Freddie Mercury: An intimate memoir by the man who knew him best

by Peter Freestone

  I had never in one way felt so bad about the job in hand in my life although on the other hand, I couldn’t help laughing to myself at the sheer farce of the situation. Talk about bedroom doors banging. It was a scenario worthy of Neil Simon as the master wrote in California or Plaza Suite. It could have been this little stint in the kitchen which gave Freddie the idea for the kitchen in Garden Lodge because he had the same style of kitchen cabinet built and installed, the ones made by Boffi in lacquered oxblood.

  I have to observe that the said Richard’s surname might have played some small part in this episode. His surname was Dick and Richard predictably became known as Dick-Dick. He and Freddie had great fun together while their passion lasted but it was no great love affair.

  And poor Eduardo!

  I have to mention here the odd habit which developed during private, non-Queen travel of always missing a flight we had quite seriously booked with all intentions of catching it. All very well except that our partying schedule usually outlasted the curfew which we would have to have stuck to in order to have caught the flight. I don’t think we ever caught the first flight we had booked. My first job on returning to the hotel early in the morning was always to rearrange the flight plans.

  The third event in my litany concerns the launch of the Barcelona album in Britain which took place one lunchtime in the Crush Bar at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Montserrat had flown in just for the day and we collected her en route from the Inn On The Park where she had booked in to change her clothes. Once again, the event might have been a military manoeuvre. Timing was all-important.

  I think the occasion was important for me because the Opera House was where I was working when I first met Freddie but this time, I wasn’t merely a backstage worker I was one of the causes of the event that was taking place front-of-house. I had worked at the Opera House for four years and very rarely in that time had I experienced anything to match the feeling I had when I walked with Freddie and Montserrat up the famous red-carpeted stairs to the Crush Bar with flash bulbs popping at our every step. It’s so hard to describe this feeling but I wish everybody could feel it at least once in their lives. I felt that I had come a very long way.

  I think it was a landmark day for Freddie too. It was as though the Opera establishment had opened its ranks a little to let him in. I don’t think he would have ever deemed that they’d accepted him but it was a huge step for Mercury even though only a small step for opera.

  Inside the Crush Bar, the scenario was like King Arthur and Queen Guinevere being shown to The Round Table where both of them fielded questions hurled at them by the assembled press. There was TV footage taken of the event and considering where and what the occasion was, both Freddie and Montserrat took it in their stride.

  It was as though Freddie had just ‘popped in’ to a sitting room. He looked quite relaxed in the pale blue suit. I suppose this press launch was a wonderful apex to a project which had started as something which, when finished, had it never even reached the ears of the public would not have mattered to Freddie. This was his totally selfish project which he did only for himself but now he had the eventual added bonus that his public would have a chance to share his pleasure.

  The Crush Bar seems to feature in my high points of Freddie’s life as much as it did in his own. For me, I suppose, there was always that added extra dimension of my perspective over time. Then I was invisible and backstage, now I was sharing a feted and celebrated company in the spotlight. The only occasion on which I and my co-workers had in the past been acknowledged on stage was on the occasion of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee when after the curtain call all the backstage staff were summoned on stage to be applauded not only by the house but by seventeen members of the British Royal Family whom we met afterwards on stage behind the curtain. Upon shaking hands with Her Majesty, she asked benignly, “And what do you do here?”

  Time stopped still. The Royal Family departed and we were left milling around on stage bathed in a really tangible euphoria. We in turn were just about to leave when Princess Margaret returned to the stage and asked, “Has anyone seen my mother?”

  Her Royal Highness was then escorted to the back of the stage where Her Majesty was regaling the assembled stage hands with stories of horse racing. It really was a most fantastic event.

  Mine and Freddie’s combined royal event concerned Prince Andrew whom I had met several times before as he was a regular visitor to the opera and the ballet as was I, both being friends of the principal dancer Wayne Eagling. Freddie and I were part of a group that attended a big gala night at The Royal Opera House. Freddie’s biggest quandary this night wasn’t what he should wear but what he should do to entertain himself between the end of the gala and making his entrance, fashionably late, to the party afterwards in the Crush Bar. The fashionably late bit was accounted for by Freddie’s leaving the Opera House and driving round the block a couple of times before making the suitably grand entrance. It was in the summer, strawberries and cream were much in evidence and Freddie was introduced via Wayne Eagling to Prince Andrew. It was their first meeting. To break the ice, Prince Andrew was absolutely charming and fished out the end of Freddie’s silk scarf which had draped itself accidentally into Freddie’s glass of champagne.

  Andrew wrung out the sodden scarf and they both laughed. They continued chatting for a while during which time HRH finished his plate of strawberries and cream. Freddie noticed HRH’s discomfort at being unable to politely rid himself of his plate. At this point, Freddie turned round to me and said, “Phoebe, get rid of that plate!”

  Prince Andrew looked a little taken aback and said, “Did you just call him Phoebe? I know him as Peter.”

