COUNCIL OF WAR

Until John Deacon walked into their rehearsal room, the genesis of Queen had been an erratic, hesitant affair. Numerous lives had intertwined but few had run in parallel for any real length of time. Unknown to any of them, they had finally found a line-up which would last them more than 20 years, and one that only death would fracture.

The finalised Queen failed to inspire anything more than the customary apathy from the music business. They had trouble finding concerts even in the capital with its surfeit of venues, and had to call on old friends like Ken Testi. The former ‘manager’ of Ibex had returned toSt Helen’s to retake his ‘A’ levels in the autumn of 1970 and had established himself as social secretary at the local technical college. Although the concerts at St Helen’s College were held in a gymnasium, Ken Testi, with his usual wily enthusiasm, had brought artists like Dave Edmunds and Delroy Wflharns to Merseyside.

He received a phone call from Freddie Mercury informing him that he, Roger and Brian had formed Queen. Instinctively he knew their new group would be ‘absolutely wonderful’. «It couldn’t be anything else because it contained so much talent,» said Testi. «I suppose it hadn’t made sense that Freddie wasn’t in Smile. He was very much part of their group of friends. Smile had three front-line vocalists and while I think it was mentioned earlier that Freddie should join, Freddie must have been satisfied that they didn’t need a singer,».

Queen’s first concert in Merseyside was at the college on October 30, 1970.while Barry Mitchell was still part of the line up on bass. Partly to make the trip snorth worthwhile, they appeared at The Cavern Club in Liverpool the following fnight. The Cavern, made famous, of course, by The Beatles, was six years past its £best and known within Liverpool as ‘a bit of a toilet’, but Queen were delightedto appear there. They spent the night with Ken Testi’s family who were running the Market Hotel in St Helen’s town centre.

It was the first time Ken Testi had heard or seen the band perform and he admired their resolve: «This was a college in the industrial north and they were this act from Kensington who had come with their posturing and their little grandiose remarks, playing in a gymnasium and getting away with it. They left no one with any doubt they meant it and it was a joy to see.» Ken had been a shade concerned about Freddie’s routine with the top half of the microphone stand: «I took him to task about that and he said, ‘It’s my gimmick, my dear. You have got to have a gimmick. When Freddie expressed conviction like that, argument was pointless.» Queen returned again to Merseyside just a few days before the Christmas of 1970 when they played once more at the college and at St Helen’s Congregational Church Hall. Their set was still mainly composed of covers but they had devised their own mini-epic. ‘Hangman’, a track they played live until 1975 but never included on an official record release.

Queen were determined to present a show of consummate professionalism and spent much of the early part of 1971 locked away in rehearsat. They were working on material to be included later on their first two album and their sedulous approach meant honing the songs took many weeks. They had a fresh confidence in the new line-up but both Brian May and John Deacon were heavily constrained by their college studies. They still managed to rehearse up to four times each week but concerts a good distance from London were virtually impossible during term time. This cautious strategy was to last some time. Brian May not dedicating himself solely to the band until ‘Queen II’ and John Deacon until ‘Sheer Heart Attack’. Whether driven by the need to appease their parents or not, it revealed an astounding degree of prudence - it indubitably slowed Queen’s progress in their formative years but these very attributes were later part of their character; they didn’t take risks, the group was scrupulously regimented, It was perhaps simultaneously their main strength and weakness-John Deacon made his live debut at Surrey College on July 2, 1971, and the evening was marked by a disagreement between him and Freddie Mercury. Like the group’s previous bassists he was primarily a jeans and T-shirt man, but Freddie had singled out a particular shirt he wanted him to wear. John Deacon acquiesced and over the course of the next few years his style of dress was to change markedly.

After a show at imperial College on July 11, when they again distributed popcorn to the audience, Queen embarked on an 11-date tour of Cornwall, organised by Roger Taylor, It was an excuse to spend more than a month drifting through some of England’s finest scenery and they mixed well with Roger’s old friends There were few quarrels and the intensive nature of the trip was an excellent rehearsal for a real life on the road that would follow some time later They opened at The Garden in Penzance and continued to take their profuse rock to the most unlikely places Hayle Rugby Club (twice) the NCO s Mess in Culdrose Truro and Wadebndge Young Farmers Club all welcomed Queen and it was m these inauspicious venues that thev learned to temper their lavish pretensions with a common touch which later endeared them to millions.

