Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury (48 page)

Yet where were Dave Clark, Peter Straker, Tony Hadley, Elaine Paige? Aretha Franklin, Prince, and Michael Jackson? Plenty of us were surprised by the unexplained absence of singers who had meant so much to Freddie, as well as by the fact that the “metal” element of the lineup was perhaps not quite what Freddie would have wanted. The music of Guns n’ Roses, Metallica, and Def Leppard was much more to Brian’s and Roger’s taste. It has been claimed that many of the artists who did perform were chosen because their own sound had been influenced by Queen. Others agree with the theory that the Tribute concert was actually about Brian, Roger, and John welcoming their beloved front man back into the Queen fold, where in their hearts he belonged, and about a retrospective of the band’s original flavors, ethos, and ideals.

Tim Rice says that Elaine Paige was “wounded” that Liza Minnelli was invited to sing at the tribute instead of her. Many, too, were surprised by the absence of the “out” gay element—Boy George, Holly Johnson, Jimmy Somerville, Leee Johns—to celebrate that aspect of Freddie’s lifestyle. Against the lineup who did perform, Pavarotti, Carreras, and Domingo delivering the classical arias Freddie adored would have looked and sounded wildly out of place. As for Montserrat Caballé, she herself has explained that she had full commitments to EXPO in Seville, performing live every night during its inaugural week, which kicked off on the same date as the tribute concert. She had expressed a
wish to contribute to Freddie’s concert, by satellite. But in the event, a satellite link into London could not be established, because the concert itself was being transmitted live worldwide. Not even the late Hollywood legend and AIDS campaigner Dame Elizabeth Taylor, in her tearful address to the audience, could compensate for the absence of La Superba.

George Michael, who stole the show with “Somebody to Love,” echoing the band’s Live Aid triumph seven years earlier, revealed that he was “living out a childhood fantasy.”

“When I think of Freddie, I think of everything he gave me in terms of craft,” George said. “Just to sing those songs, especially ‘Somebody to Love,’ was really an outrageous feeling. It was probably the proudest moment of my career.”

“George Michael at the tribute concert was
amazing
,” enthused Peter Paterno. “It did cross my mind, and I’m sure a lot of other people’s minds, that they really should consider having him take Freddie’s place. In the end though, I guess, no one ever could.”

Spike Edney, who contributed keyboards with Mike Moran, was saddened by the post-concert fallout, when many critics blasted contributors for falling short of Freddie’s standards. Those who expressed disappointment failed to remember or understand that very few artists in rock history have been blessed with Freddie’s extraordinary vocal range.

“It may not be fair to say that none of those great artists could sing any of the songs as well as Freddie,” he reasons. “But I know a lot of them felt as if they were there in his shadow. Of course, he would have loved that. It would have tickled him to see them all suffer. As well as appreciating it for what it was—a great tribute—he would have relished the agonies they all had to go through, not managing to match his keys!”

The experience was summed up, relates Spike, by the scene at the after-show party at Brown’s nightclub.

“Upstairs, I saw Roger propped up against the wall, just staring into space. Then I spotted Brian a couple of feet away, doing the same thing.
I went over to them. ‘How do you feel?’ I said. ‘Can’t feel anything,’ one of them replied. Nobody could remember anything about it. You just couldn’t take it all in. Once it was over, it was, ‘God—what have we done for the past month? And what do we do now?’ ”

The fundraising wheels were in motion. The Mercury Phoenix Trust, established in 1992 to handle revenue from the concert and other sources, took as its emblem the phoenix from Queen’s crest, which Freddie had designed at the very beginning of the band’s career. To this day, the trust continues to raise money for AIDS causes throughout the world.

George Michael, Lisa Stansfield, and Queen donated royalties from the
Five Live
mini album to the Mercury Phoenix Trust. In April 2002, the Trust received a further major boost when the concert was released on DVD to mark the tenth anniversary of the charity. It entered the UK chart at Number One. Today, twenty years on, money continues to flow into the fund.

*   *   *

There is no doubt that Jim, the bereft lover, embarked upon his selective 1994 biography with the intention of creating a tender tribute to an adored partner. This was blurred by a cowriter who dwelled on more sensational aspects of the relationship, as well as on intimate details of Freddie’s final days.

