Freddie Mercury: The Biography

by Laura Jackson

  ‘By this time I wanna beat him bad, and that was us, our recording sessions forgotten as for like two solid hours all you heard from the basement was “Shit!” or “Aw, good shot!” or “God dammit!” In the end I won and became the Olympic Studio ping-pong champ!’ It was just a game, but despite his coke-induced high, the hugely competitive Mercury was not a happy man.

  For Gorham, Mercury was unlike any other star he’d worked with: ‘There were times during that tour when he wasn’t being outrageous and in fact was quite sedate. He was an intelligent guy and not your basic rock slob. He had refinement. You could sit down with the bloke and talk to him, and he talked to you. He was also a good listener. He had the knack of making you open up. He certainly wasn’t the kind whose ambition in life is to get pissed and go out and cause some problems.’

  Mercury did most things to excess, and he often had a lot of fun doing them, as Trip Khalaf, the sound man assigned to tour with Queen in the States, once recalled: ‘What a strange person Freddie was! I mean, he was a lovely person, but he wasn’t one of us. He was a fascinating creature. On one hand he was completely ridiculous, but he knew he was completely ridiculous, and he enjoyed being ridiculous.’

  What Mercury didn’t enjoy was any problem with his health, but with such a punishing tour schedule in America, it was not unlikely that his throat condition would surface again. Immediately after that San Francisco gig, his throat problem re-emerged, resulting in the cancellation of two gigs to allow him to rest. With the unexpected time off, he went sightseeing in Hollywood, soaking up its glitz and glamour, before meeting up again with the others for the Canadian leg of their tour.

  When Queen returned home in mid-March, it was to discover that their latest single ‘Tie Your Mother Down’, a typical hard rocker of Brian May’s, hadn’t broken into even the top 30. With the advent of the punk movement, bands such as the Clash, the Damned, X-Ray Spex and the Sex Pistols ruled the charts. The Pistols are in particular universally considered to have single-handedly launched New Wave music in Britain, punk roots having been laid some years before in America. The movement itself would die out in something like eighteen months, but its influence would be long-lasting.

  The music press had been quick to latch on to punk, to the exclusion of established bands such as Queen. Perhaps particularly Queen, since they were the extreme antithesis of the punk philosophy. But, Freddie Mercury remained unconcerned about New Wave and almost seemed to go out of his way to offset its grosser aspects.

  He was even more showy on stage than ever. When Queen opened their European tour in Sweden on 8 May, he appeared at Stockholm’s Ice Stadium sheathed in a replica of an almost diaphanous costume once worn by the dancer Nijinsky. And not content with the impact that made, he took the final encore in a silver skintight leotard, so heavily sequinned that it blinded the audience as he shimmied under the huge array of spotlights.

  Throughout Denmark, Germany, Holland and Switzerland, there were continual gigs and parties. In Holland they were presented with no less than thirty-eight awards, a tribute to their huge popularity in the Netherlands. On their return to Britain, the UK leg of the tour began in Bristol, ending on 7 June at London’s Earls Court. But, just before that, they played two dates in Liverpool, as Mercury’s first manager, Ken Testi, recalls.

  ‘By this time I had a famous club in Liverpool, called Erics, on Mathew Street, on the opposite side to where the Cavern had been. The Sex Pistols, the Clash, Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds etc., all played there. I gave Holly Johnson his first break at Erics, and around 1977 it was a hot venue. Anyway, during Queen’s tour they played two nights at the Empire, and while they were here they looked me up. Freddie, John and Roger arrived grandly at the club in three separate limousines, and it was great to share an hour or two with Freddie again.’

  But Ken Testi was conscious of a barrier between them, which now he concedes was inevitable but regrettable and attributed to others. But whoever or whatever was to blame, as Chris O’Donnell had already experienced, Mercury had changed from his Kensington market stall days – and not necessarily for the better.

