Is This The Real Life? Page 9

  In Harrogate, a local R&B covers band had hired Smith after they’d heard him practising the organ in a church near to their rehearsal space. In London, Chris was still studying church organ as part of his music degree. Three or four evenings a week he would practise at a church in Acton. ‘Sometimes Fred would ask to go with me,’ says Smith. ‘He’d offer to turn the pages of the sheet music while I was playing. Or that was the idea. Once we got there and I’d been playing quietly for a while, he’d start … “Go on, Chris. Do ‘Gimme Some Loving’ … Do ‘Gimme Some Loving’.”’ Eventually Smith would relent and start pounding out the Spencer Davis Group hit while ‘Freddie started jumping around the empty church, going mad and doing his poses’.

  Freddie’s desperation had become almost tangible by this stage. One morning, Smith encountered him sitting at his desk, his eyes glazed. ‘So I put my hand in front and said, “Come on Fred, you’re miles away.” He just looked up and said, “I am going to be mega! You have no idea how mega I am going to be!” I said, “Oh yeah, as mega as Hendrix?” “Oh, yes.” I was like, “Well, good luck with that one.”’

  Every Tuesday, the college would host lunchtime concerts, where bands with at least one foot on the ladder would perform to a student audience. These gigs were a godsend for the would-be ‘megastar’. ‘Tim, Freddie and I would go down to the entrance to meet the groups,’ remembers Smith. ‘We’d tell them we were from the Student Union, a complete fabrication. We’d just help carry in their gear and hang out, see what they’d tell us, see what we could learn. It was bands like Tyrannosaurus Rex, Savoy Brown, Chicken Shack … ’

  Earlier that year, on 29 April 1969, as Smile were signing to Mercury Records, Fred and Chris had encountered David Bowie at one of the lunchtime sessions. ‘This little Renault pulled up and out he came,’ says Smith. ‘Bowie had this little WEM PA column, an acoustic guitar, a tape recorder and a mic stand.’ Once inside the college’s amphitheatre, Bowie was far from happy. ‘He was like, “There’s no stage!”’ Chris Smith, David Bowie, just two months shy of having his breakthrough hit ‘Space Oddity’, and the future Freddie Mercury set about pushing tables together to build a stage.

  Meanwhile, the objects of Freddie’s jealousy were still waiting for their big break. Smile’s single, ‘Earth/Step On Me’, snuck out in the US in August but disappeared. Despite failing to promote the single, Mercury were still making vague noises about an album or, possibly, an EP. In September, Smile went into Kingsway’s De Lane Lea studios, with a producer, the late Fritz Freyer, to cut two original songs and one cover. ‘Blag’ was a blood-and-thunder rocker, instrumentally in the spirit of Cream’s ‘N.S.U.’ or Deep Purple’s ‘Wring That Neck’; ‘Polar Bear’ was a bluesy soft-rock shuffle, while the dainty ballad ‘April Lady’ (written by one Stanley Lucas) had been suggested by the record company. Whatever their shortcomings, though, the distinct harmonies and May’s snazzy guitar lines flit in and out of the songs like snapshots of the future. Staffell’s keening voice is also only a few steps removed from Freddie Mercury’s on Queen’s earliest recordings. In the end, Smile’s EP never appeared, and Mercury shelved the recordings for nearly fifteen years, only cashing in when Queen were in their pomp.

  Yet Smile would have another recording session that month, which, unbeknown to them, would have lasting consequences. Terry Yeadon had been a club DJ in his native Blackburn before moving to London and a job as a maintenance engineer at Pye Studios. One night he ran into a student who remembered him from his club days and told him about a band called Smile. ‘She said she was going out with the guitarist,’ says Yeadon now. ‘She said the band were good and persuaded me to go and see them. For once, I thought, “OK, why not?”’

  Terry is uncertain, but there is some suggestion that was Christine Mullen, Brian’s girlfriend and future first wife, who’d buttonholed him that night. Christine had family in the north of England, but was now in London studying at Kensington’s Maria Assumpta teacher training college where she became friends with Roger Taylor’s girlfriend. Christine and Brian had initially met at a Smile show.

