Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury (37 page)

“I think each of us thinks of leaving quite a lot,” admitted Brian. “But we all know that, even though we might get our own way if we left, we’d still lose something. We’d lose more than we’d gain at the moment. It’s a stimulating environment, and because we don’t always agree, it’s good for us. If you split up, you lose your vehicle. It has a certain balance of talents, a name people identify with. Getting your own way doesn’t always make you happy in the end.”

“I used to think we’d go on for five years, but it’s got to the point where we’re all actually too old to break up,” said Freddie.

“Can you imagine forming a new band at forty? Be a bit silly, wouldn’t it?

“There will come a point where there will be a unanimous vote, or whatever, when we feel instinctively that Queen have gone as far as they can go and there’s nothing left, constructively or creatively,” he also said.

“And the last thing I want to do is actually force things within Queen. I’d rather leave it at a nice level, and then do something completely different. I’m sure that all of us have that kind of way of thinking.

“The reason I personally needed a rest was because I just got too tired of the whole business. It got to be too much. I decided I really needed a long break. I don’t think we’ll ever split. It would seem like cowardice. I suppose if people stopped buying our records, we’d call it a day. And I’d go off and be a striptease artist or something.”

The decision came after one of their most demanding years ever. A contract with EMI for a further six albums had been signed in April 1982, just before Queen embarked on another European tour, taking in several dates around the UK in May and June. It concluded, predictably, with erotic revelry: a Shorts & Suspenders blow-out at London’s hottest club, the Embassy.
Hot Space
, their tenth studio album, was released in May. Brian later alluded to his disappointment in the disco-oriented album, which was panned in the United States.

“I think
Hot Space
was a mistake, if only timing-wise. We got heavily into funk, and it was quite similar to what Michael Jackson did on
Thriller
. The timing was wrong. Disco was a dirty word.”

Ignoring for now their rapidly waning reputation in America, Queen pushed on with their summer tour, playing two nights at Madison Square Garden, one of their favorite venues. In Boston, the band were handed the keys of the city by the mayor on 23 July, and the date was officially declared Queen Day. They also made guest appearances on
Saturday Night Live
and
Entertainment Tonight
in September. On to Japan, bracing themselves for Queenmania, after which Freddie withdrew to New York. By November, Elektra Records in the States were smarting from an almighty flop with “Staying Power,” the final Queen single of their existing contract. To have renegotiated the deal would have been complicated and expensive. Freddie especially was unhappy with Elektra, primarily for their poor handling of
Hot Space
, and told the others he was not prepared to make another album for the label. That Elektra contract also covered Australia and New Zealand, where Queen felt they could be doing far better than they were. After heated discussion, they declined to re-sign there, too. With Queen’s unsatisfactory deal with Elektra Japan also terminated, they were at a crossroads. While the band did succeed in extricating themselves from their American contract, freedom cost them a million dollars. Jim Beach negotiated a one-off solo deal for Freddie with CBS Records in the UK, and Columbia in the States. By October 1983, the band were signed to EMI’s American affiliate label, Capitol.

While working on ideas for his solo album in Munich, Freddie would decamp frequently to New York. On one such trip he detoured to Los Angeles, where he would join the band to begin work on another Queen album, and also find time to visit Michael Jackson at his bizarre mock-Tudor, pre-Neverland mansion on Hayvenhurst Avenue in Encino. The house had a tower for an entrance, manned by guards, and there were fairy lights in every visible window.

“He has been a friend of ours for a long while,” explained Freddie. “He used to come and see our shows all the time, and that is how the friendship grew . . . just think, I could have been on
Thriller
. Think of the royalties I’ve missed out on!”

Michael and Freddie had long toyed with the idea of collaborating
on some tracks. This was the first time they found themselves in the same city at the same time, with a little time to kill.

“I’m always quite interested in working with other musicians, like Michael Jackson,” Freddie later said.