  At this point, it was Freddie’s turn to look taken aback. I think all he could utter was, “Oh!”

  I duly relieved HRH of his empty pudding plate. It was true that Freddie invited Prince Andrew to Heaven along with others of the company after the party but HRH declined. Freddie and troop duly left for Heaven. I believe it was on this occasion that one of the ballerinas lay down and cavorted in the empty coffin which was a feature in one of the leather bars at Heaven, much to the chagrin of other patrons. You somehow got the impression that no one was supposed to enjoy themselves in these sorts of clubs. You weren’t supposed to be seen to be having a good time.

  Through Wayne Eagling, Freddie had attended the performances of quite a few ballets. Of everything he saw, his favourite was Kenneth MacMillan’s masterpiece for the male dancer, Mayerling. Traditional ballets almost always centre around the ballerina and this was the first full length ballet which demanded an inordinate amount of stamina from the male principal. While Wayne wasn’t the first cast as Crown Prince Rudolf, as far as Freddie and I were concerned, his was the best portrayal. Freddie even seriously considered sponsoring a run of performances of Mayerling but as soon as ballet officialdom entered into private patronage, it became too involved and centred upon him and he lost interest.

  We were lucky at Covent Garden because I knew one of the box office staff and so should Freddie decide that there was something he wanted to see at the last moment, tickets were not a problem. In those days, prior to computer ticketing, a block of ten of the best seats in the house were always left available should any VIP require seats. These seats were kept on hold until the last minute when the box office knew they would always be able to get rid of them. These seats were generally front row of the grand tier, best seats in the house. This means of acquiring seats is definitely no longer available, thanks to the inevitable computer.

  Which brings me on to my number five on the significant moment list. This next and last just goes to show that like life, my time with Freddie was not always a bed of roses. This is more a chain of events than a single situation and it is as sad a memory as it is an important one, although the outcome brought about an incredible strengthening of our relationship.

  It concerns one of the most important tenets of Freddie’s life, the question of tr
ust. And I have to say, my own life, for trust is a two-way street. In hindsight, the build-up to this situation occurred over quite a long period but in essence I began to feel an unsettling shift in our relationship. I can’t put my finger on the moment and so I can’t say when the process started but I remember it building up to a moment when after much soul-searching I told Freddie in the middle of 1989 that I thought it was better that I left Garden Lodge.

  At the time, as it was happening, I didn’t know what was going wrong but it finally occurred to me that there was so much that I wasn’t being told, I was beginning to feel very marginalised in the household.

  There were bits of information which I was hearing which under ordinary circumstances I would have been privy to. I felt like the untried apprentice about whom someone once joked, “They’re just like mushrooms. Feed ’em shit ‘n’ keep ’em in the dark!”

  To be specific, I was being deliberately kept in the dark about Freddie’s appointments at the hospital or with the doctor. Nothing of life-or-death importance but Freddie’s whereabouts was information I would have usually known and been told about both by Freddie as well as by Joe and Jim, because everyone in the house would always assume that the others knew equally what any single person knew. As far as we ‘staff’ were concerned, although Freddie hated the ultimate confrontations that could arise in a household such as his, he would let petty situations develop and simmer and would rather enjoy watching them brew. It was one of his ways of controlling the drama, rather like his way in business in general. If relationships were too hunky dory and too cosy between all of ‘us’, he would often get to feel left out, as though there was some big conspiracy against him being hatched. Being the master puppeteer, he always knew that it could fall to him to pour oil on the ruffled waters and to emerge the ostensibly sympathetic shoulder to cry on at the opportune moment. A master.

  At that point, I really could not understand why I was being excluded from being told this medical information. I have to re-emphasise here that Freddie was doing his utmost to play the health question very close to his chest. I had no alternative but to come to the blind conclusion that whatever Freddie was suffering from, it was indeed very serious. I suppose, deep in the back of my mind, I had suspected that Freddie had Aids but the forward parts of the mind, the positive-thinking parts, tell one the opposite story. That he hadn’t…

  But, then, what had he got?

  This unbearable situation continued and looked like doing so as I was unable to summon up the boldness or find the right moment to approach Freddie and ask him privately what it was that was the matter with him. In the end, I went through Joe, Jim and Mary. I just had to tell them, “Look… There is no point in my being here if I don’t know what’s going on, I cannot plan anything in my own life and I simply shouldn’t be here.”

  It transpired that Freddie suspected that it had been through me that certain information as to the state and causes of his health problems were being leaked to the press and to others. Freddie had heard something which had come back to him via an eighth or ninth party which could only have come from a source within Garden Lodge, something to do with a visit to a hospital which he had made earlier on in the year and which should have been entirely confidential.

  Joe and Jim reacted to my unease by being conciliatory … “Are you sure that’s what you want to do? Are you really sure?” Things like that.

