Tim Staffell

Tim Staffell, formerly an artist and once a member of Smile along with Brian May and Roger Taylor (of Queen) tells all in this interview, exclusively for the Music Devotee blog!

"I think music is the only thing of any real value that the human race has produced..." - Tim Staffell

Following the release of 2018's Bohemian Rhapsody, the biopic movie of Freddie Mercury and the rock band Queen's life, Queen seemed to become more popular with the younger generation.

The film was also how I got into Queen, and as an extension, classic rock.

But as soon as the film started with the Live Aid scene, it felt like coming home. One of the very first scenes in the film is the Smile scene, or where a young Freddie Mercury, at that point Farrokh Bulsara (played by Oscar-winning actor Rami Malek) sees Smile playing, made up of the members Brian May (Gwilym Lee), Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy), and of course, Tim Staffell (Jack Roth). As one of the first scenes, I attribute a lot of my love for classic rock music to those actors, and as an extension, the people that they played.

So when Tim Staffell, the bassist and lead-singer of Smile replied to a message of mine way back in August 2019, I was determined to follow it through to the end and get the answers which I had been craving... and now I want to share them here.

In 1970, bassist and lead-singer Tim Staffell made the decision to leave Smile, "part of the reason why I left Smile was because of the graph of my self-esteem was on a downward slope; the result was that it made me restless and I began to determine that I needed to change my direction towards something that I felt had more substance", shortly afterwards, Farrokh Bulsara, known then as just Freddie (and later becoming Freddie Mercury) joined the band, the name changed from Smile to Queen, and bassist John Deacon joined. History was made. The lineup of Mercury, Taylor, May and Deacon would not change for the next fifteen years, until the band made the decision to stop touring (their final show was 9th August, 1986 at Knebworth). "He was never Farrokh when I knew him... We were just students together at Ealing College; so much is made retrospectively of a situation which was fairly unremarkable at the time... It's quite hard to think of anything significant that singled him out at that time for what he was later to become... At Ealing College, Freddie was likely engaged in the process of using the skills he was learning in the advertising graphic design course to inform his task of designing and refining himself to be a successful entertainer. It probably is as simple as that. In the same way that any creative effort needs to be the result of a conscious manipulation of the raw materials. Actually I know he always thought he would be an improvement as the singer in Smile (and he was right)."

As the swinging sixties were drawing to a close, Smile was just beginning. Many people who I have spoken to and interviewed previously have said that they didn't know what they were living through until it was over. However, Staffell does not feel that the sixties were monumental, and instead were a "largely illusory condition generated by the development of mass communication in the UK during the sixties. We just think it was significant because, amongst other things, the techniques of marketing (which had been in development for decades across the Atlantic) had reached the UK.. People were suddenly empowered to create and sell their own 'cultural' products (such as music, fashion and art); actually that's a bit unfair.. it was a self-propagating phenomenon that really did draw a generation together - but I think it's important not to regard it as some sort of 'golden age' to the detriment of what went before or has come afterwards... I mean, my parents used to reminisce about the 'thirties 'Ah, it's not like it was in the old days' - I think that's a pretty common feeling with every generation."

A lot has changed since then, and many have posed the question if there could ever be a decade like it again, "never, because it was, first and foremost an economic revolution. Capital realised it could monetise products that were generated by a class of people (teenagers and young adults) who had previously been marginalised in our society.. and they've been doing it ever since. Every decade since the sixties there has been a steady investment in popular music as a means of tapping into youth spending power. It has very little to do with the creativity that existed in the Tim Staffell sixties. Culturally, it's simply a method of creating a revenue stream. That's not all it is, of course, but that's the thing which determines whether or not there could ever be another musical revolution' - anything surprising and innovative and strongly creative would rapidly get absorbed by the entrepreneurial mechanisms and be defused."

"[When Smile started out] Being in a band in the sixties for a teenage boy was a passport to social acceptance. Many of my contemporaries, naturally shy in any conventional social gathering, saw that the 'notoriety' of being a member of a rock band was an effective way of negotiating ones' sexuality and self confidence. The infamous rock & roll 'swagger' was a direct result of this. I was no different than anyone else. I embraced it initially, but after a couple of years it began to wear a bit thin eventually (and another reason for my increasing discomfort with Smile) it seemed to me it was detrimental to the 'pure' process of making music", here, Tim Staffell remembers what the live music scene was like in the sixties, when Smile was starting out, and music was everywhere.

But, regardless of how the times have changed since the sixties, there is still one question which begs an answer; just how much contact does Staffell have with Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor nowadays? "Not a great deal. Naturally, I saw Brian when I recorded the soundtrack for BoRhap; and we do coincide from time to time; Roger I haven't seen for twenty years or more; my wife and I went to a couple of parties at his house outside Guildford years ago, but I think he spends a lot of his time away from the UK. We exchanged e-mails during the time the movie was premiered, but that's all."

"I'm fairly sure my [writing] process is pretty similar to everyone else's - it usually (but not always) starts for me with a snatch of melody or an insistent riff going round my head - these seeds of songs can be triggered by listening to other music, or can even be generated in the rhythm of a spoken phrase, or sometimes even in colloquial phrases. Bizarrely, sometimes I wake up in the morning with the essence of a song fully formed, and just lyrics to flesh out. That's happened several times." This way of writing is similar to that of the legendary Lennon-McCartney, who Staffell cites as one of his biggest musical influences, alongside the likes of Little Richard, and Chuck Berry, Brian Wilson, Freddie Mercury and Brian May.

As mentioned previously, Jack Roth played Tim Staffell in one of the opening scenes of Bohemian Rhapsody, though Tim describes it as a "blink and you'll miss it" appearance. "It didn't stretch Jack Roth's undoubted acting ability to portray me, but he did well enough... I did enjoy the film, however - I thought that it was really well paced and directed (even though it was a joint effort)... a nice piece of work, with - in my view, just the right balance between artistic integrity and narrative expediency... thanks, Jack! You done good!"