Today - June 27th, 1970 - Queen Story!
The first Queen gig: Truro, City Hall, UK, with Mike Grose on bass
🔸What must it be like to brag that you were at rock gods Queen’s first ever performance? Well, quite a few people in Cornwall can, because on this very date – June 27 – in 1970 popular rockers-on-the-rise Smile played their first gig with a new line-up and a new name, Queen, at Truro City Hall, which later became the Hall For Cornwall.
Truro boy Roger Taylor told Cornwall Live: “That was actually arranged by my mother in aid of the Red Cross. We were paid £50, which was quite a lot of money back then. I’m not sure many people turned up though.”
Roger’s mum Win had placed two adverts in The West Briton newspaper on the run-up to the gig, still in the name of Smile. However, the band had already decided to play under the new name Queen – eyebrow-raising for the time.
She recalled Freddie explaining the new name at her Truro bungalow: "He just kept saying how regal it sounded.”
Sue Johnstone, a friend of the band from Truro, remembered: “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?’
"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’.”
The first Queen gig: Truro City Hall, June 27, 1970
With Fred, still known as Bulsara, and bassist Mike Grose – a Truro regular at the Smile shows at PJ’s – on board, Queen was born.
The new band intended to concentrate on its own material. Mike recalled rehearsing tracks from the first album, as well as 'Father to Son' from 'Queen II' and 'Stone Cold Crazy' from 'Sheer Heart Attack' from day one.
In preparation for the first Queen concert, Freddie stayed at the Johnstone sisters’ house at Truro’s Rosedale.
Sue said: “He stayed in our attic room and Freddie would stand on his head with his legs crossed doing yoga against the wall. He had long hair and would use our heating tongs to curl his hair in the way he wanted. And my dad was completely taken aback and initially thought they were all a bit weird.”
However, Freddie and Sue’s father soon became the best of mates when Mr Mercury-to-be and his friends dug up the garden, filled it full of flowers and sorted out the lawn.
Sue Johnstone said of that debut concert and other early Queen shows: “Freddie would get up on the stage and strut his stuff like he’d been doing it all his life. He was well prepared. He didn’t just get up and sing, he got up and performed from day one. I loved Tim's voice, but he wasn't the same as Freddie as a performer"
By Lee Trewhela - June 27th, 2018
https://www.cornwalllive.com/whats-on/music-nightlife/queen-played-first-concert-cornwall-1720494
Pic: Queen in 1970, on the left Mike Grose, Queen's first bassist (dies in 2019)
📸 Photographer © Doug Puddifoot
