Freddie Mercury: The Biography

by Laura Jackson

  As well as penning songs at the breakfast table, Mercury had bought a cheap guitar, which wasn’t actually of much musical value. Mike Bersin confirms: ‘No, Freddie could strum a little bit, maybe play a couple of chords at a push, but that’s it. Mind you, he wasn’t above taking a guitar off of you, to show you how it would look better if you did this with it, or that. A guitar was a prop to Fred.’ Mercury was soon to graduate to a better class of prop with a white Fender Telecaster electric guitar. He wasn’t bothered with details such as plugging it in. He just loved to dangle it strategically low round his neck and make a nuisance of himself at the crack of dawn as a wandering minstrel. He would prowl the flat, stepping over the sleeping bodies and serenading them with his latest favourite chart hit, the Who’s ‘Pinball Wizard’.

  Financial realities such as paying the rent and buying food were an unwelcome interruption to his dreams of stardom. But as his income from the stall wasn’t enough to live on, Mercury had to take on an extra job; one that at least utilised his art-school training. ‘Freddie sketched all the time to keep his hand in,’ Mike Bersin says, ‘and at some point drew us all. But one day I happened to look over his shoulder and saw that he was sketching a woman in her underwear, and I said, “OK, what’s going on here then, Fred?” It turned out Freddie was making ends meet by doing fashion drawings for newspaper adverts.’

  Mike Benin’s momentary confusion about Mercury’s sketches was not supported by any doubts about his sexual preferences. Geoff Higgins recalls, ‘Freddie would ask me along to Kenny market saying, “Come and help me sell something today, for fuck sake,” and when I was there some of his friends would turn up. They were all as effeminate as him, but at the time we mostly thought they were just larking about.’

  While Ken Testi explains: ‘In these touchy times it’s hard to find the right words to describe Freddie without offending someone, but it was common then to see him behaving in a very affected manner. He certainly displayed all the qualities we attribute to gay people. But then again he and Mary had become a fixture in a relatively short space of time, so it was hard to tell. To be honest, no one took that much notice. There was too much else of more importance going on. Like having fun.’

  Fun was always a high priority then, and Higgins reveals that ‘At Kensington market we’d get a regular supply of marijuana which was mixed with jasmine tea, and once home we’d take turns to separate the grass from the tea. Years later Freddie was heavily into cocaine, but in those days he wouldn’t go near dope of any kind. One day “Tupp” took home the tea but dumped it, still all mixed together, by the kettle and went straight out. Freddie came home and made himself a pot of tea. God! By the time we got in he was completely out of his head.

  ‘His prized album was Only In It for the Money, and one track features a noise like a stylus scraping across the disc. He was freaking out to this album and busy wheeling about the flat waving his arms around when he heard the scraping noise and dashed straight to the record to examine it, thinking somebody had scratched his precious LP. He was well gone that day.’

  When Mercury later found out what had happened to him, he thought it was a great joke that he couldn’t wait to play on someone else as equally unsuspecting as himself. His chance came when two policemen arrived at the flat one night to break up a particularly rowdy party. Playing the accommodating host, he offered the officers tea and cakes – baked with marijuana – which they promptly accepted.

  That Mercury had no interest in drugs then is confirmed by Ken Testi: ‘To my knowledge Freddie had no involvement with drugs of any kind at this point, and even his alcohol consumption was limited. He wasn’t particularly into excesses of any kind. Part of the reason for that, of course, again came down to money. He didn’t have much of it to splash about on booze and getting Freddie to let someone buy him a drink was a bit of an uphill struggle, too, but if he did agree, you can bet he wouldn’t have a beer. He’d say, “A port and lemon then, if you insist, my dear. For the voice, you know.”’

  For Mercury, the chance to use his voice wasn’t frequent enough with Wreckage, and he had begun to show an interest in the possibility of joining another band. Scanning the music press for singers-wanted ads, he sent out several applications, receiving only one reply. Taking Roger Taylor with him for moral support, Mercury went to Leatherhead for the audition, armed with his precious personal Schure microphone and numerous ideas on how to win them over.

