Les Brown and Sinclair Gardens

Les Brown is well known to Queen fans as the man who originally brought Brian May and Roger Taylor together when he saw an advert for a drummer at Imperial College where he was studying Maths...I spoke to him in France last night, and he had some great memories of the Smile years in particular, both in London and Cornwall. He remembers for example cooking breakfast for 17 in Truro when Smile and their entourage descended on him one weekend!

There are some unanswered questions re Sinclair Gardens though which I will hope to get to the bottom of over the next few days mainly regarding who exactly lived there and when...

This picture is taken from Google maps...The black door level with the blue lorry was the entrance to their flat... You also have to imagine a Smile sticker - about a foot across - in the window...

UPDATE 3/12/10 All the Queen biographies say that Roger moved in with Les in 1967 - but actually Les and Geoff Daniel who lived at Sinclair Gardens say they were in Halls during academic year 67/68. Its possible Roger was too - but will need to try and clarify this. Certainly Roger and Les lived there during the academic year 68/69 and Brian and Freddie visited and slept over regularly but never lived there - at least whilst Les was there.

The Kensington was a regular haunt for the band  - especially before they moved to Barnes late in 1969. It was near Sinclair Gardens and it was where Freddie met Ibex for the first time...

UPDATE 12/12/10 There was a flat a few hundred yards away in Sinclair Road where Ibex stayed with the McConnell sisters. Roger also first met John Harris the Queen sound man via the McConnells in the same pub.