Queen Unseen (17 page)

When Fred’s car and driver arrived at the scene, he reassured me he had called The Manor and somebody was coming to pick me up. We were both still suffering a little from shock as he took off for London, so I watched The Manor’s estate car being towed away and chain-smoked while sitting on my sticker-covered briefcase at the side of the road.

The wagon train arrived: Roger, Brian, John, engineer, studio staff, crew et al. They saw a solitary figure on the roadside and asked where everybody – and everything – was. Fred had relayed the accident in his theatrical manner as being hideous carnage and a mass of twisted charred metal! The car brakes were found to be faulty, and the police took
no action against me. Later, a music press interview offered Fred a dramatic opportunity to relate how the incident had affected him. He replied that his life had flashed before his eyes – and he had wondered who would look after his cats.

‘And the roadie actually screamed!’

Fred commended me for getting so far around the roundabout and never held me responsible. I still drove him many times after that – even in an old Transit van!

Losing Fred would have been a disaster, as would losing an album’s master tape which held all the work done to date. As well as a master copy, there was also a safety copy. Just like on a modern computer, everything was constantly saved and backed up. The master and safety copy were kept and transported separately – just like royalty. Like Queen.

Vinyl days, before sampling, were when musicians played and sweated hard in the studio. Roger, being a sweaty drummer, needed to be in good physical shape and was complaining of aches and pains during recording at Island Studios in London. A masseuse was located, and a very
sexy-looking
lady, in starched white uniform and high heels, turned up with her little kit bag. Screens were pulled together in the studio for an area of privacy and naturally the microphones were left ‘live’ for engineer Mike Stone to capture the moment. But she was a proper, qualified masseuse and Roger was genuinely relieved of the stiffness… in his back and shoulders. Poor old drummers are often the butt of jokes.

‘What do roadies, groupies and drummers have in common? They all hang out with musicians.’

Guitarists weren’t spared either, being generally fussy and pedantic. ‘How do you know when a plane full of guitarists has landed? You can still hear whining when the engines have shut down.’

Bass players only have four strings to worry about so they generally keep quiet.

And of course we
never, ever
took the piss out of Fred…

T
he first five Queen albums were all recorded in the UK. However, the ailing Labour government had a penchant for taxing wealthy rock stars higher and higher and it was time for a change. Switzerland, traditional home of tax exiles and numbered bank accounts, had a studio that looked nice. We decided to pop over there for a convenient period during the company’s tax year.

‘Greetings from Montreux – beautiful but boring.’ That’s what my postcard home from Switzerland would say; after all, how many Swiss rock bands can
you
name? (World champion yodellers maybe, but not many contenders for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.) Switzerland has clean air and clean living. Orderly and efficient, it is a wealthy God-fearing and law-abiding police state. Not
quite
rock ’n’ roll is it? As for the packs of beer available in 1978, they were printed in
three languages: ‘sans’, ‘ohne’ and ‘senza’ alcohol. No degree in linguistics needed.

It is early summer 1978, and Queen are planning to spend some four months in this healthy, fiscal climate, writing and recording new songs that the record company, accountants and hungry public demand. No pressure then? Rehearsals and recording will be in Montreux, then on to Super Bear Studios in the south of France, to finish the vocals, overdubs and do final mixes. The plans for the US tour to follow the album are already in preparation, with Europe, a live album and Japan also pencilled in. Then some more recording to finish off the year. Queen –
This Is Your Life.
Welcome to the corporate ladder and the annual schedule.

One of the more romantic notions of rock ’n’ roll was that you never knew what you would be doing very far in advance. I relished the element of surprise, but now the next year of my life was mapped out. It would prove to hold a few surprises, though.

The pretty, chocolate-box town of Montreux on Lake Geneva (Lac Leman) has a reputation for its international Jazz Festival, held in the casino complex that had previously caught fire and inspired the Deep Purple song ‘Smoke On The Water’. Housed in the side of this rebuilt concrete building was a recording studio that was used by major rock bands in exile from the wicked taxman.

I had driven out in a Ford Transit on my own to ‘prep’ our time in Montreux, with Pete Brown, Queen’s management coordinator, flying in to nearby Geneva airport to join me. 
The back of my van was stuffed with last-minute personal effects, for what was a long stay for the band and their partners and families. There were boxes of disposable nappies stacked in with toys and stereo systems and other pieces of home comforts. After a few days, the truck with the equipment and two of the crew, Richie Andersen and Crystal, arrived. They were shortly followed by the band.

For Queen’s rehearsals in Montreux, we were booked into an old classical ballet school that was on summer break. Situated in a steep, narrow, cobbled street, it was a tricky load in of the gear. Fred’s Steinway piano, weighing over a ton in its enormous flight case, teetered precariously while being manoeuvred over the threshold into the rehearsal room. Creak – snap – crunch! Its industrial-strength wheels pierced the parquet floor, tipping it at a jaunty angle. No human damage, but plenty of floor damage.

