When Brian May first began working with Freddie Mercury, he wasn’t immediately certain they had found the right singer. Freddie’s energy was overwhelming, unpredictable, and unlike anything Brian had experienced before.
Looking back during a recent Q&A session, Brian openly admitted just how unsettling those early moments felt.
“When we first worked with him, it was a little unnerving, because he did a lot of running around the place and screaming his head off. So we thought, ‘Is this going work?’”
Freddie’s personality was intense and impossible to ignore. He didn’t behave like a typical young singer trying to fit into a band. He behaved like someone who already believed he belonged at the center of it.
Brian also acknowledged that Freddie wasn’t universally liked in those early days.
“And not everybody liked him, to say. A lot of people found him kind of abrasive, but they all thought he was interesting and entertaining. At that point, though, he wasn’t the singer that we all got to know as Freddie Mercury.”
At that stage, Freddie was still discovering himself. The transformation truly began when the band entered De Lane Lea Studios to record their first demos.
Hearing his voice played back changed everything.
“What happened was, we went into the studio… As soon as Freddie heard his voice coming back, he went, ‘Oh, I don’t like it. I’m gonna do that again.’”
Freddie refused to accept anything less than what he envisioned. He repeated takes relentlessly, determined to shape his voice exactly the way he wanted.
“And he would go back, and back, and back until he got it the way he wanted it. So, he became instantly, very aware of what he sounded like, and incredibly quickly fashioned himself into the singer he wanted to be.”
What stood out most wasn’t just his drive, but his belief — not only in himself, but in Brian as well.
Brian recalled how Freddie constantly encouraged him, pushing him past his insecurities and speaking with complete certainty about their future.
“Even when Freddie was nothing and nobody, he was Jimi Hendrix in his mind. He always said, ‘You can do anything anyone can do, Brian. You can do this for me.’”
It wasn’t arrogance. It was belief.
Although Brian May initially had doubts, those doubts quickly disappeared as he watched Freddie reshape himself into the frontman he was meant to be. That same relentless drive would eventually lead Freddie to record fifteen albums with Queen, helping turn the band into one of the most iconic forces in music history.
What once seemed uncertain became undeniable.
Freddie Mercury didn’t just become Queen’s singer.
He became Queen itself.
