Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury (43 page)

Whenever I watched Hollywood movies set in plush homes with lavish decor, I wanted that for myself, and now I’ve got it. But to me it was much more important to get the damn thing than to actually go and live in it. I’m very much like that—once I get something, I’m not that keen on it anymore. I still love the house, but the real enjoyment is that I’ve achieved it. Sometimes, when I’m alone at night, I imagine that when I’m fifty I’ll creep into Garden Lodge, as my refuge, and then start making it a home. When I’m old and gray and when everything is finished and I can’t wear the same costumes and jig around on stage anymore—not quite yet—I have something to fall back on, and that’s this wonderful house.

Freddie Mercury

F
rom chart
positions and awards to rereleases and video releases, the Queen machine was in perpetual motion. The wonder would never cease. Unspendable income was guaranteed for life. Freddie would never need more money than he had already. He could buy anything he wanted, could have gone anywhere he fancied. Instead, he retreated into his private world and the relatively modest comforts of home. He had his cook, valet, chauffeur, cleaner, and a handful of trusted friends. Mary Austin was responsible for the household and accounts, including
staff wages and cash, and came to see him every day. Jim Hutton was there for him, too. To anyone who asked—including Freddie’s parents Bomi and Jer if they came for Sunday lunch—Jim was simply the gardener, and they pretended that another bedroom was his room. Was Jim offended by this pretense?

“Not a bit,” he insisted. “They were lovely people. I understood the reason for the secrecy. They were religious. Zoroastrianism did not allow homosexuality. He had not come out to his family.”

Did his parents realize during his lifetime that Freddie was gay?

“No,” his mother Jer told
The Times
in 2006, fifteen years after his death.

“That area’s too sensitive,” added her son-in-law, Roger Cooke, confirming that Freddie never came out to his family.

Was it that he was afraid of declaring the truth to the world?

“At the time,” said Jer. “Society was different then. Nowadays it’s all so open, isn’t it?”

She indicated her belief that, had he lived on, Freddie would in time have felt able to be open.

“He didn’t want to upset us,” she added. “When he came home, he was just ‘Freddie.’ ”

Jer revealed that her all-time favorite song by her son is “Somebody to Love,” the song which Freddie also loved best.

Peter Freestone remembered one particular celebration, which Freddie gave for his parents’ wedding anniversary, just before he officially took up residence at his new house. None of the future Garden Lodge entourage was invited.

“Just his family and Mary, of course, who looked very good in a scarlet Bruce Oldfield which I had helped her pick out from a vast selection, and which Freddie had bought for her.”

Jim Hutton met Freddie’s parents “many times” and got on well with them.

“They came to Garden Lodge very rarely—usually for Sunday lunch, or for one of Kash’s children’s birthdays,” Jim said. “But when
he was in London, Freddie saw them every week. I’d drive him over to visit them every Thursday afternoon at their small terraced house in Feltham, the same one they’d always lived in, and we’d all sit in the kitchen together, having tea. Mrs. Bulsara got the tea at her own pace; she didn’t rush around. She was very independent. She still drove herself all over the place in her little car. Their place was very homey. One thing I found odd was that they didn’t have any pictures of Freddie in frames anywhere, which you’d think they would have. It was also strange to me that they were still living in that tiny house when Freddie could easily afford to buy them something grander. He’d offered, but they’d said they didn’t want to move. They were happy with the home they had. It was very endearing actually, since a lot of rock stars’ parents jump at the chance of all the material things, once their offspring has made it.”

Jim had little in common with Freddie’s mother, but shared with his father Bomi a love of nature and gardening.

“He was proud of his garden,” said Jim. “I’d go out there with him. He loved his old rose trees and a wonderful eucalyptus.”

As for Jer, Jim was touched by the fact that she always made Freddie his favorite cheese biscuits, which she’d pack into a little lunchbox for him to take home.

“I met Freddie’s sister Kashmira for the first time when she and her family came to stay at the Mews. You could see at once that she and Freddie were sister and brother—they had the same big, dark brown eyes. Her daughter Natalie was a sweet, boisterous kid, and she also had a baby son, Sam.”

Freddie’s family was always very important to him, affirmed Jim.

“Whenever he was away, no matter where, he always made a point of sending cards to his parents and his sister.”

