Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury (18 page)

“The chairman, Sir Joseph Lockwood—the only ‘sir’ in the business back then—was this outrageously camp figurehead whom Freddie idolized. It didn’t get much better than Sir Joe. As it turned out, he and Freddie were two peas in a pod, they had so much in common. Delusions of grandeur, for starters: whenever Sir Joseph strode through EMI’s reception with his entourage, there was always a lift waiting to take them straight up to his penthouse.

“Then there were the Easts.

“Ken East was EMI’s MD in the seventies. He was this big, bold, brassy Australian who’d been a truck driver before he got into the music business. Dolly, his wife, used to be in PR. Still was, in many ways. She was a large lady, this irresistible Mama Cass figure. Ken adored artists and was one of the first to come down from his ivory tower to associate with them. EMI was full of queens, so Ken and Dolly embraced that whole scene, too.

“We’d all go out for dinner with Cliff Richard and make mischief around the Soho clubs. They were
Watership Down
days, complete make-believe. No wonder Freddie aspired to all that. It was bloody marvelous. As for EMI, why
wouldn’t
they want Queen? That band had EMI written all over them. Why? Because they were so different and intelligent, and had such a creative attitude. They were tuning into the zeitgeist, listening to what music fans wanted, and taking it a step further. They knew what they were doing, and so did EMI.”

The chief A&R man for EMI at the time, and the person who would decide whether the label should sign Queen, was Joop Visser—remembered by former Cockney Rebel front man Steve Harley as “a lovely great Dutchman.”

“Joop was the guy who found three of EMI’s most successful acts of the era, and signed them all at the same time,” Steve tells me.

“One was Queen. The second was Pilot—the band formed by former Bay City Rollers Billy Lyall (who died of AIDS-related causes in 1989) and Dave Paton. The third, by the way, was us. Joop signed Cockney Rebel for three albums, no options. Not one single with options. No messing about. The kind of deal that is unheard-of now. Joop made my career and changed my life.

“I was twenty-two and full of myself. Thank God I was dealing with Joop; anyone else might have knocked my block off. Joop was the man you deferred to, the one you went to for advice.

“I was my own man, something of a gambler, a bit restless, a lot cocky. But you couldn’t offend Joop. I loved him dearly. Maybe I made mistakes that Queen were smart enough to avoid. Freddie and I had in common a penchant for the theatrical. Not ‘glam rock’ in any sense: you wouldn’t have called either my band or Freddie’s band that. The thing is, Queen fronted by Freddie Mercury would have been theatrical in any era. It didn’t need that ‘glam rock’ label to validate it or set it in context.”

It was photographer Mick Rock, Steve agrees, who inspired the theatrical bent in artists like Freddie, Bowie, and Steve himself.

“And then he pushed it to the hilt. Mick was the catalyst. He was always putting people together. I remember him bringing Mick Ronson [the late guitarist with Bowie’s Spiders from Mars, Mott the Hoople, Van Morrison, and many others] round to my flat off the Edgware Road one day, saying that we should meet and that we’d get on like a house on fire. We did, of course. Musos loved Mick. You wanted him down there in the pit, taking the long shots. He was the rock musician who wasn’t.

“Mick photographed me everywhere, and did all that great stuff with Queen. He understood me and Freddie, and encouraged us in
our creativity. Bands like Queen and Cockney Rebel knew we had to shake the business up. In my heart and soul I’m a folksinger, but at the time I denied all that. Bugger Woodstock. Wearing makeup and poncing around was of its time. I know Freddie felt the same, because we discussed it over dinner down at Legends a few times. I also know they must have loved Joop as much as I did. Especially Freddie.”

It wasn’t love at first sight. Visser was seeking a band to fill the gap left by Ian Gillan quitting Deep Purple after their exhausting Machine Head world tour. But the Dutchman was initially unimpressed by Queen. He, too, had attended their Marquee Club gig on 20 December 1972 but was underwhelmed. He had watched them in rehearsal, all a bit so-what. He confessed privately that the band members’ personalities “left him cold.” There was work to do.

