Freddie Mercury (16 page)

It was Montserrat who had been a major contributor to my own love of opera as on April 22, 1975, my first night of work at the Royal Opera House, she was singing the role of Leonora in
Il Trovatore.
It was a coincidence that Freddie’s favourite aria in opera was to be ‘D’ Amor Sull’ Ali Rosee’ as sung by Montserrat on one of her early opera aria discs. Having fallen in love with her voice, Freddie took great pleasure in taking the disc into the studio with him, putting it on a turntable, plugging it into the main speakers and turning it up full volume. It amused him to hear the orchestra members’ seats making a noise and the pages of the score being turned.

“My god, this is real! You couldn’t fake those noises.”

He learned a lot about her voice this way as prior to our night at the opera he had shown little interest in female voices. His love for Montserrats voice never diminished but it wasn’t until 1986 when he was on tour in Spain that he made his admiration public on Spanish Radio. When asked by the interviewer whose voice he most admired, I believe the expected answer was to have been Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson or Prince. He surprised everybody by saying that it was Montserrat’s. He accentuated the fact that he was not being patronising just because she was Catalan and he was being interviewed in Barcelona.

Freddie thought nothing more of it until Jim Beach came to him saying that he had been approached by Carlos Caballe, Montserrat’s brother and manager and Pino Sagliocco who was Queen’s concert promoter in Spain and who had first been inspired to approach Carlos Caballe.

The idea was, what did Freddie think of the idea of writing an anthem for the Barcelona Olympic Games for Montserrat to sing? At first Freddie was very unsure, even a little scared. This was asking him to do something for someone he had admired for so long. It was also a new direction for him, specifically writing with someone else in mind, particularly someone with whom he had never worked before.

Eventually, with all the powers of persuasion applied to him on one side by Jim Beach and the nagging voice of me on the other, he succumbed and the project was agreed. The original idea was to produce a single which would be entitled ‘Barcelona’, that could be used as a theme for the Olympic Games, to be sung at their opening. Even so, that didn’t prevent Freddie coming up with ideas above and beyond the call of duty.

A meeting was arranged at which Freddie could meet and present some ideas to Montserrat. He knew her capabilities well by now, having listened to so many of her recordings and after the idea had been finalised, Montserrat had kindly picked a selection of her performances and sent him some video copies that were not available to the general public and, in his turn, Freddie had sent her a full collection of his work including his latest work, his recreation of the classic rock song, ‘The Great Pretender’.

Freddie knew within himself how much he wanted to make Montserrat do. He wanted to push her to her limits but in the best possible way. He had a few weeks to get the germs of some ideas down on tape to take with us to Barcelona where the meeting had been arranged. Much the same as now, everything had to be organised around Montserrat in that she was hardly ever at home. If you want to get in touch with Montserrat, try anywhere around the world where she is so much in demand. As you will see in the recounting of the recording, Montserrat is a workaholic, one of the things which she has in common with Freddie.

Mike Moran was the first to be taken on board. Because of the relationship which had developed between the two, Freddie found it
easy to collaborate with this genial gentleman. By doing so, the responsibility of some of the difficult intricacies of orchestration was removed from Freddie’s shoulders. This initial collaboration with Mike produced a cassette of three very rough tracks. One of these became ‘Exercises In Free Love’ which then became ‘Ensueno’ on the
Barcelona
album. The other two were the basic format of ‘The Fallen Priest’ and, similarly, ‘Guide Me Home’ which Mike had put together with Freddie using a falsetto voice to approximate to Montserrat’s part.

Mike Moran, Freddie, myself, Jim Beach and Terry flew into Barcelona the day before that auspicious meeting in March 1987 and stayed at the Ritz hotel. As you might imagine, the talk over dinner that night was of little else but Montserrat.

“What’s she doing now.”

Probably eating, Freddie.

“No, but is she watching television as well?”

Probably, Freddie.

What Freddie didn’t know was that very night Montserrat was in fact giving a recital in a town just outside Barcelona.

