Read Online Is This The Real Life? by Mark Blake - Free Book Online

‘always small-time’, during Brian May’s final months in the band, they were lurching closer still to their musical idols. Dave Dilloway’s course at Twickenham had introduced him to trainee technicians at Thames Television’s studios in Teddington. The studio had invested in new equipmentand needed a group to test it. Dilloway offered 1984. On 31 March, the group spent a day playing musical guinea pigs (minus the MU rates the studio would have had to pay a professional band) and recording a handful of songs, including Cream’s ‘NSU’, Sam and Dave’s ‘Hold On I’m Coming’, Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze’, and Eddie Floyd’s ‘Knock On Wood’. Heard now, it’s May’s guitar playing and Staffell’s voice, loose and soulful like a wannabe Steve Winwood, that most impress. Tellingly, Staffell sounds more at ease on the soul numbers than he does on ‘Purple Haze’, which, naturally, gives May the chance to cut loose.
    The differing tastes of 1984’s singer and its lead guitarist would become a sticking point later on, but in 1967, Tim and Brian were sufficiently in tune to start writing songs. Also recorded that day were two versions of a May/Staffell composition titled ‘Step On Me’. ‘I didn’t know then that Brian wanted to explore songwriting or that he even had ideas,’ admits Dave Dilloway. ‘I don’t think the rest of us had those aspirations. “Step On Me” was our one original number in all the time 1984 played live.’ With its dainty melody and subdued guitar solo, its overriding feature is the exquisite harmonies; like an early test drive for the sound May would explore fully with Queen.
    Just weeks later, Brian was back in the studio, helping out his old Hampton Grammar schoolmate Bill Richards. Two years earlier Richards had put together a band called The Left-Handed Marriage and in January 1967 issued a privately pressed album. Two months later, Richards signed to EMI’s music publishing wing, Ardmore and Beechwood, as a songwriter. Richards wanted May to help beef up the group’s sound. May joined the group at a recording studio in Twickenham, playing on four songs for a planned EP. The EP was never released, but Ardmore and Beechwood stumped up for another more prestigious recording session two months later. This time, Dave Dilloway joined May, deputising for The Left-Handed Marriage’s absent bass player. ‘We got taken down to Abbey Road to do it,’ says Dave. ‘This was at the height of The Beatles’ era, so it was tremendously exciting.’
    Bill later recalled that an A&R man present at the session was unimpressed by Brian’s playing. But, undeterred, a third sessionwith May took place at London’s Regent Sound, in July. With singer Henry Hill’s enunciated vocals, The Left-Handed Marriage merged elements of The Kinks, while his co-singer Jenny Hill brought a folkier slant to the music. In the end, Bill’s career as a songwriter never took off. But in 1993, the final Regent Sound sessions were included on a Left-Handed Marriage album called Crazy Chain , giving Queen fans the chance to hear their guitar hero in his youth; the Red Special splashing colour on a set of whimsical mid-sixties pop songs, miles away from the pomp of Queen.
    In between the recording sessions, May also came within touching distance of his idol. On 13 May, 1984 were booked on the same bill at Imperial College as The Jimi Hendrix Experience, the day after the band released its debut album, Are You Experienced? ‘Brimi’ was in his element. But there would be no communication between the two; only Jimi’s question to Tim Staffell as he loped down the corridor from the dressing room: ‘Which way’s the stage, man?’ Also in Hendrix’s entourage that night was Brian Jones, soon to be expelled from The Rolling Stones for too much drinking and drugging. Dave Dilloway glimpsed the ghost-like Jones tagging along behind Hendrix on the walk to the stage looking sicker than anyone he had ever