as Bowie or Elton John.

“They would call us up and say David Bowie had finished a few hours early, so we had from three a.m. until seven a.m. when the cleaners came in,” Brian admitted. “A lot of it was done that way. There were a few full days, but mainly bits and pieces.”

The arrangement was hardly conducive to creativity. Ironic, then, that a notable recording from the Trident era and a highly collectible item today was created by accident. Hanging about in the studio waiting for access one day, Queen were invited by producer Robin Cable to record cover versions of the Phil Spector–Ellie Greenwich composition, “I Can Hear Music”—with which the Beach Boys had scored a Top Ten hit in 1969—and “Goin’ Back,” written by husband-and-wife songwriting team Gerry Goffin and Carole King, and first recorded by the Byrds. Freddie provided vocals while Brian and Roger played and harmonized. Each Queen member received a modest fee. None of them could have imagined then just how infamous and eventually how valuable those recordings would become. Queen had signed nothing and had agreed to nothing, but by default, and in innocence, had relinquished their right to control over the finished product. The recording was released by EMI the following year under the made-up name Larry Lurex, in both homage to and as a sendup of Gary Glitter. But the gag backfired. Most high-profile British DJs were offended by the dig, fiercely protective as they
then were of the Leader (long before Glitter’s spectacularly shameful fall from grace). Thanks to negligible airplay, the record sold few copies and was relegated to the bargain bins. Years later it would be rereleased to become the coveted disc it is today, changing hands for relative fortunes. Growing wise to the ways of the cutthroat record industry, Queen would eventually acquire the rights to the record themselves.