Jim was consequently banished from the Queen camp. This reaction, which left him bewildered and confused, surely occurred because Freddie’s bandmates, management, family, and friends were grieving, too. They found it unbearable to see the stark details of Freddie’s death out there for all to consume.

During the time I spent with Jim in picturesque County Carlow, in the southeast of Ireland, where he lived out his days in a comfortable bungalow built with Freddie’s £500,000 legacy, I was in no doubt that the love Jim claimed to have felt for Freddie was genuine. He was a warm and decent man who was content with his lot. He was eternally grateful, he told me, for having experienced the superstar lifestyle
through Freddie. In his garden, he proudly showed me his lilac Blue Moon roses, which Freddie adored.

Given Jim’s Catholic background, and the fact that his mother was still alive when he published, it must have taken immense courage to write the book.

“I did discuss it with my family,” he said. “In a way, I asked their permission. I shouldn’t have worried. They simply said that they were there for me, and that was that.”

Freddie, Jim knew, had faced a greater dilemma because of his family’s religion.

“But Freddie didn’t practice Zoroastrianism,” reasoned Jim, with which Peter Freestone agreed. “Because Freddie’s parents had him cremated according to the faith, it was assumed that he had practiced,” added Jim.

“But in all the years I knew him, he never worshipped. I know nothing about his family’s religion. We never discussed it. But I do remember lying in bed beside him at night, and hearing him praying. In which language? In English. To whom? I don’t know. I’d sometimes ask who he was talking to, and he’d just shrug and whisper, ‘I’m saying my prayers.’ ”

*   *   *

Queen Productions’ offices in Pembridge Road closed down after Freddie’s death. So did Mountain Studios, when David Richards dismantled his production facility and moved into the Alps above Montreux. The heavily graffitied doorway (and the studio’s ghosts) are all that remain. But the many who presumed that the Queen story would end, bleakly, with Freddie’s demise, were mistaken.

Made in Heaven
, Queen’s fifteenth studio album, debuted at Number One in 1995, four years after Freddie’s death. Estimated to have sold twenty million copies worldwide, it is an immaculate compilation made with diligence and devotion. Brimming with vitality and mortality, it is also a requiem to and a showcase for the diva in Freddie. One stand-out track, for me, is “Mother Love.” To music composed by Brian, Freddie’s
haunting vocal draws us back on a channel-surfing rewind into a blast of incandescent live Queen, an echoed riff from “It’s a Kind of Magic,” and a shred of Gerry Goffin and Carole King’s “Goin’ Back,” by Freddie, released as Larry Lurex in Queen’s earliest Trident days . . .“I think I’m going back / to the things I learnt so well / in my youth . . .” A heart-tugging baby cry plays the song to a ghostly conclusion, which surely symbolizes his death as the singer’s rebirth.

The other favorite on this album is “A Winter’s Tale,” Freddie’s swansong, which he wrote and composed at his Montreux apartment overlooking the lake he loved. The lyrics, describing what he saw from his window, celebrate the peace and contentment he found there towards the end. The song’s title, whether intended or not as a homage to the romance “The Winter’s Tale” by William Shakespeare, reveals perhaps more about Freddie’s early songwriting inspiration. One protagonist of Shakespeare’s play is Polixenes, the King of Bohemia—an ancient kingdom which corresponds loosely to the modern-day Czech Republic. As such, it may have germinated “Bohemian Rhapsody.” If, as presumed by many Bard scholars, this play was an allegory on the demise of Anne Boleyn, its character Perdita was based on the daughter of Anne and King Henry VIII, who would become Elizabeth I, England’s
Queen
. . . The band’s original greatest hit laced through Freddie’s final offering? It’s not impossible.

There are many memorials, not least the statue of Freddie crafted by Irena Sedlecká which stands on the edge of Lake Geneva in Montreux. It was unveiled by Montserrat Caballé on 25 November 1996, marking the fifth anniversary of Freddie’s death. The ceremony was opened by the mayor of Montreux, in the presence of Freddie’s parents, his sister Kashmira, Montreux Jazz Festival founder Claude Nobs, and Brian and Roger. The statue remains one of the most-visited tourist sites in Switzerland. It has also become the focal point of Queen fans’ annual pilgrimages, to celebrate their idol’s September birthday.

“One of my hardest moments was unveiling the statue,” Brian told
Q
magazine in 2011. “Obviously it’s a very nice tribute, and the
ceremony was very moving, but I just suddenly became overcome by anger. I thought This is all that’s left of my friend, and everybody’s thinking it’s normal and fabulous, but it’s actually awful that I’m looking at a piece of bronze which is the image of my friend, and my friend’s not here anymore.”

