Freddie Mercury: The Biography

by Laura Jackson

  ‘In lots of ways he was a happy man. He thoroughly enjoyed his beautiful home and the company of his friends, loved his big garden and, of course, his cats. When Tiffany, the long-haired Persian, died Freddie was absolutely heartbroken. He was a highly intelligent man too. He read avidly and had a vast knowledge of art and history.’

  These sentiments are echoed by Tim Rice, who says, ‘I found Freddie a very sophisticated and charming man. I mean some evenings at his house were sort of boisterous – he was a great entertainer in private, too – but he was always jolly and eternally generous. And he had a great knowledge of artistic things, of Japan in particular, but art in general, and was an absolutely fanatical follower of opera.’

  Socialising at home was about the limit to Mercury’s strength that summer. Although he did slip abroad for a holiday, he avoided his usual haunts and headed instead for the tranquillity of a rented lakeside house in Montreux. There he spent hours watching the television or taking slow walks along the shore with Jim Hutton. At home he stepped up his now regular visits to his parents, too. Because of their son’s rejection of their way of life, relations between them had been strained for a long time. Parsees consider homosexuality unclean, and Mercury’s reputation for wild, decadent behaviour had caused a rift. But his family remained very important to him, and he helped them whenever he could. Healing the breach, he obtained the finest medical treatment money could buy when, at one point, Bomi Bulsara took seriously ill.

  His parents occasionally came to visit at Garden Lodge. This was a world of splendour away from the same modest semi in Feltham from which Mercury had gone to school. They refused his frequent offers to buy them a new home. During these visits a charade was staged for their benefit, whereby Jim Hutton was introduced as the gardener, and there was no hint of their true relationship. No word of his illness, at least at this stage, reached them either. Although with their son’s weight loss and the marks on his skin, even if they didn’t specifically know what was wrong, it must have become clear to them that he was not well.

  Mid-October would finally see the release of Barcelona and also the single ‘The Golden Boy’. Before that, on the 8th, Mercury took part in what would be his last live performance. La Nit was a huge open-air festival, held in Barcelona, on the Avinguda de Maria Cristina – the equivalent of the Mall in London – that would officially launch the four-year run-up to the 1992 Olympic Games. Mercury and Montserrat Caballé were to perform with the Barcelona Opera House orchestra and choir on an enormous stage set in front of the beautiful fountains in Castle Square. For organiser Pino Sagliocco and Tony Pike, there to enjoy the spectacle, it was a night to remember – and not just because, at the last moment, Mercury had to mime.

  ‘Freddie was anxious about the whole thing,’ says Pino Sagliocco, ‘but he had worked on the project with Mike for a whole year, and he admired Montserrat so much that he never stopped saying that this was a dream come true for him. He was possessed about it. Everyone had thought I was a lunatic matching these two, and people made attacks on why Montserrat was doing this, but there was nothing wrong with cross-culture. It worked. Freddie was an extravagant personality. Montserrat is recognised as a diva, but Freddie was also a diva. Both were great artistes and totally inspired.

  ‘I never saw anyone with such belief as Freddie. He was professional all the way and he always delivered 100 per cent. Not many have the drive to make something happen. But he was unique in that way, and it was a privilege and a pleasure to work with him. For me, having built this Ibiza ’92 show, it was great to have Montserrat and Freddie open it – all that power of music. It was a piece of art.’

  Although Sagliocco describes La Nit as magical, putting on the actual show, he admits, was hell: ‘The universal feeling in my camp when it finished was, thank God! I financed it with mainly Japanese money. I assembled the artistes and had great difficulties in sorting problems out, like one performer at the last moment would refuse to go on stage with another and so on.’

  Among the other participants in the colossal event were Jerry Lee Lewis, Dionne Warwick and José Carreras, as well as Rudolph Nureyev – who also had AIDS. With this being Mercury’s first public appearance for a long time – and the rumours rife about him – some sections of the press were in their element, trying to link Mercury with Nureyev. ‘The stories were bullshit!’ confirms Sagliocco. ‘Freddie and Rudolph were never involved. They never even said hello.’