  Queen performed on two consecutive nights at Earls Court three days later. It was Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee year. A huge fan of the monarchy, Mercury adored all its pomp and circumstance, and this must partly explain the lavish expense this time on their stage effects at Earls Court. Besides the familiar smoke bombs, fireworks and elaborate lighting, a specially designed rig, in the shape of a crown, had been commissioned at a cost of £50,000. Ascending dramatically amid the smoke of dry ice, Mercury was in his glory, straddling the centre stage beneath it.

  Such an ostentatious display at the height of punk was guaranteed to goad the critics, and in June NME attacked Mercury in a lengthy interview by Tony Stewart, entitled IS THIS MAN A PRAT? Stewart criticised Mercury’s love of lavishly toasting his audience with champagne, as well as generally setting out to lampoon him. But the foppish Mercury turned out to be a good match for Stewart, a fact that was clear in the text of the article.

  That year the Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save the Queen’ became a UK number one, outselling Rod Stewart two to one. Banned from the airwaves, at least one major retailer refused to stock the single, and many distributors would not handle it. Their manager Malcolm McLaren calls the number: ‘The most English, angst-ridden, toughest, mother-fucking rock song that’s ever been written,’ adding, ‘that was to me, punk rock at its best.’

  Queen and the Pistols were to meet one day, in a recording studio. ‘In 1977, after the Sex Pistols signed with A&M Records,’ Malcolm McLaren recalled, ‘we all trucked off to Wessex Studios in north London. Queen were recording in studio one, and Chris Thomas, the Sex Pistols’ producer, was in studio two. On entering studio one on his way next door, Sid Vicious got down on his hands and knees and crawled through Freddie Mercury’s legs. That was the day the Sex Pistols finished their second and most notorious single, “God Save the Queen!”’

  The studio work under way was for Queen’s new album, although Mercury made time for another attempt at production; this time for actor Peter Straker, a close friend. Straker, who had been cast in the original stage production of Hair and appeared regularly on TV, had decided to make a record. Mercury’s newly formed Goose Productions had invested £20,000 in Straker’s album, This One’s On Me. Mercury produced Straker with Roy Thomas Baker, but only as a one-off. When Straker went on to record more material with Goose, Mercury’s role was purely financial. In addition to Goose Productions, in time he formed Mercury Songs, a publishing company set up to handle his future solo work.

  Queen recordings soon demanded his full attention, and on 7 October their tenth single was released. It was ‘We Are the Champions’, a sturdy arm-locking anthem, written by Mercury. The simple but rousing chorus sounded as if it had been around for years and was a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. Its promotional video was, unusually, to be filmed in front of a live audience. Bruce Gowers, the promo director of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ who had also shot their last three videos, was not available. So they enlisted the services of Derek Burbridge to control the crowd of ‘extras’ hired through the Queen fan club for the shoot at the New London Theatre Centre.

  Released with Brian May’s ‘We Will Rock You’ as the B-side, ‘We Are the Champions’ was immediately panned by the critics. But the fans took no notice, and it went to number two. Elektra also liked the new single enough to release it as a double A-side. They correctly anticipated massive airplay and were rewarded by its huge success in the States. ‘We Are the Champions’ found favour throughout Europe, too, holding on to the number one slot in France for an impressive twelve consecutive weeks. Today the song still features regularly at major world sporting events.

  When News of the World, the album from which the hit single had been selected, was released at the end of the month, it topped the charts in nine countries. Two years on Mercury was still reaping awards for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, but he came to value most hig
hly the one he was to receive on 18 October, at a ceremony in Wembley Conference Centre, when ‘Bo Rhap’ tied jointly with Procol Harum’s ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ to receive the Britannia Award for the Best British Pop Single of the Last Twenty-Five Years. Queen received their awards from TV presenter Michael Aspel.

  The financial rewards of their continuing success helped Queen out of their commitment to Trident. Finally they could buy themselves out of the clause in the severance agreements that had given Trident a 1 per cent share of six future albums. But any pleasure derived from this development was dulled by the band’s growing awareness of management difficulties.