  Keen to ‘have a go in the studio myself’, Terry Yeadon arranged a session for Smile late one night in Pye’s Studio 2. Terry and Pye’s disc-cutting engineer Geoff Calvar oversaw the ‘illicit session’, producing half a dozen acetates of ‘Step On Me’ and ‘Polar Bear’, finishing just before the morning shift began. ‘I remember Geoff and I were taken with the fact that they were writing their own stuff, which was still unusual for bands back then,’ says Yeadon. ‘Smile were still rough around the edges, especially Roger, but Brian was exceptionally good, even then. After we were done, they were like, “What do you think? Can you do anything for us?” But we didn’t have any experience of placing bands. I was hoping I could have a career in producing, which is why I offered them the session. It was a selfish thing. I wanted some practice.’ Thinking no more of it, Terry gave Smile their acetates. The band now had a top-quality audition tape with which to approach record companies. Yeadon would come back into Brian’s and Roger’s lives two years later, but for now, he says, ‘I thought that was the end of it. I didn’t expect to see them again.’

  The Kensington can still be found on the corner of Elsham Road and Russell Gardens; a short stagger from Kensington Olympia, a longer trawl from Shepherd’s Bush and Holland Park. It’s now a gentrified bar and grill with branded canopy, lunchtime menus and ‘free wireless internet access’ for all. In 1969, the Kensington Tavern was just another London pub, a boxy, smoke-filled watering hole with an upstairs function room for jazz groups, and a clientele of local workers and students spilling in from rented digs, nearby colleges and the fashion hubs of the Portobello and Kensington markets.

  By 1969, Smile and their extended entourage had been frequenting the Kensington for more than a year. That summer Freddie Bulsara graduated from Ealing with a diploma in art (his thesis was based on Jimi Hendrix), but he had other ideas regarding a future career. In the Kensington one night, Fred saw Chris Smith walking in, and put his head in his hands, feigning despair. When asked what was troubling him, Fred replied, ‘I’m never gonna be a pop star.’ Chris’s response was straight out of a Tony Hancock comedy routine: ‘You’ve got to be a pop star, Freddie, you’ve told everyone now.’ To which Fred stood up, very slowly, before raising his hands above his head in an exultant gesture. ‘I am not going to be a pop star,’ he announced. ‘I am going to be … a … legend!’ Finally, after two long years, a chance meeting in the Kensington would bring him a tiny step closer to fulfilling that dream.

  Ibex were a trio from St Helens in the northwest of England, made up of guitarist Mike Bersin, drummer Mick ‘Miffer’ Smith and bass guitarist John ‘Tupp’ Taylor. Just like 1984 and The Reaction, the band had met at school, in this case Wade Deacon Grammar School in Widnes. Taylor and Bersin had started out playing soul covers in a five-piece called Colour. By 1966, and under the overpowering influence of Clapton and Hendrix, the pair had separated from their bandmates. ‘They were older guys very set in their ways,’ explains ‘Tupp’ Taylor, ‘and Mike and I were into blues and progressive rock.’ They found a sympathetic drummer in ‘Miffer’ who suggested a name change to Ibex. (‘What is an ibex?’ ponders Taylor. ‘I think it’s an African antelope. But that name only came about because “Miffer” once said, “I’m so hungry I could eat an ibex.” And we were like, “Right, that’s the name of the band.”’)

  In May, Ibex sent their demo tape to BBC Radio 1 DJ Stuart Henry and The Beatles’ newly launched Apple Records label. The Beatles connection was enough to gain them a splash of publicity in the Widnes Evening News (‘Ibex’s philosophy – blues is not music, it’s a way of life’), but Apple never made an offer. After a couple of local gigs and with a few months to spare before college and work commitments kicked in, Ibex, joined by their seventeen-year-old schoolfriend Ken Testi, decided to try their luck in London.

  ‘We thought we’d go there and get famous,’ remebers Ken Testi. ‘G
ive it a few months and see what happened.’ Testi already had a driving licence and previous experience of promoting school dances in and around Widnes. He was naturally gifted as an organiser, and had fallen easily into the role of unofficial Ibex manager-roadie-chauffeur. ‘Ken was always very resourceful,’ says Taylor. ‘He sent the tape to Apple and Stuart Henry. We got some recognition in the Liverpool area, but then, nothing, so it was time for London.’

  Crucially, Testi’s girlfriend, Helen McConnell, was in the capital, sharing a flat with her older sister, Pat, who was at the Maria Assumpta college. ‘Very sportingly Pat agreed to let half of us stay at her flat in Sinclair Road, just behind the Olympia,’ explains Testi, ‘while the other half were farmed out to another friend of hers, Ann McCormick, who was renting a place in Patoumb Gardens off the Shepherds Bush Road.’

