Freddie Mercury: The Biography (3 page)

Although they had work, May, Taylor and Staffell were increasingly ambitious for Smile. It was almost three months since they
had backed Pink Floyd, yet apart from playing support to T-Rex and Family, nothing else was happening. However, on 27 February
1969, they took part in a concert organised by Imperial College at the Royal Albert Hall. The prestigious line-up included
Free and Joe Cocker. Smile was amazed – and delighted – to feature above Free on the bill, and their anticipation of the event
was immeasurable. As it turned out, the gig was most memorable for a couple of embarrassing
mishaps, involving the wrong length of guitar lead for the stage, and Staffell, by playing in his stocking feet, ending up
with splinters. But the occasion still left them reeling, and talking about it for days afterwards. It was in the midst of
this high that Staffell introduced his Ealing College friend, Freddie Bulsara, to the rest of the band.

By the sixties Kensington itself, with its famous market and boutiques – Biba among them – had become the place to hang out;
the arty cosmopolitan atmosphere suited Mercury well. Mercury first met the Smile band members in a popular pub called the
Kensington. From that day on, they got on well. And, from the first moment of meeting, Mercury set his heart on getting into
the band, even though he hadn’t yet heard them play.

Later that evening he invited himself along to one of their rehearsals. Enthusiasm was one thing, but Mercury instantly became
the bane of their lives at practice sessions. He loved the sound they were creating, but their presentation, in his opinion,
left a lot to be desired. With the possibility of taking the trio in hand, he found it impossible to resist his endless ideas
for jazzing them up.

Says Tim Staffell, ‘We didn’t take Freddie that seriously as a singer at first, as it took a few years for him to develop
the quality and assurance he showed when he was into his stride.’ Roger Taylor was amused but apparently immune to Mercury’s
vocal bombardment, and Brian May tolerated him with patience, ignoring the hints about joining the band.

But Mercury was relentless. Listening to Smile, his own urge to perform again became so desperate that when he attended their
gigs, he would sometimes stand at the front of the audience and shout, criticising them for what he considered they were doing
wrong. Cupping his hands round his mouth, in his frustration he’d yell, ‘If I was your singer, I’d show you how it was done.’
And still it had no effect. But Mercury was a planner.
As a full-frontal assault was clearly too abrasive, he decided to try another tack.

Mercury hung out with the band as much as possible and continued to attend their rehearsals. As well as showing them up in
public, he also went to work on each band member, pandering to their individual weaknesses. In Brian May’s case, Mercury played
Hendrix records for him all evening on a small second-hand stereo. Already besotted by the rock guitarist, May’s analytical
brain was quick to absorb the extraordinary sound of Jimi Hendrix in stereo. All night Mercury paced obligingly from one speaker
position to the other with May, ostensibly trying to figure out how the maestro produced such effects; in reality he was just
trying to find a way to gain an ally.

Despite his best efforts, a place in Smile continued to elude him. This was particularly galling when it began to look as
if the band were becoming successful. On 19 April they played at London’s Revolution Club, after which they were approached
by Lou Reizner, then involved with Mercury Records. The US label was about to break into the UK market, and Reizner had been
favourably eyeing up Smile all evening. When he asked them if they would sign with Mercury, they said yes at once.

Freddie could only enjoy the band’s excitement from the outside, when soon after having signed a contract in May 1969, Smile
were booked into Trident Studios, Soho, to make a single with producer John Anthony. The A-side was ‘Earth’, a number written
by Staffell, and backed by ‘Step on Me’. Reminiscent of Barclay James Harvest in style, ‘Earth’ was the better single, with
Staffell’s melodic vocals and Taylor’s strong drumming to anchor the track. There was no sign yet of Brian May’s distinctive
guitar work, and if the number had a weak spot, it was in the slight incoherence of the mid-track instrumental. Understandably,
expectations were high as Mercury fixed its release date for August.

