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How It All Began
In 1968 Brian May and Tim Staffell, both students at London's Imperial College, decided they wanted
to form a group. Brian placed an advertisement on the college notice board for a "Ginger Baker Type" drummer and a young medical
student called Roger Meddows Taylor auditioned, and got the job. They called the group SMILE. Tim Staffell was at Ealing College
of Art with Freddie Bulsara and introduced him lo the band. Freddie soon became a keen fan. Sadly, in 1970 Smile decided lo
call it a day as nothing seemed to be happening for them. Freddie left his band, Wreckage and joined up with Brian and Roger
- it had all begun.
Freddie changed his name by deed poll to Mercury, changed the bands name to QUEEN and John Deacon
was asked to audition as their bass player after three temporary bassists had been and gone. In February 1971 John was taken
on as the fourth member of Queen. The band rehearsed tirelessly and played several small gigs at Imperial College, where they
rehearsed, for close friends. In return for trying out new equipment they could make free demo tapes, which they did.
Queen were given the "down time" or out of hours studio time at Trident Studios, where they began work on their first album.
In 1973 Trident and EMI signed a contract for a recording deal for Queen, and July of that year saw the release of QUEEN,
their first album.
The Story Behind The Crest
The crest was designed by Freddie in the early days of queen, and got reworked for the album 'a night
at the opera' after previously being used on queen's first album 'queen'.
The now famous CREST features the band's starsigns;
two fairies for Virgo which is Freddie, a Crab for Cancer which is Brian and two lions for the two Leos which are
John and Roger.
Freddie's Death
As a tribute to Freddie, and to raise funds for the Terrence Higgins Trust to continue the fight
against AIDS, as Freddie's last wishes had requested, Bohemian Rhapsody/These Are The Days Of Our Lives was released as a
double A sided single. It entered the UK chart at number one, where it remained for five weeks, raising over one MILLION pounds
for the AIDS charity. In December 1991, Queen had no fewer than 10 albums in the UK top 1 00.
In February 1992, the annual
BRIT awards recognised Freddie with a special posthumous award for "Outstanding Contribution To British Music" and out of
three Queen nominations, "Days Of Our Lives" won the Best Single of 1991 award. At that awards ceremony, Roger and Brian announced
plans for a massive, open air concert at London's Wembley Stadium lo celebrate Freddie's life, and give him a send off to
remember.
The tickets went on sale the next day , with no announcement of who was going to play apart from Brian, Roger
and John, and all 72,000 tickets sold out in just SIX hours.
On Easter Monday, April 20th 1992, many of the worlds top
stars joined Brian, Roger and John on stage at Wembley stadium to pay an emotional tribute to Freddie. The stadium was packed
lo capacity and it was televised live to over one billion people. As could be expected the band still have not got over the
death of Freddie Mercury, their band member and true friend. Brian said that he often watches the door expecting freddie to
walk in.
Future Queen
Plans are afoot for the release of archive videos and live material. Brian and Roger are recording
solo albums with plans for tours to follow. A state of the art video game featuring Queen music is in production, a major
photographic exhibition featuring stunning shots of Freddie is on a world tour, Queen are one of the most collectable bands
in the World, and their fan club is as strong as ever. Queen will be around for a lot longer yet! At the moment there is a
queen musical running in london titled 'We Will Rock You'. It was written by Ben Elton and the music is being supervised by
none other then Roger Taylor and Brian May. It has now being running for a year and is still going strong.
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