  As Pete Brown explains: ‘The problem was that Queen didn’t feel that John Reid was able to give them enough of his time, and that didn’t suit them. When Queen were brought on board you have to understand that it was really the Elton John office. Reid had been working at Tamla Motown and hadn’t been a manager before Elton picked him to handle his business affairs. He duly set John up with an office, and all the staff had worked for Elton for a long time already, so their loyalties lay there. If Elton had a tour, that took priority, and with the different personalities in Queen, you can imagine how that went down.’

  It was Queen’s lawyer, Jim Beach, who negotiated their way out of the partnership, and with much less difficulty than freeing the band from their ties to Trident. ‘Queen were doing an outdoor video shoot for “We Will Rock You” in Roger’s garden,’ says Pete Brown. ‘It was unbelievably cold, with snow lying about a foot deep, which made it not a lot of fun for everyone hanging about, as you do on film shoots. People were growing very touchy as the day wore on, and the light grew poorer; then suddenly John Reid arrived and the band all piled into the back of Freddie’s limo. That’s when they signed the severance papers.’

  As a penalty for opting out of their contract in advance of the agreed expiry date, Queen had to pay a substantial sum of money to John Reid Enterprises, as well as signing over a sizeable percentage of royalties on existing albums.

  Years later, when referring to Mercury’s grasp of finances, Elton John commented that his friend wouldn’t know the price of a pint of milk but could tell you, to a penny, the cost of a bottle of nail varnish. And Mercury himself often airily claimed never to concern himself with the extent of his wealth, maintaining that as long as he had enough money to go shopping he was happy. But in reality Mercury wasn’t anything like so naive. He was fully conscious of the fact that once again they had had to shell out big. He was equally aware that while the downside of this latest severance with John Reid did not impoverish Queen, it did leave them with the continuing headache of making the correct decisions concerning future management.

  After much discussion, the band unanimously agreed that they would try to manage themselves. They would be assisted by Pete Brown and Paul Prenter – both of whom remained with Queen, although they had been employed originally through John Reid – as well as Jim Beach and Gerry Stickells. And this new arrangement came into effect just prior to Queen’s tour of America, their second that year.

  Joining the band this trip was Bob Harris. He was working on a Queen documentary and intended to gather more footage for it, as well as holding interview sessions with Mercury and the others. ‘The idea was to knock all this together with the tour film and do a retrospective at that point,’ says Harris. ‘But, in fact, what ended up happening was that on my return to London I went to an editing room in Wardour Street, with only an editing engineer in my innocence, and, of course, progress was extremely slow. I just didn’t have the time with all my other commitments, and eventually Queen took back the film. Bits and pieces of it have emerged in various videos over the years.’

  More successful was the tour itself, which began in Portland, at the Cumberland County Civic Center, on 11 November. That night, for the first time on tour, Mercury sang his tender ballad ‘Love of My Life’. The audience joined in, and thrilled that they sang so well, Mercury stopped and let the fans carry on alone. From then on, this became a feature of every gig. As Mercury said, no matter where they performed the number, the fans automatically knew their role without him having to say a word.

  Witnessing this first-hand, Bob Harris agrees that ‘Freddie was one of the most generous performers in the business. It was no ego trip when he got the crowd to sing back to him. He actually wanted them to communicate with him that intensely.’ This is something that is made especially clear from video footage. Here Mercury can be seen, looking like a doting tutor, as he watches and listens intently to the crowd. His eye contact with the vast audience is acute enough, one imagines, to pick out a single person in the back row not joining in.

  By the time they reached New York on 1 December, it was clear that this was the tour that marked Queen’s conquest of North America. Back in February they had played the prestigious Madison Square Garden, at which time Mercury had vowed to better Yes’s record there of three consecutive sold-out nights. They would do five in a row, he said. Eleven months on, although they fell short of that pledge, Queen were still booked to headline for two consecutive nights. Both shows turned out to be very special.

