Brian May has revealed that he has discovered a tape of one of Queen’s first ever concerts.
He revealed the news in an interview with Ultimate Classic Rock and said: “We’re always looking at finding stuff that is historically important. And this one tape that cropped up very recently which I am excited about, which is one of the first gigs we played in a lecture theatre at Imperial College. I didn’t even know I had the cassette.”
May didn’t say what concert the tape was from. It is known that the legendary band played their first concert as Queen in Cornwall in June 1970 but played their first “proper” gig in July of that year at the Imperial College where Brian May was studying.
Their inexperience on the tape is evident according to May. At the time of the early concerts, Mike Grose was the bass player and he soon left the band because they were spending more time on working on material rather than performing.
“We were very unformed. Hearing Freddie at that point in his development is fascinating. He had all the will and charisma and passion, but he didn’t have the opportunity to harness that voice yet. Which makes me hesitate a little bit, because I’m not sure Freddie would be that happy hearing himself at this stage. But strangely, if he were alive and sitting here at this moment, he’d probably be the same as me: ‘Oh darling, we were kids.’”
Brian May confirmed the band are still wondering what to do with the tape.
“A few years ago we’d have felt very protective and thought, ‘Nobody should hear this, because we’re very rough.’ But now, in the position that we are in our lives, we feel forgiving. We’re not ashamed of where we were at that time. It was us against the world.”
Surprisingly, Brian May recently revealed that he thought Queen’s iconic Live Aid performance was only “ok” at the time. Check out our report on it here.