  The band, with the unlikely name of Sour Milk Sea, comprised Paul Milne, Rob Tyrell, Jeremy Gallop and Chris Chesney. They were, as planned, knocked out by Mercury’s panache and promptly gave him the job. But his reign with this band was brief, playing almost as few gigs as rehearsal sessions, nearly all in Oxford. At seventeen, Chris Chesney was six years younger than Mercury, but the two quickly became close friends, and Chris moved into the Ferry Road flat for a time. Unhappy with the guitarist’s sudden allegiance to their new lead singer, the other members of Sour Milk Sea grew disgruntled, and the band folded within weeks. Soon afterwards, Chesney left Barnes and returned to Oxford.

  The year 1969 had proved to be a good one for Mercury. Probably for the first time since his family had moved to Britain, he felt truly among friends; some of them would be with him for life. And in his private life, although the future held complications, for now he had found a unique and loving bond with a woman who was devoted to him. Professionally, however, he was dissatisfied. Despite the brief interlude with Sour Milk Sea, he remained lead singer with Wreckage, but their prospects were dim. The same could be said of Smile. A recent showcase gig at the prestigious Marquee Club in London’s Wardour Street had been a disaster, and the band’s relationship with Mercury Records was beginning to turn stale. There was a general despondency, but, like Mercury himself, Brian May and Roger Taylor were still ambitious for success in the rock world. Tim Staffell, a songwriter showing increasing signs of seeking his own direction, seemed restless. Within Smile, the scent of change was in the air. Always on the alert, Mercury was poised and ready, just waiting in the wings.

  THREE

  What’s In a Name?

  At the beginning of the seventies, Mercury conceded defeat. Wreckage were never going to be famous, and rather than prolong the agony, he made a clear-cut decision to leave the band. By day he still worked the Kensington market stall, his income now supplemented with freelance commissions for the Austin Knight commercial art agency. The rest of the time he spent deep in discussion with Brian May, Roger Taylor and Tim Staffell – who were all aware, too, that Smile’s days were numbered.

  ‘Like most student bands, we suffered from a lack of finance,’ says Staffell. ‘We’d played some notable gigs and backed some great names, and we’d had a good time doing it, but for me now was the time to move on.’ In late February 1970 he decided to quit. ‘I was tired of playing rock full blast,’ he explains. ‘So I went to see Colin Petersen, ex-drummer with the Bee Gees, to audition for his band.’ Staffell wasn’t sure that he was making the right move, but he felt strongly that he was now searching for a quieter style than Smile’s. ‘I left for my own reasons, but in a sense I was moving out of the way, and the birth of Queen was an inevitable outcome of that,’ he adds.

  With Staffell’s departure Mercury Records, not unexpectedly, parted company with May and Taylor. It was no particular loss on either side. Relations had been cool for some time, and with their contract fulfilled, there was nowhere else to go. Convinced it was simply a watershed moment in their careers, May and Taylor remained undaunted, and with Staffell out of the frame, Mercury lost no time muscling in on the act. After their resistance to letting him join Smile, it now seemed only natural to team up with the live-wire singer. As friends there had been plenty of time to recognise each other’s talent and common ambition: to take the rock world by storm.

  In April 1970 Freddie Mercury, Brian May and Roger Taylor formed a new band. Their immediate task was to find a bass player, and Taylor suggested Mike Grose. A former member of
Reaction, Grose was also co-owner of PJ’s in Truro; just a few weeks before, when Smile had played there, he had helped out the band at the last moment, so they knew he was a good musician.

  ‘When Roger rang and asked me to join the band it was good timing because PJ’s was under a demolition order,’ says Mike Grose. ‘They hadn’t actually named themselves Queen at this stage, but it was the three of them plus a bass player, which I agreed would be me.’ Grose accepted their offer of a flat share in Earls Court and packing up vital equipment – his guitar and a huge, much-needed Marshall amplifier – he left Cornwall for London in his Volkswagen van; another valuable asset he would be bringing to the band.

