Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury (25 page)

As Rock remarked, “Freddie was never the same again.”

The Anvil experience was presumed to be the inspiration for both the “leather” and “gay clone” looks which Freddie would adopt. While the “leather” phase was short-lived, the “clone” image, so far removed from his seventies Bohemian pose, and which favored closely-cropped hair, bristly moustache, a muscular upper body, and tight denim jeans, would last. The look had actually originated in San Francisco and was referred to as the “Castro clone” look, after the Castro district, a once dilapidated Irish neighborhood of San Francisco that had served the Haight-Ashbury hippies. Thanks to an influx of homosexual refugees, it became Gay Main Street. At first, the look had been a disguise, because straight people tended not to recognize it as an exclusively gay identity. But from that one image grew an entire code of homosexual behavior. A gay man could even indicate his sexual preference by the color of the handkerchief hanging from his back pocket.

“Hanky Code” or “Bandanna Code” was widely used among homosexuals in the late seventies. Handkerchiefs were worn in the rear trouser pocket or threaded through belt loops: on the left side of the body for “tops,” the right for “bottoms,” as in whether your preference was over or under. While there is no universally recognized color code, some of the better-known include yellow for “water sports,” brown for “scat,” black for “S&M,” purple for “into piercing,” red for . . . let’s not go there, light blue for “oral,” gray for “bondage,” and orange for “anything goes.”

One of the most thrilling aspects of New York, to a newly world-famous Freddie in the late seventies, was that homosexuality was a political triumph. Gays were out, united, and in charge of their lifestyle and destiny. Things could only get better. So they thought. The boundaries of sexual experiment could be pushed to limits not possible in any other city in the world at that time, except perhaps Munich.

“Freddie was quite well behaved in London, compared with how he was in New York, or later, in Munich,” said Paul Gambaccini.

“Those two cities were the capitals of anonymous, one-time-only sex—which never interested me in the least. Freddie undoubtedly enjoyed those places. It’s a whole world, as rich in its magnitude as popular music is. I got the impression from him that his times in New York were always really wild, but the gay scene there at that time was much harder than anywhere.”

In a discussion with pop columnist turned publisher John Blake, Freddie confessed to “slutting himself” in New York.

“It’s sin city,” Freddie cooed. “But you have to come away at the right time. Stay a day too long, and it grips you. Very hypnotic. It’s all tripping in at eight or nine every morning, and taking throat injections so I can still sing. It’s a real place. I love it.”

While vaguely admitting here to his wild promiscuity, Freddie maintained discreet silence about his passion for cocaine. Apart from the fact that the drug was highly illegal in most countries, certainly in Britain and the States, Freddie had never fitted the “druggie” mold, and never wished to.

He would have loathed to be regarded as an addict. Not that he became one: when he decided to stop using the substance, he relinquished his habit overnight. But for now, he was living the sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll cliché. What Freddie was hooked on was the instant high, the effect that excessive booze and cocaine had on his personality and his libido. Cocaine boosted his confidence. It gave him the nerve to be Freddie Mercury.

If Freddie metamorphosed into the ultimate “shopping and fucking” hedonist in New York, it was primarily because he could afford to. Growing bored of even his favorite hotels—the Waldorf Astoria Towers, the Berkshire Place, and the Helmsley Palace—he would buy himself a lavish, top-security apartment with stunning views of the Chrysler building (Freddie’s favorite Manhattan landmark) as well as the Twin Towers and the Empire State Building. On the forty-third floor of the Sovereign Building at 425 East Fifty-eighth Street between First Avenue and Sutton Place, and a short walk from Central Park, Bloomingdale’s department
store, and Carnegie Hall, the apartment boasted a balcony with a view of seven bridges, including the Fifty-ninth Street bridge made famous by Simon and Garfunkel in the song also known as “Feelin’ Groovy.”

“He was the classic refined person who loved to slum it,” observed Rick Sky. “His ultimate fantasy would be to take a rent boy to the opera. Rudolph Nureyev was very similar to Freddie in that he had that rare ability to adore high culture and low culture at the same time.”

Although Freddie loved ballet dancers, and a hot affair with Nureyev was rumored—the Russian having written about his “relationship” with Freddie and visits to his Kensington home in personal correspondence published in 1995—Freddie’s PA Peter Freestone denied this. Nureyev never came to Garden Lodge, Freestone insisted. The alleged romantic interlude never took place.

Few understood the motivation for Freddie’s promiscuity and decadence. The rest of the band simply shrugged and let him get on with it. The world had moved on in terms of acceptance of sexuality, and anyway, who were they to judge? What Freddie chose to get up to in his private life was his business. Sexual orientation was only one facet of the whole. The fans tended to accept what they knew, turning a blind eye to the rest. It was only the media that got excited whenever there was a whiff of scandal. Later it was apparent that Freddie was one of the few rock superstars intelligent enough to perceive that ordinary folk adored him for daring. They loved him for trying and tasting life’s dangers to excess, in a way they would never dream of doing. As well as entertaining his swelling audiences with brilliant music and an unforgettable show, he was providing them with the ultimate vicarious thrill.

“We went to a Queen gig, interviewed Freddie, got to see the size of all their excesses—and we got to eat the crumbs,” Rick Sky points out.

