Queen
Stuff You Don't Know
About the 60s
This excerpt is from the book "Follow the Music," the story of Elektra records as told by its founder, Jac Holzman.
In
Pursuit of a Queen - Elektra vs. CBS, The Giant of The Industry
JAC HOLZMAN: In 1971, Jack Nelson of Trident Audio Productions in London paid me a visit.
JACK NELSON: A casual meeting, a little fishing expedition. I had a couple of hours between planes. Jac was a fan of our work. I was carrying a sample tape of what Trident could do, so that people could hear our studio sound and also the groups we had under management. I was going to see if we could license some bands to Elektra.
Trident was probably the foremost studio of its time in England. It was a beehive of activity because of the engineers and the sound. Everybody from the Beatles and the Stones recorded there. Elton John-that's where he made his first six or seven albums. David Bowie. Cat Stevens was with Trident. One of Jac's English signings, Lindisfarne, recorded there. Carly Simon made her 'You're So Vain' album there.
I had a group called Queen. I had been shopping them for almost a year, and now I was signing them to EMI in England and I was in the process of signing them to CBS in North America. Jac said, "I'd like to hear them." I said, "OK, but I'm already in my third revision of the CBS contract."
JAC: Jack gave me the Queen tapes, a complete album, two full 10-inch reels. I listened to them at Tranquility, first through the speakers, then through headphones. It was so beautifully recorded and performed; everything was there, like a perfectly cut diamond landing on your desk.
JACK NELSON: Queen reminded me of the makeup of the Beatles. Each guy was so totally the opposite of the others, the four points of the compass. Freddie Mercury was the lead vocalist. He composed on keyboards, and he was classically trained. Very complex guy, incredibly talented. Brian May was a rock and roll guitarist and he brought that influence. Also incredibly talented, scatterbrained as they come, and yet as focused as they come. He had a degree in infrared astronomy. John Deacon was the bass player. He brought the solid bit, as bass players do, grounded them. He had a first-class honors degree in electronics. Roger Meddows-Taylor, the drummer, had a double degree. They were probably the smartest band in the business. And totally diverse personalities-we could get into an airport and one would stop, one would go right, one would go left, and one would go straight ahead. But it made a great creative force. When they got together in the middle, with the stacked vocals, that center was amazing.
JAC: I was knocked out. 'Keep Yourself Alive,' 'Liar,' 'The Night Comes Down'-all great songs in asumptuous production that felt like the purest ice-cream poured over a real rock and roll foundation. I wanted Queen and CBS wanted Queen-this was going to be Harry Chapin times two, Clive Davis and me duking it out again.
JACK NELSON: I flew back to England over the weekend, and on Monday I get a call from Jac: "I love this band." And then another call from him in LA. And maybe a week or two later another call from him in Japan: "I'm really serious." I do my calculations and realize it's the middle of the night in Japan, so I guess he was.
Negotiations with CBS had stalled over something inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, half a point or something. Also I had had a conversation with Clive Davis that was very unsettling. Clive and his A&R staff hadn't really listened to the music like Jac had. The might of CBS was very attractive. However, if you studied your history, you saw that they weren't particularly good as far as rock and roll was concerned. And the fact that one of their A&R guys called Queen one of the best country bands he had heard in a long time made me extremely nervous.
Jac was pursuing us heavily, without being obnoxious about it-it wasn't the bullshit that we knew too well in the business. He called me again, from Australia, I think: "I've got to have them." I said, "You know, if you're really serious, I'll put on a gig and you come over and see them."
JAC: I flew to London, listened to them at the gig Jack had set up at the Marquee in Soho, and was dreadfully disappointed. I saw nothing on stage to match the power I had heard on the tape. But the music was there. I wrote them a long memo, four or five pages single-spaced, with my thoughts and suggestions. Then I sent Mel Posner to follow up on my visit to discuss marketing. Then a will-of-the-wisp passionate lady from our artist relations department, Jeannie Theis, who was a real fan of their music. And always more ideas and memos-the Holzman wear-them-down, frequency-of-interaction method.
And I had yet to unleash another potent persuader, the no-nonsense Elektra contract. By contrast, the CBS standard contract was a thing of wonder for CBS, but for artists it was desperation-thirty pages or more, the first sixteen pages protecting CBS and on page seventeen a tiny paragraph about what the artist might receive if all the planets were properly in conjunction.
JACK NELSON: Everybody told me I was crazy to go with Elektra, that they were a great folk label, but Queen was the farthest thing from folk. I looked at Arthur Lee and Love, and the Doors, which was totally different from what Jac had done in the past. Also, his knowledge of Queen's music and his enthusiasm for it. My brain kept saying, "Is he a great merchandiser, can he promote the stuff?" In the end, against popular advice, I said, "To heck with it, we're going for Elektra."
We got the contract done quickly. Certain things I had to have, take it or leave it. Jac didn't give me Elektra Records for Queen, but we came to a very fair deal. I always felt you'd never get sold down the river with Jac. And from then on, everyone at Elektra did what they said they were going to do, and that's a miracle for our business.
"Follow the Music" is the must-read story of Elektra records, as told by its founder Jac Holzman and the artists and staff of one of America's legendary record companies. (441 pages, softcover, 140 illustrations) Order today from this site and from Amazon.com
Copyright 1998 by Jac Holzman and Gavan Daws. All rights reserved.