Is This The Real Life? (11 page)

On other occasions, though, his enthusiasm would prove infectious. If there wasn’t a guitar to hand, Freddie would drag Chris to a music shop on nearby Ealing Broadway: ‘We’d go there at lunchtime, and Fred would just take a guitar off the wall and start playing it, showing me what he’d just written. They got fed up with us because we were in that shop every week, playing their guitars. Then we’d buy one plectrum and leave.’

The Bulsara/Smith songwriting team came close to finishing just one composition. Intriguingly, Chris remembers it as a piece called ‘The Cowboy Song’. The opening line was: ‘Mama just killed a man …’ Seven years later, those words would form the opening line of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. Smith: ‘When I first heard “Bohemian Rhapsody”, I actually thought, “Oh, Freddie’s finished the song.”’

In Harrogate, a local R&B covers band had hired Smith after they’d heard him practising the organ in a church near to their rehearsal space. In London, Chris was still studying church organ as part of his music degree. Three or four evenings a week he would practise at a church in Acton. ‘Sometimes Fred would ask to go with me,’ says Smith. ‘He’d offer to turn the pages of the sheet
music while I was playing. Or that was the idea. Once we got there and I’d been playing quietly for a while, he’d start … “Go on, Chris. Do ‘Gimme Some Loving’ … Do ‘Gimme Some Loving’.”’ Eventually Smith would relent and start pounding out the Spencer Davis Group hit while ‘Freddie started jumping around the empty church, going mad and doing his poses’.

Freddie’s desperation had become almost tangible by this stage. One morning, Smith encountered him sitting at his desk, his eyes glazed. ‘So I put my hand in front and said, “Come on Fred, you’re miles away.” He just looked up and said, “I am going to be mega! You have no idea how
mega
I am going to be!” I said, “Oh yeah, as mega as Hendrix?” “Oh, yes.” I was like, “Well, good luck with that one.”’

Every Tuesday, the college would host lunchtime concerts, where bands with at least one foot on the ladder would perform to a student audience. These gigs were a godsend for the would-be ‘megastar’. ‘Tim, Freddie and I would go down to the entrance to meet the groups,’ remembers Smith. ‘We’d tell them we were from the Student Union, a complete fabrication. We’d just help carry in their gear and hang out, see what they’d tell us, see what we could learn. It was bands like Tyrannosaurus Rex, Savoy Brown, Chicken Shack … ’

Earlier that year, on 29 April 1969, as Smile were signing to Mercury Records, Fred and Chris had encountered David Bowie at one of the lunchtime sessions. ‘This little Renault pulled up and out he came,’ says Smith. ‘Bowie had this little WEM PA column, an acoustic guitar, a tape recorder and a mic stand.’ Once inside the college’s amphitheatre, Bowie was far from happy. ‘He was like, “There’s no stage!”’ Chris Smith, David Bowie, just two months shy of having his breakthrough hit ‘Space Oddity’, and the future Freddie Mercury set about pushing tables together to build a stage.

Meanwhile, the objects of Freddie’s jealousy were still waiting for their big break. Smile’s single, ‘Earth/Step On Me’, snuck out in the US in August but disappeared. Despite failing to promote the single, Mercury were still making vague noises about an album or, possibly, an EP. In September, Smile went into Kingsway’s De Lane Lea studios, with a producer, the late Fritz Freyer, to cut two original
songs and one cover. ‘Blag’ was a blood-and-thunder rocker, instrumentally in the spirit of Cream’s ‘N.S.U.’ or Deep Purple’s ‘Wring That Neck’; ‘Polar Bear’ was a bluesy soft-rock shuffle, while the dainty ballad ‘April Lady’ (written by one Stanley Lucas) had been suggested by the record company. Whatever their shortcomings, though, the distinct harmonies and May’s snazzy guitar lines flit in and out of the songs like snapshots of the future. Staffell’s keening voice is also only a few steps removed from Freddie Mercury’s on Queen’s earliest recordings. In the end, Smile’s EP never appeared, and Mercury shelved the recordings for nearly fifteen years, only cashing in when Queen were in their pomp.

Yet Smile would have another recording session that month, which, unbeknown to them, would have lasting consequences. Terry Yeadon had been a club DJ in his native Blackburn before moving to London and a job as a maintenance engineer at Pye Studios. One night he ran into a student who remembered him from his club days and told him about a band called Smile. ‘She said she was going out with the guitarist,’ says Yeadon now. ‘She said the band were good and persuaded me to go and see them. For once, I thought, “OK, why not?”’

Terry is uncertain, but there is some suggestion that was Christine Mullen, Brian’s girlfriend and future first wife, who’d buttonholed him that night. Christine had family in the north of England, but was now in London studying at Kensington’s Maria Assumpta teacher training college where she became friends with Roger Taylor’s girlfriend. Christine and Brian had initially met at a Smile show.

Keen to ‘have a go in the studio myself’, Terry Yeadon arranged a session for Smile late one night in Pye’s Studio 2. Terry and Pye’s disc-cutting engineer Geoff Calvar oversaw the ‘illicit session’, producing half a dozen acetates of ‘Step On Me’ and ‘Polar Bear’, finishing just before the morning shift began. ‘I remember Geoff and I were taken with the fact that they were writing their own stuff, which was still unusual for bands back then,’ says Yeadon. ‘Smile were still rough around the edges, especially Roger, but Brian was exceptionally good, even then. After we were done, they were like, “What do you think? Can you do anything for us?” But
we didn’t have any experience of placing bands. I was hoping I could have a career in producing, which is why I offered them the session. It was a selfish thing. I wanted some practice.’ Thinking no more of it, Terry gave Smile their acetates. The band now had a top-quality audition tape with which to approach record companies. Yeadon would come back into Brian’s and Roger’s lives two years later, but for now, he says, ‘I thought that was the end of it. I didn’t expect to see them again.’