A special Ballet for Life, “
Le Presbytère n’a rien perdu de son charme ni le jardin de son éclat
” (“The presbytery has lost none of its charm, nor the garden its sparkle”) was choreographed five years after Freddie’s death by Maurice Bejart of the Bejart Ballet of Lausanne, to celebrate the lives of Freddie and the Bejart’s principal, Jorge Donn. Featuring Queen songs and Mozart compositions, the moving piece opens with “It’s a Beautiful Day”—the first track of
Made in Heaven
, and closes with “The Show Must Go On”—the final track on
Innuendo
, Queen’s last album during Freddie’s lifetime. It was first performed in the Theatre de Chaillot, Paris, in January 1997, in the presence of Madame Chirac (wife of the then president of France) with Elton John, Brian, Roger, and John Deacon. This was the bassist’s last live performance with his bandmates.

John suffered serious depression after Freddie’s death. Having lost his own father when John, was only eleven, Freddie’s demise brought back memories of emotions he had not dealt with at the time. At one point he started frequenting a lap-dancing club and took up with a twenty-five-year-old dancer, lavishing her with an apartment, a car, and luxurious gifts. The ill-advised relationship foundered, after which John was understandably keen to retire with his wife and family. He left the band officially in 1997.

“He’s very private now,” commented Brian. “He communicates by emails when there’s a business discussion, but that’s it.”

Brian and Roger were anything but ready to let go. The right project would come along in good time.

In June 2002, Brian performed “God Save the Queen” on the roof of London’s royal residence (in memory, he said, of Jimi Hendrix), to open Party at the Palace, a concert held to commemorate Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee. In 2004, he collaborated for the first time
with former Free and Bad Company front man Paul Rodgers, at the Fender Strat Pack concert. Excited by the obvious chemistry between them, Brian persuaded Paul to play with Queen for their induction into the UK Music Hall of Fame. Brian, Roger, and Paul then announced a world tour as Q + PR in 2005, making clear that Paul was not replacing Freddie, but that the project was a variation on a theme. They played at a concert in South Africa for Nelson Mandela’s 46664 AIDS awareness campaign in 2005, following which they toured together for the rest of that year, with Spike Edney happily back on keyboards.

Q + PR went on to play a twenty-three-date tour of North America. Two years later, they performed in Hyde Park for Nelson Mandela’s ninetieth birthday celebration, bringing their troubled South African episode to a sublime conclusion. They then departed on a full-scale tour of Europe. Although the collaboration is concluded for now, both parties insist that the arrangement remains open. All, meanwhile, push on with solo interests, notably Brian in 2011 with West End and Broadway star Kerry Ellis, on a sell-out musical-theater-meets-rock presentation entitled
Anthems
.

On the eighteenth anniversary of Freddie’s death, 24 November 2009, some two thousand Queen fans from around the world convened in Feltham town center to watch Brian and Freddie’s mother unveil a granite Hollywood Star–style plaque dedicated to her son’s memory. It was the first UK monument to commemorate the Queen front man (not counting the mock-up statue welcoming fans to
We Will Rock You
above the Dominion Theatre on Tottenham Court Road).

“Feltham was his first home in England after we arrived from Zanzibar, and it was a place where he began to explore his musical future,” said eighty-seven-year-old Jer Bulsara.

“Freddie, we pursued your dream, our dream, and we love you, and we always will,” said Brian. “We are very happy to honor you in this way.”

“Stormtroopers in Stilettos” (the title taken from the track “She Makes Me” on Queen’s third album,
Sheer Heart Attack
, 1974) is a nostalgic international touring exhibition of Queen’s early days. It opened
to commemorate the band’s fortieth anniversary in 2011—a year of celebrations which would also see them sign a new record deal, with Island Records, through Universal.

In late 2010, a major Hollywood film based on Freddie’s life was announced by GK Films. Graham King’s Freddie Mercury movie is coproduced by Robert De Niro’s TriBeca Films and Queen Films. Freddie is played by
Borat
and
Bruno
star Sacha Baron Cohen, to a script by Peter Morgan, author of many acclaimed screenplays including
The Queen, Frost/Nixon
, and
The Last King of Scotland
.