I saw the Queen in Cornwall once. It was the queenly Queen and it was a profoundly depressing experience for a republican Scot.

The Queen was on an official visit and her convoy from Penzance rolled across Newlyn Bridge an hour behind schedule. Her Maj looked thoroughly miserable. The ranks of excited schoolchildren half-waved their flags and missed the moment by a blink. They looked downcast, understandably. The rest of us went back to the pub.

I feel even more downcast at having missed all of the other Queen's gigs in Cornwall during the 1970s. Unforgivable really, but I was out on the ocean most of the time in those days.

However, a remarkable book, Queen In Cornwall, by Rupert White, illuminates the early days of Queen's drummer, Truro-bred Roger Taylor, and the fascinating history of Cornish live music in the 1960s – from skiffle to rock & roll to folk to Freddie Mercury. The fact that super-group Queen's first ever gig was at City Hall in Truro on June 27, 1970, has some resonance, to say the least. And it is around such intriguing details that Rupert White has created a fascinating overview of social and cultural reportage.

Roger Taylor's family moved to Truro from his birthplace of King's Lynn in Norfolk in 1957, when the little drummer boy was eight. Taylor went to Truro School and from his early teens was involved in the mid-Cornwall live music scene.

Cornwall produced a number of talented young musicians at the time and Taylor was a major figure from the start. His talent as a drummer was evident and he began his career with a number of groups before forming The Reaction, one of the most popular and resilient bands on the Cornish music scene from the mid to late 1960s.

Rupert White has gathered reminiscences from contemporaries of Roger Taylor and local musicians of the time. It is linked by a narrative of how Taylor and Queen evolved and coalesced in London round the quartet of Taylor, Brian May, Roger Deacon and Freddie Mercury. The rest was rock super-stardom.

This is a fascinating and absorbing book on many levels. It paints a picture of gifted yet down to earth young people as they emerged during the liberating years of the 1960s with their talents given free rein. The contrast between conventional ambition and the dream of pop stardom was never so ironic. Roger Taylor's trajectory towards becoming one of the world's greatest rock drummers was interrupted only briefly by his teachers at Truro School. They advised him that there was more money in dentistry than in drums. A year of dental college in London was enough for Roger. He teamed up with Brian May and Tim Staffel to form the group Smile, later to become Queen.

The Cornwall of the 1960s was no backwater hoe-down when it came to live music and the book describes the vibrant world of "beat" dances, concerts and competitions that engaged Cornish teenagers in village halls, church halls, rugby clubs and a spread of memorable dance venues such as PJ's in Truro, Penzance's Winter Garden and the Flamingo at Redruth. Even after moving to London, Roger Taylor, with Smile and Queen, returned frequently to play at PJ's and the Garden and at other Cornish venues such as the Driftwood Spars at St Agnes, Hayle Rugby Club and the 1971 Tregye Festival.

There was a refreshing social democracy about those days. Local musicians included Manny Cockle, Johnny Quayle, Mike Grose, Mike Dudley, Rick Penrose, Acker Snell, Roger Brokenshire, Pete Bawden, Bert Biscoe and many more. All contribute their reminiscences to the book in a kind of free-flowing reportage that at times may seem to lack continuity, but lends a fresh and lively immediacy to the story. Soon to be famous figures, such as David Bowie, Rod Stewart, The Kinks and Eric Clapton, drifted across the Cornish scene during the period.

There was a natural crossover among the various types of live music being played throughout Cornwall during the 1960s. Rock musicians intermingled with performers in the booming Cornish folk music scene. For several years, Roger Taylor was the boyfriend of Truro folk singer Jill Johnson, an undoubted star in her own right, who with her sisters Jenny and Janet and a friend, Sue Johnstone, formed the popular folk group, Jayfolk. The pair were together for several years during which time Taylor moved to London and the long road to Queen.

Jill Johnson was easily the most talented female singer to emerge in Cornwall at the time and was in a very different class to the undoubted "queen" of folk, Brenda Wootton. She became lead singer of contemporary folk group, the Famous Jug Band, with Clive Palmer, Pete Berryman and Henry "The Jug" Bartlett. Along with folk stars, such as Ralph McTell, the Famous Jug Band played regularly at the Folk Cottage club in Mitchell. They toured widely, and released two acclaimed LPs.

In Queen In Cornwall, Rupert White has captured fascinating reminiscences from the likes of Jill Johnson and Pat Johnstone, who stayed close to the developing Queen's career in London and who, with her sister Sue, set up the Queen Fan Club as the group took off.

The Truro girls and their families looked after members of Smile/Queen when they performed in Cornwall, and they provide insights in the book that portray the good nature of the young musicians and especially the innate humanity and shyness of a complex Freddie Bulsara (Mercury). What Queen In Cornwall captures so well is the social and cultural life of Cornish young people during the 1960s and 1970s that was further illuminated by close connections with the highest echelons of British rock music. Today's "celeb" culture cannot match the image of Freddie Mercury and Brian May helping to dig a back garden in Truro and planting it out as a thank you surprise for local girl Pat Johnstone's father.

Grainy photographs from the period, along with newspaper reports and adverts, add to the feast. The cover features a photograph of Freddie Mercury performing at The Garden in Penzance in 1974. This is a book that will delight contemporaries as much as it should fascinate later generations with its portrait of a time when rock royalty and legend were born in the village halls and urban dance venues of Cornwall.

Signed copies of Queen In Cornwall (Antenna Publications) are available on ebay. Copies are also available from Waterstones in Truro.