‘Aaaah – look at that – all this!’ the horrified studio manageress, who had booked the ballet school, screamed.

‘I know – lucky, weren’t we?’

‘Lucky? Lucky! Do you realise, in order to get this place, I told the owners we had a small musical group who wanted to do a “bit of practice”. That’s a beautiful antique floor!’

‘Not any more.’

The reduced Queen crew of two (Richie, Brian’s roadie had gone home – he was leaving the music business and would look for a replacement) set about arranging an intimate and creative musical ambience; we put the gear in a circle, put Queen in the middle and left them to it.

‘Tea – tea please’ the call came down to the kitchen basement area – a haven from all the noise upstairs. Queen 
regularly took tea: Fred and Roger: milk and two sugars, Brian: milk and one sugar, John: milk and no sugar.

Local shopping produced drinkable tea, a hand-carved Swiss pipe and some not so local ‘Moroccan tobacco’ to take to our secret hideaway in the ballet school. The lake and mountains looked really beautiful those summer evenings, man.

After a Jazz Woodbine and armed with free passes, it was on to the Jazz Festival. Despite our enhanced state of mind, we still couldn’t understand jazz. But I really enjoyed the performance of Ray Charles (once he recovered from walking into his piano).

Queen’s accommodation was dotted around the mountains; Crystal and I were in a two-bedroom flat, above a
ground-floor
flat that housed Geoff Workman, the studio engineer, brought in by producer Roy Thomas Baker for the album. These flats were built on to the side of a stunning house in the mountain village of Blonay, and were owned by Monica, an attractive woman in her forties, who was a high-class lady of some note. The lady of the house got into trouble with the police for failing to register us as paying guests with the local authorities. Local bedtime was around 8.30 pm – not for us. Rather than come to the door and ask us to shut up or keep the noise down, the locals went directly to the police and reported what they were unhappy with – us.

‘Knock-knock-knock!’

I raised my weary head: ‘It’s that bloody Geoff, wanting to scrounge a cup of tea! Hang on, I’m coming!’ 

Yawning, I staggered down to open the door. Geoff Workman, who described the state of his eyes in the morning as like ‘red lace curtains’, had remarkably transformed into two Swiss cops in bulging uniform and peaked party hats. One asked me in French why we were making all this noise and playing music every night and bouncing around on the balcony.

‘Sorry…’

He asked me what we were doing in the town, and when we were leaving.

‘
La musique?
A few weeks?’

He then asked me again in his native French for our passports. I obliged. After studying them, he replied that he was going to take our passports away for further checks. I snatched them back and quoted him in plain English the inscription inside a UK passport: ‘We are subjects of Her Majesty and “are to be afforded to pass freely without let or hindrance” – so PISS OFF.’

I slammed the door. They didn’t come back. They just did a lot of muttering, took lots of notes and then waddled off to report back.

The Swiss are a very ordered race with clinical and squeaky-clean lives. We became a nasty blot on their beautiful Alpine landscape. Our truck driver hated the compulsive cleanliness of Switzerland so much that he would save up all the rubbish that he accumulated in his truck cab during a tour; cigarette packs, chocolate wrappers, crisp bags, papers plus the contents of his bulging ashtrays. Whenever he crossed the border into Switzerland, he would throw the whole lot out of the window into this antiseptic neutral territory. 

Nevertheless, Montreux did offer some diversions. The White Horse Pub was an English-style inn complete with dart board, and, when evening meal break was called, you would see Geoff Workman bolt from the studio and dash down Rue Du Theatre towards the pub shouting in his Liverpudlian wake: ‘Come on, you’re wasting valuable ale time!’ No fancy haute cuisine band meals for Geoff, the
self-appointed
cultural attaché for Merseyside: Beer. Burger. Beer. Fries. Beer. Belch. Beer. Beer. Punctuated by several cigarettes of high strength.

The White Horse closed relatively early, and after being banned from the Hazyland Disco – thanks to the antics of Gerry Stickells on a flying visit – the only place for late-night recreation left to us was The Hungaria nightclub. It became known colloquially as The Vulgaria, which was fair. Trying to remove cigarettes from some drunken local’s mouth with a stripper’s whip was a nasty business. Medical facilities are fortunately very good in Switzerland.

The exiled Queen were now working well; the band had settled in with their respective families and were enjoying the countryside. Brian, Roger and John had all driven their cars over from England, and Derek, Fred’s driver from London, had driven over the Mercurial Mercedes, but was not available to be daily personal chauffeur to Fred. A driver was needed. The Mountain Studios office found Valerius Knobloch. Who? Valerius Knobloch, an American on his European Adventure. Valerius Knobloch – a joke or a bet? It turned out to be his real name, poor bloke. How unfortunate. It would be cruel to taunt.

Valerie Knob Rot. 

