{"id":326600,"date":"2026-08-21T12:30:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T12:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/326600\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T12:30:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T12:30:11","slug":"former-queen-bassist-barry-mitchell-dies-terribly-sad-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/326600\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Queen bassist Barry Mitchell dies: \u2018Terribly sad news\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Former Queen bassist Barry Mitchell has died.<\/p>\n

The \u201cterribly sad news\u201d was announced by Greg Brooks, the band<\/a>\u2019s official archivist, on Facebook this week.<\/p>\n

Mitchell was Queen\u2019s second bassist, after Mike Grose, and played 13 gigs with the band between August 1970 and January 1971 before leaving because he \u201cwasn\u2019t enthusiastic enough about their music<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Doug Bogie then took over for two gigs before the band finally settled on long-time bassist John Deacon.<\/p>\n

Queen released their self-titled debut album in 1973 and achieved international stardom with their 1975 record A Night at the Opera.<\/p>\n

In 2018, Mitchell spoke to Rolling Stone<\/a> magazine about his time with the band in their early days.<\/p>\n

\"BarryBarry Mitchell played with Queen from 1970 to 1971 (Facebook)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe played quite a few concerts in England, notably in Liverpool<\/a>,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince we didn\u2019t have enough original songs to last a whole show and Freddie [Mercury] loved classic rock & roll, we played that too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked about his exit from the band, Mitchell told Rolling Stone that he was \u201cfired\u201d because his fellow bandmates \u201cthought I was useless\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, he went on to say: \u201cIn fact, it was me who wasn\u2019t enthusiastic enough about their music.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis didn\u2019t necessarily go in the direction I wanted to go. At the time, they weren\u2019t at all the cult band you all know.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t see the potential. It\u2019s crazy to say this now but it\u2019s the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"FreddieFreddie Mercury (second from the left) with Queen in 1984 (Alamy\/PA)<\/p>\n

After leaving Queen, Mitchell went on to play with Tiger, a proto-punk band formerly known as Crushed Butler, which disbanded in late 1971.<\/p>\n

Mitchell\u2019s death has been met with tributes from friends and fans on social media.<\/p>\n

Friend Mark Cotterill wrote: \u201cFarewell to a genuinely lovely man. A pleasure to call him friend. He had time for everyone at the Queen conventions. He had some great stories to tell re his music career. A man who could make any hat look cool. RIP Barry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gary Taylor wrote: \u201cRIP Barry Mitchell, Queen\u2019s second bass player, who sadly passed away on August 17th.<\/p>\n

\u2018He was a great guy, and a friend, and we had some very interesting chats over the years on the phone and in person.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-326600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}