Freddie Mercury (11 page)

Early in 1985, the band flew back to South America for the Rock in Rio festival. The Copacabana Palace Hotel acted as HQ for this visit. Freddie’s personal guests on this occasion were once again Barbara Valentin and Winnie. Barbara had been to Rio earlier, in her
capacity as German movie star and gave Freddie many enjoyable hours, regaling him with stories of her past adventures in the art movie houses of the world.

The audiences of between two hundred and fifty and three hundred thousand people were the largest the bands on this bill had ever played to. It seems odd now to reflect that Freddie’s need for emotional conflict wasn’t evident on these two occasions. Perhaps because he knew he had two shows, he thought the conflict would arise on the second one. The lack of communication due to Winnie’s paucity of English and Freddie’s unsophisticated German may have been a factor in the relatively unruffled emotional atmosphere. It was sometimes comical to watch the arguments happening with Barbara as the translator for both parties. Both Freddie and Winnie would be screaming at Barbara who had to do her best to try to sort out the jumbled words and jumbled emotions. It was a far cry from her original film performances as the Diana Dors of the German silver screen.

Because we were in Rio for so long, Freddie did actually manage to go out on three or four occasions but it was one of those situations where, when Freddie left the hotel, at least one other car had to accompany him with onboard security. It became such a farce, his attempts to get in and out of nightclubs, that eventually he gave up and had many long-night parties in his suite.

There was a massive party organised by EMI given at the Copacabana Palace but which Freddie refused to attend. There were many occasions where he hated being on show and these sort of industry parties were just such events. Freddie would have been the first to have shown up at a band-organised party but as this was just another excuse for the record company to show off their wares, the band would have to be available to be poked and prodded by the record company’s unparticular guest list, all the people who had been promised favours by record company executives. Had this been a purely professional affair, Freddie would have displayed no such disregard. Having never been one himself, Freddie consistently expressed his disdain of those whom he regarded as liggers, a human sub-species which contained two categories – the Professional and the Business liggers. The former he didn’t object to as these were mostly his peers. The latter came under the umbrella appellation of ‘Record Company’ and as such to be reviled.

Freddie was there to perform for the crowds who had paid.

Understandably, he believed he had earned the right to do and behave as he wanted. Put in any position where he was under scrutiny or where he had to be on his ‘best behaviour’, he felt very uneasy. He was very much an impromptu person. Because of his natural spontaneity, he hated being in the spotlight on unfamiliar territory – for example, when he was asked to meet the President of Argentina. On the other hand, in his own home, he could and would be the perfect host and gentleman. This trait must have been born from his schooling. At a boarding school, life is so regimented. You are under the continual gaze of masters while at school and matrons in the dormitory so much so that you constantly rebel against any perceived authority in later life and this I can attest to as I also attended a boarding school in India very much like Freddie’s.

More than anyone, because of his fame, Freddie was forever being scrutinised and he was very sensitive to it. Many’s the time I have seen him come in after one of the enforced attendances that he couldn’t get out of, throw off the outer layers of his clothes and let rip with the pent-up frustration of the previous few hours and swear and curse about anyone and everyone…

“It’s the fucking last time I’m going to fucking well go to anything like that for anyone! Fuck ’em!”

At this point in the Queen touring schedule, I bowed out, as Freddie’s new house, Garden Lodge, had taken on a life of its own, requiring someone permanently living in to organise the comings and goings of workmen and decorators. I relinquished my touring role to Joe Fanelli. I’d had a ball but being away from home for so long when you consider I’d started in late 1979 and had not spent much more than a matter of months in England since then, I think the time had come to settle down while Freddie continued to bear the royal standard around the world.

However, I was still to be involved with Live Aid.

Although Joe was to take care of Freddie and his needs for Live Aid, I was sent on ahead to Wembley, earlier that afternoon of July 13th 1985, to check the layout of dressing rooms, et cetera. I actually spent a fun couple of hours chatting with other people, both crew and performers, I hadn’t seen for a while. The atmosphere was electric. Because of the sheer size of the show – size meaning both the concert length as well as the associated collective ego – many things happened on the spur of the moment.

While nothing was left to chance, it couldn’t be foreseen when there’d be an electrical or satellite failure or some other such catastrophe. By the time that Freddie and the rest of the band arrived, I knew where everything that they would want was located including the watering hole for both bands and crews and the Hard Rock Cafe’s marquee, both of which were being used by everyone, performers and crew alike.

There was a limited amount of space for dressing rooms and, if I remember rightly, there were six that were used in rotation as each band, when they finished its performance, immediately vacated their dressing room to allow the next band to move in like a version of the Royal Variety Show at London’s Palladium theatre. I could sense tension with Freddie but I think this was purely because of the enormity of the occasion. It didn’t take long for him to be laughing and joking with everybody else backstage whom he knew. Tony Hadley from Spandau Ballet, David Bowie, Elton, the Status Quo entourage… It really was a rendezvous for so many old friends, veterans of a lifetime in rock’n’roll. Remembering that so many bands spent so much of their time on the road, very often, friends will only meet when their paths cross on tours.

One thing made Freddie apprehensive about performing this gig and that was that due to timing, the band would have to perform in daylight. He disliked the light because you have to work so much harder for people to see anything. The daylight bleaches the performance, making the spotlights that were working redundant. Even make-up became a useless artifice to communicate the intensity of his personality. Everything would be working as per a normal show but from the audience’s point of view, nothing was much apparent on stage as far as subtleties of performance went. Then again, Freddie was never one for subtleties on stage and it showed in his subsequent performance.

This daylight aspect no one else seemed to have quite worked out for they all give good but unenhanced shows. Freddie knew he had to compensate for this bleached-out effect and very soon had everyone in the stadium – not only the crowd but everybody backstage – in the palm of his hand. The available television footage doesn’t quite capture the feeling backstage. Even the other performers gladly conceded that Queen had given the best show.

