Mark Hodkinson - Queen: The Early Years

Paula Ridings for your encouragement, support, and love. My parents and grandmother for watching out for me. Chris Charlesworth for valued suggestions, corrections and deadline extension. Andrew King for believing in the project. Johnny Rogan, for Educating Hodkinson, and altruism all too rare in a selfish world.

And, finally, the following who shared a drink, telephone number, house space, book, video, advice, or secret: John Adams, John Baltitude, Peter Bartholomew, Neil Battersby, Peter Bawden, Ronnie Beck, Mike Bersin, Tony Brainsby, Roger Brokenshaw, Greg Brooks, Les Brown, Nigel Bullen, Clive Castledine, David Cooper, Kim Cooper, Trevor Cooper, Dave Dilloway, Michael Dudley, Chris Dummett, Tony Ellis, Rik Evans, Jeremy Gallop, Dorothy Gill-Carey, Gillian Green, Michael Grime, John Grose, Vaughan Hankins, Gill Hankins, Bob Harris, Jenny Hayes, Mike Heatley, Sean Hewitt, Geoff Higgins, Win Hitchens, Ed Howell, Rob Kerford, Fran Leslie, Sam Lind, Dave Lloyd, Paul Martin, John Matheson, Barry Mitchell, Geoff Moore, Barbara Morrison, Guy Patrick, Mark Paytress, Richard Penrose, Geoff Pester, Josephine Ranken, Phil Reed, Mark Reynolds, Bill Richards, Peter Rowan, John Sanger, Tim Staffell, Carol Stringer, John Stuart, John Taylor, William Telford, Ken Testi, Nathan Tiller, Richard Thompson, Helen Tonkin, Sarah Triptree, Joop Visser, Lawrence Webb, Rod Wheatley, Jane Wilderspin, Dave Williams, Andy Wright, Eileen Wright, Richard Young.

Q UEEN ARE EVERYWHERE, STILL; not quite the Coca Cola Company or Ford, but not too far behind. Freddie Mercury in November 1991 and the group folded immediately afterwards, but the clich is authentic and the legend really does live on. It endures because we live in the age of the rewind. Digital remastering, video technology, CDi, CD ROM no one dies any more, bands no longer split up, the song goes on forever. We play them, pause them, hold them as our own at that moment we cherish the most. And, simultaneously, across town, where the housing estates wash up against the business parks, someone is dreaming of lunch time or home time as she packs the traditional Queen memorabilia into cardboard boxes. The records, videos, T-shirts, posters, badges, postcards, bedspreads, and sew-on patches are set for the lorries and markets. Queen and Freddie Mercury are as alive as they ever were.

We can, of course, bequeath to anyone we choose this virtual immortality. At the very least, we are each of us on a wedding video somewhere or have mumbled into a tape recorder. Thankfully, there is a natural selection of sorts. Cameras and cassettes are placed in front of all pop stars, but not to the same extent as Queen. In simple terms, they had the songs and knew how to present them, in the studio and in concert. Their songs, from the Neanderthal pomposity of We Will Rock You and Hammer To Fall to the outlandish muse of Bohemian Rhapsody and Killer Queen, were consumed voraciously by the public.

Between March 1974 and December 1992 Queen had forty-one UK Top hits (one of them, Under Pressure, with David Bowie) and amassed nearly seven years worth of Top 75 chart placings. Only one other group, Status Quo, have had more hits, and they had a six-year start on Queen. In fact, if the solo hit singles by members of Queen are added to their overall total, only three artists Cliff Richard, Elvis Presley and Elton John have had more UK hits. Queen, of course, also sold albums, more than 80 million at the last count, and rising.

They were, on the surface at least, an unlikely force to acquire such widespread adoration. Fronted by a vainglorious bisexual, their music was schizophrenic: at different times absurd, choral, linear, funky, far-out inane, rocking, mawkish or pulsating. Critics, and few had much regard for Queen save for a grudging acknowledgement of Freddies stagecraft, claimed Brian May knew just one guitar solo, while Roger Taylor and John Deacon were supposedly nothing more, and nothing less, than rock journeymen. And yet few groups, if any, have honed so many styles of music into gilded hit singles. Their very appeal lay in their sheer size, and the other world all glitzy and glamorous -stage side of the footlights. They were juggernaut rock incarnate, too bulky and brazen to embody any substantial cultural worth, but unsurpassed as entertainment value. When Freddie clenched his fist and Roger Taylor pounded the snare, Monday morning, the rain, the queue at the bus stop, the electricity bill, the smell of the office or the workshop, they were gone.