Is This The Real Life? (19 page)

Lou Reed was in Trident recording his
Transformer
album that summer with David Bowie in the producer’s chair. ‘We’d get a call confirming that Bowie or someone had finished early, so we’d get the 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. spot, when the cleaners came in,’ grumbled Brian May. ‘Literally, they’d be coming up the stairs and we’d be coming down the stairs,’ remembered Roger Taylor. In a waggish moment, Bowie later told one interviewer that Mercury had asked him to produce Queen’s first album; a rumour since denied by the band.

Bowie’s presence at Trident was a particular thorn in their sides. Queen may have been huge Bowie fans, but were already fretting about their lack of a record deal and wider recognition, and that others, Bowie included, might gazump them. In July, Mercury and Taylor drove to Aylesbury in Roger’s Mini to watch Bowie
debuting his Ziggy Stardust alter-ego onstage at the Friars club. ‘The first time I’d seen him was at Friars during the
Hunky Dory
era,’ said Taylor. ‘And he’d been dressed as a woman! Then we went to see him again and, at first, all we could see were silhouettes of the band onstage, with these alien haircuts.’ A month later, a gloomy May watched Bowie at the Rainbow Theatre: ‘I thought, “He’s done it, he’s made his mark and we’re still struggling to get a record out.”’

Queen recorded their first album in fits and starts that summer. But before long John Anthony was out of the picture. ‘I was already recording Home and Al Stewart, and would arrive at Trident at two or three in the morning … I was doing all this in the middle of the Queen stuff.’ One night, Anthony collapsed in the studio. He was diagnosed with mononucleosis, a strand of the Epstein-Barr virus, and ordered to rest. ‘I went to Greece to eat good food, and not drink alcohol, and recuperate. So Roy took over.’

Roy Thomas Baker had started out as an apprentice engineer at Decca, before joining Trident as a staffer in 1969. He’d helped engineer hits such as T-Rex’s ‘Get It On (Bang A Gong)’ and Free’s ‘Alright Now’. Fellow engineers at Trident included his Neptune Productions partner Robin Geoffrey Cable and Bowie’s regular collaborator Ken Scott; all three would have a hand in Queen’s debut. But they weren’t alone. ‘Everybody who was hanging around, including myself, was roped in to tape-operating,’ says Glen Phimister, then Trident’s apprentice tape op and teaboy. As a sign of Trident’s belief in the band, Phimister recalls one story doing the rounds, that ‘Trident had turned down a Diana Ross recording session … so Queen could do more demos.’

Despite their lowly position, Queen made their feelings known and squabbled with their paymasters over the miking of the guitar amps and drums. ‘We wanted everything to sound like it was in the room, in your face,’ Brian May told
Mojo
magazine. ‘We had this incredible fight to get the drums out of the drum booth and into the middle of the studio, and to put the mics all around the room.’ Trident had a trademark sound, and as May explained, ‘That was the exact opposite of what we wanted to be.’

Baker’s expertise of recording classical music at Decca helped create the sound May wanted for his guitar. ‘We never thought of
Brian’s guitar as a raunchy instrument, like most guitarists do,’ the producer explained. ‘It was an orchestral instrument.’ The end result was a mellifluous, layered sound every bit as regal as the band’s name. But the producer wasn’t above, as Brian May describes it, ‘blinding us with science’. When the band claimed the drum sound was too dry, Baker reassured them that it would be taken care of in the final mix: ‘And we had this feeling that it wouldn’t be. I wouldn’t knock Roy. He did some great stuff, but we fought big battles with him.’

Ken Scott fondly remembers Queen as ‘sharp, bright and on the money’, and Freddie as ‘outrageous, even then’. Mercury’s art school pal Chris Smith attended a couple of sessions, soaking up the atmosphere and the droll humour. ‘After they did one take, Freddie turned to Roy Thomas Baker and said, “What did you think?” And he replied, “Well, I think you’re gonna be so famous soon you’re not gonna want to talk to me.”’ At Trident, Mercury’s camp affectations became infectious. Before long, Baker was following Fred’s lead, and, as one Trident staffer recalled, ‘suddenly everyone was mincing around, calling each other “dearie”.’ Later, one of the rejected titles for Queen’s debut album would be
Dearie
Me
, an homage to Baker’s favourite catchphrase of the time.

