INTRODUCTION

A legend of the 20th century, the band “Queen” hasn’t always been the same one
we know and love today. Brian May, a student at London’s Imperial College,
together with his friend, Tim Staffell, decided to start a band. They had lots of
enthusiasm and ideas, but they were missing something: that’s where Roger
Taylor, drummer, came in.

The new formed band, named Smile, had grown in popularity across small college
groups. Farrokh “Freddie” Bulsara, one of Staffell’s friends, soon realised he
would be the perfect puzzle piece after Staffell’s decision to leave the band, due to
a similar taste in music.

1970 was the start of a new era. The newly formed band had a rough start: between
switching a few bass players that didn’t match the chemistry of the band and
getting no record deals, “Queen” recorded four of their own songs: "Liar", "Keep
Yourself Alive", "The Night Comes Down" and "Jesus" after they found their
perfect match bass player: John Deacon. Their first live performance was on 2nd of
July at a Surrey college outside London, with the now - famous members:
Mercury, May, Taylor and Deacon.
 A Kind Of Magic-The Unstoppable Power Of Queen

They’d already written ‘We Are The Champions’, but Queen in the 80s were a truly unstoppable
force that helped define the decade.

The ‘70s had been a momentous decade for Queen. Their albums had sold tens of millions and
their hit singles – including ‘We Are the Champions’, ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘Bohemian
Rhapsody’ – were anthem-like cultural landmarks. Queen in the 80s, however, took it up another
level with an era-defining pop-rock sound that turned them into the biggest band in the world.

For their first album of the 80s, Queen recorded their most accessible and pop-oriented record to
date: “The Game” was a commercial triumph that earned Mack a Grammy nomination as a
producer. The 34-year-old Mercury, who had spent much of his childhood in India, had grown
up loving the boisterous music of Little Richard and Fats Domino, and his songwriting for the
album reflected the energy of the early rock pioneers. ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’, a song
written while taking a bubble bath at Hotel Bayerischer Hof, in Munich, was a monster hit. “I’m
a loving person. Love was the inspiration for the song,” Mercury said.

1981's Under Pressure was Queen's second No.1 hit (after Bohemian Rhapsody) and their sole
collaborative single during Freddie Mercury's lifetime. The song came from a Queen demo
called Feel Like that wasn't quite up to scratch.

David Bowie had been invited to their studio to sing backing vocals on the Queen song Cool Cat
- which were subsequently wiped at his insistence - and during the session, the five musicians
started jamming, recording as they went. That's why the opening sections of the song have
Freddie scat-singing.

Apparently the iconic bassline came from an accident and lapse of memory, with bassist John
Deacon forgetting what he was originally doing. Brian May told the Mirror in 2016: "What we
got excited about was a riff which Deacy began playing, 6 notes the same, then one note a fourth
down". But when they tried to go back to it later, Bowie misremembered it as more rhythmically
complex, accidentally giving it its final form, defined by Brian as "Ding-Ding-Ding Diddle Ing-
Ding"

May said that the band were at a crunch point when “we were not only the biggest group in
America, but probably the biggest in the world”. The money and accolades flowed. Queen had
sold more than 45 million records worldwide and, in 1982, entered The Guinness Book Of
Records as Britain’s highest-paid executives.

They kept experimenting, though. Taylor’s drum-machine-driven ‘Radio Ga Ga’, from the 1984
album The Works, reached No.1 in 19 different countries, helped by a vibrant music video.
Perhaps the most memorable song on the album, however, was ‘I Want To Break Free’, which
was a hit in most places apart from North America. The video, directed by David Mallet,
featured the band members dressed up in drag, parodying the British television soap series
Coronation Street. May later said they were caught by an unexpected backlash that included
MTV banning the video: “I remember being out on promotion and people being so shocked. I
remember presenters going white and not wanting to be a part of that.”