The apex of their short tour was an appearance at the grandiosely titled Tregaye Festival of Contemporary Music at Tregave Country Club in Carnon Downs, Truro. The festival on August M was partly organised by Roger Taylor’s friend, Rik Evan,s who supplied the canvas to cover most of the walled garden htre the groups played. The line-up was indeed contemporary with Arthur Brown’s Kingdom Come headlining above Hawkwind, the Duster Bennett Band, Tea and Symphony, Brewer’s Droop, Indian Summer and Craphite. Queen were second from bottom of the bill, with only Barracuda beneath them. The posters featured a naked girl playing a flute in the mandatory floppy hit and revellers were promised. “Food, freaks, licensed bar and lovely things’ for their £1 25 entrance fee.

Ken Testi remained in St’Helen’s to study with intermittent forays into London primarily to help Queen. None of them had any real knowledge of the intricacies of the music business and much of their action (or non action) was decided on impulse. Queen s ‘office’ became a public telephone at the end of an aisle on Kensington Market and their plan of attack on the industry amounted to Ken Testi procuring a copy of Yellow Pages and working his way through the listed record companies. “We had all this great music on tape and would sit around saying. ‘This is great, we should get a record deal’, Testi explained. But we didn’t know how to make the next step. None of us knew much about it and it did become frustrating. I used to ring up record companies and tell them I had this great demo by a wonderful band. We were all young and stupid in those days”.

Ken Testi would ring record companies twice firstly to discover the name of a member of the A&R team, and then to ask for that person by name a few hours later. Amazingly, two companies, CMI and Decca agreed to meet Ken and the band to listen to their music. All the group attended these meetings, except John Deacon, who was preoccupied with his studies. Ken Testi remembers Roger Taylor being the most enthusiastic: «He was always ready to drop a lecture for virtually anything.” Both EMI and Decca paid mere lip service to Queen and the meetings were fruitless.

Very quickly Ken Testi learned that as in any business, most of it was done on recommendation. The record industry was inherently unsettled by the new; demo tapes sent without a prior call or nod from an insider were deemed ‘idiot tapes’ and left to pile up in the corner until the cleaner was finally given permission to scoop up the mound of rotting dreams ind put them in the bin.

Due to an unusual dash of good fortune, Queen were at least able to present record companies with a noteworthy demo tape. Alter returning from Cornwall, Brian Ma met up with an acquaintance called Terry Yeadon. Originally from Blackburn, Yeadon had moved to London in the mid Sixties to work is a maintenance engineer at Pye Recording Studios at Marble Arch. He had first met Brian May m 1969 when he attended a Smile concert at Imperial College and afterwards spoke with the group. Unknown to his employers, Yeadon had booked Smile in to record at Pye and along with Geoff Calvar, a disc cutting engineer, they recorded two songs ‘Step On Me’ and ‘Polar Bar’ and copied them on to acetate.

Terry Yeadon explained to Brian May that he was establishing a new studio complex in Wembley called De Lane Lea and needed a band to test the equipment. The complex comprised three adjoining studios and he was anxious to discover whether there was a bleed of sound from one to the other. They had even fired blanks from a shotgun to see if the separate desks detected the sound but a live loud rock group was far more suited to do the job.

Within days of their meeting, Queen were having free use of innovative studio technology. They were allowed to use the largest studio which could hold up to 120 musicians and a bank of Marshall stacks was hired to crank up the power. Aside from the clarity and power the studio supplied to Oueen s music, De Lane Lea was virtually a music business thoroughfare; it is a workshop for emerging talent from sound engineering to management.

With members as garrulous confident and personable as Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor, it was obvious that they would use the opportunity to make new contacts, and during their time in the studio they met their future production collaborators, John Anthony and Roy Thomas-Baker. John Anthony remembered Brian May and Roger Taylor from their days in Smile. Both he and Thomas-Bakersaid they would recommend the band to Barry and Norman Sheffield, theowners of Trident Studios in Soh, who were looking to become involved with promising new acts.

