Queen grew from Smile after Freddie Bulsara joined in
London, 1970: Mercury, May, and Taylor founded Queen, with Deacon completing the classic lineup. Sales estimates of 250–300 million make them one of rock's giants; Mercury's November 1991 AIDS disclosure and death the next day froze the original era.
British rock band Queen formed in London in 1970 around Freddie Mercury's voice and piano, Brian May's guitar, and Roger Taylor's drums, later stabilized by bassist John Deacon. May and Taylor had played in Smile; fan Farrokh "Freddie" Bulsara—Zanzibar-born with Indian Parsi heritage, met via Ealing Art College circles—pushed them toward grander staging and eventually fronted the new group. Multi-tracked choirs and genre jumps from hard rock to opera pastiche became trademarks.
Mercury received an AIDS diagnosis in 1987; the band still released The Miracle (1989) and Innuendo (1991). On 23 November 1991 he publicly confirmed the illness and died the following day, ending the four-man chapter that stadium audiences still replay. Catalogue sales estimates sit between 250 and 300 million. May had built a homemade guitar with his father in 1963 before the west-London meetings that seeded Smile and then Queen.
May had earlier formed a group named 1984 after Orwell's novel, then left in 1968 to study physics and infrared astronomy at Imperial College. When the singer Tim Staffell quit Smile in 1970, the others took Bulsara as frontman, and he proposed the name Queen. Deacon, a quiet bassist handy with electronics, joined in February 1971, and the classic four first played together on 2 July at a Surrey college. Early going was humbling: a 1972 gig at Bedford College drew six people, and the band turned down roughly 25,000 pounds from Charisma because the label would favour Genesis. Their debut single, Keep Yourself Alive, came out on 6 July 1973 after Trident secured an EMI deal, and in 1990 the Brit Awards honoured them for their outstanding contribution to music in Britain.
Source: Queen (band)