  Mercury and Montserrat Caballé were to close the show with two songs, but the nearer the time came to take the stage, the edgier he got. Tony Pike recalls that ‘Freddie had been extremely nervous earlier when he was introduced to the King and Queen of Spain, anxious about how he looked etc. As time marched on, Peter Freestone was the only person he allowed near him for about the last half an hour. We kept out of his way, but I caught sight of him – and he was pacing up and down dressed in his suit, deep in thought and lipping various phrases from the songs.’

  It is impossible to tell whether it was nerves or ill health, but just prior to joining Caballé on stage, Mercury complained of a sore throat and insisted that they should mime. With two such experienced stars, this might have worked. But, much to Mercury’s great annoyance and embarrassment, a technical hitch made the tape play too slowly and so mismatch the lip-sync. His friends maintain that either no one really noticed, or they didn’t care.

  ‘It was a fabulous setting in the old place,’ says Pike, ‘and a magic moment in entertainment when, just as Freddie hit that last “Barcelona!”, the sky exploded with fireworks.’

  While Pino Sagliocco maintains, ‘I honestly never found out why it was suddenly to be mimed. The song was very complicated and to perform at that level perhaps it made it easier, but no one cared because the occasion was so wonderful.’

  During Mercury’s brief stay there, Pino Sagliocco was among those who could not help but notice the change in his friend; the dark marks on his face, now hard to disguise despite the heavier make-up. ‘Freddie always showed integrity,’ he says, ‘even when he was dying. But there was a feeling about him right then of being totally closed in in his own world. He wanted to write and record, and not tell the world his troubles. Perhaps he feared coming up against prejudice. And, anyway, no artiste wants to be seen that way.’

  Jim Hutton had accompanied his lover to La Nit. Says Sagliocco, ‘He and Freddie were very happy together. They were established and a really close couple. Jim was like a wife to Freddie, and Freddie loved him dearly.

  ‘I would say that Freddie was too generous to some people. When someone becomes a huge star, sometimes people around the star abuse him. And it’s often they, and not the star himself, who is trouble. But Jim was never like that. He never used any power because of his position. He always discreetly kept in the background.’

  After miming his performance that night, Mercury then compounded the speculation around him by cancelling his press conference. One of the few media people he did speak to was Simon Bates back in London. ‘Freddie rang me,’ Bates says, ‘and we talked on the phone about “Barcelona”. He was very ill then, but again it wasn’t something I asked about. It was definitely not an area to intrude upon.’

  From that point on, life for the remainder of the year seems to have become increasingly stressful. Perhaps the strain of having appeared in public – or of not having been able to perform – had brought his weakness home to him. That Mercury was a natural showman was true during his long quest for success, and remained so as he reigned supreme at the top of his profession. The fact that his doctors had diagnosed his condition as terminal didn’t remove any of that overnight. He was just not physically capable of performing any more and had bleakly been forced to acknowledge this. But that is not to say that coping, emotionally, was easy.

  Leaving aside for the moment the reality that he was having to face the prospect of a horrible and premature death, no one who had received so much adulation for so long – who’d derived such intense nourishment
from it – could suddenly switch it off. He said himself that performing live was so much in his blood that he would be vulnerable without it. And he had to have felt its lack with an acuteness bordering on agony. His distress was causing stormy rows with Jim Hutton that shattered the illusion of tranquillity at Garden Lodge. Some of the arguments were quite vicious, and most ended in tears. The strain of keeping his illness to himself was clearly too much for him.

  It hadn’t helped, either, that he had severed all contact with some of his friends, only to miss them terribly. The closest friend he had been avoiding for months now was Barbara Valentin, the person he had said he felt best understood his chosen way of life. But that was one battle he was about to lose.

  ‘When Freddie had suddenly quit living in Munich I knew he was worried that he had HIV,’ said Valentin. ‘I knew he went hurrying back to London to hide – but there was nowhere to hide. Soon after the special concert with Montserrat in Ibiza, I began to see less and less of Freddie. I rang Garden Lodge often, but he would not take my calls. That Christmas I tried again, but this time was told by someone there to stop calling, and, I thought, OK. Fuck this.

