10/30/2025
On this day in Queen history, February 5, 1973, Queen record their first BBC radio session in Langham 1 Studio, London, UK, engineered by John Etchells, produced by Bernie Andrews. It was broadcast on February 15, 1973 on the John Peel’s Sound Of The Seventies program.
Queen emerged in 1970 from the ashes of another group, Smile, which featured Brian May on guitar and Roger Taylor on drums. When Freddie Mercury replaced Smile’s lead singer, Tim Staffell, the group was rechristened “Queen,” a name Mercury described as “very regal, strong, universal, and immediate. Certainly I was aware of the gay connotations, but it sounds splendid!” For the next year, the group worked with different bassists, finally finding a good fit with John Deacon, who played his first show with Queen on July 2, 1971 at a college in Surrey, outside of London.
Trident allowed Queen to record at their studio when it wasn’t booked (meaning sessions were fit in at odd hours of the day and night). It was at this stage, while recording their debut album, that Queen was booked to appear on Radio 1’s “Sounds of the Seventies” program. Bernie Andrews, who produced the session, learned about Queen through Ronnie Beck, who worked for the company handling the band’s publishing. Andrews liked the music, but was put off by the group’s name, telling Beck “You can’t call them Queen! They’re great, but you can’t put a band called Queen in the Radio Times!” But it was a short-lived reaction, “In a couple of weeks the name was completely accepted,” Andrews says in the liner notes of “On Air.”
The BBC sessions for Queen provide excellent recordings of a very young and eager band. This was Queen’s first radio session and it took place before they had established themselves as a household name. They hadn’t even released a single yet. As the band were recording their debut album at the time, they were more concerned with finalizing the result instead of rushing out to record four fresh versions of songs they had painstakingly worked on for the past few months, though they knew that this kind of exposure would be exceptional. So, a compromise was drawn, with the band delivering the backing tracks of four songs and new vocals recorded by Freddie and Roger.
The result is underwhelming, though, at the time, these unheard of songs from Queen, especially “My Fairy King,”which hadn’t been performed live, were a real treat to the band’s early fanbase. There’s not much to praise here in hindsight though. Freddie’s lead vocal isn’t drastically different on any of the songs, excepting the odd ad-lib here and there, but the real treat of the session is to hear Roger sing lead vocal on the final verse of “Doing All Right,” an arrangement which hadn’t been attempted by the band in either the studio or the live setting.
A catalyst in moving Queen towards a record deal was their Radio 1 session recorded in February 1973. Still unknown outside a few London venues and music business gossip, it was a coup when Phil Reed persuaded producer Bernie Andrews to record an unsigned group.
Queen laid down four songs on February 5 at Langham One studio, across the road from Broadcasting House in Portland Place. Phil Etchell engineered the raw versions of ‘My Fairy King,’ ‘Keep Yourself Alive,’ ‘Liar,’ and the original Smile song, ‘Doing Alright.’
The session was broadcast on John Peel’s ‘Sounds Of The Seventies’ program ten days later. The hour long show was aired at 6 pm, throughout the week, with different DJs each night, and was the BBC’s substantial pledge to inventive new music. ♥️
These recordings were published many years later in “Queen at the Beeb” (1989) and “On Air” (2016), with the other BBC sessions.