Queen spent long hours at De Lane Lea with the in-house producer Louie Austin. They had to work around the whims of artists whose recording was funded by record labels, and it often meant that sessions lasted deep into the night. Queen made no compromise to their standing as studio «practice» band and were fastidious in their approach to recording. «They were very fussy.» said Louie Austin. «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.» Queen recorded four of their own songs at the studio - ‘Liar’, ‘Keep Yourself Alive’, ‘The Night Comes Down’ and ‘Jesus’. They had persevered with their song writing throughout the year and the live set also boasted additional original songs like ‘Procession’, ‘Father To Son’, and ‘Ogre Battle’.

During the De Lane Lea sessions the band developed a manifesto on song writing which was to remain steadfast throughout most of their career. During a discussion about the author of the track ‘Liar’, Freddie announced, with his usual imperiousness, that he considered the ‘writer’ of a song to be the person who had contributed the lyric. It was a highly simplistic and flawed pronouncement but was generally accepted by the others, possibly as an endorsement and appeasement to Freddie’s greater songwriting skill.

For the purposes of assessing what each contributor should receive in terms of royalty payments, a song is generally divided into twelfths and the separate contributions roughly split, usually with the lyrics contributing six-twelfths, or a half of the total. Freddie’s policy inevitably meant he would, as singer and [therefore] main lyricist, lay claim on the lion’s share of the performance royalties accrued by Queen, an immense sum which would later run to many millions Brian May followed Freddie in terms of songwnting credits but Roger Taylor and John Deacon were left way behind. The others received an equal share of mechanical royalties which are paid per performer per record sold, but until May, Taylor andDeacon wrote hit songs themselves in their entirety they would accumulate wealth at a notably slower pace than Freddie.

The various bodies protecting the interests of Queen have remained mute on this potentially divisive situation, though there was brief reference made to it in the group’s official biography. In it Freddie conceded that, «The rule almost certainly discouraged us from co-operating on lyrics for a long time, and started a trend towards separateness in song-producing, which was acute at the time of the Munich records [those made in the late Seventies and early Eighties].».

Songwnting credits provide fascinating insights into the power base of any group, and within Queen, one of rock’s greatest cabals, it is, as always, divulged by the names in small print in brackets. Freddie’s tactic of effectively prohibiting co-written songs meant that for the others to earn a publishing royalty it was necessary to include complete songs written by an individual group member on each LP. A brief perusal of Queen’s albums untii the final two, reveals that Roger Taylor and John Deacon rarely contributed more than two songs per album, (on the first two Deacon received no credits at all). They might simply have been less prolific than Freddie Mercury and Brian May, but it still implies more than an element of tokenism: though this must be placed in context with Freddie’s songwriting prowess since hit songs like ‘You’re My Best Friend’. ‘Another One Bites The Dust’, ‘I Want To Break Free’, ‘Radio Ga Ga’ and A Kind Of Magic’ - all by either John Deacon or Roger Taylor - could hardly be considered ‘token’ efforts in terms of their musical vintage.

The brief discussion held at De Lane Lea in the winter of 1971 might have shaped their song writing strategy thereafter, but it is noteworthy that the twenty-two songs on their last two albums. ‘Innuendo’ and The Miracle’, were ascribed to all four members of the group (aside from ‘All God’s People’ which was credited to Queen and Mike Moran). This would suggest a compromise had been reached; the move would certainly partially address a lopsided balance of royalties if the main songwriter of a band were to die and a portion of the group’s legacy was directed outside the band to satisfy the wishes of his estate. .

The sessions at De Lane Lea provided Queen with a rare luxury since it allowed them to realise their own ‘sound’ almost immediately. Most groups have to contend with scratchy, thwarted demos for years before they are able to properly capture the sound that exists in their collective heads; sometimes, whether through incompetence or the wrong choice of producer or studio, artists never actually batten down on to tape what they consider to be their true sound. Queen, in contrast, though unsigned and unfancied, had a demo tape that summarised their sound precisely - power, a certain complexity of arrangement, intricate harmonies, and a fair smattering of melody.