  ‘But, then, about eight months later my door bell rang one day, and it was Freddie. He just stood there and said, “I can’t stay away from you. I can’t live without you in my life. Take me in and take care of me.” And I did. He was in a lot of emotional pain, and he had to work out a way to live with his illness. But it was very hard.’

  By January 1989 Queen’s album was finished. Because of past rows over money, Mercury suggested that it would be fairer collectively to credit all tracks to the band. And that, equally, the royalty earnings should be a four-way split. Work was due to start on a new album, which would mean frequent trips for Mercury to Mountain Studios in Montreux. In the meantime his latest solo single, prophetically entitled ‘How Can I Go On’, had just been released. It had barely scraped into the top 100 but the star little cared.

  The progression of his illness meant that the marks on his skin, where visible, as on his face, were becoming harder to hide with make-up alone. So, to help his disguise, he grew a beard. Although not ready to share his troubles with anyone apart from the two or three friends who were sworn to secrecy, Mercury was thinking ahead. He had decided gradually to start utilising his vast wealth. One of his first decisions was to make huge donations to various cat sanctuaries. He would later establish certain close friends in substantial new homes.

  The first single from Queen’s new album was released on 2 May, a belter entitled ‘I Want It All’. Its video had been shot in Pinewood Studios without an audience and was the first public recognition of how Mercury was drastically changing. Dressing conventionally in a collar and tie and sporting designer stubble proved little distraction for the shock of realising how much thinner he was – his face was gaunt and almost haunted under the studio make-up. He sang as powerfully as ever, though, and despite the fact that he was clearly much less energetic, his delivery remained defiant. The single charted instantly at number three, giving the band their highest entry to date.

  Ten days later The Miracle followed. It was a stylish album complemented by an inspired sleeve design, the work of artist Richard Gray. Using advanced computer graphics, Gray had created a striking effect of fusing the band’s four faces. Working on their new album, in Montreux, Queen got together one night in a restaurant. Taylor, Deacon and May had been told no more of their lead singer’s illness than any outsider, but clearly each harboured his own suspicions. It seems they anticipated with a sense of foreboding that their friend was about to give them some devastating news. Perhaps he had intended to confide in them, feeling the pressure recently of the burden of keeping his illness a secret. But, although Mercury admitted to his friends for the first time that he was not well, he shied away from revealing the truth.

  Not able to tell the band, Mercury certainly wasn’t about to confess days later, when for the first time in nearly ten years, Queen were interviewed together on radio. It was DJ Mike Read’s coup, and for an hour he subjected all four to a question-and-answer session. When the question arose about why Queen no longer toured, Mercury took the blame by saying that he wanted to change the cycle of album-tour-album-tour. For many, it was an unsatisfactory reason, and as time passed the queries kept on coming.

  Eventually Mercury partially confessed: ‘I can’t carry on rocking the way I have done in the past,’ he told persistent reporters. ‘It is all too much. It’s no way for a grown man to behave. I have stopped my nights of wild partying. That’s not because I’m ill, but down to age. I’m no spring chicken. Now I prefer to spend my time at home. It’s part of growing up.’

  Over the next six months, four further singles emerged from The Miracle – ‘Breakthru’, ‘The Invisible Man’, ‘Scandal’ and the title track itself. The first and last of these spawned unusual videos. For ‘Breakthru’ Queen were filmed playing aboard a speeding vintage steam train on the Nene Valley Railway near Peterborough. Although the shooting lasted three days, Queen were there for just one of these. With the now familiar designer stubble Mercury looked good, albeit a shadow of his former self.

  For ‘The Miracle’, probably in an effort to involve the star on screen as little as possible, child actor band look-alikes had been hired, who mimed to the song. All were well cast, but Ross McCall, who beat off stiff competition at auditions to play Mercury, fittingly stole the show. So much so that when the band joined the kids on film, for the last minutes of the track, Mercury found himself imitating McCall. He later quipped to Ross, ‘How are you fixed for doing a tour?’