The hotel arranged for a very basic, hi-fi, speaker system to be placed in the Garden Room of the hotel where there was a grand piano in the corner.

After a very restless night, we all gathered in Freddie’s room. I don’t think I have seen Freddie more nervous than he was that morning. As we went to the lift to go downstairs for lunch, he looked like the condemned man being led from his cell. At one point – and I really don’t know even now whether or not he was serious – he even said, “Come on. I can’t go on with this. Let’s go home!”

The lunch had been arranged for one o’clock. We walked into the room perhaps five minutes early. There to greet us was a vast circular table with a huge centrepiece which blocked the vision of anyone sitting opposite. That was soon removed. Freddie picked his seat and wouldn’t move. I had ensured that he had two packets of cigarettes with him as he was smoking rather a lot at this point. He wasn’t necessarily inhaling very much but he found cigarettes were the easiest things to use to keep his hands occupied. I was not permitted to sit down as every two or three minutes I was asked to go to the door to see if she was coming yet. I only had to go to the door three times and on the third visit, a wonderful sight presented itself. Without being disrespectful to Montserrat, the scene that I saw reminded me of the
lyrics of an old song often sung by Joyce Grenfell which began, “Stately as a galleon, she sailed across the floor…”

As Montserrat’s procession advanced, the pathway opened before her. People stood back. You must appreciate that particularly in Catalonia, Montserrat is more than a queen. She is the supreme symbol of Catalan culture. She was dressed in a knee-length frock in colours and design entirely reminiscent of a Spanish spring. With Montserrat were her manager Carlos, Pino Sagliocco whose idea the project had been and her niece, Montsy, who was my counterpart both in the court of Montserrat and also that day at lunch, when, that is, I was finally permitted to sit down.

Freddie didn’t know what to do.

He could meet Michael Jackson whom he respected. That was fine. But although Freddie was a huge, huge star himself, I don’t think he ever got over an inherent shyness which had been with him all his life. I know that nothing at boarding school takes into account anybody’s fear of being themselves in social situations. Shyness can be crippling and Freddie felt it acutely. I can understand his feeling because while I have played video games and met some of the greatest names in rock music, someone finally arranged for me to meet a not-particularly-famous English opera singer whose career I had followed for many years. When I was led into her presence, I became a gibbering wreck. All I could mumble was, “Oh, it was brilliant.”

Freddie was now meeting
his
idol. It was an incomparable moment, one for which nothing could have possibly prepared him.

She swept into the room through double doors. Freddie jumped up from his seat and after shaking hands, he ushered her to her seat next to him. He said simply, “Hello, I’m Freddie Mercury and that’s it. We’ve started!” and then sat down.

While Jim Beach and Carlos had met prior to the lunch and were able to carry on a conversation, it took Freddie and Montserrat a few minutes to gauge each other but once the ice had properly been broken, there was no stopping them especially after a glass of Louis Roederer Cristal champagne. After discovering her love of this champagne to which he had introduced her, Freddie delighted in sending Montserrat a full case on her next birthday.

Once the initial awkwardness had been overcome, it took Freddie and Montserrat about five minutes flat to discover that they shared a wicked sense of humour and the pair started talking nineteen to the
dozen. There was much giggling and talking with their hands to make up what they couldn’t manage to say due to their babbling torrent of words. They were each trying to communicate in three hours what they’d have liked to have been saying for three months. Montserrat had been kind enough to let Freddie know that she really did only have three hours to spare before her prior commitments to a rehearsal called her away.

I was instructed to start the tape ten minutes later and the tape was played and rewound, played and rewound several times. The tracks were listened to in silence the first time. On second playing, comments were passed about specific parts that they liked and then other people chimed in with their opinions. Finally they were ready for the food to be brought in at about two-thirty. Strict instructions had been given that no dining staff could be present until called for.

