Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury (26 page)

Besides, as Roger remarked in
Q
magazine in 2011 about the “separate limos” scenario: “That was the easiest way to do it. Limos are the stupidest cars. There’s really only room for two passengers, and you’d usually have your girlfriend or wife or whatever, companion, or your assistant with you. We could afford four, you know? It was nothing to do with not wanting to speak to one another.”

On 10 December the album was released, with advance orders of half a million. To promote it in style, EMI Records took a marquee at Kempton Park and sponsored a special
Day at the Races
hurdle. Lavish food, booze, and live entertainment by the Tremeloes and Marmalade, plus a telegram from Groucho Marx himself, made it another memorable day. The album was to some extent a disappointment, given what had gone before. But the first single, “Somebody to Love,” written by Freddie, wearing his heart on his sleeve again, went straight to Number Four on the UK chart, and all the way to Number One at Radio Luxembourg.

“That track was me going a bit mad,” said Freddie. “I just wanted to write something in the Aretha Franklin kind of mode. I was inspired by the gospel approach she had on her earlier albums. Although it might sound like the same approach on the harmonies, it is very different in the studio, because it’s a different range.”

Christmas 1976 saw the band celebrating a Number One album, with countless requests to appear on television and radio. The BBC repeated the Hammersmith Odeon
Whistle Test
concert from the previous year. Freddie’s Christmas present to himself was an unusual one: he finally plucked up courage to be honest with both himself and the
love of his life, Mary Austin, and ended their long-standing romantic relationship.

“We were closer than anybody else, though we stopped living together after about seven years,” Freddie admitted. “Our love affair ended in tears, but a deep bond grew out of it, and that’s something nobody can take away from us. It’s unreachable.”

It must have been difficult for him. While he had come to prefer his sexual encounters without any emotional involvement, he also loved the comfort and security that a steady relationship brings. Juggling his conflicting needs had taken its toll. Moving out of the cozy nest they had shared together, Freddie decamped to an apartment at 12 Stafford Terrace in London’s Kensington and bought Mary a place of her own. She would remain his devoted assistant and “coordinator,” at his side almost daily until his death fifteen years later.

Nineteen seventy-seven brought unexpected challenges, in the shape of punk rock. Punks were ugly and angry types, opposed to decadent bands like Queen, who stood for everything the Sex Pistols and their ilk had decided had gone wrong with the music scene. It was an argument neither faction could win. There was only one thing for it. Another New Year, another three-month world tour of North America, this time with Phil Lynott’s Thin Lizzy as support. The latest American shows proved as successful as the last, except for a couple of West Coast cancelations due to Freddie’s throat.

“My nodules are still with me,” he said. “I have these uncouth callouses growing in my interior. From time to time, they harm my vocal dexterity. At the moment, however, I am winning. I’m going easy on the red wine, and the tour will be planned around my nodules.”

It was during this tour that Freddie became involved with twenty-seven-year-old chef Joe Fanelli. Once their affair was done with, Joe tended to come and go, working at a string of restaurants, including the popular September’s on London’s Fulham Road, before becoming a full-time member of Freddie’s household at Garden Lodge. Like the master himself, Fanelli, too, would succumb eventually to AIDS.

The European tour began in Stockholm and moved on to Britain, where it kicked off at the Bristol Hippodrome that May. At the London Earl’s Court shows in June, proceeds from the second night of which were donated to Queen Elizabeth II’s Jubilee Fund, the band introduced their special “Crown” lighting rig, a huge construction that rose from the stage in a swirl of smoke and dry ice. No sooner had the tour concluded than they were back in the studio yet again, to record another new album. By now, Freddie, Brian, Roger, and John were also venturing into the solo arena, as well as guesting on albums and singles by other artists.

If fame and fortune had begun to feel like a slog, at least music still got them out of bed in the mornings. There was always plenty of healthy tension, competition, and one-upmanship in the studio to spur them on, while performances seemed to go better when they’d just had a good spat.

“Although he needed the emotional stability to record, it seemed that Freddie needed conflict and confrontation as a vital catalyst to performing,” his future personal assistant Peter Freestone would later remark.