The tape appeared to vitalise the band members and dispel some of their jittery reticence about a life devoted solely to rock’n’roll. Roger Taylor, whose commitment to anything outside the group was always cursory, left the stall on Kensington Market he had been running with Freddie. Alan Mair, the owner of a nearby shoe stall, took over and ran it with Freddie for a few more months. Brian May had also started to recognise the dilemma between his academic and musical side. He spoke increasingly to lecturers about his love of music and made it clear he would no longer be part of study trips to Tenerife. In a sudden change of tact, however. Brian May announced in November 1971 that he had found a full-time job, teaching at Stockwell Manor School, a large comprehensive in Brixton, south London. Whether he accepted the position through parental pressure or to earn himself some desperately needed cash is unknown, though it was to last less than a year.

Queen closed 1971 with another incongruous booking, at the London Rugby Club on New Year’s Eve. They were still securing concerts from supportive friends putting the word around but there was at least a tiny clique in the music business who had seen and heard Queen and were prepared to make tentative endorsements. Ken Testi was the first to pledge himself to the cause and he worked tirelessly on their behalf. For a short period early in 1972 he shared a flat in London with Paul Conroy {now managing director of Virgin Records) and Lyndsay Brown. Thev were both booking acts for a concert agency. The Red Bus Company, based in Vardour Street. Soho. «1 hassled them for gigs mercilessly.» says Testi. «I gave them a demo tape of Queen and asked them to hsten to it properly. They retired to the bedroom and when they re-emerged they said it was a good piece of work but the last thing the world needed was another Led Zeppelin. I agreed, because I didn’t think they were another Led Zeppelin.» They still offered Queen a support spot at King’s College Hospital in Denmark Street on March 10, 1972, for which they received a fee of £20. It was a distinct improvement on Queen’s first show of 1972, an appearance at Bedford College on January 28 organised by John Deacon which attracted just six paying customers.

Paul Conroy recognised Ken Testi’s zeal for Queen, and arranged an appointment lor him with Tony Stratton-Smith, the ebullient owner of Charisma Records. Stratton-Smith had built up a creditable reputation, chiefly for his unstinting devotion to the acts he signed, among them Genesis and Lindisfarne. From Charisma’s small office in Dean Street he had conducted a fine campaign for ‘Trespass’, the first album Genesis recorded for Charisma, with a noted personal touch.

Tony Stratton-Smith liked Queen and offered them an advance of £20.000. an extremely reasonable sum, but they were concerned they were not his first love. «They were worried that they would be identified as second string on a small label,» said Ken Testi. «Queen would have had a lot of personal support from the staff there, but they felt resources were limited. It wasn’t a bad offer, but it came at a time when some bands’ advances had been in telephone numbers. CBS had been paying out monstrous amounts.».

Queen seemed to adopt a bizarre logic to Charisma’s offer. Although recognising Stratton-Smith as ‘an honest guy’ and his offer as fairly generous, they decided to ‘bank’ it in the sense of using it to lever more money and commitment from other labels. «I felt relieved that there was a deal there but on the other hand, if there was one deal there ought to be another.» said Ken. «I understood the band’s reasons for turning it down. It all seemed great fun at the time, but I was slightly bemused by their lack of commitment to an action plan.».

By early 1972 Ken Testi, along with the band and John Harris, had formed what he dubbed ‘a council of war’ - his own term for the tight unit they had become. It had not occurred to him to seek a formal arrangement but Queen began to make overtures that he should. Unfortunately for both parties. Queen’s semi-formal approach was poorly timed for Ken Testi. The lease was about to expire on his Fulham flat, and his parents were splitting up; he felt it right he should return to Merseyside and offer financial and practical support to his mother. So, during the crucial early days of Queen, when they were set to become ensnared in an industry about which they knew very little, they were without an Important ally. Ken Testi couid only watch from afar, selling carpets in a high street store in Widnes. He recognised the nascent brilliance of Queen, knew where it was heading, but also understood that his role thereafter would be peripheral.

