Queen: The Complete Works (6 page)

Their next bassist was Doug Fogie, and a popular myth has been built up about his brief stint with the band: according to legend, he successfully upstaged the others by jumping around and showing off in an unbecoming manner, resulting in his prompt dismissal. John S. Stuart, a Queen collector and expert, refutes the tale: “Unfortunately, the mythological story that he stole the limelight from the rest of the band is just not true. The real story is that he filled in for a few gigs (not just the one-off slot that some biographies would have us believe), and the genuine reason for his departure is that he had to sit university exams. Remember, ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ was a part-time lifestyle, and Queen were no more than a pub band. Investing in his future, [Doug] decided to take his studies seriously and sit his finals. This caused a huge rift in the band: either he put the band first or his ‘career’. He chose the latter.

“Dougie lives and works as a film/TV producer in the Lothian area, and with hindsight regrets his decision to leave the band, but as he explained, ‘One must do what one believes to be the right thing at the time, and if with hindsight it was not the right thing to do, then you have to live the rest of your life with that decision. But you cannot live in the past, and you have to move forward with your life.’”

Still determined to find the perfect bass player, the band auditioned a series of candidates until Roger, Brian and their road manager, John Harris, were introduced to a young bassist named John Deacon in a Chelsea disco. After he had met Roger and Brian, they asked him if he would like to audition for the band; John duly showed up a few days into February 1971 at Imperial College, Queen’s regular rehearsal locale and Brian’s alma mater, and the others felt an instant connection with their new bassist. Said Roger later, “We thought he was great. We were all so used to each other, and were so over the top, we thought that because he was quiet he would fit in with us without too much upheaval. He was a great bass player, too – and the fact that he was a wizard with electronics was definitely a deciding factor!” John had brought along an amp of his own making, later dubbed the Deakey amp, which he initially used for his own bass but later gave to Brian to create the unique, warm sound present on most of Queen’s recordings. “We just knew he was the right one, even though he was so quiet,” Brian would say of John. “He hardly spoke to us at all.”

Once John had been established as the fourth member of the group, the band began the task of trying to interest record companies in signing them to a label. Lack of funds prevented them from recording the few songs they had written in order to present them to prospective record companies, until in the winter of 1971 Brian met up with his friend Terry Yeadon, who was involved in setting up a new recording studio called De Lane Lea Music Centre, a new studio built for music recording – the actual De Lane Lea Studios was intended mostly for film dubbing. The management were looking for musicians to test out the equipment that had been installed, and Terry asked Brian if he was interested in helping. When the issue of cost arose, Brian was informed that De Lane Lea would record them for free as payment for being test musicians. It was an offer he quickly accepted.

In December 1971, Queen entered the recording studio for the first time to record five tracks: Brian’s ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ and ‘The Night Comes Down’, and Freddie’s ‘Great King Rat’, ‘Liar’ and ‘Jesus’; Louis Austin recorded the band, while Martin Birch, who would later earn recognition as producer of Rainbow and Deep Purple, was the engineer. The band knew
exactly how they wanted the material to be presented and, according to Austin, “were very fussy. The songs were done one by one. They would carry on until they thought it was right. It sometimes took a very long time. But they put up with so much shit too during that time.”

Brian and John still worked diligently on their college courses while Roger and Freddie continued to maintain the Kensington clothes stall, though Roger had started to become restless there and tendered his resignation in the autumn of 1971. He, too, had college courses, though he wasn’t a serious student and had chosen to specialize in dentistry merely on a whim (he later switched his major to biology for the grant money it offered). So, dividing his time between his studies and the band, he felt like he was well on the way to becoming a rock star, and wanted to start living like one.

The band were still working on their demo tape towards the end of 1971 when John Anthony visited the studio. He had previously worked with Brian and Roger when Smile held a recording session at Trident Studios, and he was surprised at how meticulous the two had become. John had accompanied producer Roy Thomas Baker (who had previously worked on John Entwistle’s debut solo album,
Smash Your Head Against The Wall
) and both of them were given a copy of Queen’s demo tape. After a few listens, they both arrived at the same conclusion: Queen were an impressive band – it was only a matter of convincing the right people. Those people would be Norman and Barry Sheffield, managers of Trident, who were intrigued but cautious. “I found that first tape interesting,” Barry said later. “You could tell there was talent individually, and they could play, they were good musicians. But I was wary of of making a full commitment at such an early stage.”

