With Freddie becoming closer and closer with the Smile boys- as Staffell drifted further and further apart from them – it
wouldn’t be long before Staffell decided that Smile was not for
him, and Freddie replaced him as lead singer. The band also began
the long search for a new bass player, initially settling on Barry
Mitchell. Freddie quickly stamped his authority on the band,
changing the band’s name from Smile to Queen, stating, ‘Years
ago I thought up the name Queen... It’s just a name, but it’s very
regal, and it sounds splendid. It’s a strong name, very universal and
immediate. It had a lot of visual potential and was open to all sorts
of interpretations. I was certainly aware of the gay connotations,
but that was just one facet of it.’ Also deciding his own name
needed a makeover, Freddie Bulsara found inspiration for a new
one when writing the song My Fairy King, which contains a verse
with the lyrics ‘Mother Mercury, look what they’ve done to me.’
Bulsara was quick to latch on to Mercury, and subsequently took
the stage name Freddie Mercury – arguably an attempt to detach
his stage persona (‘extroverted monster’) from his personal persona.
It would be another few years before the band would finally
become complete, when in 1972 bassist John Deacon joined the
group. Queen began to rehearse for their first full-length release - the eponymously titled ‘Queen’ – but struggled to find a label
to market the finished product, as Roger Taylor recalled, ‘We had
quite a difficult genesis. It was very difficult for us to get a contract,
to be accepted in any way. But many groups went through that,
and it does engineer a kind of “backs to the wall” feeling in a
band. So we felt very strong together.’
When they were eventually picked up by EMI, it had been eight
months since the band had completed the album, by which point
the group themselves had almost grown out of it. Years later, Brian
May would talk about the lengthy process, stating, ‘The album
took ages and ages – two years in total, in the preparation, making
and then trying to get the thing released.’