The Elis James and John Robins podcast on BBC Radio 5 Live welcomed Brian May to the show, where he revealed details of a never-heard, previously lost Queen live recording from very early on in their career.
Although Brian hadn’t intended to mention it, Elis let the cat out of the bag when he said: “Before we started recording you were telling us that you found some old Queen tapes.”
Brian laughed and reminded Elis that they’d agreed to not mention it. Now it had been, Brian explained: We’ve been looking around and finding stuff. We’re always finding stuff, and among my great mountain of cassettes from the early days we found a box which just had ‘concert’ written on it. And it turned out to be one of our very, very first shows. Earlier than anything that’s ever been out there, one of those shows that we put together ourselves in a lecture theatre in Imperial College, in Mechanical Engineering.”
“We invited about 100 people of which probably 70 came along. All the important people didn’t come. Mostly our friends came, and we put on a show. And we gave them orange juice and popcorn, and hoped that we would be discovered. I mean it’s flawed, because we are flawed, and it’s very early days, we’re very rough and raw. But I like it. I found it quite magical to listen to it.”
John wanted to know if the recording will ever be shared with fans. Brian answered that its possible, although he needs to talk to fellow bandmate Roger Taylor.
“We’re probably the only two who will care… So yeah, we’ll talk about it and see what we can do,” Brian added.
The Elis James and John Robins podcast on BBC Radio 5 Live is available to list to on BBC Sounds.