Meanwhile, the band distributed the tape to other companies, but received few responses; those who did respond politely declined to sign them. It wasn’t until Terry Ellis, head of Chrysalis Records (home of Jethro Tull), showed an interest that they received their first offer. After much deliberation, however, the band turned it down, feeling that it fell short of their financial expectations. It was a fortunate decision: on 24 March 1972, Barry Sheffield was finally able to see the band perform live, and made the spontaneous decision to offer them a record deal. Queen were overjoyed, and when negotiations finally started in May 1972, they capitalized on the offer by insisting that three separate agreements be drafted: the publishing rights, recording deal and management contracts were to be negotiated separately. The band were taking a risk, but Trident proceeded with the deal, and three separate agreements were drawn up but not yet signed.

In terms of management, Norman Sheffield had sworn to Queen that he would personally take care of them, but now realized that such an undertaking would be too time-consuming; he didn’t feel confident enough to split his energy between two labour-intensive jobs: managing Queen and running Trident Studios. So he contacted Jack Nelson, who had been an advisor for the fledgling Trident Audio Productions. At that time, Jack had convinced Norman to set up a production company in the hope of turning it into a record company, and was therefore the first person Norman thought of when he needed managerial advice; Jack agreed to become involved with Trident based on the strength of Queen’s demo tape, which he began to shop around to managers in London. Finding little interest, Jack was advised by his friend, Dee Anthony, to instead manage the group himself.

In the summer of 1972, Jack set about the task of drumming up interest in Queen among the record labels, though he had a secondary motive too: in addition to getting Queen signed to a record deal, he had devised a package plan in which he would also sell the talents of Eugene Wallace and of Mark Ashton and Headstone. When he took the three bands’ demo tapes to EMI, the record company were interested only in Queen and not the other two. Jack argued that Trident would not compromise, that it was all or nothing, so EMI turned him down. As a consolation for Queen, who had been focusing separately on their studies during this period, Trident sent them to their recording studio to begin work on their debut album.

A. QUEEN ALBUMS

The first part of this section concentrates on studio and live albums that Queen, as a band, have released. Catalogue numbers are given in the order of original UK and US albums, followed by CD releases over the years. Overseas and specialist reissues are ignored.

QUEEN

EMI EMC 3006, July 1973 [24]

Elektra EKS 75064, September 1973 [83]

EMI CDP 7 46204 2, December 1986

Hollywood HR-610464-2, June 1991

Parlophone CDPCSD 139, 1994

Island Remasters 276 387, March 2011 [94]

‘Keep Yourself Alive’ (3’47), ‘Doing All Right’ (4’09), ‘Great King Rat’ (5’43), ‘My Fairy King’ (4’08), ‘Liar’ (6’25), ‘The Night Comes Down’ (4’23), ‘Modern Times Rock ‘n’ Roll’ (1’48), ‘Son And Daughter’ (3’21), ‘Jesus’ (3’44), ‘Seven Seas Of Rhye...’ (1’15)

Bonus tracks on 1991 Hollywood Records reissue
: ‘Mad The Swine’ (3’20), ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ (
long lost retake
) (4’03), ‘Liar’ (
remix by John Luongo and Gary Hellman
) (6’25)

Bonus tracks on 2011 Universal Records deluxe reissue
: ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ (
De Lane Lea demo, December 1971
) (3’51), ‘The Night Comes Down’ (
De Lane Lea demo, December 1971
) (4’24), ‘Great King Rat’ (
De Lane Lea demo, December 1971
) (6’09), ‘Jesus’ (
De Lane Lea demo, December 1971
) (5’06), ‘Liar’ (
De Lane Lea demo, December 1971
) (7’54), ‘Mad The Swine’ (3’22)

Bonus videos, 2011 iTunes-only editions
: ‘Son And Daughter’ (
live version, Hammersmith Odeon, December 1975
), ‘Liar’ (
live version, Rainbow Theatre, November 1974
), ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ (
promotional video
)