  In the past when Smile had played PJ’s, Mike Grose had sometimes witnessed friction between Roger Taylor and Tim Staffell. Once in London it didn’t take him long to discover that this time Taylor and Mercury were often at odds. ‘It was a cramped flat,’ he explains, ‘with four guys sharing one bedroom. Two girls were there as well who had the other room along the passage and that was it. There was a garden, but it could get very claustrophobic, and Roger and Freddie used to squabble a lot. If it got too much for Brian, he would go home to his parents for a while.’

  Sometimes the squabbling arose from discussions over the band’s direction, but there was little doubt about who won here. ‘Both Roger and Brian had plenty to say,’ stresses Mike Grose, ‘and even I had input. But Freddie was the ideas man. He had great plans. They were pretty intense about practising, too, and twice a week we went to a room at Imperial College that Brian had got permission for us to use.’

  As well as this, all four band members would often sit outside in the garden, bouncing suggestions around, in imaginative brainstorming sessions that drove Mercury and May to write some new material. ‘What would turn out to be their first single “Keep Yourself Alive” and also “Seven Seas of Rhye” came out of sessions like that,’ reveals Mike Grose. ‘Even ones like “Killer Queen”, which came a good bit later, were rumbling around in those days.’

  According to Grose, what to call the band occupied much of their thoughts: ‘I clearly recall that the name Queen came up for the first time one day while we were all in the garden. It was Freddie’s suggestion, of course, and he also wanted to design a very rude logo based around the letter Q, but the others downed that right away.’

  Having waited a year for the chance to form a band with May and Taylor, Mercury was keen to go. To him, everything they’d been involved in so far was just a precursor of better things to come. He saw this as his chance to find fame – but to make the band into something special it was vital that they presented themselves with a professional polish that left nothing to chance. Mercury’s ambitions for Queen were on a grand scale so it’s possible that his indecent proposal for the logo was no more than a distraction. He had cleverly engineered the change from Ibex to Wreckage, so perhaps he decided that, by giving May and Taylor the satisfaction of dismissing his outrageous idea for the logo, they would be more likely to allow him to have his own way with the name, Queen. This was a change that he considered crucial to his plans.

  Mercury put his case strongly. Queen was short and therefore memorable. It was a universal concept, with a majestic ring that undoubtedly appealed. It was perhaps the latter quality that eventually sealed it, but still there was one drawback – there was no way of avoiding the camp overtones of the name, something Mercury himself acknowledged. ‘It was open to all sorts of interpretation. I was certainly aware of the gay connotations.’ This was presumably satisfactory for Mercury, who, as Geoff Higgins puts it, had been ‘poncing about’ for a long time now, but the other band members had to decide whether they wanted to promote themselves with an image like that. Rock was, after all, a very macho, male-dominated world.

  Brian May ran the idea past Ken Reay, his tutor at Imperial College, who, acquainted with Mercury, had no need to ask who was behind the suggestion. ‘I wouldn’t say Brian had much trouble with it though,’ admits Reay. ‘Certainly he recognised it would be risqué, but that seemed to amuse him more than anything. The bottom line was, he saw it as being a very good move to call themselves Queen.’ In no time the vote was unanimous, and once again Mercury had got what he wanted without anyone else noticing that they had been steamrollered into it.

  Watching all this debate over the band’s name at the time, with hindsight Mike Grose feels that it ought to have told him something: ‘Freddie was a super guy. We went out drinking together a lot, and I didn’t have a clue that he was gay.’ It wasn’t that Mercury obviously enjoyed the company of women and, unlike some gay men, liked them around him in his life, nor that he had a steady girlfriend. As others would later attest, Mercury’s homosexuality was not something he generally flaunted when out socialising.

  With Grose as their new bassist, the band looked forward to their first gig. It was again in Truro, this time at the City Hall on 27 June 1970, but after all Mercury’s efforts to adopt the name Queen, they were billed as Smile. ‘It was a long-standing booking,’ explains Mike Grose. ‘I suppose we could’ve notified them that the band was different, but we didn’t bother.’