After another Marquee Club showcase on 9 April 1973, and following three months of complicated negotiations with Trident, during which the latter drove the hardest bargain, refusing to back down, Visser did eventually sign Queen to EMI. It was worth all the agony and the wait. Queen would remain at EMI for the rest of their career . . . almost. (Not until thirty-eight years later, at the end of 2010 and on the eve of remaining band members Brian and Roger entering a year of celebrations for their fortieth anniversary, did Queen abandon the sinking EMI ship to sign with the Universal Music Group. Their recordings have appeared, since January 2011, on the Island Records label.)

Queen’s official debut single, “Keep Yourself Alive”—the opening track of their debut album and written by Brian—was released on 6 July 1973. But they couldn’t win. The accompanying promotional blitz was dismissed as “hype” which, although infuriatingly commonplace in the music business today, was then regarded as opportunistic and in poor taste. Freddie could not have been more frustrated, believing that Queen were doing everything right. Rejected five times by national station Radio 1’s playlist compilers, and not yet having the licensed commercial radio stations to fall back on (these only became operational later that year), the single failed to chart. It was both the first and last
time in Queen’s career that this would occur. The only DJ to give it airtime was the late Alan “Fluff” Freeman, described by John Peel as “the greatest out-and-out disc jockey of them all,” whose legendary catchphrase was “not ’arf,” and who played the single on his new Saturday afternoon
Rock Show
, featuring heavy and progressive sounds.

Undeterred, EMI went into overdrive. Arguably the best exposure for bands at the time was an appearance on BBC TV’s cult rock show
The Old Grey Whistle Test
, presented by DJ Bob Harris. Its name was derived from a Tin Pan Alley (community of music publishers and songwriters) phrase of yore: when virgin pressings of records arrived, executives would give a listen to the “Old Grays,” the doormen in gray suits. Songs that made enough impression to have the old boys whistling the melodies after just one hearing were deemed to have passed the “Old Grey Whistle Test.” Unlike the BBC’s
Top of the Pops
weekly chart show,
OGWT
featured only album music. The hit program had been on air for sixteen years, whereas comparable shows today rarely last a second series.

A “white label” pressing of Queen’s album—a blank LP in a flimsy sleeve—was delivered to
OGWT
’s production department. But the plugger had neglected to write the names of band and record company on the label. No one had any idea who had sent in the disc, nor who the artist was.

“At that time, a lot of the strengths in album music were coming from the States,” remembers
OGWT
producer Mike Appleton. “Therefore, most of the bands were not available to come into the studio and play live. To get round that, I started this thing whereby I’d pick album tracks and have this talented guy Phil Jenkinson match the tracks with appropriate visuals. Today, many people say that this was what led to the invention of the video. And with hindsight, I can say that it was all rather detrimental to the music industry. It took all the money and emphasis away from the live performance. Rock venues closed down, and ultimately all rock TV programs began to look the same.”

Creating the visuals proved immensely enjoyable nonetheless.

“Fans began tuning in to
Whistle Test
just to watch those,” agreed
Appleton. “Regular featured artists included Little Feat, ZZ Top, J. J. Cale, early Springsteen, Lynyrd Skynyrd—I could have featured their “Freebird” every week and still have been inundated with requests for it; that track was the most popular thing at the time. We showed a broad range—cartoons, abstract films, experimental pieces, the lot. It worked incredibly well. One day I picked up this white label on my desk and noticed it was unmarked. I might well have ignored it or dropped it straight in the bin, but as it happened I put it on, unaware that this was a first pressing of Queen’s debut album.”

Appleton was so impressed by what he heard that he decided to feature the track “Keep Yourself Alive” on that week’s program.

“I phoned around to try and establish a name and a source. No one knew. In the end I gave it to Phil and said, “Let’s put this on. We’ll say on the program that we don’t know what the hell or who the hell, but if anyone out there knows, could they please call us.” Phil pulled in some black-and-white cartoon footage of a super silver streamlined train with F. D. Roosevelt’s face on the front, tearing at lightning speed across America. The footage had been used in a political campaign in the thirties. The next day, EMI called to tell us that the band was Queen, and we planned to inform the viewers on the following week’s show. But our audience beat us to it. We got an avalanche of inquiries from enthusiastic fans, which was highly unusual.”

