The first biography of the legendary British band to focus on their formative years. It highlights the desperately urgent days of pre-stardom, when the Queen quartet played with bands like The Reaction, The Opposition, 1984, and Sour Milk Sea. From the tiny downbeat village of Oadby in Leicestershire, where John Deacon grew up, to the exotic splendor of Zanzibar, where Farookh Bulsara was born, author Mark Hodkinson offers a new and enticing version of Queen. In tracing these unpublished stories he also examines the Queen era before and immediately after stardom. SELLING POINTS: He has interviewed over 60 friends and colleagues of Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon, and pieced together a fascinating web of stories that for the first time tell the true story of the emergent Queen. This is the first genuine account of Queen s rise to stardom, as told by those who knew the band and watched from the front row. Illustrated with many previously unseen early photographs of the four members of Queen.