  The day after they arrived, and keen to get hustling, Testi parked Ibex’s Comma van by a public telephone box, took out his list of numbers and started cold-calling record companies. ‘I rung up Chrysalis Records and asked to speak to Chris Ellis. The woman on the end of the line was like, “Yes, this is Chrysalis.” We didn’t have a clue.’ In hindsight, Ibex’s timing could have been better. Many students had gone home for the summer and the lucrative London college gig circuit was lying fallow.

  Through knowing Brian May’s and Roger Taylor’s girlfriends at Maria Assumpta, Pat McConnell had seen Smile play at Imperial College. A couple of days before her twenty-first birthday, she chose to celebrate by paying a visit to Smile’s local, the Kensington Tavern. (Ken Testi: ‘The reason being she’s seen Smile and thinks they’re quite cute and would like to meet them … especially Roger.’) The Ibex/Smile rendezvous took place that night. Flitting around on the fringes that night was Freddie Bulsara, looking sharp in a tiny fur jacket. Like Roger Taylor in his Granny Takes a Trip threads, Fred already resembled a rock star. ‘We felt like Northern hicks next to them,’ laughs Testi. Smile seemed to have achieved so much already: a recording session, support slots to Yes and Family … ‘Then they told us about this deal with Mercury Records, so we were even more impressed.’

  ‘Brian was very, very polite,’ remembers Mike Bersin, ‘and Roger was a poser, in the nicest possible way.’ At closing time the party continued at Pat’s Sinclair Road flat. Unable to stop himself, Brian picked up Mike Bersin’s unplugged guitar and started to play. ‘Brian was sat there cross-legged on the floor,’ continues Testi. ‘I thought I had a handle on guitarists. I’d seen all the black blues guys who toured in the sixties, I’d seen everyone that had been through John Mayall’s band … but when Brian started playing I thought I’d just missed a chapter. It was that special.’

  Before long, May, Taylor and Staffell began demonstrating a couple of Smile songs, with a little help from their friend. ‘They had a chum with them,’ says Testi. ‘And that was Freddie. He knew all the words to the Smile songs and even started singing the harmonies. From that moment, it was obvious to us he wanted to be in that band. But Smile didn’t need a frontman. Ibex did.’

  Like Smile, Ibex were solely about the music. Their idols were Cream, Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After, and, like those idols, they were predisposed towards, as ‘Tupp’ Taylor, admits, ‘soloing endlessly until everybody fucked off to the bar’. On at least one occasion, ‘Miffer’ Smith’s drum solo was lengthy enough for the spikes on his floor tom to get wedged into the gaps between the stage boards, causing the drum to disappear lower and lower into the stage with each paradiddle.

  Image-wise, Ibex had the requisite long hair, with Mike Bersin sporting a capacious afro, but beyond that, it was all flared jeans and trench coats. While ‘Tupp’ Taylor was confident enough to sing some lead vocals and handle the between-song announcements, neither him nor Bersin were comfortable frontmen. It didn’t take long for Freddie to make his move. Taylor thinks they asked him to join in a meeting at the Kensington; Mike Bersin remembers an audition in somebody’s basement flat, while ‘Miffer’ recalled an audition at Imperial College. ‘One thing we learned later was that Freddie was very good at getting his own way,’ says Bersin. ‘He was very sure of himself, and he wanted to sing with us.’ The deal was done.

  The Smile/Ibex contingent spent July and August drifting between the flats surrounding the Kensington Tavern. David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’, timed perfectly to coincide with Neil Armstrong’s historic walk, gave the struggling songwriter a hit single. Back on earth, The Rolling Stones played a free concert in Hyde Park as a memorial to ex-guitarist Brian Jones, who’d been found dead in his swimming pool. At Sinclair Road, the soundtrack included the inevitable Jimi Hendrix LPs, The Who’s ‘Tommy’ (‘Tupp’ Taylor: ‘We wore that one out’) and the Island Records sampler ‘All Join Hands’ with its heavy roll call of honour: Free, Spooky Tooth, Jethro Tull …

  Before long, the presence of mysterious hairy males at the McConnell sisters’ flat came to the attention of the landlords. ‘So we all shipped over to Patoumb Gardens,’ explains Ken Testi. Here, three beds were shoved together to accommodate more bodies. ‘There was nothing else going on,’ laughs Testi. ‘They were good Catholic girls, all totally respectable. But it was only one stop short of a squat … I think “Miffer” had to sleep in the bath.’

