The Smile File: The Precursors of Queen

by Christopher John Smith

Art School was the unofficial music school for British musicians in the 60s and 70s and in 1967 Chris Smith attended Ealing Art College. It was there he started writing songs with Freddie Bulsara following the formation of the band, Smile. Bulsara became Freddie Mercury, Smile became Queen and Chris remained true to the blues music that had inspired him from his early teens. The rest is history. This is his story.

377 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 24, 2023

Reviews

[Mr Day · Rating 4 out of 5]

So so. Things I liked : Nice, short, concise chapters with no waffle. Well written too. More like a diary than an autobiography. I was hoping for more Queen though, which is my fault.

Also, I dont know if it’s just the Kindle version but my copy of the book is punctuated throughout the pages by random numbers. For example, I went and bought a guitar 2. Or My mate Billy was a great bassist 3. Makes for a jerky reading experience. Appears this is just various references that appear at the end, but whoever has converted the text into Kindle-text hasn’t done a brilliant job.

Conclusion: not bad. The writer has clearly had a colourful life and seems to have captured the life on the road of a band in the 60s and 70s really well. I struggled with bits as the blues and all that stuff is my least favourite music, but overall worth a read. Just don’t expect too much about Smile or Queen.