In the sweltering heatwave that summer, Mercury’s hopes of joining a band took an unexpected turn with the arrival in London
of a Liverpool group, Ibex. Like Smile, they were a three-piece outfit: drummer Mick ‘Miffer’ Smith, bassist John ‘Tupp’ Taylor
and lead guitarist Mike Bersin. With their manager Ken Testi, they had headed south in a rusty old van to seek fortune and
fame in London. ‘My girlfriend Helen McConnell had a flat in Earls Court with her sister, Pat, so at least we had somewhere
to crash,’ Testi explains.

Testi remembers that they met Freddie Mercury almost on arrival. ‘It was Pat’s birthday, and we thought we’d take her out
for a drink. She was adamant it had to be in Kensington. At that time there was very much a collegy subculture in the area,
and there was quite a student thing going on – a substrata to the more opulent side of Kensington.

‘Pat had seen Smile playing at Imperial College and knew that the Kensington was their boozer, so we went, and right enough
the chaps were there. In no time at all the two bands got chatting. They had a friend with them who wasn’t in Smile but clearly
felt that he ought to be, and this was Freddie.’

Says Testi, ‘Freddie was wearing a short fur jacket and had well-groomed shoulder-length hair. He looked the business. I suppose
to him we must have appeared brusque northerners that night and not at all sophisticated, but you’d never have guessed it.
On first acquaintance Freddie would be very quiet.

‘After the pub shut we all ended up back at Pat’s flat where Smile performed for us, and Fred kept throwing in harmonies as
if he couldn’t help himself. That night my focus centred on Brian’s playing, and I felt that I was listening to something
potentially special. But I noticed that Freddie was clearly extremely comfortable in that company.’

Like Ken Testi, Ibex guitarist Mike Bersin recalls that the person who made the most impact at that first meeting was Brian
May: ‘I was dead keen to hear him play but the big
surprise for me ended up being that he used a sixpence coin instead of the usual plectrum,’ an idiosyncrasy that still fascinates
guitarists. But as both bands met up often after that night, it wasn’t long before Mercury made his presence felt.

‘That was an unforgettable summer,’ he continues. ‘Brian Jones died, and the Stones held that huge Hyde Park memorial to him,
and the weather was stiflingly hot! What I remember most is everyone sitting outside the Kensington on the low window ledges
drinking barley wine, because it was cheap. Although Freddie had been quiet at first, he quickly lost that.

‘One evening we were all outside the pub discussing music as usual, and Freddie suddenly piped up, “What you guys need is
a singer.” We looked at each other and wondered how he could possibly know that because he hadn’t heard us play. I guess it
was a lucky opening line, but anyway he promptly offered to front us.’

Ken Testi watched Mercury moving in on his band with a knowing smile! ‘Ibex had no designated singer, although Bersin was
holding that down too, but we really could’ve done with one,’ he says. ‘It was obvious to us all that Freddie’s heart was
still set on joining Smile but that wasn’t going to happen so that’s why he’d turned his sights on Ibex.’

The ease with which Mercury, at least superficially, transferred his affections has stayed with Mike Bersin, who says, ‘Well,
he came to our rehearsals a couple of times in a basement flat but far from doing much singing, he really just talked his
way into the band. We had no real resistance to the idea and that was it. He joined Ibex.’

Finally securing a place in a band was not the only success for Mercury at this time. For months he had haunted Barbara Hulanicki’s
trendy boutique, Biba, with an ulterior motive. Although it was one of the hippest places in town, the main attraction there
lay in his developing friendship with one of Biba’s sales assistants, Mary Austin. They had begun to date,
Mercury presumably choosing to suppress his homosexual tendencies. His feelings for the petite blonde, and hers for him, were
strong enough for them to start living together in a tiny first-floor flat, close to Kensington market. It was the beginning
of a lifetime’s devotion to one another.

