Queen came after heavy metal - Freddy Mercury took this position (6)
I believe the answer is:
leader
'queen' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'came after heavy metal freddy mercury took this position' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'metal' could be 'lead' (lead is a kind of metal) and 'lead' is found in the answer.
The remaining letters 'er' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for leader that I've seen before include "Head of an orchestra" , "Editor's article" , "Aliens demand to be taken to this man" , "Important (newspaper) article" , "One is ahead and shows the way" .)