The Mountain Studio was not big, certainly not a mountain – more of a mole hill – with a hallway the size of a postage stamp, a cramped control room and no lounge or recreation area. The studio itself was one floor above the control room and, again, small. Communication was by talkback and closed circuit TV cameras. For
Jazz
, we were lucky to have use of The Salon, a vast sectioned-off area of the casino arena. (It can be seen in the gatefold photograph on the
Jazz
album.) Little areas for separation of the instruments were constructed and centred around producer, Roy, working out, through some mathematical calculation with a pencil and some string, where the dead centre of the room was. Once the axis of the universe had been found, that is where the bass drum was placed and the rest of Roger’s vast kit built around it.

The guitar booths had wooden floors to give a ‘live’ sound, and studio screen walls with a roof thatched from huge shaggy sheepskin rugs. These grubby, tatty old bits of fleece made the booths we had built look like a herd of Tibetan yaks. (Tibetan yaks giving painful birth, when Brian and his screaming guitar were inside.)

‘Fancy a drink down the White Horse?’

‘Yeah.’

A pint or two later, we returned; the Tibetan yak was still in labour.

‘Yeah – sounds great, Brian! Wanna try another…?’

‘Mmmmm? Yes, I think so… just one more take, just to be sure.’

‘Fine.’ (Fancy another couple of swift halves?)

We were effectively ‘on the road’ as far as the equipment went, and had very limited local resources for hiring or buying any item required on a whim. Consequently, we had transported a whole 40-foot trailer full of gear: dozens of guitars, drums, amps, effects, etc. – but not one synthesiser. In addition to the arsenal of instruments were bicycle bells! Every cycle shop in the area was scoured in order to build a collection of various tones and actions of bell, used on Fred’s locally inspired song ‘Bicycle Race’.

Being in a small sleepy town such as Montreux, and being the town’s most glamorous guests, made us a magnet for some of the more adventurous females; and apart from bicycle bells, there were a fair amount of other Belles – all given unique nicknames.

Edam – a resident Dutch girl; The Lapin – a girl who wore a rabbit-skin coat and ‘went’ like one; Marty – a girl with large bulging eyes who resembled the comedian Marty Feldman; Tits – no explanation required; and the ubiquitous ‘That bird you reckon you knobbed’. I did have a tender encounter with an Israeli stripper, who resided (honestly!) at the Hotel Eidelweiss. Julie Andrews she was not. I had to help her up the narrow staircase to her attic room with her ‘equipment’, which included a small set of carpeted steps.

Then there was Renate (not her real name) – otherwise known as James Galway – who, like the flautist, had marvellous oral control talents while holding an instrument. She had a deep, sexy voice too: ‘He is like a long flute, him – a saxophone, and he – a French horn!’ (Lucky lad).

‘Him – only like a piccolo!’

I sneaked her back to the flat under cover of darkness, telling the others that I was feeling unwell and was going to lie down. We were locked out. Unperturbed, and spurred on by the desire to have a full brass section symphony, I drove the van under the balcony and we climbed on to its buckling roof. From here I tried shunting her up on to the balcony. She was
very
well built, and as she straddled around my neck trying to grasp hold of the balcony rail, I caught sight of an adversary – the old dragon from across the road peering aghast through her shutters.

Knock-knock… ‘We are officers of the law!’

No need – I’d already been punished. A visit to a local doctor and a course of Switzerland’s finest pharmaceuticals until things cleared up.

There are many exclusive finishing schools in this area of Switzerland and a lot of girls of legal age from all parts of the globe. A not unattractive Middle Eastern girl, the daughter of some mega-rich Arab, translated the words and gave the correct pronunciation to Fred’s Islam-inspired song ‘Mustapha’.

‘Mustava piss – I’m bursting.’

‘Are you bloody lot making fun of my song – again?’

‘Us, Fred? Never!’

A year or so later, Queen purchased Mountain Studios, but no major changes were made. Eugene Chaplin, son of Charlie, who had spent his later years on a splendid estate in nearby Vevey, was still on the staff, and had invited us to
spend the day around the pool at his beautiful family residence. A studio flat, decorated in Swiss ‘punishment and correction’ style, was added at staggering distance away from the studio. The Mountain Studio office, across the street from the casino, like all contemporary Swiss buildings, had a mandatory concrete nuclear fall-out shelter in the basement. These bunkers, with sealed doors, were required to be stocked with a certain quota of food and drink, plus bedding and supplies for survival. The studio office used their nuclear shelter with some interpretation – for storing wine and skiing equipment.

The studio was managed by Aileen, an attractive local girl with a full-lipped mouth who spoke excellent English. She told me she had been inspired to learn the language from an early age while listening to Beatles records.

The original 24-track master tapes of an early Queen album were requested from the EMI vaults in London; they were needed for a particular sound, reference, effect or possibly just to settle an argument. Quite possibly. The tapes duly arrived via personal courier. A shy young girl arrived late one evening in the studio with Aileen and the tapes. She was new to being a personal courier, and had nowhere to stay that night.