Freddie’s father Bomi died in 2003. His mother Jer now lives in Nottingham, having moved there to be close to her daughter Kashmira, her son-in-law, and grandchildren. Jer’s house was “christened” “Fredmira”—a blend of the names of her own two children.

*   *   *

“I can’t carry on rocking the way I have done in the past,” Freddie declared after what turned out to be Queen’s final gig in August 1986.

“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. I prefer to spend my time at home. It’s part of growing up.”

He continued to entertain, but mostly under his own roof. His fortieth birthday party on Sunday, 7 September 1986 was modest by his standards: a “Mad Hat” garden party for two hundred guests.

Designer Diana Moseley prepared a range of eccentric headwear for Freddie to choose from. He opted for a white fur construction with Martian-style antennae.

“It was a sedate party for him, but really lovely all the same,” remembers Tony Hadley, who was there, along with Tim Rice, Elaine Paige, Dave Clark, comedian Mel Smith,
EastEnders
actress Anita Dobson, Brian, Roger, and John.

“Freddie insisted on taking me upstairs to show me the carpet he’d had made for his bedroom,” remembers Tony. “It had no join in it; the loom must have been enormous. It also had a big star on it, like a star of David. He was so proud of that carpet it wasn’t true.”

“Freddie was very proper and very ‘British’ about household things,” revealed Jim.

“I remember his parents were coming to Sunday lunch once, and Freddie was practically having a nervous breakdown. Talk about a mother hen. He was in and out of the kitchen all morning, fussing over the food. He was into everything. The dining table he had to lay himself. It was important to him. The knives and forks had to point perfectly towards the ones opposite, and the place mats had to line up just so. He was the absolute perfectionist.”

Despite the fact that they were essentially there to serve the master, there were neither politics nor pecking order at Garden Lodge. All who lived there were treated equally and were expected to keep just one rule: “You didn’t bring anyone back,” said Jim. “No pals, no overnight
partners. It was Freddie’s domain. Security was paramount. Otherwise we were a family bunch, not just Freddie’s staff. It mostly ran on an even keel. Joe the chef got away with blue murder. He could be a sweetie, but he had his tantrums. Freddie would throw a paddy quite often, but he wasn’t bossy, he didn’t lord it. He never flung his weight around or gave us orders. It was much more relaxed than that. We often all ate together,
en famille
, but mostly it was just Freddie and myself. I don’t think I gave the others reason to feel resentful towards me. Everyone had their own room, including Barbara. Her room had been my bedroom, in fact. Later, when Freddie and I no longer slept together, I moved back into it. There was never any favoritism. Whenever Freddie’s friends came back for a few drinks, everyone in the house was included in the party. Garden Lodge was everybody’s home.”

For all the fun, frolics, and wild times that Freddie and Jim shared—a million-pound holiday in Japan, the madness of Live Aid, the tranquility of Switzerland—and the tender relationship which sustained Freddie until the end, Jim claimed to have derived the most satisfaction from his lover’s creativity.

“He never stopped,” Jim said. “Always into something. Always planning. His brain was perpetually doing overtime. First, it was Garden Lodge to get finished. Then he bought the mews house directly behind Garden Lodge, in Logan Mews. Then he was off to buy a place in Switzerland. He could never rest, nothing was ever completed. He had to be
doing
all the time.”

Freddie was not in the habit of talking to Jim about his music.

“But when it came to lyrics, he’d talk to anyone who was there. He’d say, ‘I’ve got this idea,’ or ‘I’ve got these words,’ or ‘Help me out with this line here.’ He was always scribbling things, on anything at all. He never sang around the house—only occasionally in the bath. But not Queen songs. I’ve got a video of him in the Jacuzzi [which surfaced on the Internet, after Jim’s own death], and he’s warbling away at the top of his voice.”

Freddie had promised his lover the holiday of a lifetime in Japan at the end of September 1986, and Freddie kept his promises. He relished the fact that for the first time ever he could enjoy as a tourist the country he had always adored. Freddie and Jim saw the sights, wined and dined, shopped outrageously—their purchases even included a huge kimono stand, an item Freddie had always wanted. The experience for both was unforgettable. On their return to London, they settled into an orderly domestic routine with their cats, their koi carp, and their closest friends.

Their cozy world was detonated on Sunday, 13 October 1986, by the
News of the World
, after which a cloud descended over Garden Lodge. It was never to lift.

