Freddie was already putting his stamp on Queen, not only as a songwriter, but also as a leader. He was the frontman on-stage, and his demand that the person who wrote the lyrics essentially wrote the song shows a man who wanted to be the frontman behind the scenes as well. Again, given his perceived intellectual inadequacy, these demands may have been an attempt to justify himself within the group; if he couldn’t compete with Brian, Roger and John intellectually, then he could at least surpass them artistically. As Freddie said: ‘I’m the only one in the band from the artistic field. The others are all scientists.’4
Queen left the sessions with a high-quality demo reel that they hoped would attract some attention from record companies. Financially, all four band members were getting increasingly desperate and Freddie was relying on any money he could earn working at Kensington Market supplemented only by whatever Mary earned. To make matters worse, the band had one solitary gig lined up for the first part of 1972, at Bedford College, which was organised by John Deacon and attended by only six people, and this lack of exposure threatened to undo all of the hard work Queen had done over the previous months slogging around the concert circuit gaining valuable exposure.
One of the producers passing through De Lea Lane as Queen were recording was Roy Thomas Baker. One of John Anthony’s partners in the newly formed Neptune Productions, he was immediately impressed when he heard ‘Keep Yourself Alive’, so much so that he asked to take the demo away with him. Another figure keen on the sound of Queen was Ken Testi, the original Ibex manager, who was back on the scene in London, eager to carve out a career for himself in music management. Testi trudged around the A&R departments of major record companies on behalf of Queen and managed to get a few appointments for Freddie and Brian to accompany him to try to get a deal for the band.
Despite Freddie’s confidence and the professional demo, no one they met would commit to Queen, including EMI who, years later, would sign them as part of a multi-million pound deal. That was until Charisma Records made them an offer of £25,000, the equivalent to roughly £230,000 at the time of writing, an astronomical sum to four struggling musicians in London. After sleeping on the offer, Queen stunned Charisma by turning it down citing reasons as diverse as not wanting to play second fiddle to Genesis (who were also on the label), needing a substantial investment to upgrade their equipment, which wouldn’t be covered by this figure and, perhaps most tellingly and illustrative of their blind faith and confidence in themselves, they felt Charisma were not one of the major labels of the music industry.
‘The moment we made a demo we were aware of the sharks,’ said Freddie. ‘We had such amazing offers from people saying, “We’ll make you the next T-Rex,” but we were very, very careful not to jump straight in. We went to probably every record company before we finally settled on one. We didn’t want to be treated like an ordinary band. We approached it that way because we were not prepared to be out-of-work musicians, ever. We said, “Either take us on as a serious commodity or don’t take us at all.” ’5
It was an astonishing show of confidence by Freddie and the band, and one that always had the potential to backfire. They had exhausted almost every record company and yet turned down the one major offer they had. All they could do in the short term was go back to gigging around London.
Meanwhile, Freddie spent his days working in Alan Mair’s shop and any spare time was spent starting to experiment with the way he looked on stage. One of the people he worked with on Kensington Market was Wendy Edmonds, and she recalls the lengths to which Freddie would go in early 1972 to stylise his on-stage appearance: ‘Freddie knew how to sew. He was pretty good so, for example, he’d at least sew on sequins himself. Then I made him these wrap-around tops to wear on-stage. He was very specific about what he wanted and he’d ask me to copy things. So he had these little women’s ballet tops, crossover things, and he’d give me the stretch velvet and say “Can you copy this?” ’6
Behind the scenes, without Queen knowing, Roy Thomas Baker and John Anthony were becoming excited by the demo of ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ that they had in their possession. They took it to Norman and Barry Sheffield, two brothers who had opened Trident Studios in the heart of Soho and who also operated a management company. Norman Sheffield found the tape interesting but wasn’t prepared to commit to signing them immediately. However, he was persuaded to go and watch them play live to see if that might sway his decision.
Accompanied by his brother, Norman travelled to the next Queen gig, which happened to be a hospital dance being held at Forest Hill Hospital. Unbeknown to the Sheffield brothers, Tony Stratton-Smith of Charisma Records had also turned up as well, convinced he could get Queen to change their mind and sign with Charisma, the band having previously rejected his £25,000 offer.
Aware of what might be riding on their performance, Queen performed their set perfectly and the Sheffield brothers were thrilled by what they saw, remembers John Anthony, who had joined them at the gig: ‘We watched the gig and Barry couldn’t believe it when they did Shirley Bassey’s “Big Spender”. Straight away, he was like, “Right, we have to sign them!” ’7
A couple of weeks later, Queen walked into Norman Sheffield’s office at Trident Studios in Soho to negotiate a deal, having totally dismissed Charisma. To Norman, the four band members were an intriguing mix: ‘Roger Taylor was a really good-looking kid, with long blond hair and charm. Brian May was tall, with a mane of curls and a little introverted but clearly very intelligent. The bass player, John Deacon, was also quiet. I could tell right away that the fourth member was going to be high maintenance. He [Freddie] was charming, acted a bit shy and reserved at times and spoke in quite a posh, mannered voice. When he relaxed he had a very sharp sense of humour and spoke at a hundred miles an hour. Freddie apparently had a girlfriend but we were pretty certain he was gay. I agreed to offer the Queenies, as we christened them, a loose kind of arrangement. There were times when the studio was “dark”, usually at 2am. So we said: “We’ll give you this downtime in the studio to see what you can do.” ’8
But even at this early stage, despite a contract being on the table, Freddie and the rest of Queen were keen to have some control over the negotiations. They weren’t simply prepared, as they had shown with Charisma, to agree to the first thing on offer and so negotiated three separate agreements to cover publishing rights, the recording deal, and the management contract. Trident agreed to their demands and even bought the band new instruments, a brand new PA system, and found them a manager, Jack Nelson. But for the time being the contract remained unsigned, and would do so for another seven months.
Freddie himself was keen for the agreement with Trident to be exactly what they wanted: ‘It’s not just a question of having a recording contract and that’s it, it’s not all going to be peaches and cream. You have to keep in check all of the things that are going on. Talent isn’t just about being a good musician, these days. It’s about being aware. It’s vital to do the whole thing properly. Talent is not just writing good songs and performing them, it’s having a business brain, because that’s a major part of it – to get the music across properly and profit from it. You use all the tricks of the trade and if you believe in yourself, you’ll go all the way.’9
Part of the Trident deal was that Queen were able to use the prestigious Trident Studios to record tracks for their debut album, for which Trident would secure recording and distribution deals with a major label. But the downside was that the band could only use the studios’ facilities during what is known in the industry as ‘Dark Time’, that is when no other artists were working in the studio and, unfortunately for Queen, the studios were so popular that this generally meant they could only get in during slots starting at 11pm or 2am.
While Queen were recording at night, during the day Trident were trying to secure recording and distribution deals for the band, but nothing was forthcoming. Even in the US, Jack Nelson’s attempts to get Queen a deal with EMI were scuppered when, about to make an offer, EMI backed off after they learned the band had to come as part of a Trident