The album was released on 13 July 1973—coincidentally, twelve years to the day ahead of Queen’s triumphant performance at Wembley Stadium for Live Aid. The music press were not amused. Most were at best dismissive of the record. Some actually loathed it particularly
New Musical Express
critic Nick Kent, who described it as “a bucket of urine,” thus creating a long-running feud between Queen and the respected rock weekly. At least the public were beginning to listen. The album remained on the chart for seventeen weeks, reaching Number Twenty-four, and earned them a gold disc.

After a further session at Radio 1—with the playlisters still snootily ignoring them—Trident booked Queen into Shepperton Studios to
develop new songs and rehearse existing material. It was during their spell at Shepperton that Queen found themselves making their first promo film, Trident having recently expanded into video production with another subsidiary company, Trillion. The promo, intended to support the tracks “Keep Yourself Alive” and “Liar,” would be directed by future film supremo Mike Mansfield.

“The promo video, then in its embryonic stages, was to become such an integral promotional tool of the music industry that soon record companies would be spending countless thousands on top-gun directors, glamorous locations, and dazzling special effects in their efforts to push their artists up the charts,” says Scott Millaney, who produced some of the most iconic pop videos in history, including “Video Killed the Radio Star” for the Buggles—the first-ever video to be shown on music channel MTV in 1981—“Ashes to Ashes” for David Bowie, and “I Want to Break Free” for Queen. In all, his company MGMM would create ten classic Queen videos.

“The promo video business, with all its tricks and techniques, would eventually exhaust itself,” admits Scott. “The record industry would then remember the human element, and the whole cycle would begin again. But in the seventies it was still an exciting and fresh new medium which would greatly enhance the careers of dozens of artists, some of whom did little to warrant the hype.”

According to Scott, the successful promo video relies on three essential elements: the music and lyrics of the song; the “live” performance; and the distinctive imagery of the artist. When the mix of these ingredients is right, a single airing of the video can do more to promote a record and establish an artist than any amount of radio play. As a result, many artists were soon avoiding the live circuit completely, realizing that an illusion of perfection can be achieved in a video recording that the live performance can never live up to.

“The downside is that filming is demanding and exhausting,” Scott points out.

“Shoots often begin at sunrise and may not finish until well into the
night. Hectic schedules do take their toll on artists. There’s no doubt that companies like ours turned video making not only into a whole separate industry, but into an art form. We mined the philosophy to the point where we were able to say to record companies, ‘You need to pay a fortune to get the best.’ I had the best creative partners in the world at that time. We set the standards, and we were operational two years prior to MTV—which came along and changed everything.”

Queen’s first experience of the medium was less than encouraging. The band felt uncomfortable in the studio and were at odds with Mansfield, who frustrated them by dismissing most of their “novice” artistic suggestions in favor of his own “more experienced” ideas. Freddie in particular felt that Mansfield was missing the point of Queen’s music, and that his efforts were dated, predictable, and “full of himself.” The result was pronounced unusable and was abandoned. When it came to “Liar,” Queen refused to work again with Mansfield. Agreeing that the only way to get what they wanted was to make it themselves, they joined forces with technician Bruce Gowers at London’s Brewer Street Studios to create something “directly in tune with the band’s own ideas of how they should be presented. This rare piece was the first to be used to promote Queen, though in these early days there were very few outlets on TV, so it has hardly ever been seen until now,” as they later wrote in the accompanying booklet to their DVD collection,
Queen Greatest Video Hits 1
. The track “Liar,” written by Freddie for the same album, was never released as a single in the UK, only in North America, where it was poorly edited. The version of the track’s promo which appears on the DVD had never previously been released.

It had now dawned on the band that, only by retaining close to complete control over their work could they relax enough to take risks with their creativity. This was to set the template for Queen’s entire career.

“I wouldn’t say that they were control freaks exactly,” Queen’s first publicist Tony Brainsby told me in 1996, four years before he died. “But they always knew exactly what they wanted, and they found it extremely hard to compromise or make do. They had a perfectly clear
idea of how they saw something, so it was generally pointless to suggest going with something else.”