Freddie Mercury: The Biography by Laura Jackson Read Free Book Online

Freddie Mercury, Brian May and Roger Taylor formed a new band. Their immediate task was to find a bass player,
     and Taylor suggested Mike Grose. A former member of Reaction, Grose was also co-owner of PJ’s in Truro; just a few weeks before,
     when Smile had played there, he had helped out the band at the last moment, so they knew he was a good musician.
    ‘When Roger rang and asked me to join the band it was good timing because PJ’s was under a demolition order,’ says Mike Grose.
     ‘They hadn’t actually named themselves Queen at this stage, but it was the three of them plus a bass player, which I agreed
     would be me.’ Grose accepted their offer of a flat share in Earls Court and packing up vital equipment – his guitar and a
     huge, much-needed Marshall amplifier – he left Cornwall for London in his Volkswagen van; another valuable asset he would
     be bringing to the band.
    In the past when Smile had played PJ’s, Mike Grose had sometimes witnessed friction between Roger Taylor and Tim Staffell.
     Once in London it didn’t take him long to discover that this time Taylor and Mercury were often at odds. ‘It was a cramped
     flat,’ he explains, ‘with four guys sharing one bedroom. Two girls were there as well who had the other room along the passage
     and that was it. There was a garden, but it could get very claustrophobic, and Roger and Freddie used to squabble a lot. If
     it got too much for Brian, he would go home to his parents for a while.’
    Sometimes the squabbling arose from discussions over the band’s direction, but there was little doubt about who won here.
     ‘Both Roger and Brian had plenty to say,’ stresses Mike Grose, ‘and even I had input. But Freddie was the ideas man. He had
     great plans. They were pretty intense about practising, too, and twice a week we went to a room at Imperial College that Brian
     had got permission for us to use.’
    As well as this, all four band members would often sit outside in the garden, bouncing suggestions around, in imaginative
     brainstorming sessions that drove Mercury and May to write some new material. ‘What would turn out to be their first single
     “Keep Yourself Alive” and also “Seven Seas of Rhye” came out of sessions like that,’ reveals Mike Grose. ‘Even ones like “Killer
     Queen”, which came a good bit later, were rumbling around in those days.’
    According to Grose, what to call the band occupied much of their thoughts: ‘I clearly recall that the name Queen came up for
     the first time one day while we were all in the garden. It was Freddie’s suggestion, of course, and he also wanted to design
     a very rude logo based around the letter Q, but the others downed that right away.’
    Having waited a year for the chance to form a band with May and Taylor, Mercury was keen to go. To him, everything they’d
     been involved in so far was just a precursor of better things to come. He saw this as his chance to find fame – but to make
     the band into something special it was vital that they presented themselves with a professional polish that left nothing to
     chance. Mercury’s ambitions for Queen were on a grand scale so it’s possible that his indecent proposal for the logo was no
     more than a distraction. He had cleverly engineered the change from Ibex to Wreckage, so perhaps he decided that, by giving
     May and Taylor the satisfaction of dismissing his outrageous idea for the logo, they would be more likely to allow him to
     have his own way with the name,Queen. This was a change that he considered crucial to his plans.
    Mercury put his case strongly. Queen was short and therefore memorable. It was a universal concept, with a majestic ring that
     undoubtedly appealed. It was perhaps the latter quality that eventually sealed it, but still there was one drawback – there
     was no way of avoiding the camp overtones of the name, something Mercury himself acknowledged. ‘It was open to all sorts of
     interpretation.