Before leaving London, Testi had witnessed the band’s growing involvement with Norman and Barry Sheffield. Their Trident studios had renowned Triad mixing desks, and the set-up was regarded as one of the best in the UK. It was used extensively by leading players like David Bowie and Elton John, and the recording team within its portals were developing their own distinctive sound.

At this time Freddie Mercury had an extremely small record collection which he stored horizontally in a drawer at his flat. It was no more than a dozen albums including Liza Minelli’s ‘Cabaret’, ‘SF Sorrow’ by The Pretty Things, which he heralded as the first rock opera. ‘Tommy’ by The Who. and various records by Led Zeppelin. The Beatles and David Bowie - a huge influence on both Freddie and Roger Taylor from his early acoustic shows onwards. In many ways, the grand, powerful production techniques developed at Trident crystallised Freddie’s record collection and his own personal vision of Queen. It was imperative that he and his group record there and Ken Testi feels Freddie might have manipulated fate to make it happen.

For some time Freddie had cruised the King’s Road and the streets around it in the fashionable borough of Kensington and Chelsea, It was little more than a pose, but he would parade in his fineries and search out luminaries from the pop. and to a lesser extent, art world. He paid particular attention to his appearance on Saturdays and would sometimes spend the whole afternoon promenading along Kensington High Street, leaving his stall in someone else’s custody. Ken Testi believes that for some time Freddie had purposely hoped to meet John Anthony, the young producer forging a name for himself at Trident who had previously worked with Smile and passed through De Lane Lea while Queen were recording at the studio. «I am sure there was some kind of conspiracy.» Testi maintains. «Freddiewould spend ages dressing himself up and when I asked him why he did it he wouldsay. ‘You never know who you might meet’.»

He did, indeed, meet John Anthony and after Freddie plied him with tales of his band’s distinctive talent. Queen were invited to Anthony’s Oat to talk further. The producer invited his employers, the Sheffields, to see Queen at a show at Forest Hill Hospital on March 24 and the band put in an excellent performance. Queen, and Ken Testi, were requested to meet formally with Trident at the earliest opportunity.

The mood at their first meeting was unlike any previous experience for Oueen. It was carried oat with an almost exclusive emphasis on business arrangements rather than music. «They were two quite imposing fellows.» said Ken Testi. «They explained they were forming a production company. They already had the studio, so in a way they were simply moving up the food chain. They were talking in telephone numbers which Queen found attractive. What I don’t think the band realised at the time was that they would be part of a package involving two other acts. Trident didn’t say anything about this package at the time, it was some way down the line when they found out about it. To me, it all looked like the grey men in suits. It was a commodity as far as the Sheffields were concerned. Put it this way, there wasn’t a lot of humour in the room.».

Queen took a great deal of Lime before actually signing to Trident - nearly eight months, a period during which they did not play a single concert. In hindsight, it is difficult to understand the delay since Ken Testi cannot remember any lawyers being consulted. It would seem the band were still soliciting interest from other quarters and were scrutinising the small print themselves. The deliberation certainly did not lead to a contract which favoured the group in any unique way: in fact, the band and subsequent advisors later considered it a very poor contract. Freddie Mercury was certainly lucid about the Queen-Trident partnership once it had been dissolved some years afterwards: «As far as Queen are concerned our otd management is deceased. They cease to exist in any capacity with us whatsoever. One leaves them behind like one leaves excreta. We feel so relieved.».

Trident was in a much stronger bargaining position than Queen. Apart from being an established and substantial force on the music scene. Trident Audio Services had an unparalleled inducement to offer a fledgling group - a deal which would provide access to studio facilities out of reach even to most groups already signed to major labels As a taster of Trident s opulence Queen were immediately supplied with a new public address system and each were bought new instrumenti apart from Brian May who said he was quite happy with the Red Special.

The first album was the most important for any act, even more so in the case of a fastidious, serious, minded band like Queen. It was the culmination of years of dedication and hitherto abstract crealivity. It was the statement, the branding; put simply, the artistic birth. Trident Studios would yield the most expansive, accomplished debut possible tor Queen md it uould seem the allure was perhaps too great.