This was undoubtedly driven by his perfectionism.

“Freddie knew in his mind exactly what he wanted, and was prepared to throw a tantrum to make sure everything went the way he desired . . . Freddie knew the value of the tantrum. To throw one to greatest effect, it had to be done to either the band or business associates . . . He knew that the other people involved knew that
he
knew that
he
was indispensable.”

Their next major single, “We Are the Champions,” would prove to be one of their best-loved and most enduring anthems. While poorly received by a British press locked for the moment in the maelstrom of punk rock, it made Number Two on both the UK and American
Billboard
charts, and gave Queen their first US Number One on trade paper
Record World
’s chart. Released as a double A-side with “We Will Rock You” in the States, the “Rock You” chant was adopted by legions of American
football supporters, while “Champions” was borrowed by both the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia 76ers. Revenge was sweet. The song remains hugely popular in countless territories, thirty-five years on, and is played regularly at major sporting events throughout the world.

July to September was spent recording their sixth studio album,
News of the World
, at Notting Hill’s Basing Street Studios, founded by Chris Blackwell of Island Records fame (the studios later became Sarm West, world-famous as the venue where Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” was recorded), and at the now-defunct Wessex in Highbury New Park, where Johnny Rotten once threw up in the piano. Bizarrely, at the same time as Queen were in, the Sex Pistols were recording
Never Mind the Bollocks
in an adjacent studio. On one occasion, Sid Vicious fell through the door and confronted Freddie with an insult about his “mission” to bring ballet to the masses, in reference to an interview Freddie had given to Tony Stewart of the
NME
, headlined “Is This Man a Prat?” Freddie responded, to his eternal credit, with, “Ah, Mr. Ferocious! Well, we’re trying our best, dear!”

October brought Queen a Britannia Award from the British Phonographic Industry for “Bohemian Rhapsody,” voted best British single recorded over the past twenty-five years. That month also saw Queen publicizing
News of the World
, an exuberant album not to every fan’s (nor critic’s) taste, the sleeve of which featured a giant robot created by Frank Kelly Freas.

It had become obvious that John Reid lacked time to manage them properly. Queen, who now matched Elton in terms of star quality and status, were in desperate need of management who could focus exclusively on their needs. Lawyer Jim Beach was again summoned, this time to negotiate their exit from the contract with John Reid Enterprises—a relatively painless if costly procedure. As the agreement was severed ahead of expiry, Reid departed with a handsome payoff plus 15 percent of royalties on sales of all Queen’s previous albums, in perpetuity. Pete Brown, who had taken care of Queen’s day-to-day affairs, left with the
band and was made personal manager. Another Reid sidekick, Paul Prenter, also joined the team. Beach would henceforth handle all legal and contractual business full-time, and Gerry Stickells would manage Queen on the road. Queen Productions Ltd. was created, followed by Queen Music Ltd. and Queen Films Ltd. At last, they owned as many rights to their own work, and to themselves as artists, as it was possible to secure.

This was a turning point in several ways. While their business dealings were sorted, creatively Queen remained at a crossroads. They knew they needed to find new challenges if they were to maintain inspiration and enthusiasm. Treating themselves to their first private jet, they committed to two ambitious American tours that year. On the first, starting in Portland, Oregon, on 11 November, Freddie performed “Love of My Life” live for the first time, inviting audience participation in what was to become a staple of the Queen live show. In December, they were back in New York, where Freddie attended Liza Minnelli’s stage production
The Act
. After having cited Minnelli and Hendrix as his favorite artists and his inspiration for so long, admiration between Liza and Freddie was finally mutual. Years later, the
Cabaret
star would be one of the first to agree to perform at 1992’s Freddie Mercury tribute gig.

At Madison Square Garden, Freddie wowed his audience by reappearing for the encore dressed in a New York Yankees hat and jacket. The Yankees had just claimed baseball’s World Series, and fans were delighted by his nod to their sacred game. The personal touch was something he would introduce time and again throughout Queen’s touring career: a sentence in another language here, a folk song there, a British Union Jack for a cloak lined with the national flag of wherever they were playing . . . sometimes Freddie would ponder for hours, trying to think up precisely what gesture. It was his way of giving back, and the fans adored him for it.