  The gig was a charity performance, organised by the Cornish branch of the British Red Cross, and although the hall held 800 people, only a fraction turned up, which, according to Grose, was a stroke of luck. ‘We were a bit rough at the edges that night,’ he admits. ‘We had practised, but playing live is different to rehearsing in a college classroom. We also got a bit lost with one of us remembering a different arrangement on a song to the rest. We did our best to hide the gaffes but, let’s put it this way, we didn’t expect to be asked back.’

  Collective gaffes aside, Mercury was unhappy with his personal performance. Not even the generous £50 fee, which they were relieved to receive at the end of the night, eradicated his self-recriminations – how unpolished he’d been – and for days he dissected the gig, analysing precisely where he had gone wrong. There was a plus side, however, for they had undoubtedly left a strong visual impression. The statutory stage wear of current bands such as Free and Black Sabbath was faded denims and T-shirts, but Mercury’s vision for Queen from the outset was to stand out from the crowd. When they took the stage at Truro’s City Hall, they were dressed stylishly in black silk, and weighed down with gaudy junk jewellery.

  The strength of their visual impact was some consolation to Mercury, but he was still frustrated that the band had not yet performed officially as Queen. Keen for them to start promoting themselves properly, he would insist this never happened again. And he was equally adamant about the decision he had now reached to change his own name. Countless performers had done this as a matter of course, but Mercury’s reasons seem fairly deep-rooted.

  The name Bulsara tied him too firmly to his Persian ancestry, and as Queen’s first PR man, Tony Brainsby, confirms, Mercury was always careful during interviews to avoid any reference to his Asian background. His parents’ religion and culture represented a world from which he had been distancing himself for some time. Although his name change was not intended as a slight to his family, he preferred to close the door on Farrokh Bulsara and reinvent himself as someone else – someone synonymous with glamour, fame and strength. For this he delved into Roman mythology and chose Mercury, the messenger of the gods. As of July 1970, Queen’s lead singer was to be known as Freddie Mercury.

  Friends accepted the change easily, but for Ken Testi, with whom Mercury had stayed in touch after leaving Wreckage, the new band name came as a shock: ‘Since no one stayed in a flat with a phone, we kept in touch by using the public call box at the end of the aisle at Kensington market, where Fred and Roger worked. Freddie wanted me to help get the band bookings, and one day he rang me at St Helens, urging me to fix them up with some gigs as soon as possible. I asked him what they were calling themselves now, and Fred said, “Queen”. Well, I guess that was a giveaway when you think about it, but anyway I gasped, “Freddie! You can’t get away with that!” To which he re
plied airily, “But of course we can, my dear.”’

  But behind the cavalier façade lay a calculating brain. Although they had been formed for only a few weeks, Queen’s lack of progress was wearing them down. Playing local gigs was all very well – though even then bookings didn’t just drop out of the sky – but their horizons went far beyond that. They wanted the band to attract the interest of record companies. Apart from Smile’s brief liaison with Mercury Records, none of them could boast any real experience of how to do this. But they refused to be deterred, and Mercury had already put the first phase of his attack into operation.

  In those days, Kensington High Street thronged each weekend with people who could be helpful to an aspiring band. Fully aware of this, Mercury made a point of being there. His apparently effortless display, mincing up and down the street, draped in velvet and fur, with feather boas tossed casually around his neck, concealed a determined attempt to catch the eye of the media, preferably someone useful from the record industry. Ken Testi confirms that ‘This was an every Saturday occurrence. He’d go on the prowl up and down Ken High Street. Sure there was a bonus – he could cruise, and it was very important to Freddie to go on the promenade – but he never lost sight of the fact that he was there for a more important reason, and it was a case of, you never know your luck.’

  Queen were counting on a showcase gig they had arranged for mid-July at Imperial College. The audience would include their friends, who could be depended upon to clap enthusiastically, but the bulk of the audience, they hoped, would consist of the music executives whom they had personally invited. It didn’t turn out to be their night, though. Some executives did turn up, and the band’s friends did their best to make the gig swing, but absolutely nothing came of it.