Queen London Locations Walk

The Eventim Apollo, a large, wide building. Above the ground floor, which has steps leading up to multiple entrance doors, a narrow panel across the entire building features the venue's name and large red letters reading Let The Music Play. Above that, the building is mainly large white concrete, with a row of 14 tall, narrow windows stretching about halfway up. The very top of the venue has a red brick layer topped by a small layer of white concrete.

Back in September I spent a day walking around some of the Queen-related locations in Hammersmith & Kensington, following the Day 1 itinerary on the Queen Locations website (and you can read a Queen Online feature by site owner Judit as well).

My intention was to find most of the locations listed on that website over a series of walks – i.e. those that still exist that I can get to reasonably easily. However, due to the weather and the toughening up of Covid restrictions, I haven’t yet had a safe chance to go hunting for any more.

So these are the locations I’ve found so far, including some key places where the band lived, recorded and performed. As well as the website mentioned above, further notes and photos about these locations can be found on Queen ConcertsMercury Paradise and the map on Shane’s Queen Site. I hope you enjoy walking in Queen’s footsteps with me!

Contents

Shepherd’s Bush Empire

Shepherd’s Bush Green, Shepherd’s Bush, W12

From 1953 to 1991, this was the BBC Television Theatre where Top Of The Pops was recorded. Queen’s first appearance on the show, performing Killer Queen, is said to have been recorded here – although the Queen Concerts site indicates that it may actually have been recorded 200 metres away in Lime Grove. But either way it’s still an important location, and Queen no doubt played here sometimes. Roger Taylor has also performed here with The Cross and The SAS Band as part of his solo career.

36 Sinclair Road

Hammersmith, W14

The band shared a flat here in the early 1970s.

100 Holland Road

Kensington, W14

Freddie and Mary Austin lived here during the early 70s. The band’s first photo shoot also took place here, with many of the pictures by Doug Puddifoot appearing on the back of their first album.

54 Russell Gardens

Kensington, W14

This is the former location of The Kensington Pub where Freddie, Brian, Roger and Mary would socialise, as would the band’s sound engineer from the early days, John Harris. It wasn’t the first time they’d all met by any means, but when they lived locally it was a good place for them to get together.

Old photos of the pub can be seen on Queen Concerts (reproduced below) and Wikimedia Commons, and there will be many others online of course.

However, the pub closed in mid-2011, and was demolished in 2014. The framework of the new building started to appear in 2018, and the scaffolding is still covering it on Google’s Street View image from July 2019, which appears to be their most recent pass of the area at the time of writing.

But that had all disappeared when I visited earlier this year, in September 2020, and the new building looks very dull and uninspiring, sadly:

I don’t know what, if anything, the building is being used for now, but from a bit of Googling I’ve seen planning statements that indicate it has a mixture of commercial and residential units.

Hammersmith Odeon

45 Queen Caroline St, Hammersmith, W6

Queen played many shows here, including their classic festive concert on Christmas Eve 1975 (broadcast live on BBC2 & BBC Radio 1, and later released on DVD & Blu-ray), and another on Boxing Day 1979 (the first of the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea). The venue has had various name changes since then, and is currently known as the Eventim Apollo.

The Rutland Arms

15 Lower Mall, Hammersmith, W6

This pub near Hammersmith Bridge was a location in the Bohemian Rhapsody movie. It features in the “angry lizard” scene, where the band meet their new manager John Reid, and Freddie explains to him why they’re so unique.

The motto there is “Multum In Parvo”, meaning “a great deal in a small space”.

Conclusion

So there you have it, that was my little wander through Hammersmith and Kensington a few months ago. I hope you enjoyed looking at those photos, and I’m looking forward to exploring more in the future.

Author: Glen

Love London, love a laugh, love life. Visually impaired blogger, culture vulture & accessibility advocate, with aniridia & nystagmus, posting about my experiences & adventures.

3 thoughts on “Queen London Locations Walk”

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