Freddie Mercury (20 page)

The pink suit was designed and made by David Chambers who also made quite a few of Freddie’s suits including the dark blue tux seen in the video of ‘Barcelona’. The pink-suited Freddie was turned into a hundred cloned cardboard cut-outs for extra emphasis which appear, ranked either side on the grand staircase, at the end of the promo. David Mallet, the director, had originally wanted these standing on top of the white cliffs at Dover while a helicopter shot pulled away from Freddie standing amongst them. This idea was turned down by Freddie on two counts: first, the cost as the shot would have added thousands of pounds to the budget; and second, Freddie didn’t relish the thought of standing at the edge of the cliffs in the freezing cold!

‘Barcelona’ was filmed at least three times, twice in performance. The first was directed by Gavin Taylor at the KU nightclub on Ibiza, now renamed Privilege, the largest venue on the island. On this occasion, staged to commemorate the five hundredth anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America, it was to be the first public performance of the song. There was no real rehearsal. Freddie stayed at Pikes Hotel and Montserrat stayed at a five star hotel in Ibiza town. Pino Sagliocco organised the show which included Duran Duran amongst others. Jim Beach was one of the executive producers along with Dominic Anciano and Ray Burdis. Freddie was very nervous
and I was sent on ahead to make sure the dressing room was okay and to be there when Montserrat arrived. She wore a blue dress originally designed for her role as the diva Ariadne in Richard Strauss’s opera
Ariadne Auf Naxos.

I think because the KU appearance was Montserrat’s first exposure to this sort of gig, Freddie wanted to make sure that there was a familiar face around for her. It was strange that during the course of the evening I spent more time with Montserrat and her family – who were all there to support her – than I did with Freddie. But Freddie wasn’t alone by any means as he had the two Jims – Beach and Hutton – and Barbara Valentin with him as well as Mike Moran.

The second filmed performance was at La Nit in Barcelona on the occasion of the delivery of the Olympic flag to that city in 1988. He and Montserrat were backed on stage on this occasion by Peter Straker and their friends Debbie Bishop and Madeleine Bell, both of whom were backing vocalists on the recording. Mike Moran, as always, supervised the musical arrangements performed by a local orchestra. On the same bill was Jose Carreras, his first perfomance after battling with leukaemia, Dionne Warwick, Eddy Grant, Rudolf Nureyev, Spandau Ballet
und viel andere.

It was a huge occasion, the dressing rooms being mere partitioned spaces in a vast hangar-like building. Everything that anyone said echoed around so all the participants tended to be very quiet. When Freddie and Montserrat appeared, she was obviously glowing in the adoration of her home Catalan crowd. It was her show after all. She had performed with Carreras and sung a song on her own with the orchestra. She sang an arrangement of an aria written for a tenor by Giuseppe Verdi called ‘Hymn Of The Nations’ in which, if you listen, you hear at least three or four different national anthems.

Freddie’s nerves had only just quietened down from his meeting a scant hour or so before with the King and Queen of Spain and the royal family. Although his nervousness is apparent, Montserrat had the knack of responding to what is essentially a solo Freddie performance for, as you will understand, he had spent his stage life working only on his own or at best interacting with the other three members of Queen. If you watch this show, you see Montserrat’s instinctive reaction to Freddie’s movements and the whole duet works successfully. For those carpers who have invented so many reasons for the show not being sung live, including Freddie’s health, there was never any intention of
this song being sung live. To produce any of Freddie’s live performances, a lot of intensive rehearsal took place. Time was a commodity then that neither of the artistes involved had much of.

‘Barcelona’ in its third incarnation was filmed at Shepperton or Pinewood. Freddie wore his dark blue evening suit and performed on a stage with hundreds of candles and once again a cast of thousands, drawn from the ever-eager fan club. ‘Golden Boy’ also used footage filmed during La Nit in Barcelona on the same occasion as the video for ‘Barcelona’. Montserrat is in the same blue dress but with a vast red evening coat with a long train. The drama on this occasion was that the backing track was out of time. It was being played slower than it should have been which made the making of the video extremely difficult as Freddie and Montserrat’s lip-synching was out of sequence with the recorded track which was used. A passable video was cobbled together but it wasn’t much seen.

When Freddie came off stage, it was almost like the cartoons where you see steam coming out of people’s ears. He was absolutely furious as there was no chance to be able to re-take. He blamed any and everybody. The person nearest to hand to bear the brunt was sound engineer John Brough. There were a few present who wondered what was the matter with Freddie because the sound wasn’t noticeably slower except to an expert. Freddie knew it was slow because it was his track through and through and he realised the implications for the video.

‘I Want It All’, a rather nondescript video from 1989, was filmed at Elstree Film Studios and it was Joe’s turn that day. Watching it now I get the impression that Freddie didn’t really want to be there. He looks the archetypal angry young man and I don’t know how much of that was acting. The excessive use of lighting – sixteen supertrooper followspots, the ones made famous by ABBA, and twelve fifty-foot Dino football pitch lights – succeeds in bleaching out most of the footage. I think perhaps time was at a premium because, generally, when Queen didn’t have time, performance videos were the norm and they hadn’t performed in concert for two years. They needed to broadcast confirmation that they were still capable of performing as a band.

‘The Miracle’, directed by Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossacher, was filmed at Elstree Studios once again. Many children were auditioned to find the four lookalikes. The time spent was well worthwhile as the end result produced four very good doppel-gangers.

Freddie Mercury, John Murphy and Joe Scardilli, in Vancouver.

Lee Nolan, Freddie, John Murphy, Jim from New York and Jim Cruz in Vancouver.

Thor Arnold, John Murphy, Freddie and friend in the hot tub 649 Stone Canyon Road, Los Angeles.

Freddie and Thor Arnold in Los Angeles.

Freddie blowing out the candles on his birthday cake, Los Angeles.

Freddie with Vince The Barman, in LA.

Freddie with Rod Stewart in Los Angeles.