Evidence of the tug-of-war between Queen and Trident can be heard on the finished album. Dissatisfied with a new take of ‘The Night Comes Down’, Queen insisted on sticking with the version they’d cut at De Lane Lea. Another song, ‘Mad the Swine’, was excised from the album completely after Baker and the band failed to agree on the final mix. Even after the album was completed, Baker and May would insist on another mixing session to iron out what they both felt were further imperfections. Said May: ‘Between Roy and I, we were fighting the whole time to find a place where we had the perfection but also the reality of performance and sound.’

However, John Anthony recalls the final mix differently: ‘When I returned from Greece everyone was bummed. The first thing that struck me was that the mix of the album was very schizophrenic, and the sequencing was all wrong,’ he says. ‘Roy had gone away, so Freddie, Brian and I came in and we remixed most of it.’

Also present was Mike Stone, recently promoted from Trident runner/tea-boy. Stone had been on the verge of getting fired, according to John Anthony’, until the producer intervened: ‘I said to Mike, “We have to make this sound like a live record.” So I put all the faders to zero and mixed the album like a live gig. I wanted it to show the balls and the energy of Queen’s live show.’

For Anthony, one of the biggest problems was the version of ‘Keep Yourself Alive’. ‘They’d overdubbed on the wrong backing track. It sounded like it had been done at four in the morning, especially Roger’s drumming. So we re-recorded all the backing tracks and re-sequenced it.’ Mike Stone was present, and, according to Brian May, his mix of ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ was chosen for the final album. ‘We got on brilliantly with Mike and soon realised that he had the best ears in the building,’ claimed May. It was the beginning of a working relationship that would endure for the next six years and a further five Queen albums.

Queen may now complain about some aspects of their debut album (Taylor, inevitably: ‘I don’t like the drum sound’), but it retains a boyish energy, a naivety even, which they would never quite have again. With their orchestral guitars, paint-peeling harmonies and vocal gymnastics, ‘Great King Rat’, ‘Liar’ and ‘Son and Daughter’ blueprinted the Queen sound. Glen Phimister recalls: ‘I had just heard this huge production with sounds going backwards and forwards and huge vocal harmonies … and, amazingly, after the first track ended, Norman [Shaffield] says, “No, I don’t think it’s overproduced at all”.’

Among the album’s oddities were ‘Jesus’, re-recorded from the De Lane Lea sessions but still as baffling, a version of Smile’s ‘Doing Alright’, which would give Tim Staffell a regular royalty cheque for life and a 1.10-minute segment of ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’, that would appear in full on the next album. May and Mercury were especially prolific that summer and had written several new songs which they were itching to record. No sooner was the first album finished then it was, in Queen’s mind, out of date. The liner notes on the album’s back cover would say as much: ‘Representing at least something of what Queen’s music has been over the last three years.’

During the first album sessions, Freddie Mercury had also been
asked to record something on his own. Robin Geoffrey Cable had been fooling around in one of the Trident studios trying to cut his own version of The Beach Boys’ hit ‘I Can Hear Music’. Cable had heard Mercury in full flight with Queen and thought he’d be ideal. Straight away, Fred began making suggestions: Why not do this? Why not do that? Before long, Taylor and May were also playing on the track. The fruits of their labours, plus a second song – ‘Goin’ Back’ featuring just Freddie – would be released a year later as an EMI single, under the name Larry Lurex (a spoof on the then popular glam-rocker Gary Glitter). The single bombed, but preempted Queen’s debut single by a fortnight.

While the Sheffields were swift to spot musical potential, they were cut from a very different cloth to their artists. John Anthony and Barry Sheffield’s ruse to dress like a couple of heavies at Queen’s showcase gig tapped into the glaring difference between the Sheffields and their bands. David Bowie’s producer Tony Visconti, remembering the brothers in 2010, described them ‘as being like something out of the Wild West’. As songwriter and Queen’s Trident contemporary Mark Ashton explains now, ‘Barry and Norman were tough guys, very old school.’ In a prescient move, the Sheffields had also set up a film and video company Trident Video Productions. ‘I did a video with Norman and I always remember him shouting from the wings, “For fuck’s sake, how much is this costing us?”’ laughs Ashton. ‘They were very professional people but you did not mess around with them.’

