February 1974 - 50 years ago in 1974 that Queen launched the Fan Club!
👉 The Official International Queen Fan Club!!
🔸The Official International Queen Fan Club founded by sisters, Pat and Sue Johnstone (in the picture), Pat passed away in january 2018.
The two sisters were Roger Taylor's friend since their teenage years in Truro, UK, 1970.
🔸This club is mentioned in the Guinness book of World Records as the "longest running fan club for a band".
🔸🔸What must it be like to brag that you were at rock gods Queen’s first ever performance? Well, quite a few people in Cornwall can, because on this very date – June 27 – in 1970 popular rockers-on-the-rise Smile played their first gig with a new line-up and a new name, Queen, at Truro City Hall, which later became the Hall For Cornwall.
Truro boy Roger Taylor told Cornwall Live: “That was actually arranged by my mother in aid of the Red Cross. We were paid £50, which was quite a lot of money back then. I’m not sure many people turned up though.”
Roger’s mum Win had placed two adverts in The West Briton newspaper on the run-up to the gig, still in the name of Smile. However, the band had already decided to play under the new name Queen – eyebrow-raising for the time.
She recalled Freddie explaining the new name at her Truro bungalow: "He just kept saying how regal it sounded.”
Sue Johnstone, a friend of the band from Truro, remembered: “We would hitch a lift back to Cornwall from the start of the M4, and on one of these occasions Freddie walked us to the bus stop and said ‘what do you think of the name Queen?’
"We thought it was hilarious because he was always so camp. And we just laughed and thought of the gay connotation immediately, but he tried to make it more acceptable by persuading us that it was ‘regal’.”
Read on ↘
https://www.cornwalllive.com/whats-on/music-nightlife/queen-played-first-concert-cornwall-1720494.amp
📸 Photo: Queen Fan Club
