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Pull a thread
The Bassist Queen Had Before John Deacon: Barry Mitchell and the Nine Months Nobody Talks About
Between June 1970 and March 1971, Queen went through three bass players. Barry Mitchell lasted the longest — around thirteen gigs — and left because he didn’t think the band was going anywhere. He died on 17 August 2026, and the strange part is that he was right.
The lineup that looks inevitable wasn’t
Pull up the back cover of any Queen compilation and you get four faces that seem welded together: Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor, John Deacon. Twenty years, no substitutions, no drama in the rhythm section. It reads like a band that was assembled correctly on the first try.