Queen were back at the City Hall in Truro, where they were billed as appearing with ‘Dream Machine Disco’. Connie Bawden (wife of Pete Bawden, close friend of Roger’s who helped organise most of his escapades in Cornwall under his booking agency, Eclipse, also founder of PJ’s)remembers this first City Hall gig of 1971 better than her husband.
It was because on that particular night, Pete was called away. Connie: “It was a bit of a fiasco. Pete got a phone call: the entertainment hadn’t turned up at the Tregye Hotel so he had to take all his disco equipment out of the City Hall and go there instead. So in the end it was just me and the band and no disco. Freddie had joined by then. Queen weren’t yet famous, but they were a sell out.
They already had a following in Truro then. When half-time came they traipsed across to the Navy Arms (pub) and it was like death in the City Hall, because there was no music as we’d planned.
Then they came back from the pub and Brian’s guitar string broke so it took about another half an hour to get that sorted! The Navy Arms used to be quite the place. We often went to the Navy. Pat and Sue Johnstone (friends of Roger’s since his ‘Reaction’ days and they launched Queen’s fan club in 1974) were there that night, and I remember Queen going off with them.
This was Queen’s fifth gig on the Cornwall 11-date tour in which Pete Bawden and Eclipse helped organise. He put together the Driftwood Spars and City Hall dates that year, though most of the others would have been organised by Roger Taylor either from London, or opportunistically whilst already in Cornwall.