“Although she’s a worry: all that money and no taste, my dears! What a waste! We had three tracks in the can [“There Must Be More to Life Than This,” which later appeared on Freddie’s first solo album; and “Victory” and “State of Shock,” which went on to feature on the Jackson 5’s 1984 comeback album
Victory
, the latter a duet with Mick Jagger].

“But unfortunately they were never finished. They were great songs, but the problem was time—as we were both very busy at that period. We never seemed to be in the same country long enough to actually finish anything completely.

“Michael even called me to ask if I could complete [“State of Shock”], but I couldn’t because I had commitments with Queen. Mick Jagger took over instead. It was a shame, but ultimately a song is a song. As long as the friendship is there, that’s what matters.”

“Freddie did do a couple of demo tracks with Michael in the studio at his house in Encino,” confirmed Peter Freestone.

“I was there. I even played video games with Michael. On one of the tracks, I can be heard slamming the bathroom door, as it made a good bass drum sound. Their schedules never really allowed them to pursue their friendship. But they did like each other, and recognized each other as geniuses in their own right.”

Although it seems likely that Freddie was thrown by the control-freakery of the Jackson clan, which few outsiders could handle, for Michael there was another, more sinister reason which would soon be exposed in print.

In London, May 1983, Freddie indulged his passion for opera, attending a Covent Garden Opera House production of Giuseppe Verdi’s
Un Ballo in Maschera
(A Masked Ball). The stars were the late Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti, and the spellbinding Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballé, then in her fiftieth year.

“Until that point, Freddie had always adored the tenor voice,” said Peter Freestone.

“Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti were his favorites. I had a huge collection of opera records, and Freddie was tremendously keen to learn as much as he could about opera. One day I said to him, ‘OK, if you claim to like Pavarotti so much, he’s singing at the Opera House soon. Why don’t we go?’ He thought this was a splendid idea, and got me to book tickets straightaway.

“Pavarotti came on and sang an aria in the first act, and Freddie thought it was brilliant. In the second act the prima donna came on, and it was Montserrat. Because we had been so taken with the idea of seeing Pavarotti, we hadn’t taken much notice of who else was in it. She started to sing, and that was it. Freddie’s jaw dropped. He just about forgot that Pavarotti was on the stage. He only wanted her from then on.”

Freddie was mesmerized, particularly by the famous love duet between ardent Riccardo and exquisite Amelia, a woman tormented by guilt but unable to resist. The sentiment was one with which Freddie identified. He could tear neither eyes nor ears from the powerful yet delicate Caballé. After the performance, Freddie could not stop drooling over her “limpid tone,” “vocal versatility,” and “impeccable technique.” “Now
that’s
a real singer,” he said, over and over.

“If I were asked to come up with ten images of people being happy in my life, one of them is Freddie about to see Monserrat perform at Covent Garden,” says Paul Gambaccini.

“I’m sitting in the orchestra stalls. To my left, sitting in the front row of the box seats, is Freddie. There is a look of such wonder and delight in his eyes. His left hand makes a gesture towards the stage, and there is such happiness in his face, like a child’s. It’s a great moment . . . and proof that, no matter what success he may have had, he never lost his respect and admiration for his great favorites. Even the stars have their stars.”

Little did Freddie know that night that he and Monserrat would
soon be performing and recording together as one of the music world’s least likely duos.

Rest and relaxation was more than the bored band members could handle. All were itching to be working again. An attempt to score director Tony Richardson’s screen adaptation of John Irving’s novel
The Hotel New Hampshire
, starring Rob Lowe and Jodie Foster, was aborted when it emerged that the film’s budget couldn’t run to a rock superstar sound track. At least it inspired them to get back in the studio. Regrouping in Los Angeles at the Record Plant, they would plot their next album,
The Works
.

Record Plant, famed for having recorded Jimi Hendrix and the Velvet Underground, was founded in New York in 1968. After opening a branch in Los Angeles, the LA studio rose to become hugely successful throughout the seventies, when pop and rock migrated west. In 1985, the LA studio would move from Third Street to a new Hollywood location in the former Radio Recorders “Annex,” fabled for work with Louis Armstrong and Elvis Presley, and would eventually belong to Chrysalis Records, under Beatles producer Sir George Martin.