At January 1978’s MIDEM music industry fair in Cannes, and thanks to “We Will Rock You” at Number One on the French chart for more
than twelve weeks, Queen collected a radio award as rock band with the most potential. Even France—
“vous appelez cela de la musique rock!”
—had finally woken up to Queen.

So had the tax man. Nineteen seventy-eight would be a year of to-ing and fro-ing as tax exiles, spending most of their time abroad to avoid being penalized for earning too much. Queen toured Europe again, and played five more shows in England during May, after which they began work on the next album at Mountain Studios in Montreux. The facility had been chosen because it was technically the finest in Europe at the time, and Queen were always looking for the best. The fact that it was set in one of the most breathtaking havens on earth was an added extra. Beautiful Lake Geneva and the majestic snowcapped Alps took their breath away. Brian and Freddie remained at home, at first: Brian for the birth of his first child, Jimmy, and Freddie to work on an album for his own newly formed Goose Productions, which would be recorded by his close friend Peter Straker.

A Jamaican-born actor, Straker met Freddie in 1975 in the London restaurant Provan’s. The former was with his manager David Evans, while the latter was dining with John Reid. By quirk of fate, Evans also worked for Reid.

“I remember the ratty fur and the black-painted fingernails, the white clogs and the hair,” recalled Straker to their mutual friend Evans. “There was also the characteristic hunching of his posture, a slight stoop. However, the real impression with which I was left was his extraordinary shyness. He kept his eyes to the ground, something he always did throughout his life when he was first introduced to strangers.”

After bumping into each other around town, Straker invited Freddie to his birthday party at his small Hurlingham Road flat that November 1975. The theme was “Come As Your Favorite Person.” Freddie, who was at the time having a covert fling with young theater hand David Minns, told his host that if he came (he did), he would not be in fancy dress because he was his
own
favorite person.

“Freddie arrived with David Minns earlyish, bearing a jereboam of
champagne: Moet et Chandon, of course! I think it was that night, in a haze, I first asked him to produce an album for me.”

The pair arranged to meet for lunch.

“Thereafter, it seems, we became mates. It’s hard to remember definite dates and events, as our lives from that point onwards became inextricably tangled. In other words, we hit it off.”

Freddie and Straker, whose mother had been an opera singer, were soon enjoying nights at the ballet and the opera together, as well as ducking and diving around the seedy pubs and clubs. They even took to playing tennis together at London’s smart Hurlingham Club. Straker, well bred in demeanor and possessed of a marvelous voice and arresting vocal range, which should have earned him more success than he ever achieved, asked Freddie to produce his album of post-glam rock and vaudevillian cameos. Freddie not only agreed to do this, but generously invested £20,000 of his own money in the record, entitled
This One’s On Me
. The LP spawned two singles: “Jackie” and “Ragtime Piano Joe.” Mutual friends remember them as “two naughty schoolgirls” or as “brothers,” never lovers, and brotherly conflict was the foundation of their relationship.

“Straker helped relieve the pressure for Freddie,” said Peter Freestone. “He was always there with a ready laugh.”

“The deep friendship between Freddie and Peter was founded on a love of opera and the classics,” remembers Leee John, dazzling front man with eighties soul and dance trio Imagination, and a loyal friend to both.

“I came from soul, R&B, and jazz, and I was making an effort to understand blues and all the music of Africa. But Freddie told me I really must take some time to learn about opera, that it would be beneficial to my career.
Scheherazade
[by Rimsky-Korsakov and based on the book
One Thousand and One Nights
] was the only thing I knew. ‘Darling,’ he said, ‘it’s a good start.’ So one whole summer, on Freddie’s advice, I went to a new opera every week. Everything from
Don Giovanni
to
The Ring
. I fell asleep! I emoted, I laughed, I learned so much. I mean, I was into
Motown, check out
this
! A lot of classical music has African origins, and Freddie knew that. There is a unique rhythmic sense. He also talked to me a good deal about vocal technique. It all makes sense, as you reflect back over the years. With Straker, though, I always had the impression that he and Freddie were teaching each other equally. As friends, they’d met their match.”