“Jesus” — the 1971 Trident Studios Acetate

One of the band’s very earliest recordings, dating from the De Lane Lea Studios sessions in London — the demos Queen cut while hunting for their first record deal, before Trident Studios took them on and helped broker the EMI contract that would follow. Acetates like this one were cut as one-off test discs rather than mass-produced, and they sometimes preserve a version that never made it to the final release: a different mix, a discarded take, an arrangement later reworked.

That’s exactly the case here. This “Jesus” differs from the version that would appear two years later on the band’s self-titled debut album — a small but genuine window into how the song changed on its way to being released, and a reminder of just how early some of these recordings sit in the band’s history, predating even their first single.

This piece is part of “Keep On Rockin’ — the 2019 Exhibition.” See the full exhibition here.