  After leaving Ealing, Chris Smith had spent a couple of months in the United States. He returned to the flat he shared at Addison Gardens and was shocked by what he found. ‘There were loads of people I didn’t know having a party,’ he laughs. ‘Someone came up to me and said, “Who are you?” I said, “I live here.”’ Among the revellers was ‘Miffer’. The Ibex drummer with the Dickensian chinlength sideburns had a couple of years on his teenage bandmates and didn’t share their naivety. He’d been coaxed into giving up his job as a milkman in Widnes to try and make it as a rock star in London. As ‘Tupp’ Taylor puts it, ‘“Miffer” always seemed more worldly than the rest of us.’ Having spent weeks surrounded by Smile’s posse of art students, would-be physicists and part-qualified dentists, ‘Miffer’ sidled up to Chris and asked wearily, ‘So … how many GCEs have you got, then?’

  The relationship between ‘Miffer’ and Freddie encapsulated the differences between Ibex and their new lead singer. ‘We were all a bit rough and ready,’ admits Ken Testi. ‘“Miffer” especially.’ Fred, in contrast, was like an immaculately groomed dandy alien. The banter was soon flying between this curious creature and the Scouse milkman-turned-drummer. ‘They took the piss out of each other all the time,’ explains Testi. Later, Fred presented ‘Miffer’ with a sketch he’d drawn of the drummer, signed ‘Ponce’.

  Fred’s punctiliousness was another talking point among the Liverpudlians. ‘Freddie had no money, just like the rest of us,’ recalls Bersin. ‘So he had one outfit: he always wore this T-shirt with a wide belt and trousers, and before crashing out for the night he would take them off and fold them ever so neatly so they’d be perfect for the morning. At the time, we thought it was a southern thing, an evidence of the cultural divide: OK, men in the north don’t do that but men in the south do. In a way, Freddie was a star before he was a star.’

  Ibex would soon discover just how much of a star Freddie thought he was. Although Ken Testi had struggled to secure any gigs in the capital, Ibex already had two prior bookings at Bolton’s Octagon Theatre on 23 August and an open-air festival in the town’s Queen’s Park the day after. To make the trip, Ken Testi acquired a Luton transit van from Fred’s friend, 1984’s ex-drummer Richard Thompson. ‘Richard was working for a company at Heathrow airport and it was the works van,’ admits Testi.

  ‘It was a yellow van for the company I worked for, Arbuckle Smith & Co,’ remembers Thompson. ‘I used to love watching bands, so we’d pile twenty people into the back and drive everywhere – gigs, parties. You could get away with doing that sort of thing in the sixties and seventies.’ The van was soon filled with Ibex, their equipment and an assortment of mates, girlfriends and casual roadies, including Paul Humberstone. On a whim, Paul brought a camera,
preserving the touring party for prosperity. In one of his photos the ramshackle group are lined up alongside the Arbuckle Smith & Co van. By then, Richard Thompson had made the transition from 1984’s modish drummer to a fully-fledged hippy, with shoulder-length hair, Jesus beard and sandals. Backing up Mike Bersin’s recollection, Freddie looks immaculate, his three-button, long-sleeved T-shirt as spotlessly white as his shoes.

  The trip began after midnight, when Ken collected ‘Tupp’ Taylor after his shift at a record shop in Piccadilly. But the trek up north took far less time than anticipated. ‘I was a little overcautious,’ says Testi. ‘We arrived at about 6 a.m., and we couldn’t get into the theatre until ten. I still have this one particular memory. I pulled up outside the Octagon on the cobbles, and I’m just sat there looking in the van mirror. I hear the roller shutter go up at the back and I can see various occupants climbing out …’

  Among the first on the cobbles was Fred. Testi watched as the new singer fussed over his appearance: ‘He checked his hair, fluffed the fur on the collar of his jacket, and then began checking the creases on his trousers.’ Before long, though, Ken became aware of a noise in the background. ‘There was this clattering sound that just kept building, getting louder and louder …’ All of a sudden, the source of the noise became apparent: ‘The night shift had just ended.’ The sound was the clatter of workers’ clogs on the cobbles as they made their way home. ‘The context was immaculate,’ laughs Testi. ‘All these guys covered in dirt walking past as Freddie Mercury stands there in his fur-collared jacket fixing his hair.’