Eddie DeLena was the assistant engineer on
The Works
album at Record Plant, alongside engineer and coproducer Mack.

“Mack was a mild-mannered man of few words,” Eddie remembers. “I later discovered it was one of his advantageous traits. He never took sides, and kept out of any potential conflicts between band members, managers, and record company executives. Mack was Switzerland, which was why no one ever had any contention with him.”

Mack’s mildness notwithstanding, Eddie found that making
The Works
with Queen was “like working on four different solo records.”

“As opposed to collaborating from the beginning, every member of the band brought their own song ideas to the table, worked them out, and the other members overdubbed their parts later.” Not that he regarded this as a problem.

“The members of Queen were among the nicest and most talented
people you can imagine working with. All well-educated gentlemen, and each with their own distinctive personalities. Roger Taylor was charming, fashion-conscious, and more of a socialite than Brian or John. Brian was bright, extremely polite, and totally dedicated to his craft, in which he excelled. He possessed great knowledge of music composition and theory, and spent long, concentrated hours developing his parts in the studio. John was introverted and kept out of the scene. He also spent less time at the studio than the others. When he was needed, however, he was always spot-on.

“Freddie Mercury, of course, was larger than life. He had a tremendous presence; it filled the room when he entered. His speech patterns were often very dramatic and colorful, with intonations of a stage actor. Queen’s rock opera style was actually an extension of Freddie’s personality. He was an extremely gifted vocalist and a great composer. There were times when we were recording his vocals, and he would be singing his next part in a complex harmony arrangement as fast as you could change tracks on the multitrack recorder. He would have the entire arrangement in his head and sing every part perfectly in one take. It was a demanding task just to keep up with him.”

Eddie was not surprised to note that Freddie traveled with his own entourage from the gay community.

“In this case, friends and acquaintances from the West Hollywood ‘Boystown’ area. He often boasted about his escapades from the previous night . . .”—by which we can take it he means the number of men Freddie could get through in a session, although Eddie is too discreet to divulge detail—“. . . none of which the other members cared to hear about.”

Freddie’s favorite Boystown clubs were the Motherlode, the Spike, and the Eagle on Santa Monica Boulevard. One such excursion had wafted Freddie into the arms of “Vince the barman” from the Eagle: a tall, dark, chunky, and bearded specimen who could take or leave the fact that Freddie was a world-famous rock star. Vince owned a serious motorcycle, and Freddie could never resist a guy with a bike. The pair
were soon inseparable. But when Freddie asked his lover to join him on the road, Vince turned him down. To describe that refusal as a first would be an understatement.

“Everyone except Freddie kept a very closed guest list of friends who they allowed to visit them at the studio,” said Eddie. “They were there to make a record without distractions. One could only assume they’d been in studio party situations in the past [again, Eddie would not elaborate, we must use our imaginations], ‘. . . and were over it.’ ”

One particular night, however, turned into a rock-star extravaganza in Queen’s Studio C.

“Rod Stewart was down the hall, recording in Studio A,” recalls Eddie. “Jeff Beck was also there, working in Studio B. Everyone ended up in Studio C, jamming together. There was a priceless moment when Rod Stewart and Freddie were together at the Bösendorfer grand piano, making up lyrics on the spot and mocking each other’s physical attributes in typically British comedic fashion. Freddie would describe Rod’s hair and nose, Rod would hit back about Freddie’s protruding teeth. It was hysterical. I was beside myself, trying desperately to get everyone situated with appropriate amps and microphones, because no one was going to allow this moment to go undocumented. Jeff Beck and Brian May exchanging guitar licks, Rod and Freddie exchanging vocals, Carmine Appice and Roger Taylor sharing drum duties. It was chaotic, for sure, but the multitrack tapes do exist somewhere. Queen’s management made sure that no one would have the opportunity to play back the tapes, for fear of leaked cassette copies getting into the wrong hands. They removed the tapes from the studio that same night. I never once heard the playback.”