1 February 1978 – Queen left manager John Reid, signing severance agreement in back of Freddie’s Rolls Royce during break in filming of ‘We Will Rock You’/‘Spread Your Wings’ in Roger Taylor’s back garden of his home, Surrey, UK.
John Reid managed Queen between 1975 – 1978.
“We had a good working relationship with John,” Roger Taylor said of Reid in the 2011. “He was very fiery and very feisty, but so were we.”
Reid also managed Elton John and decided that one megastar was enough for him. Roger Taylor commented that Elton felt “a bit threatened by the band’s success.”
John said, he moved on from the role of Queen’s manager amicably, handing over the role to Jim Beach and describing it as “the gentlest parting of the ways of anyone I have ever worked with”
There weren’t hard feelings and Freddie Mercury and John Reid remained friends
By this point in Queen’s career, they became wealthy businessmen as well as musicians and decided they didn’t need to be managed by an outsider any longer.
“Jim Beach was given the task of negotiating us out of the contract with John Reid. We signed the ‘release’ agreements setting us free from the JR deal in the back of Freddie’s newly purchased Rolls Royce (his very first!), parked in the drive of Roger’s newly purchased country house. This was in a break while filming the promo video for our new song ‘We Will Rock You’ among the rhododendrons in Roger’s garden (in the snow!). We all decided there would be no more management deals along the lines we’d experienced. We were determined that the ultimate power would now rest with the four of us. Jim Beach became our full-time manager with this intent in 1978. We proceeded on a simple handshake rather than a contract, and then we all commenced a ‘year out’ of the UK, beginning with recording sessions in the South of France and Montreux, with Roy Baker producing. The album resulting from those recording sessions was Jazz. Forty years later, our relationship with Jim today is at least as strong as it was in 1977.”
- Brian May