When Freddie Bulsara arrived in England in 1964, fleeing with his family
from a bloody revolution on the streets of his homeland Zanzibar, he
already knew that he wanted to be a rock'n'roll star. But before that
dream could become a reality, there were three specific people he needed
to meet. Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon were the other three
components in what became Queen, a band whose name is now writ large in
rock legend, but whose members spent their early career mired in legal
troubles, critical hostility and financial hardship. In the early 1970s,
with their preening singer and arch conceptualiser now renamed Freddie
Mercury, the group projected an image that was at once regal, mystical
and exotic. Yet behind the black eyeliner and billows of dry ice, Queen
were four sharply contrasting individuals whose dogged struggle to win
success was every bit as dramatic as the ogre battles and fairy king
fantasias that populated their music.Queen in the Seventies is an
up-close examination of the band's now critically adored first ten
years, the decade when they forged their unique vision, beat off the
critics and became, after many epic tantrums and much violent throwing
of crockery, champions of the world.