  I was absolutely sure. What I was even more than sure of was that I was so unhappy that I really needed to leave. After all that we had been through together over the past ten years and the relationships we had all built up, I felt that it was being eroded for some mystery that I was being kept away from. It was distressing and cruel. As I had hoped, the message got to Freddie and he came down into the kitchen one day not long after, before Terry had come in for the morning and when Joe and Jim had either gone – or been sent – out, I’m not sure which. He was sitting down at the kitchen table and I was by the moveable butcher’s block in the middle of the kitchen and he said, “What’s all this rubbish about you going?”

  So, I tried to explain what I was feeling and he actually told me what it was he thought had been going on. As far as he was aware, he thought that I had been telling one of my best friends outside the inner circle what was going on in the house and that this had become the subject of gossip.

  Once his suspicions were all out in the open, I knew immediately that there was a glimmer of hope in salvaging the situation because, very basically, I knew that I had not and would never have blab-mouthed so carelessly. It was not in my nature. I knew if I could spend ten minutes trying to explain and convince Freddie of this, things would be okay.

  We talked. I told him, “Okay, maybe when I started work with the band, because everything was so new and wonderful and glamorous, of course I told my friends what a wonderful life it was. But,” I continued, “after all the years of knowing you, I fully appreciate what your privacy means to you and you know I would never invade it. You know I would do anything for you, anything you asked …”

  It must have been about this moment in the conversation that Freddie must have had a change of heart. He turned to me and said, “Well, you know I’m very sick. But that’s the end of the conversation. There’s just no more to say.”

  He didn’t have to say anything else. I had already lost some friends to Aids so I understood fully what he was saying. It was 1989, after all. Freddie, also, knew that he had no need to elaborate.

  The tension eased visibly, immediately, but I was still not a hundred per cent sure that I should be staying. Obviously, something was leaking out of the house and however much I racked my brains, I couldn’t be sure of every single word that I’d ever said to every single person about my life. I even began to doubt myself.

  I know that I never ever told one single person about Freddie’s illness, not even my best friends, not even when they pestered me about their suspicions, for the topic was almost common gossip on every street corner because of the continual press speculation. As far as I’m concerned, it is the prerogative of any person suffering from any illness to tell only whomsoever they wish. It is no one else’s place to pass on any private information like this and the right to impart such information is only the right of the sufferer. I knew, however, that my constant lie, which I told when pressed about Freddie’s health, would catch up with me eventually but I persisted with what seemed like a mantra, “No, he’s fine, he’s just a bit under the weather.” Or, “Just a liver complaint, dear.”

  I knew that true friends would be there when the time came and would understand why I felt I had to lie. One of my regrets, however, is that Freddie never knew the amount and depth of concern which was being expressed for him by people in all walks of life and at all times of day. I knew but I could never tell him that I knew that they knew because he never wanted the subject broached.

  A short while after this conversation, time enough for both Freddie and I to acclimatise to a new state of openness, Freddie asked me whether or not I still wanted to leave. It was an incredible request from a man who had spent his life avoiding such confrontations. It says something about the relationship we had that he found himself able to ask.

  I replied, “Well, you don’t really need me here.”

  “But I do need you,” he said. “I want you to stay.” At that point, I was very overcome with emotion. I then felt really guilty that I had made Freddie do this. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. We merely hugged.

  I then took on more of the responsibilities of caring for him and suddenly the grey lowering skies of the last few months lifted as far as my relationship with him was concerned.

  Not long after this episode, I remember a day which for me represents the final cementing of our ultimate relationship. It was late Spring in 1991, the magnolia blossom on the trees was in full bloom. I was suffering yet another attack of gout, this time in my ankle. I had first developed gout some years before. For people who’ve never e
xperienced this ailment, I won’t even try to explain the pain and its intensity. The day in question was one of those when Freddie had decided he wanted to sit out in the garden and due to my illness, I wasn’t able to get very far without the aid of a walking stick. Freddie arranged for two of the big wicker chairs from the conservatory to be brought out into the garden, along with one of the accompanying stools, and placed beneath the magnolias. It must have made quite a picture, both of us invalids sitting in the capacious armchairs, each with our afflicted foot supported on the footstool, the sunlight playing down through the leaves and flowers above us. He had an arrangement of magazines put out and drinks so that we wouldn’t have to move anywhere. We spent a couple of hours there, talking about nothing in particular. However, after three hours, he got bored with the idyllic setting and its carefully arranged props and went back inside.

  I have to say that it was not until after he died that I found out how the information which had so threatened the integrity of my relationship with Freddie was getting out of the house. The gossip was being passed on, without doubt, and the unwitting carrier turned out to be Joe. I think, totally unknowingly, when Joe went to the gym every day, he was going as much as to a social club as for a workout. In amongst his acquaintances at the gym was someone who was later discovered to be a reporter for the Daily Mirror. So, while Joe was having conversations with his friends, information was being gleaned from what he was saying and, from between the lines, elaborated upon as it was passed on like a horrible game of Chinese whispers.