Somebody to Love. Matt Richards
changes would take place. The first was a change in the band’s name. Mike Grose remembers a discussion that took place in the garden of Ferry Road in Barnes. ‘We were in the garden just learning a number and they came up with the name of Queen – which of course was Freddie’s idea. They said to me, “What do you think?” I know it seems ridiculous today – but forty years ago if you called yourself Queen it was a bit risky really. I said, “Well, if we didn’t get arrested or anything at least people will remember us!” ’12
Freddie had been working on the name for a while and had mentioned it in passing to Sue and Pat Johnstone, two sisters from Cornwall, who had been visiting Ferry Road in 1970. ‘We would hitch a lift back to Cornwall from the start of the M4, and on one of these occasions Freddie walked us to the bus stop and said, “What do you think of the name Queen?” ’ Sue recalls. ‘We thought it was hilarious because he was always so camp. And we just laughed and thought of the gay connotation immediately, but he tried to make it more acceptable by persuading us that it was “regal”. At that point he’d already started working on the crest and the logo. He’d thought about the whole concept from the start. He had a great marketing mind, and that’s probably what swayed the others. And he usually got his way.’13
‘It was Freddie’s idea,’ remembers Roger Taylor. ‘I didn’t like the name originally and neither did Brian, but we got used to it. We thought that once we’d got established the music would then become the identity more than the name.’14
‘It’s just a name, but it’s very regal obviously, and it sounds splendid,’ Freddie would say. ‘It’s a strong name, very universal and immediate. It had a lot of visual potential and was open to all sorts of interpretations. I was certainly aware of the gay connotations, but that was just one facet of it.’15
Smile was no more. From now on the band would be known as Queen.
The second change that took place before the band’s next concert was that Freddie Bulsara would change his name, too. In the summer of 1970, Freddie Bulsara, the shy boy from Zanzibar, became Freddie Mercury, the flamboyant singer with Queen.
‘He wrote a song for the first album called “My Fairy King” and in it there’s a line that goes: “O Mother Mercury, what have you done to me?” ’ Brian May remembers. ‘And it was after that that he said to me, “Well, I’m going to become Mercury because the mother in this song is my mercury and so I’m going to become Mercury.” And we all went, is he mad, you know, but again he was serious and he changed his name to Freddie Mercury. I think changing his name was part of him assuming this different skin. I think it helped him be this person that he wanted to be, and the Bulsara person was still there, but for the public he was going to be this different character.’16
So how far removed was this new character from the teenager who had fled with his family from Zanzibar and landed at Heathrow in 1964? Six years had passed and Freddie had been exposed to a whole new lifestyle at the very pinnacle of a cultural revolution. He had followed his dreams of attending art school before breaking into music, thereby creating his own path rather than following the safer route his parents desired for him in accountancy or law. And the very confusion over his sexuality was at odds with his parents’ Zoroastrian faith. By changing his name, was Freddie (in part) discarding his past, his Parsee roots, his colonial upbringing? His close friend, David Evans, has his own theory for the name change: ‘Farrokh Bulsara was a name he had buried. He never wanted to talk about any period in his life before he became Freddie Mercury.’17
With new names assumed, Freddie Mercury and Queen set about their quest for musical domination with a small gig for close friends at Imperial College London on 18th July 1970. It was the very first time the four of them had taken the stage as Queen. ‘I don’t really remember a proper gig there. There might have been twenty or thirty of Brian’s mates there, but that’s all,’18 recalls Mike Grose.
It would be a week later, on 25th July, that the band would make their full public debut as Queen, and it would be back on Roger Taylor’s old stamping ground in Cornwall. Advertised as ‘Queen (formerly Smile)’ in local papers, the gig at PJ’s in Truro might have been the first public show for Queen but it was the final one for Mike Grose, who left the band shortly afterwards to return to a day job in Cornwall.
With another concert booked for 23rd August, Queen urgently needed to find a bass player to replace Mike. A chance meeting in Cornwall led to Barry Mitchell becoming their new bass guitarist and he was welcomed into the band: ‘They were great guys, really great guys,’ Barry recalls. ‘Brian, a particularly nice man. He’s a wonderful, warm caring person. Freddie was a bit of a puzzle, he wasn’t as flamboyant then as he became, he wasn’t as confident as he became either, quite the opposite, he was pretty shy, I think, to my mind. Yes, they were good guys.’19
But at their first gig, at Imperial College on 23rd August, Mitchell discovered his role extended to more than simply playing the bass: ‘It was a strange affair because we laid on refreshments which comprised of orange juice, well, squash in those days, and popcorn, you know real rock’n’roll stuff, and I cooked the popcorn.’20
With refreshments organised, Queen took to the stage wearing fancy stage costumes. Mitchell had already been somewhat shocked to find Freddie straightening his hair with tongs before the gig and then going on-stage with his fingernails painted black. He had also been teased in the run-up to the gig when Freddie suggested they all camp it up and wear women’s clothes on-stage. ‘He really wanted to play on it, but it just didn’t happen, thank God!’ says Barry.21 But Freddie was keen to make an impression on-stage, regardless of what the other members of the band thought. He took to the stage in black shiny trousers, a velvet top, snake bracelet, boots and silver hair.
After a gig in September in Swiss Cottage, Queen’s next performance was scheduled for 16th October, but before then, Freddie would suffer some devastating news. On 18th September it was announced that Jimi Hendrix had died from a suspected drugs overdose. The news shattered Freddie and Roger Taylor, both ardent fans of Hendrix. As a mark of respect, they closed down their Kensington Market stall for the day.
That evening, during Queen rehearsals, the band simply played a host of Hendrix hits rather than concentrate on their own material. It might have been a mistake, because their next gig, at the College of Estate Management in London, was a disaster. They were paid £20 for a 75-minute set and one of Freddie’s fellow stallholders at Kensington Market, Alan Mair, was in the audience and remembers how bad it was: ‘Roger and Brian were obviously already very accomplished but it was Freddie that was the problem. In the early days he had a bit of a habit of singing sharp. He would be too enthusiastic, and he would push his voice slightly sharp. And he was also quite awkward on stage. He would throw his head back and step forward but it would be slightly out of time. The hall was very echoey too, it wasn’t packed and it would have had minimum advertising. The audience could have been three or four times bigger. I remember we all went to the pub, The Greyhound, after the gig, which is what we always did on a Saturday night. We were there saying, “What are we going to tell Freddie, guys? As he’s so excited about it and it wasn’t very good.” ’22
Queen played another six gigs in 1970, including one in the famous Cavern Club in Liverpool. Although Freddie had enormous drive and ambition, success and stardom seemed a long way away. Despite his occasional nervousness on-stage and any lack of progress in the music business off it, Freddie’s belief that he would make it remained undimmed: ‘When Queen first formed all of us were aiming for the top slot and we weren’t going to be content with anything less. You have to have a lot of confidence to get on in this business. It’s useless saying that you don’t need that. If one starts saying, “Maybe I’m not good enough, maybe I’d better settle for second place,” then forget it. We were full of confidence. You’ve got to have that. You have to have a kind of arrogance and lots of confidence and absolute determination, as well as all the other obvious skills, like music. Arrogance is a very good thing to have when you’re starting, and that means saying to yourselves that you’re going to be the number one group, not the number two group. We just had it inside us. We all had a very big ego as well.’23