Musicians
: John Deacon (
bass guitar
), Brian May (
guitars, vocals, piano on ‘Doing All Right’
), Freddie Mercury (
vocals, piano, percussion, organ on ‘Liar’
), Roger Taylor (
drums, percussion, vocals, lead vocals on ‘Modern Times Rock ‘n’ Roll’
), John Anthony (
additional vocals on ‘Modern Times Rock ‘n’ Roll’
)

Recorded
: Trident Studios, London, January 1972– January 1973 (
‘The Night Comes Down’ recorded at De Lane Lea Studios, London, September–December 1971
)

Producers
: Queen, Roy Thomas Baker, John Anthony (
‘The Night Comes Down’ produced by Louis Austin
)

Among the luminaries at Trident Studios in 1972 were Elton John, David Bowie and Paul McCartney and Wings, all of whom received precedence over Queen, who were forced to work during ‘down time’. When the aforementioned stars weren’t in the studio, Queen would be able to nip in and work, usually during the late night and early morning hours; fortunately for the band, Paul McCartney would often block-book studio time for his
Red Rose Speedway
album and not show up, giving Queen the opportunity to work then instead.

It wasn’t the preferred way to work, but the band took advantage of the opportunity. It was during one of these sessions that Freddie happened to run into producer Robin Geoffrey Cable, who was elsewhere in the complex working on a re-recording of The Beach Boys’ 1969 single ‘I Can Hear Music’ (for more information, see that song’s entry in Part Three). Also during this period, Roger contributed percussion to two tracks on Al Stewart’s
Past, Present And Future
album, though he wasn’t able to recall later which songs they were; ‘Roads To Moscow’ has recently been identified as one of them.

The band were enjoying the benefits of working in a creative environment, the results of which spilled over into their arrangements. While most debut albums are typically recorded in a short span of time, with the goal of recording a band’s live presentation on vinyl with as few takes or studio frills as possible, the band had a different plan. Since they had no record deal yet, there was no urgency to finish an album; so they took their time, utilizing the studio and availing themselves of Roy Thomas Baker and John Anthony’s talents as much as they could.

Even though rehearsals started in January 1972, the sessions proper didn’t begin until later in the summer. By that time, Brian and Freddie had written an impressive set of songs and had refined existing compositions, retained from previous bands, that they felt were strong enough to record. Most of the songs were not new: ‘Liar’ started life as ‘Lover’ in Wreckage, written by Freddie and Mike Bersin, but the band saw potential in the song and encouraged Freddie to transform it into something stronger. ‘Stone Cold Crazy’, another track by Freddie from his Wreckage days, was also practised during these sessions but would remain unreleased on a studio album until it was re-recorded in 1974 for
Sheer Heart Attack
.

Brian and Freddie were writing at such a frenetic pace that many of the songs would be attempted during the summer 1972 sessions but held back for the band’s second album; among these were ‘White Queen (As It Began)’, ‘Ogre Battle’, ‘See What A Fool I’ve Been’ and a vocal version of ‘Seven Seas Of Rhye’. Three songs which have gone down in Queen history as being the most elusive unreleased studio tracks from the first album’s sessions – ‘Silver Salmon’, ‘Polar Bear’ (previously recorded by Smile) and ‘Hangman’ – were long rumoured to be unrecorded, though recent searches through the band’s archives revealed that these tracks certainly were. The existence of ‘Hangman’ has been officially denied, but a private collector has recently revealed that a 10” acetate studio recording of the song exists in his collection.

From the start, it’s surprising how articulate Freddie and Brian were, expressing so much more than the typical sex stories that bands of the day like The Rolling Stones prided themselves on. The lyric matter on Queen’s eponymous album ranges from mythical or religious stories (most by Freddie: ‘Great King Rat’, ‘My Fairy King’ and ‘Jesus’) to hopes for a rosy future (Brian’s ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ and ‘Doing All Right’) and pining for the idyllic days of an uncomplicated youth (‘The Night Comes Down’, also by Brian). In fact, the songs contain none of the pub-rock element that most debuts at the time favoured, with the exception of two tracks: Brian’s ‘Son And Daughter’ is the odd man out on the album and shows that, even at this early stage, blues was not Queen’s forte, while the preceding track, Roger’s manic ‘Modern Times Rock ‘n’ Roll’, is little more than a sound-bite, lasting just under two minutes and aping the
Sturm und Drang
of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Communication Breakdown’.