Before Queen became rock royalty, they were just a band chasing a dream in a London studio. The De Lane Lea Demos capture the raw energy and ambition of their early days—now restored and remixed for the first time on 12” vinyl.
In summer 1969, Brian and Roger’s pre-Queen group, Smile, had already recorded at De Lane Lea Studios in London’s Kingsway. Two years later, the company opened a new complex in Wembley, and needed a band to help them test their new equipment and the sound quality of the different rooms.
Brian and Roger volunteered Queen, and the band spent time at the studio between November 1971 and January 1972 – “a massive thrill,” Brian recalls. They were repaid with a five-song demo, overseen by De Lane Lea’s chief engineer Louie Austin, and containing “Keep Yourself Alive”, “The Night Comes Down”, “Jesus”, “Liar”, and “Great King Rat”.
“The demos we made at De Lane Lea Studios were closer to what we dreamed of than our later sessions,” explains Brian. “Nice open drum sounds and ambience on the guitar. That was much more the way we wanted it to go.”
“We were young and had total blind faith in what we were doing,” says Roger Although these demos were intended to be hawked around to procure a recording contract, the band, says Brian, always felt the performances had more spontaneity and sparkle, as well as the benefit of more natural sounds compared with the final album versions. As, the only surviving copies of the mixes of the demos are on scratched acetates, here for the first time, these self-produced recordings have been restored and remixed from the original multitracks.