  Soon afterwards, Queen paid a return visit to the Stadium in Chicago. It was a bitterly cold night, but in contrast to Chris O’Donnell’s recollections of Mercury keeping fans freezing in the snow, Bob Harris has happier memories. ‘It was an amazing experience,’ he recalls. ‘The stadium was the one used by the Chicago Bears, and because it was so bitter we were all presented with a beautiful team jacket. I wore mine until it literally disintegrated. We went from there – and temperatures of minus fifteen degrees – to Las Vegas just three gigs later and a wall of heat. We’d arrived a few days before Queen were due to play, and so had a bit of a holiday. Roger, his minder and I one day worked our way down two strips, frequenting every hotel, casino, bar and club in our path.’

  In contrast, Mercury preferred to enjoy himself out of the limelight, as this second lengthy US tour provided him with the opportunity to scour the gay scene. In public he maintained the distinction drawn between his ‘secret’ homosexuality and self-confessed bisexuality. He was now approaching superstar status and to have admitted openly to being gay could have jeopardised his popularity. Despite his camp behaviour, and the fact that he saw his bisexual image as creating an appropriate mystique, he had a strong female following, many of whom continued to see him as a red-blooded macho man. Either not hearing or choosing to ignore any talk to the contrary they happily fantasised about Queen’s energetic lead singer and his raunchy routine with the sawn-off mike stand.

  Having embarked on this track, Mercury never went back, but there are those who wonder, even at this early stage, about how content he was with his decision. Says Chris O’Donnell, ‘Freddie demanded so much of people and often too much, so that at times they fell short of his expectations. He loved the adulation he received on stage, but in his personal life behind the scenes I felt he wasn’t really enjoying himself, not deep down.’ If this is true, it wasn’t something Mercury cared to admit, and indeed with disregard for his own health – and that of his countless one-night stands – he would continue to behave recklessly for a long time.

  EIGHT

  Alley Creeper

  Within a matter of months it became clear to Queen that managing themselves was not working out, and they turned to their new accountant, Peter Chant, for advice on setting up a proper management structure. It was decided that Chant would be responsible for the band’s business, accounting and tax. Jim Beach was persuaded to resign his partnership in the west London law firm of Harbottle and Lewis in order to become Queen’s manager, heading up the newly formed Queen Productions Ltd. At the same time, they created Queen Music Ltd and Queen Films Ltd.

  No self-respecting band could hope to chart now without a pop promo. But the publicity videos were also proving more complex and expensive to make. While they were financing their own videos, Queen’s idea behind setting up the two film and music companie
s was to retain the all-important control of the video rights and license them to EMI for promotional use.

  By now Queen were such high earners that British income tax regulations would cripple them if they were to spend more than sixty-five days out of the year in the UK. On their accountant’s advice, the solution was to record and perform overseas. The income could then legitimately be channelled through a different company from Queen Productions and would be tax-free. So after the release of the single ‘Spread Your Wings’ on 10 February, they embarked on a spring tour of Europe. While in Berlin to play the Deutschlandhalle, Roger Taylor crossed Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin. While there, he saw a piece of graffiti that made such an impact on him that it was to inspire his cover concept for their forthcoming album later that year.

  The tour wound to a close with a few British dates. Mercury’s style was visibly changing. Always flamboyant, he had appeared before his public in silver lurex bodysuits, black leotards, often with a diamanté-studded crotch, and other equally subtle outfits. Now he favoured shiny black PVC. Prowling the stage, and extremely light on his feet, he once confessed, ‘I rather fancy myself as a black panther.’ He also liked dressing from head to toe in leather. Both styles strengthened his manly stage image, but many fans wondered if they liked the new biker image. In the late seventies, this was also a popular style among gay men on the nightclub circuit – especially in America where Mercury had lately spent some time. Perhaps he viewed his new look as a way in which he could fuse his two worlds.