Queen’s first-ever live performance was organized by drummer Roger Taylor’s mother to raise money for charity. The young musician, however, felt the band still had a long way to go as they stepped offstage together for the first time. Surprisingly, he says Freddie Mercury was the weak link.
Winifred Taylor had arranged for the band to play a concert for the British Red Cross. It was a group that Mercury, then known as Freddie Bulsara, had assembled from the ashes of Smile. The show took place in Truro, Cornwall, in June 1970, and was originally intended to be a Smile performance. Queen would take the mantle instead. Bass player John Deacon wouldn’t join until the following year, so the bass spot was filled by Taylor’s friend Mike Grose. Brian May rounded out the trio with his homemade Red Special electric guitar.
May and Mercury, as history remembers, became a formidable songwriting partnership. There were occasional arguments over guitar solos, songs written in the bath, and songs that possess a strange kind of magic. Yet for Taylor, who has just released his latest solo album, Violence Insane In a Beautiful World, there were few signs of the majestic history that lay ahead of them that day.
“I think we were paid £50, which was an enormous amount in those days,” he tells the BBC. “We had just started Queen then, and Freddie hadn’t really developed his voice, his vocal capacities, to the full.
“He sounded quite alarming some of the time,” he recalls. “He sounded a little bit like a strangled sheep at times, with a very fast falsetto. But of course he kind of invented himself out of it all.”
We didn’t know what a gem we had at first.”
— Roger Taylor
Mercury’s strongest assets were slow to reveal themselves.
“We didn’t realize at the time what a great musician he was,” Taylor admits. “A great piano player. A fantastic songwriter. We didn’t know what a gem we had at first.”
That gem, of course, was still rough around the edges at that first show in Truro City Hall.
Another key aspect of the band’s trademark sound took shape in the local area. Roughly 10 miles northwest of Truro, the band found remarkable natural reverb in the caves at Chapel Porth beach, St. Agnes. There, they would refine their vocal harmonies.
“I think we must have been in caves because it sounds bigger,” Taylor says. “The sound rattles everywhere.”
Despite the bumpy first show, the band’s potential soon became much clearer, with their self-titled album arriving three years later. It peaked at number 24 in the U.K. charts, despite May’s dissatisfaction with its production.
Speaking to Guitar Player about the album’s troubled and involuntarily rushed recording in 2021, May said they didn’t have the chance to flex their muscles until its follow-up. The record was still an important first step, though — the moment when Queen began putting paint on the proverbial canvas.
Queen’s success wasn’t forged after one humble charity gig. Mercury would go on to blossom into one of rock’s most distinguished and cherished talents, though May says there was at least one occasion when he left the group speechless. Not all of Mercury’s ideas were solid gold.
It’s been 35 years since Mercury’s all-too-soon passing in 1991, at just 45. His legacy shows no signs of waning. Now, one of the band’s most infamous and controversial concerts is set for a 40th-anniversary theatrical release, bringing a monumental moment in rock history to the big screen in 4K.
“There will never be an event quite like that again,” May said of that show. The same could be said of Mercury — even if Taylor thought his first gig was less than perfect.