The sensational revelations were nauseating: Freddie, the paper alleged, had taken a secret AIDS test the year before, the same year that the band stole the show at Live Aid. The deaths of two of his former lovers were also revealed: airline steward John Murphy, one of the beloved “New York Daughters,” and young Tony Bastin, the smiling blond courier Freddie had picked up all those years ago in Brighton. Jim Hutton was identified as Freddie’s live-in lover. Wild nights spent taking cocaine with David Bowie and Rod Stewart were exposed in detail, as was the reason why Michael Jackson and Freddie had fallen out. The paper’s informant claimed that Michael had been upset by Freddie’s prodigious use of cocaine, and that Jacko had caught him snorting the drug in his lounge. There was even a spread of personal photographs, featuring Winnie Kirchberger and other lovers, under the headline “All the Queen’s Men.”

The sordid exposé also destroyed the perception of Freddie’s friendship with Kenny Everett, revealing their terminal falling-out after a row over cocaine.

“Everett thought Freddie was taking advantage of his generosity, whereas in reality it was more likely the other way round—not that Freddie would ever have given him a hard time for it,” Jim explained.

“They never made up, and Kenny never again came to Garden
Lodge, not after I moved in. If we’d see him out and about around the gay clubs, they never spoke. All those newspaper stories about Kenny being at Freddie’s bedside were fabricated.”

Freddie was speechless when he discovered that this explosive “exclusive” was the work of Paul Prenter, his trusted former personal manager and supposed close friend. Prenter had held Freddie’s hand on the road all those years. He had sold what was left of his charge’s dignity and privacy for a mere £32,000.

“Freddie couldn’t bear the betrayal,” said Jim. “He couldn’t believe that someone who had been so close to him could behave in so mean-spirited a way. There were days and days of it, followed up in the
News of the World’s
sister paper,
The Sun
: Freddie and drugs, Freddie and men; it got worse and worse. Freddie got angrier with each new revelation. He never spoke to Prenter again.”

Prenter was also frozen out by Elton John, John Reid, and others in their circle, who closed ranks to protect Freddie.

Why did he do it?

Some observers say that Prenter resented Freddie’s relationship with Jim. That, in taking a permanent live-in lover, Freddie was effectively dispensing with Prenter. Realizing that his power over Freddie had been destroyed, he sought revenge. Although Prenter phoned Freddie and tried to explain himself, Freddie refused to take his calls.

“Paul tried to excuse himself by claiming that he’d been hounded and tormented by the press for so long that he eventually cracked,” said Jim.

“He tried to say that he said all that stuff by mistake. He said he was misquoted. As if. Only Paul could have known some of the stuff that was written.

“It crushed Freddie’s ability to trust others, except for a select few,” lamented Jim. “He made no new friends after that.”

“Freddie had taken Paul on after the band got rid of him,” said Peter Freestone. “Even though Freddie knew that Paul was taking advantage of him, financially and so on. That made it all the harder to bear.”

“Prenter was the one who had always taken advantage of Fred’s forgiving nature,” added Spike Edney.

“People were constantly saying, ‘How does he get away with this shit?’ Yet Fred maintained their friendship. He got shafted by more people over the years than anyone I’ve ever known . . . considering that he was a pretty shrewd judge of character, it’s amazing how many leeches got through. Fred never actually had any true privacy, ever. People like Prenter saw to that.”

In the United States, the falsification of death certificates was sensationally on the rise. Many prominent figures on the way out thanks to AIDS-related illnesses had talked their doctors into preserving their image by registering information that wasn’t true. Even as cabaret supremo Liberace lay dying, his spokesman was still insisting that the star was “suffering the ill effects of a watermelon diet.” Macho heartthrob Rock Hudson, last of the square-jawed romantic leads and costar of screen sweetheart Doris Day, had been the first major movie star to die openly of AIDS, in 1985. By then, 264 cases had been reported in the UK. The disease was declared the most serious health threat to the nation since the Second World War. New laws were passed, empowering magistrates to order hospitalization of AIDS sufferers, to prevent them from engaging further in careless sex. Attacks on homosexuals became commonplace, and misinformation was rife.
Burke’s Peerage
, ironically the former employer of Jeremy Norman, the Embassy Club and Heaven founder, made the shock announcement that, in order to preserve the “purity of the human race,” it would not list families of which any member was known to be infected with AIDS.