In September, Trident offered Queen a weekly wage of £20 each. ‘That was the first bone of contention,’ remembers John Anthony, ‘because they wanted their sound engineer [John Harris] on a wage as well. I said, “No way. If you want him, you pay him.”’ Queen hadn’t played a gig in months, and were still managing themselves. The 18 September 1972 issue of the underground magazine
International Times
carried a classified ad that month which read: ‘The Queen! Wants gigs! Rock! Phone Roger 428 5617 after 7 p.m.’ In the meantime, Taylor graduated with his degree in biology, and Deacon did the same in electronics (though he would remain at college to study for an MSc). May, meanwhile, was still caught between finishing his thesis, full-time teaching and playing in the
band. To the shock of his colleagues, he handed in his notice at Stockwell Manor. Similar disappointment would follow at Imperial College. May’s PhD thesis was, in the words of his professor, ‘one last push’ away from completion. ‘I had it typed up and waiting to be bound,’ recalled Brian. ‘I showed it to my supervisor, who said I should spend another couple of months on it. Which I did. Then I took it back and he started going on again. And I thought, “This is as far as it goes.” The band was happening, and I remember thinking, “If I don’t quit this and give the group a chance, I’ll end up regretting it.”’

‘I think Brian fretted a lot about giving up his job and his studies,’ offers John Anthony. ‘I remember sitting in The Ship with him and Roger, and he’d been offered the chance to go somewhere and study the stars, and I came out with something ridiculous like, “Look, Brian, you can study the stars or you can be one!” Roger fell about laughing.’

With their album recorded, Trident’s plan was to shop Queen to potential record companies as part of a package deal with two of their other artists, Irish singer-songwriter Eugene Wallace, who was being touted as the next Joe Cocker, and Headstone, a group formed by Mark Ashton, until recently the drummer with Rare Bird, who’d had a hit in 1969 with ‘Sympathy’. Both Headstone and Wallace had recorded their respective debuts,
Bad Habits
and
Dangerous
, at Trident. ‘It really wasn’t that unusual to offer bands to a label as part of a package,’ insists John Anthony.

However, Anthony encountered the same frustration as Ken Testi, when trying to shop Queen to the major labels. ‘Roy and I took them to Island, who didn’t want to know. CBS’s guy understood the vibe but said no when I said we needed £30,000 for lights and costumes. Someone else asked me, “Is this guy a homo?” when I told them the band was called Queen …’

In the meantime, Queen’s publishing had been taken up by B. Feldman & Co., with Neptune Productions taking a cut. ‘Feldman’s had Deep Purple’s publishing,’ says Anthony, ‘so I knew they could promote a hard rock band.’ In Feldman’s managing director Ronnie Beck, Queen found a staunch ally. In the meantime, the Sheffields had bought in an American, Jack Nelson, to help secure
Queen a record deal and a business manager. Before long, though, Nelson would take on the manager’s job himself. In November, Queen officially signed with Trident, who arranged a showcase for them at the Pheasantry, a fashionable pub on the Kings Road, which had once housed the Russian Dance Academy. Despite the louche surroundings and the best efforts of Trident and Feldman’s, not one A&R man turned up. Despite this, there were still some interested parties. But Jack Nelson had succeeded in keeping EMI’s head of A&R Joop Visser interested.

When Feldman’s were later taken over by EMI Music Publishing, Queen inched even closer to the record company. Nelson was also on the cusp of securing a deal for the band in North America. Three drafts of a contract for Queen had been drawn up with CBS. Then the managing director of Elektra Records, Jac Holzman, (past success stories: Love and The Doors) heard Queen’s tape and was stunned. ‘Everything was there, like a perfectly cut diamond landing on your desk,’ he said.

John Anthony had previously worked with Jac Holzman with the band Lindisfarne: ‘Jac had said if I ever had a band, I should call him.’ Anthony says that he was instrumental in bringing Queen to Holzman’s attention. However, interviewed now, Jack Nelson recalls that ‘on my way to Carmel, California, from London, I stopped in New York and gave Jac Holzman a copy and told him that I was already in negotiations with CBS.’ Interviewed in 1998 for Holzman’s book,
Follow the Music
, Nelson recalled that the CBS deal stalled over a technicality, giving Holzman the chance to start hustling. ‘Jac called me from Los Angeles … Japan … Australia and said, “I’ve got to have them.”’ In the meantime, Nelson began to doubt just how closely CBS’s A&R team had listened to his act: ‘One of their guys called Queen ‘one of the best country bands’ he’d listened to in a long time. That made me extremely nervous.’

Trident arranged another showcase gig, on 20 December at the Marquee, opening for exiled American art-rockers Sparks. Jac Holzman flew in from the US but was, he later wrote, ‘dreadfully disappointed. I saw nothing onstage to match the power on the tape. But the music was still there.’ Joop Visser was similarly unimpressed, but tentatively agreed to a production deal with
Queen, via Ronnie Beck, though Visser baulked at the ‘five-figure’ advance requested. Sparks, meanwhile, made a note of Queen’s hotshot guitarist and would offer him a job later.