Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury (54 page)

Brian May and Roger Taylor with Freddie’s mother, Jer, at the sixteenth Annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Ceremony, 2001, New York.

The author, Barbara Valentin, and friend, Munich, 1996.

Queen’s official photographer, Denis O’Regan, with the author, London, 1996.

The Teddy Bar, a favorite Munich nightspot.

HansSachs Strasse, Munich: the apartment building in the infamous Bermuda Triangle district where Freddie purchased a flat with Barbara Valentin.

The Munich building which housed Henderson’s, one of the nightclubs Freddie frequented. Here, in 1985, he combined his thirty-ninth birthday party, a £50,000 black and white ball, with a video shoot to promote “Living on My Own.”

Jim Hutton in his garden in County Carlow, Ireland, July 1996, five years after Freddie’s death.

Jim Hutton, Peter Freestone, Barbara Valentin, and the author, the Groucho Club London, August 1997.

Back, from left:
the author, Barbara Valentin, Jim Hutton, Peter Freestone.
Front, from left:
the son of Freddie’s school friend Gita Choksi, and Indian friend, at the Groucho Club London, August 1997.

Peter Freestone and Jim Hutton at a private party given by the author at the Groucho Club, London, August 1997.

Queen’s rarest and most sought-after record:
The Works
LP, pressed on red vinyl in Colombia.

Limited Edition: Two hundred copies of “Bohemian Rhapsody” hand-pressed on seven-inch blue vinyl to commemorate Queen’s label EMI Records receiving the Queen’s Award to Industry, 1978.

A replica of the Freddie Mercury statue sculpted by Czech artist Irena Sedlecká, which stands above the entrance to London’s Dominion Theatre, home to We Will Rock You since 2002.