The Kensington can still be found on the corner of Elsham Road and Russell Gardens; a short stagger from Kensington Olympia, a longer trawl from Shepherd’s Bush and Holland Park. It’s now a gentrified bar and grill with branded canopy, lunchtime menus and ‘free wireless internet access’ for all. In 1969, the Kensington Tavern was just another London pub, a boxy, smoke-filled watering hole with an upstairs function room for jazz groups, and a clientele of local workers and students spilling in from rented digs, nearby colleges and the fashion hubs of the Portobello and Kensington markets.

By 1969, Smile and their extended entourage had been frequenting the Kensington for more than a year. That summer Freddie Bulsara graduated from Ealing with a diploma in art (his thesis was based on Jimi Hendrix), but he had other ideas regarding a future career. In the Kensington one night, Fred saw Chris Smith walking in, and put his head in his hands, feigning despair. When asked what was troubling him, Fred replied, ‘I’m never gonna be a pop star.’ Chris’s response was straight out of a Tony Hancock comedy routine: ‘You’ve got to be a pop star, Freddie, you’ve told everyone now.’ To which Fred stood up, very slowly, before raising his hands above his head in an exultant gesture. ‘I am not going to be a pop star,’ he announced. ‘I am going to be … a … legend!’ Finally, after two long years, a chance meeting in the Kensington would bring him a tiny step closer to fulfilling that dream.

Ibex were a trio from St Helens in the northwest of England, made up of guitarist Mike Bersin, drummer Mick ‘Miffer’ Smith
and bass guitarist John ‘Tupp’ Taylor. Just like 1984 and The Reaction, the band had met at school, in this case Wade Deacon Grammar School in Widnes. Taylor and Bersin had started out playing soul covers in a five-piece called Colour. By 1966, and under the overpowering influence of Clapton and Hendrix, the pair had separated from their bandmates. ‘They were older guys very set in their ways,’ explains ‘Tupp’ Taylor, ‘and Mike and I were into blues and progressive rock.’ They found a sympathetic drummer in ‘Miffer’ who suggested a name change to Ibex. (‘What is an ibex?’ ponders Taylor. ‘I think it’s an African antelope. But that name only came about because “Miffer” once said, “I’m so hungry I could eat an ibex.” And we were like, “Right, that’s the name of the band.”’)

In May, Ibex sent their demo tape to BBC Radio 1 DJ Stuart Henry and The Beatles’ newly launched Apple Records label. The Beatles connection was enough to gain them a splash of publicity in the
Widnes Evening News
(‘Ibex’s philosophy – blues is not music, it’s a way of life’), but Apple never made an offer. After a couple of local gigs and with a few months to spare before college and work commitments kicked in, Ibex, joined by their seventeen-year-old schoolfriend Ken Testi, decided to try their luck in London.

‘We thought we’d go there and get famous,’ remebers Ken Testi. ‘Give it a few months and see what happened.’ Testi already had a driving licence and previous experience of promoting school dances in and around Widnes. He was naturally gifted as an organiser, and had fallen easily into the role of unofficial Ibex manager-roadie-chauffeur. ‘Ken was always very resourceful,’ says Taylor. ‘He sent the tape to Apple and Stuart Henry. We got some recognition in the Liverpool area, but then, nothing, so it was time for London.’

Crucially, Testi’s girlfriend, Helen McConnell, was in the capital, sharing a flat with her older sister, Pat, who was at the Maria Assumpta college. ‘Very sportingly Pat agreed to let half of us stay at her flat in Sinclair Road, just behind the Olympia,’ explains Testi, ‘while the other half were farmed out to another friend of hers, Ann McCormick, who was renting a place in Patoumb Gardens off the Shepherds Bush Road.’

The day after they arrived, and keen to get hustling, Testi parked
Ibex’s Comma van by a public telephone box, took out his list of numbers and started cold-calling record companies. ‘I rung up Chrysalis Records and asked to speak to Chris Ellis. The woman on the end of the line was like, “Yes, this
is
Chrysalis.” We didn’t have a clue.’ In hindsight, Ibex’s timing could have been better. Many students had gone home for the summer and the lucrative London college gig circuit was lying fallow.

Through knowing Brian May’s and Roger Taylor’s girlfriends at Maria Assumpta, Pat McConnell had seen Smile play at Imperial College. A couple of days before her twenty-first birthday, she chose to celebrate by paying a visit to Smile’s local, the Kensington Tavern. (Ken Testi: ‘The reason being she’s seen Smile and thinks they’re quite cute and would like to meet them … especially Roger.’) The Ibex/Smile rendezvous took place that night. Flitting around on the fringes that night was Freddie Bulsara, looking sharp in a tiny fur jacket. Like Roger Taylor in his Granny Takes a Trip threads, Fred already resembled a rock star. ‘We felt like Northern hicks next to them,’ laughs Testi. Smile seemed to have achieved so much already: a recording session, support slots to Yes and Family … ‘Then they told us about this deal with Mercury Records, so we were even more impressed.’

‘Brian was very, very polite,’ remembers Mike Bersin, ‘and Roger was a poser, in the nicest possible way.’ At closing time the party continued at Pat’s Sinclair Road flat. Unable to stop himself, Brian picked up Mike Bersin’s unplugged guitar and started to play. ‘Brian was sat there cross-legged on the floor,’ continues Testi. ‘I thought I had a handle on guitarists. I’d seen all the black blues guys who toured in the sixties, I’d seen everyone that had been through John Mayall’s band … but when Brian started playing I thought I’d just missed a chapter. It was that special.’