Queen insisted on separate sub contracts covering publishing, management and recording but this appeared to have been largely a cosmetic exercise. In plain terms Trident Audio Services planned to colonise Queen. In several shrewd, but perfectly legal moves Trident adopted the roles and functions normally served by several different parties. It would record the band produce them manage them sub- publish them and secure them a record deal. This would of course invoke several conflicts of interest, but it was not a particularly unique approach in an insidiously dubious business.

The most bizarre twist was Trident s apparent plan to present Queen along with two other acts as a ‘package deal’ though there is some confusion as to whether this was ever more than an impertinently ambitious idea. Any such package may not have needed to be related explicitly in the contract, but by today’s legal precepts which tend to draw greater sanction for the artist it might be construed as a restraint of trade: an artist’s success or failure should not depend on the fortunes of a completely unconnected act which just happens to share the same contract space.

Much of Trident s philosophy had been formed by an experienced music business operator, Jack Nelson. An American, Nelson had served his apprenticeship in his home country which was more than d Tew steps ahead ol the LK in its business manoeuvre.s He had formed Blue Thumb in the US, one of the first independent production companies. Ultimately, the dual stance made for greater control ol the ‘product’ and greater financial returns. Since Nelson had galvanised the Sheffield’s move along the ‘food chain’, it was perhaps obvious that they would encourage him to oversee the project.

Jack Nelson liked Queen’s demo tape and to a lesser extent the other two who were part of the supposed package - Eugene Wallace and Mark Ashton. He agreed to move to London and place Queen with a business manager sy mpathetic to the band and the aims of Trident. He was astounded that others did not share his passion for Oueen and after several rebuffs, he decided to become their manager himself; the idea was suggested to him by another American manager, Dee Anthony, who had managed the crooner Tony Bennett and, more recently, Joe Cocke.r Anthom rejected Queen because he was about to manage Humble Pie, a band ,he promised, who would eventually be much bigger than Oueen.

It would have suited Trident if a record label had offered to fund Queens recordings but after EMI among several others turned them down, it fell upon Trident to offer its own studio to the band Queen were possibly surprised to discover that they were not top priority within the Trident empire. They were told that their recording sessions would take place during ‘down time’ when others had finished earlv postponed or cancelled Queen though potentially set to earn Trident vast sums of money, were placed in the undignified position of having to squeeze their sessions m around paying guests like David Bowie, Elton John and a variety of perpetual unknowns. “They would call us up and say David Bowie had finished a few hours early so we had from 3 am to 7 am when the cleaners came in “ said Brian May. “A lot of it was done that way There were a few full days but mamiv bits and pieces”.

On one occasion while they were lingering at the studio they were invited bv a producer, Robin Cable, to provide backing on a cover of a Phil Spector song, “I Can Hear Music”, a version of which recorded by The Beach Boys had reached number 10 in March 1969. Freddie sails’ while Brian May and Roger Deacon supplied the instrumentation and vocal harmonies. They each received a small session fee but their cooperation had been naive since they held no control over the finished tapes. The song was released a year later as a single by EMI and designed as a spoof of Gary Glitter under the name of Larry Lurex. The joke misfired when DJs, solemnly loyal to Gary Glitter, refused to mention or play the record. It sold only a handful of copies and disappeared without trace until its re-release as a collectors’ item many years later. Rather unfortunately for Queen, it will forever remain a blemish on their recorded canon because, technically at least, it was their first record release.

Brian May had spent nearly a year teaching at Stockwell Manor while he worked simultaneously on hrs PhD. The manuscript for his thesis had been drafted but not typed when he finally conceded that he should commit himself solely to music. Professors at Imperial College who had read the thesis considered it strong enough to earn him a doctorate, through uhjc-h he would have become Dr Brian May, At Stockwell Manor he was taken to task by maths teacher, Mr Simon, who questioned the sense of leaving the teaching profession. He was asked to consider the ‘prospects, security and pension’ of the job.

At the end of September 1972 Trident put the members of Queen on a weekly wage of £20. It was a magnanimous move because the band did not officially sign the contract until several weeks later. The wage coincided with Roger Taylor graduating from North London Polytechnic with a degree in biology and John Deacon with a first in electronics from London University.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 772