Freddie Mercury - The Liverpool Years

Liverpool has seen its fair share of exotic characters and transient musos.

It's a little known fact that Freddie Mercury (under his real name, Farrokh Bulsara) made his first on-stage debut with Brian May and Roger Taylor at Liverpool's famous: 'The Sink Club' - now known as  The Magnet.  


The original membership card to gain entry to the sink club was by a numbered rubber plug on a chain.


Here is a bootleg recording of Freddie with the short-lived Liverpool band Ibex taken at the The Sink Club.  

There is another Liverpool link:  this one ties the Beatles to Queen.


Rumour has it, that Freddie once lived on Penny Lane. 
It's a popular story that Freddie once lived in Dovedale Towers - now a pub.
If anyone has any images of Freddie in Liverpool i'd love to see them.

Whitechapel - NEMS bites the dust.

Here are two photographs of the same building, a building that for a time was the centre of Liverpool music business - here 'the most important contract in music history' was signed.

 And 40 years later... demolished for redevelopment.

Photo from PhillipGMayer

It shows the NEMS (standing for North End Music Stores) building on Whitechapel, Liverpool.  


Legend has it that At about three o'clock on October 28th, 1961, a boy called Raymond Jones, walked into 
this NEMS record-store in and asked:


 'There's a record I want. It's "My Bonnie" and it was made in Germany. Have you got it?'

Behind the counter was the store manager, Brian Epstein. 

He shook his head. 'Who is the record by?' he asked. 

'You won't have heard of them,' said Jones. 'It's by a group called The Beatles....'

Whether the story is true or not, it was from this building where Brian began his music empire signing The Beatles and going on to manage some of the biggest bands of Merseybeat.

The building is now gone but i'm sure the legend will live on.

Thanks to Phillip G Mayer, check his photostream of Liverpool photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/44435674@N00/