While the band recorded in the early hours and pored over the contracts during the day, their regular live gigs ground to a halt. Following their March concert at Forest Hill Hospital, Queen would not play again ‘live’ until November and would only play two more gigs in the whole of 1972. John Anthony wanted them to lay low and then come back with a sound that could enable them to play bigger venues.
‘Why bother with tiny clubs?’ he said.11
At the outset, John Anthony agreed to produce the recordings with Queen and Roy Thomas Baker, but Anthony was forced to leave the process when he was diagnosed with an illness, leaving Roy to cope with the eager – and stubbornly knowledgeable – musicians by himself. ‘They turned out to be every bit as good – and demanding – as we’d anticipated,’ Norman Sheffield, head of Trident, recalled. ‘Things had to be one hundred per cent right, otherwise they wouldn’t be happy. They’d spend days and nights working on the harmonies. Arguments would start about the tiniest little detail. They’d start screaming, shouting and chucking things. Sometimes it would blow over in a few minutes, but at other times they would stew on it, not talking to each other for a day or two. They’d always sort it out, however. It wasn’t personal; it was about the work.’12
While Queen were infuriating everyone at the recording studios, Trident were still seeking a recording and distribution deal for the band. But the news coming back from Jack Nelson’s discussions with record companies in the US wasn’t encouraging: ‘They all told me that Queen just weren’t going to happen,’ Jack said.13
Throughout the summer and autumn of 1972, Queen spent the early hours recording their debut album. All the tracks were written either by Brian or Freddie. While Brian’s songs were more conventionally structured, Freddie’s compositions were naturally eccentric, as Brian remembers: ‘Freddie wrote in strange keys. Most guitar bands play in A or E, and probably D and G, but beyond that there’s not much. Most of our stuff, particularly Freddie’s songs, was in oddball keys that his fingers naturally seemed to go to: E-flat, F, A-flat. They’re the last things you want to be playing on a guitar, so as a guitarist you’re forced to find new chords. Freddie’s songs were so rich in chord structures.’14
‘I have no set rules for writing a song. It’s haphazard,’ Freddie would say. ‘Some songs come faster than others. I never sit down at the piano and say, “Right, I’ve got to write a song now.” No. I feel a few things out and get some ideas about them and then I begin. It’s hard to explain but there are always various ideas going through my head.’15
Away from songwriting, another idea swirling through Freddie’s head around this time was to create a logo for the band. He had already spent considerable time designing the look and style of the band onstage, now Queen needed something identifiable, an emblem that was distinctly theirs. Convinced there was no one else in the band who could do this – he was the only artist in the group, after all – Freddie created an impressive crest based around the zodiac signs of the four band members. Atop the ‘Q’ was a Phoenix, the bird of classical Greek mythology. As well as the crest representing each member of the band, it also imparts a sense of royalty and a majestic bearing, resembling closely the British coat of arms, a fact presumably not lost on Freddie.
In September 1972, Queen finally signed the contract with Trident, which resulted in the company paying the four band members £20 each per week, about £240 at the time of writing, as well as trying to get them the best recording and distribution deal for their Trident recordings. Jack Nelson was continuing, without much success, to get an overseas label interested and, by now, Roger and John had finished their studies and Brian had abandoned, at least for the time being, his PhD thesis at Imperial College. Suddenly, they were all in the same boat as Freddie: depending upon Queen for their livelihoods. But Freddie was concerned that they might be old-fashioned and out of vogue before they had even begun: ‘There was a long gap between actually forming Queen and having a recording contract. That’s why we were so concerned about people saying, “Here comes Queen, glam rock is in, and they are following the tradition.” We never copied anyone. We were into glam rock before groups like Sweet and Bowie, and we worried that we might have come too late. Our way was to put together a different kind of theatrical music.’16
Despite the tracks for their debut album recorded and in the can, nothing seemed to be happening for Queen. All four bandmates were beginning to get increasingly frustrated. Brian May recalls, ‘going on the number 9 bus up to town every day with Freddie to pummel the company into doing something because we felt that the album had gone cold. Groups like Nazareth were all over the radio and we couldn’t get our foot in the door.’17
Trident set up two showcase gigs for the band, inviting executives and A&R reps from as many record companies as their contacts book allowed. The first gig, at The Pheasantry Pub on the King’s Road, was plagued by problems with the PA equipment and no offers were forthcoming. The second gig, supporting Sparks at The Marquee in London on 20th December 1972, showcased their growing confidence and charismatic energy. Their set was well appreciated by the crowd, but despite an increasingly dynamic show, they remained unsigned.
However, 1973 would see the fortunes of Queen begin to turn.
13
While attending the MIDEM Festival at the beginning of 1973, a music networking event in Cannes, Roy Featherstone, a top executive at EMI (the label who had already turned down Queen in the US when they were offered as part of a package) happened to hear the demo tape of Queen. Liking what he heard, he got in touch with Trident immediately and requested a meeting with the band. In the meantime, Queen had accepted their first recording session with the BBC for their Radio 1 programme, Sounds of the Seventies. They wouldn’t get paid for the session but the publicity and exposure were priceless.
Ten days later the sessions were broadcast on Radio 1 and such was the response from the listening public to the songs ‘My Fairy King’, ‘Keep Yourself Alive’, ‘Liar’ and ‘Doing Alright’ that EMI decided to speed up the process of signing the band. As a result, in March 1973, EMI, the company who had turned the band down once already, finally signed Queen to their label. A month later, Jack Nelson had persuaded Jack Holsten of Elektra in the US to sign Queen. Suddenly, the band had a recording deal that covered not only the UK and Europe, but the US too.
However, the first single released on EMI wasn’t a Queen single, but a song Freddie had recorded during some downtime at Trident Studios while Queen were recording their album. Engineer Robin Geoffrey Cable had been working in an adjoining studio on his own version of The Beach Boys’ ‘I Can Hear Music’. Before long he had cajoled Freddie into providing the vocals and soon Roger and Brian were joining in on drums and guitar. The recording lay dormant for a few months before Cable persuaded EMI to release it. Unable to use the Queen name, EMI decided to spoof Gary Glitter, who was extremely popular during that period, and so named the ‘artist’ Larry Lurex. The single flopped, however, failing to chart in the UK and reaching 115 in the US.
Two weeks later, on 16th July 1973, Queen’s first official single, ‘Keep Yourself Alive’, written by May, was released. However, with Radio 1 turning down the song on five occasions and mixed reviews from the music press, the single was largely ignored and flopped on both sides of the Atlantic. In doing so it became the only Queen single never to chart in the UK. With such a disastrous debut single, it was vital that Queen’s album was a success.
Released on 13th July 1973 the album, titled Queen, received varying reviews. Rolling Stone said: ‘There’s no doubt that this funky, energetic English quartet has all the tools they’ll need to lay claim to the Zep’s abdicated heavy-metal throne, and beyond that to become a truly influential force in the rock world. Their debut album is superb.’1 New Musical Express, however, called it a ‘bucket of urine’. To Queen’s disappointment, initial sales were very slow, which only increased Freddie’s anxiety as, unlike the others, he had no university education to fall back on. One of Freddie’s