  While these releases kept Queen in the public eye, the band were busy on their new album in Switzerland and London. Mercury had grown steadily weaker and could manage less time each week in the studio. He had been forced to give up smoking because of respiratory problems, and singing exhausted him more than he allowed anyone to see. In December Queen released Queen at the Beeb, an album of early recordings made for the BBC.

  But, it wasn’t the past the watching press was interested in. Having had their antennae tuned in for some time, they were now seriously alert. Media speculation about what was wrong with Mercury multiplied by the week. The pressure on the band was considerable. While the star himself had become adept at avoiding journalists, the other three band members were hounded by the press at every opportunity. Forced to lie and say that Mercury was fine, each was burdened with the knowledge that their lead singer’s plight – and their own – could only worsen.

  FOURTEEN

  Silent Sorrow

  Work on Queen’s new album, already ten months in the making, looked set to take even longer than The Miracle. In the end its production spanned the whole of 1990, too. But, with Mercury’s state of health dictating the pace, there was nothing anyone could do. When it had come to the crunch the previous year, Mercury had shied away from admitting to the rest of the band that he was battling against AIDS. Although it remained unspoken, each believed that this would be the last album they would record together.

  For close friends such as Mike Moran it was a hellish state of affairs that someone they cared for deeply was suffering so much. Yet because of his decision not to discuss his illness openly they were not able to reach out to him. It was a very painful time, as Mike Moran recalls.

  ‘Freddie showed immense bravery, and none of us really knew just how ill he was,’ he says. ‘He didn’t want to be a burden to people and certainly didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for him. For about three years it was awfully difficult for us, but we coped by going into denial – the way you do when you don’t want to face the fact that someone you love is dying. And there were often times when we’d say to each other, “He’s looking a bit better today, don’t you think? Maybe, right enough …” We’d semi-convince ourselves that he was going to be OK. It was all a case of not wanting him to go.’

  Apart from recording when he was able, Mercury now lived reclusively, and, conscious of his looks,
the last thing he was likely to welcome was any public engagement. But this year the British Phonographic Industry chose to honour Queen for their outstanding contribution to British music, and in mid-February that meant being presented with an award at their ninth annual ceremony, held at the Dominion Theatre. The evening was hosted by Jonathan King, and the band, in formal dinner dress, received their award from BPI chairman Terry Ellis.

  Mercury couldn’t win this time. Had Queen turned up without him – whatever the excuse – it would have provided the press with more fuel to fire the rampant speculation about his health. Inevitably, when he did appear on stage, keeping well to the back and watching as Brian May delivered the acceptance speech, his hollowed features and gaunt frame were so pronounced that it sparked off a rash of new rumours.

  Queen made a quick getaway that night, shunning the official BPI dinner for the attractions of their own special party at the Groucho Club in Soho. They had celebrated 1981 as their tenth anniversary. For the purposes of this party, they decided to make 1990 their twentieth. Mingling with over four hundred guests were celebrities and Queen employees past and present. Many people were privately shocked – hardly able to recognise the star in their midst.

  Mercury tired easily now, and looking drawn and feeling not very alert, he tried to slip quietly away from the party. A press photographer lurking in the shadows outside had been hoping for just such an opportunity and snapped him leaving. Looking haggard and preoccupied, Mercury’s picture was splashed across the front page of a national daily newspaper next day. Fans and friends, already jittery, became downright anxious.

  Mercury must have known that he was fighting a losing battle with the press, but again he tried to scotch the rumours. Publicly he reiterated that he felt fine and categorically he denied that he had AIDS. He was clearly in no condition to go on tour, but that didn’t stop journalists questioning him about the cessation of live Queen performances. All he would say on the matter was that nothing was planned for the foreseeable future; that they had recording commitments in the studio. His private life in Britain was becoming non-existent, and he quit London almost immediately thereafter for the haven of Montreux.