Town gave Freddie Mercury debut gig
WITH Queen being the band of the moment once again decades on from their heyday and Rami Malek being critically acclaimed for his performance as Freddie Mercury, it may be a less known fact that Freddie’s debut as a singer in the UK was actually with a group of lads from Wade Deacon Grammar School in Widnes.
The band, Ibex, was formed in 1966/67 as a trio, with John Taylor on bass and vocals, Mike Bersin on guitar and vocals and Mike Smith on drums.
John and Mike Bersin, together with their manager, Ken Testi, were classmates at Wade Deacon and Mike Smith was a local milkman.
John said: “There’s been a lot of stuff said that people just wanted to say to try and grab hold of bit of this or that but I’ll tell you what I remember.
“We were probably playing together from around ’65 and playing shows around Liverpool, Lancashire and Manchester and into Yorkshire.
“There were loads of shows in Liverpool and Manchester in those days. All the pubs had bands and there were a lot of clubs
“We were in school and did sixth form and we’d been doing really well, so we decided we were going to go to London and see what we could do in the two or three months of summer holidays before Mike Bersin’s course at Liverpool Art School started.
“I ended up staying, Mike went to his course at art college, Mike Smith had already gone back probably becoming a milkman for a bit before moving to America where he still lives in New Jersey.
“I just didn’t want to go back.”
The boys met Smile – Brian May and Roger Taylor’s band – on their first night in London.
Ken Testi’s girlfriend, Helen McConnell, had an elder sister, Pat, who lived in Kensington and offered to put the boys up sleeping on her floor for a couple of weeks until they got themselves sorted.
In return they said they would take her out anywhere she wanted to go, but she only wanted to go to the Kensington pub as three men she fancied always went there – they were Brian, Roger and Tim Staffell, and Freddie was their friend so ● he was there too.
Freddie wanted to be in a band, and ended up joining Ibex, later changed to Wreckage, as the singer.
Ibex, with new singer in tow, headed back north to perform a few gigs.
They were booked at Wade Deacon Girl’s school by John’s sister, Jean, and they performed at a dance.
John recalled: “Mike Smith wasn’t allowed in as he wasn’t a pupil at the school and a few of the girls who came up with us got in trouble for smoking.
“We felt big because we were coming back from London to play.”
John was originally going to study philosophy and law, but in the end stayed in London to forge a career in music.
He said: “I was a reluctant student and did not want to get a job, so the longer that could be avoided the better.
“If you talk to my family they used to tease me about getting a proper job but for me, it was only ever going to be about music whether I was playing it or producing it.
“It was after The Beatles, and everybody would have liked to do that.
“You got more girls, that was really most people’s reason for joining a band.
“If you could play and it was serious then even better and we did quite well to be able to get down to London and do as well as we did.
“It was always going to be music I was quite single minded. My parents thought I should grow out of it, I did quite well at school, they would say ‘oh no you need a real job and to do something proper’ but I evaded it somehow.
“It was always going to be music.”
By 1969 John had taken on a job managing a record store in Piccadilly Circus. With the other two musicians gone: “It left Fred and I without a band.
“I started to be road manager with a band called Patto and toured America with them in 1972 on a Joe Cocker Tour and that was the start of it really, I just sort of followed that path.
“I was good at sound, still am, I often do it for people that I manage.
“I become a tour manager and then I got into management quite early I was 27. I was working on the road with Jim Capaldi from Traffic and his management situation was falling apart. They really weren’t doing a very good job and he asked me to take over.
“I hadn’t planned to do management ever, I didn’t want to do it as I’d only ever seen people do it badly and I didn’t want to be that guy everybody hated.
“He said ‘no you’ll be fine’ he knew what he wanted and he said ‘you’ll be fine’ and after a year or so I probably was.
“I realised I was quite good at it and Jim wanted me to sign a contract with him which seemed unusual and I looked after Jim for 26 or 27 years until he died and then his estate for a few years thereafter.”
The move to management happened in 1978 and John has had a long, successful career in the field. For the past 28 years he has been managing Joe Brown and has also managed other members of the Brown family.
He has also managed stars such as Jim Capaldi, Sam Brown, Dennis Locorriere of Dr Hook, Vicki Brown and guitar player Andy Fairweather Low.
He said: “I’m not sure you’re always aware of how well you’re doing until you look back and think bl***y hell I’ve been doing that for a long time.”
There are rumours about the origins of some of Freddie Mercury’s famous stage gimmicks – like the broken microphone stand. Everybody says that it happened first in their town.
But John said: “The microphone thing happened everywhere we played, the equipment was really shoddy. It was a bl***y pain to be honest.”
Despite being from Warrington, John thinks it could be said Widnes was where it all began.
He hails an old classmate, Gordon Fraser as an inspiration and the boy who taught him and Mike Bersin to play a lot of things.
John said: “He was both a great artist and a fabulous musician, who by night was playing with professional Liverpool bands aged 12 and by day in school with us.
“Gordon was instrumental in our both being in bands, apart from our desire to meet more girls.”
John still meets Mike Bersin and Mike Smith and they have performed at Queen conventions in the past. Their last gig together was at the Royal Albert Hall, but John is not saying whether he’s completely finished with being on stage.
He said: “Memories are interesting. The four of us, including Ken, still meet up occasionally and it’s funny, we all remember the same things – but we all remember them differently.
“And it’s not that any of us are wrong, it’s just we remember from different perspectives, I really like that”
And when talking about the new film, Bohemian Rhapsody he revealed he hasn’t seen it, adding: “I wasn’t actually a massive fan of Queen. They were just my mates and I was proud they had made it as big as anyone ever has.”