How Queen perfected trademark harmonies in a cave

Queen drummer Roger Taylor has recalled how his mum organised the band's first ever concert to raise funds for the British Red Cross.

The show in Truro in June 1970 featured Taylor on drums, Brian May on guitar and vocals by Freddie Mercury, then known as Fred Bulsara.

Taylor also revealed how the group perfected their trademark harmonies by singing in a cave on a Cornish beach because they loved the "big sound".

The musician was speaking ahead of the release of his latest solo album, Violence Insane in a Beautiful World.

The Truro gig was Mercury's first live performance with Taylor and May and he used the occasion to announce their new name, Queen.

The set consisted of songs they had written themselves, including Stone Cold Crazy and Son and Daughter, as well as rock 'n' roll covers.

Queen went on to become one of the most successful rock bands in history, selling more than 300 million records worldwide.

They also gained a reputation as a formidable live act, filling stadiums around the world.

Taylor was born in King's Lynn, Norfolk, and was drawn to drumming from an early age.

"I got all my mother's saucepans and turned them upside down. She had some big wooden knitting needles, which I used to use to sort of play them. And I would pretend I was playing the drums, but I was playing the saucepans."

Taylor moved to Cornwall with his family when he was seven. He sang in the Truro Cathedral Choir for about a year and played drums with various local bands as a teenager.

"We lived by the sea at first, but just a few months. Then we moved to Truro which, of course, is in the middle [of Cornwall] and is kind of the capital really. It was a nice place to grow up. Cornwall's beautiful, you know."

At the age of 18, Roger Taylor headed to London to study dentistry, later switching to biology. But his heart was set on music.

He answered an advert on a college noticeboard for a drummer to join a band called Smile that included Brian May.

Smile broke up in the spring of 1970 but the group still had a booking to fulfill at Truro City Hall, now known as the Hall for Cornwall.

With Freddie Mercury on board, Smile became Queen and the Truro gig marked their live debut.

"I think we were paid £50, which was an enormous amount in those days.

"We had just started Queen then and Freddie hadn't really developed his voice, his vocal capacities, to the full.

"He sounded quite alarming some of the time. He sounded a little bit like a strangled sheep at times with a very fast falsetto. But of course he kind of invented himself out of it all.

"We didn't realise at the time what a great musician he was. A great piano player. A fantastic songwriter. We didn't know what a gem we had at first."

Taylor admitted his mum was "rather alarmed" by their performance but she admired Freddie's courtesy and style.

"She could never believe how Freddie had such beautiful manners and he was always so deferential and polite and how his trousers were always immaculately creased," he said.

"We found out he was putting his trousers under the mattress and pressing them as he slept."

Taylor said calling the group Queen was Freddie's idea.

"We were discussing daft names. One was Build Your Own Boat, which is a sort of prog name, I suppose.

"There were various things, you know. But it [Queen] was a good name. It was simple. It was easy to remember and direct."

Taylor recalled practising harmonies with May and Mercury in the caves at Chapel Porth beach in St Agnes.

"I think we must have been in caves because of the nice reverberation, echo in there. So it sounds bigger," he said.

"It would have been a nice place to sing. Bit like singing in a big church or something. The sound rattles around everywhere."

It was an early hint of the powerhouse vocals that became a hallmark of hits like Bohemian Rhapsody and Somebody to Love.

"We had a great blend between the three of us. The three voices had different characteristics. But they went together to make a very good sound when we harmonised."

In the summer of 1971, Queen played a dozen gigs in Cornwall over six weeks, with John Deacon on bass completing their classic line-up.

Many of the shows were organised by Taylor, using his contacts in the county, including dates at Hayle Rugby Club, the Driftwood Spars pub in St Agnes and the band's first open-air concert at the Carnon Downs Festival.

There was also an unlikely appearance at the Royal Navy airbase RNAS Culdrose where the group performed for service personnel in the Warrant Officers and Senior Rates Mess.

Taylor said: "We would play anywhere that would give us a gig."

"We all lived in a nice little cottage in a tiny village called Devereux and I was getting up every morning and working on a farm which was very hard but we were broke, we didn't have any money so it was tough."

Taylor said he still has a house on the Helford River in Cornwall and his son Rufus - who's the drummer for The Darkness - has a pub on the other side of the water.

"I love to get down there. Don't get down enough," he said.

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