“That made us as privileged as they were, relatively speaking. Queen were never selfish. They were always anxious that everyone else was having just as great a time as they were. There was this incredible generosity of spirit as well as a sharing of material riches which defined Queen, of all the rock bands we hung out with, as the best in the world.”

13

The album
A Day at the Races
. . . ends with a Japanese thing, a track from Brian called “Teo Torriatte” which means “let us cling together.” It’s a very emotional track, one of his best. Brian plays harmonium and some lovely guitar. It’s a nice song to close the album.

Freddie Mercury

There was a strength and an energy in Queen music which was breathtaking. The way technology has moved on, people have become very lazy. Blood, sweat, and guts is what it takes. It was down to Freddie performing those songs with every fiber and cell. Today, you’ll get one artist with eighteen dancers behind them, you don’t know if it’s a recording, or whether he’s miming, or what on earth you’re getting. With Freddie you got the lot, and it was real.

Leee John, Imagination

C
ome February
1976, with all four albums in the UK Top Twenty, Queen were primed for further live dates in Japan and Australia, where their records and gigs were on fire. Their return to Britain saw them back in the studio to begin work on their fifth album, to be produced by the band themselves, having parted amicably from Roy Thomas Baker. This next album would be entitled
A Day at the
Races
—another favorite Marx Brothers movie. In March, their feature film
Live at the Rainbow
was released. In May, Brian took time off to marry his girlfriend Chrissy Mullen. On 18 June, John Deacon’s first Queen single was released. “You’re My Best Friend,” a mellow song written for his wife Veronica (to whom he is still married—the only Queen member to last with his original partner) featured Deacon playing a Wurlitzer electric piano as well as his bass guitar. Though it differed significantly from previous Queen releases, it was quickly received onto the Top Ten. The track’s video was shot in a vast ballroom in a heatwave, lit by a thousand candles.

During the Scottish Festival of Popular Music that summer, which was part-sponsored by John Reid, Queen played two gigs at the Edinburgh Playhouse. They followed this with an open-air concert in Cardiff. On 18 September, the sixth anniversary of Jimi Hendrix’s death, in a typically touching Queen gesture, they staged a massive free concert in London’s Hyde Park to thank the fans for their support. Close to 200,000 turned up to enjoy the show. The day was co-organized by Richard Branson, then the high-flying boss of Virgin Records. When Branson introduced his PA Dominique Beyrand to the band, he unwittingly gifted Roger Taylor a new girlfriend. The couple soon set up home in Fulham, and in a luxurious Surrey mansion set in several wooded acres with its own recording studio.

Brilliant weather held out on the day of the gig, which harked back to those given in the park in the late sixties by Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, and the Stones. Support artist Kiki Dee, also managed by John Reid, had been due to perform her new chart-topping single, a duet with Elton John. Despite many popular releases, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” was Elton’s first Number One. But he failed to make it, and Kiki had to settle for singing beside a giant cardboard cut-out.

“Welcome to our little picnic on the Serpentine,” said Freddie, resplendent in glittering white catsuit.

“ ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ is one of Brian’s heavies,” he remarked later. “I remember we played it at Hyde Park . . . before we had actually
recorded it. I was able to come to grips with the song in front of a live audience before I had to record the vocal in the studio. Being a very raucous track, it worked well for me.”

Fledgling photographer Denis O’Regan blagged his way into the backstage enclosure and wedged himself under the stage during Queen’s set. He had made it his business to befriend Rocket Records employees in an attempt to get close to Queen, so that he could photograph them officially. One of John Reid’s friends and henchmen, Paul Prenter, had taken a shine to Denis and soon began allowing him access during their shows.

“One of the earliest he let me into was in Paris,” remembers Denis.

“I was in the backstage area, and noticed that they had built another little stage behind the scenes. I immediately thought that Queen were going to do an impromptu session. They had all these chairs set out in front of it. The next moment, this girl came on and did a strip. Then another one, and then another one, until there were a dozen women on this stage. They then did this giant lesbian act in front of us all. Just for the amusement and entertainment of those working and lurking backstage. All a bit seedy for its time, but that kind of thing became Queen’s party theme. They would always go for boobs and bottoms and decadent sex. Nothing really that sordid about it, just the thing they did for a laugh. Their preoccupation with sexy stuff was deliberately cultivated and seemed to project a different side of Queen. I imagine it would have laid to rest any rumors at the time about Freddie being gay.”

Although they would have denied so at the time, Freddie and Roger were undoubtedly the brains behind these outrageous bashes.

“I like strip clubs and strippers and wild parties with naked women,” Roger said breezily, as if to add, “Why shouldn’t I?”

The most unusual thing to strike Denis was that they were one of the only big bands to stick around after their own shows.

“Which I used to hate, because I just wanted to go out and have fun after the work was done. But they always used to have their dinner together after the show. Bands didn’t do that. They did a runner, limos
waiting at the stage door as they came off, ready to roar away to the airport or back to the hotel. Much later, I can remember thinking that there was a real element of camaraderie about that. I think they genuinely liked each other’s company. Later on there were stories about them not getting on and traveling in separate limos and so on. But everyone does that when they’re big news and they can afford it. Freddie, in a tour bus? You must be joking.”