He basically knew he had to channel his usual two-hour show
energy into a performance of a mere twenty minutes. The sight of the packed stadium clapping in time and in unison to ‘Radio Ga Ga’ was mind-blowing for us backstage and so what it must have been like for Freddie who was controlling it, I have no idea. He must have felt at that point that he could have controlled the world for the whole world, it seemed, was attending upon him that day. He came offstage totally exhilarated and felt he could have done the performance another six times over. Freddie had been under the impression that once he and Queen had done their bit and he and Brian had performed ‘Is This The World That We Created?’, he would be able to get off home. This was not to be. Just before the finale where everyone was expected to attend and sing, the performers were informed that they should, with respect, all go to the Wembley Conference Centre and remain there for an hour so as to allow traffic to die down. This would make the job of the police much easier. This enforced hiccup also allowed time for Freddie to meet up and chat for a long time – a good half-hour – with George Michael whom he admired. The feeling was definitely mutual. Freddie also chatted to Bowie for a while.

He ended up quite pleased that he had been made to stay on.

We were royally amused.

Almost a year to the day later, on July 11 and 12, 1986, the band returned to Wembley with
A Kind Of Magic
under their belts. Freddie had flown the New York Daughters specifically to see one of these shows. He knew it was going to be something to be proud of. He hired a coach for the show which left Garden Lodge with all his guests including Straker, Mary Austin, Wayne Eagling, Gordon Atkinson, Gordon Dalziel and Graham Hamilton, Barbara Valentin and Trevor Clarke. It was my job to ensure that the coach was laden with goodies for the trip out for the guests and on the trip back when Freddie himself joined in. This was to be the start of one very long party. I don’t think there are many stars who would indulge in this kind of behaviour. I don’t know that there are that many of his equivalent status who would have that many friends who would come together at one time to celebrate their friend’s success. And they certainly wouldn’t have travelled on a bus!

Freddie was a master controller but he was a lucky man in that his machinations worked for him as far as his friends were concerned. Freddie was very rarely in a situation which he didn’t control or had
not organised to be just ‘so’. Should such a situation arise, he was quick-minded enough to extricate himself from any possible harm but that day must have been one of the happiest of his life.

On July 12, the second Wembley Show, a party was hosted by Queen and EMI Records at the Roof Gardens which is situated on what was the Derry and Toms building in Kensington High Street. This was the party where a few of the attendant staff wore nothing but body paint designed to look like clothes. There were girl attendants in the gentlemen’s lavatory and vice versa. However, once again, to disprove reports which circulated at the time, there were no dwarves with bowls of cocaine. Of course there were drugs around. Drugs went with the territory but the excesses which were noised abroad were never excesses at all. This was the famous occasion when Freddie jumped up on stage with Samantha Fox and they duetted ‘A Crazy Little Thing Called Love’, as the band played live.

I was there on August 9, 1986, when the band played Kneb-worth Park. This was my second helicopter ride, this time in the wonderfully painted machine which has been seen in photographs so often. I was obviously there should Freddie need anything done that Joe was too busy to do but this show gave me an opportunity to see the band at their best. The show was a huge success except for the record British traffic jams following and in hindsight was perhaps the best last show that the band could have possibly had. Queen showed themselves to be quite simply the best stadium rock band in the world. They didn’t expect this to be their last show and I’m sure all of them in their hearts were planning their next tour because this, the Magic Tour had gone so well.

Freddie’s Christmas letter to the fan club seems to bear this out:

I
t’s time I tried to give an insight into the recording processes which characterised the making of Queen’s and Freddie’s records because without the recordings, there would be nothing to tour, nothing to make a video of, nothing to design an album cover for. I would like this next chapter to show what was put in by the four performer/composers and what the process demanded from them.

Hot Space
was the first Queen album I was involved with. It was really exciting because it meant living abroad for an extended length of time as opposed to merely touring abroad when our lives were still based in England. In those days there were still significant tax advantages in spending whole years at one time out of England. Very loosely, for every month you were out of the country, you were allowed back in for one day. So while I wasn’t a tax exile, I also reaped the advantages by being paid in England while living on per diem expenses abroad. I therefore managed to save most of my salary.

Hot Space
was recorded in both Montreux and Munich. The Mountain Studios in the Casino complex in the lakeside town of Montreux had already been purchased by Queen, both as an investment and as a utility. In the end it was used more as an investment and used by people like David Bowie. For two weeks every year the studio was commandeered for the recording of the internationally famous Montreux Jazz Festival.

On the first day of recording, the instruments and sound equipment would already be set up in the studio. The equipment would have arrived a few days earlier from London with the road crew where it had been in storage in the Queen warehouse in William Road. Rock’n’roll recording isn’t a Monday through Friday nine-to-five routine but like most other schedules, to start at the beginning of a
week is logical even though weekends often didn’t count as weekends. Recording was done as and when the band members felt like it. Most bands before going into a recording studio would have some idea of what they wanted to produce. Queen, however, very rarely, if ever, did. They would go in and just see what would come into their heads. The date and timing of the recording of any album would be as the result of a band meeting with Jim Beach. Obviously, the band had to fulfil any contractual obligations to EMI and to the other record distribution companies with whom licensing deals had been signed. In the band’s overall schedule, there would be a minimum of six months set aside for recording. This would allow time for exhausted brains to relax and recharge in between the arduous and often tortuous sessions. In those days, Queen recorded beneath the ultimate luxury of the twenty-four hour lock-out umbrella which denied any other band or artist access to the studio for as long as their contract with the studio lasted… Six, nine months. Even a year.