These musical ideas were there so that the best of them could be taken for a record which, to Freddie’s mind at that time, would consist of the A and B sides of a single, the ‘Barcelona’ track and another, although at that point ‘Barcelona’ as such did not exist. It could have been, for example, that the music for what was to become ‘The Fallen Priest’ could have ended up as ‘Barcelona’. Everything at that point was up in the air. It was when lunch was being eaten that talk turned to how long it took Freddie to record an album… An album?

It was at this point when Montserrat enquired, “An album? What do you mean by an album?”

Freddie said, “Oh, you know! You’ve done them. Eight or nine tracks on one disc. That’s an album.”

Montserrat said, “Fine. That is what we will do. An album.”

So, in the space of two hours, Freddie’s pet project quadrupled in size and once more he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to do it or not. He wasn’t certain that he could come up with enough ideas.

Straight after eating, Mike Moran and Montserrat went to the piano because she wanted to try out the
vocalise
, ‘Exercises In Free Love’. She only had a short time to spare before her rehearsal and in that time, she decided that she would come back to the hotel after the rehearsal was over. Mike Moran was given four hours to completely transcribe the song from tape onto manuscript paper. She duly returned with Montsy to spend the ensuing few hours trying out ‘Exercises In Free Love’ to see how well it suited her voice. When she
had exhausted Mike Moran, she left, taking the manuscript with her. He hadn’t even photocopied it.

Freddie’s party flew back to London, exhausted but elated. He couldn’t wait to get to work. Freddie went into the Townhouse Studio and started work straightaway.

At the end of the week, Montserrat flew into town because she was giving a recital at Covent Garden which she naturally insisted Freddie attend. This time there were about six of us in the party including Mike Moran. Jim Hutton and Joe were there, as well as myself. The arrangement was that in return for Freddie attending upon her at her recital, she would attend upon Freddie for a post-performance supper at his home, Garden Lodge in Kensington.

To Freddie’s surprise, towards the end of Montserrat’s show, Mike Moran made his excuses and left his seat, saying, “Sorry. Gotta go to the loo.”

Well into her encores, Montserrat stopped and announced, “Now, we have a change of pianist. I am now going to perform a song for the first time in public. It has been composed by someone whose name you might know but not from inside this opera house and who just happens to be sitting over… there!” She pointed at Freddie and at the same moment Mike Moran walked on stage and Freddie wished that the ground could have been opened up. You have to realise that in opera houses, during recitals, lights are never dimmed totally and Freddie was fully visible, dressed as he was in a pale blue suit.

Montserrat made him stand up and take a bow, which he very reluctantly did and then tried to hide in his seat. She then proceeded to sing ‘Exercises In Free Love’ which, unknown to Freddie, she had been rehearsing intensely the whole of the previous week. While the audience reaction couldn’t be described as ecstatic, it showed many people there a fact that few realised. Music is very difficult to categorise. Freddie least of all ever dreamed that something that he wrote would ever be performed in such an august hall. To me, that night just went to show that music is music, whoever composes it.

The arrangement on departure was that Freddie would go straight off home to get the supper ready! I was to accompany Montserrat. She said she was going to execute her version of Freddie’s “Take the money and run” scenario after the concert which meant in her world that she would not as per normal stand at the stage door signing autographs. For some reason, though, some two hundred people
found their way to her dressing room so she took the money and ran about an hour and a half later!

The Opera House had tried to facilitate her exit by arranging for her car to be parked outside the back door but this all had to change when, ten minutes later, Montserrat, Montsy and I were scrambling over scaffolding and holes in the ground as the Opera House staff had forgotten to mention that some reconstruction had begun.

We eventually got to Garden Lodge with much laughter en route in the car about midnight. I heard later that Freddie had been pacing the kitchen wondering whether he’d been stood up.

After dinner, Freddie fully expected Montserrat to take up her wrap and go. Instead she asked where the cigarettes were and wanted to know what work he had done in the week since she had seen him. He was actually very honest and admitted that not a lot had come out of his week’s work but because Mike Moran was there he would be happy if Mike wanted to play the ideas on his piano, the same piano incidentally that Freddie had used to write ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. Little did Freddie know it but this was to be the start of a mammoth session even by his own standards.