Roger Taylor has detailed his frustration concerning the drum sound on Queen‘s first album, which the band lastly fastened when revisiting the recordings for final yr’s fiftieth anniversary Queen I field set.
Previous to being signed, Queen recorded a demo at De Lane Lea Studios in Wembley, North London, in late 1971. The songs included Hold Your self Alive, Liar, Jesus, Nice King Rat and The Night time Comes Down, all of which the band rerecorded once they relocated to Trident Studios in Soho to work on their debut album the next yr. The studio had efficiently performed host to the likes of David Bowie, Elton John and Lou Reed, however Taylor wasn’t pleased with the setup.
“At De Lane Lea, we’d simply flip up and do what we are able to – and rapidly,” says Taylor, within the newest episode of their ongoing video sequence Queen The Biggest. “At Trident, it did really feel like, ‘OK, now we’re in it’, however I didn’t actually get on with their concepts. That they had a drum sales space and it was a widely known sound: very dry and useless, which isn’t what I needed.
“I needed to listen to the drums resonate. I did not need it to go ‘thud, whack’. However that is what they needed. There was fabric over all the things, and all the things was taped down.”
“I did not even have my correct equipment in there. I needed to play this shitty little equipment. It was simply terrible. We have been instructed: ‘That is the Trident sound’. However we did not need the Trident sound. We needed our sound. I actually had a foul time enjoying that equipment, which is why, really, when you hearken to the demos – which I performed on my comparatively low-cost equipment in De Lane Lea – it is a larger normal of drumming. It’s fairly busy, but it surely is smart. And it is simply higher to hearken to.”
For the Queen I set, the band have been in a position to make use of present know-how to tweak the drum sound to deliver it according to what they’d all the time supposed, and Queen The Biggest Particular: The Drum Sound (Episode 6) goes into extra element, sharing three samples of Taylor’s remoted drum tracks from aspect two opener Liar – the De Lane Lea and Trident variations, as properly the remixed 2024 sound.
“What we have executed now with Queen I is we’ve used all of the precise recordings however made it sound extra like we needed it to sound on the time,” says Taylor. “So it’s ‘liver’, the drums are extra alive and extra ambient. So, for me, it is a vital enchancment, and I do know Brian [May] feels the identical.”
Queen I is accessible from the Queen retailer.