a couple ‘o’ groovy queen facts
(that I didn’t already know)
last month i was in london and i went on a queen tour - we visited a bunch of places like trident studios and garden lodge, and i kept a list of cool facts the guide told me. the guide was a guy called Lee, who actually knew Queen when he was a teenager! Lee was in a band called Plex with Darren Sheffield, whose dad was Norman Sheffield (i.e. ex-manager of Queen, had a little song called ‘Death On Two Legs’ written about him), so Lee used to hang out with his band at Darren’s house, and sometimes hang out with Freddie, Roger, Brian, and John. but more on that later.
[EDIT: i’ve been informed that a couple of these facts weren’t entirely accurate, so i’ve gone ahead and fixed them up.]
most things lee said I already knew, but here’s a couple of interesting ones that i didn’t. in no particular order:
Freddie loved koi fish. he owned a bunch of them, and they lived in the pond at garden lodge. he loved koi fish so much, he actually owned one valued at £250000. in 2002, someone who was working on the house stuffed something up, which resulted, basically, in all the fish dying. including the mad expensive one. mary tried to sue the company, but it was never resolved.
the stomping we hear in ‘we will rock you’ was done in a converted church hall - Wessex Sound Studios
the clapping we hear was done partially by Lee’s band! queen needed more people to clap, and they realised that they actually had a bunch of 14-year-olds nearby who wouldn’t mind helping out.
Queen never played at Royal Albert Hall. but Smile actually did, in 1969
Peter Grant (who is known as the most successful British manager of all time - he’s managed Led Zeppelin, The Pretty Things, etc.) approached Queen to ask to be their manager in 1976. at this point, Queen was already having troubles with their management at the time; and the thing with Peter Grant is that you don’t turn down Peter Grant. but Queen did. absolute big dick energy.
did lee have any interesting things to say about the boys, seeing as he used to hang out with them? he had a couple of little anecdotes here and there:
freddie was like a whirlwind. always busy. apparently he used to speak very quickly, too.
Lee and the other boys in his band used to help save messages from fans who called the sheffield house, and pass the messages along to Queen. Roger received the most messages by far, mostly from women who were besotted by him
out of all of them, Deacy was the best soccer (or football) player, although Roger wasn’t half-bad, either. Freddie was hopeless, and he generally wasn’t that interested in playing, anyway. Lee didn’t even mention Brian, so I’m not sure what that says about Brian’s soccer-playing abilities.
Lee himself got along best with Brian, mostly because of their mutual enjoyment of Rory Gallagher. well, Brian’s ‘enjoyment’ was more like ‘obsession’. Lee had only seen one musician live at that point in his life, and it happened to be Rory Gallagher. when Brian heard this, he got really fucking excited, and talked about Rory Gallagher non-stop. Lee got along with Brian pretty well after that.
Lee did tell one story about how he and his friends used to pretend to be all grown-up and cool by hanging out in Queen’s van, until one day, someone accidentally took off the handbrake. bc it wasn’t a normal handbrake (it was a button), and none of them could drive, they couldn’t figure out how to put it back on again, and just had to accept their fate as the van slowly rolled down the driveway. it hit the gate, but luckily, bc they’d been rolling so slowly, the van wasn’t damaged. they didn’t hang out in the van after that.
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