Mercury’s involvement with Mary Austin was to offset any doubts among his friends about his sexuality. ‘I’d no idea he was
gay until long after I’d gone,’ admits Tim Staffell. ‘In those days it was fashionable to adopt campness as a kind of social
passport, as if it implied artistic integrity or sensitivity.’

‘Freddie had just started living with Mary when I met him,’ says Mike Bersin, ‘which I guess threw us off the scent, because
in his behaviour in every other respect he was wonderfully camp in that beautifully English foppish way. In many ways, you
know, Freddie almost wasn’t real.’

What was real to Mercury was the perpetual shortage of cash. Although still averse to getting his hands dirty, he realised
that independence meant he needed a paid job. But he was not only unwilling to spend time out of the Kensington area but was
also only interested in music and art. His solution was to rent a stall in Kensington market. By August 1968 Roger Taylor
had left medical school with only the first part of his dental degree. Seeing a golden opportunity to solidify his connection
with Smile, Mercury asked Taylor to join him in business.

They rented a stall for £10 a week in an avenue that traders depressingly dubbed ‘Death Row’. Years later, in early Queen
publicity releases, it would be grandly elevated to the status of ‘a gentlemen’s outfitters’, but, as Ken Testi confirms,
their market stall was the size of a telephone box. Stocking it was easy, Mercury’s art-school friends brought paintings and
drawings to sell, and occasionally he displayed his own work. But sales were so slow that they switched to selling clothes
and soon turned a small profit.

Tim Staffell recalls this time: ‘I had a stall of my own for a couple of months trying to sell original artwork, mine and
that of other Ealing-ites. It was some place. I particularly remember an extremely uncomfortable pair of calico trousers that
some shyster sold me.

‘Freddie and Roger worked part-time at their stall selling fashion items. There was a strong emphasis on personal adornment;
naturally, I suppose, since that would be the motivation for wearing and selling the stuff. But there was an air of narcissistic
coquettishness about the place that I loathed. I guess it was very influential in creating the sense of outrageousness that
Freddie cultivated. But I didn’t like it. It was all a little too deliberate for my liking.’

Kensington, however, became Mercury’s stomping ground. Although it paled against the exoticism of Bombay’s bazaars, he thrived
on the activity of the market. Comfortable, too, with his new circle of friends and infected by the end-of-sixties buzz, Mercury’s
increasing flamboyance became an acceptably surreal part of everyday life. Mike Bersin remembers, ‘We were all very conscious
that Freddie always thought of himself as being special. With hindsight, I recognise the determination to succeed that he
had in spades. He demanded to be treated as a star long before he was a star. His talent was his ambition really, and people
reacted to it in different ways, but it wasn’t an unpleasant thing.’

Doubtless Mercury’s drive to succeed had received a boost, albeit at second-hand, as he watched the band he longed to be a
part of preparing for the launch of their first single. Mercury Records released ‘Earth/Step on Me’ in August 1969, but the
joy of rushing to the nearest record store to see it on display was denied them – it was released only in America. Weeks of
anticipation turned sour, until their profound disappointment was diluted when Mercury invited the band back into the studio
to record more tracks for an album.

Tim Staffell recalls that ‘By now Brian and I had written a few songs and were looking forward to having the chance to record
them properly. Our producer was Fritz Freyer and the tracks we cut for that album included “Polar Bear”, “Earth” and “Step
on Me”, of course, as well as “Blag” and “April Lady”, on which Brian sang lead. But although we were happy with the results,
Mercury wouldn’t release the album. It ended up surfacing years later in Japan.’

Disappointment set in yet again, and weighing it all up, Freddie Mercury was clear that this kind of thing was not going to
happen to him. He had been denied the chance to jazz up Smile, but he had gained a foothold with Ibex and was determined to
make an impression. The band played gigs wherever Ken Testi could book them, mainly at venues in the north of England. They
worked in particular around the Liverpool area, where he had a lot of useful contacts.

Testi recalls, ‘Ibex had been into progressive rock, very much influenced by bands like Wishbone Ash, Free and Jethro Tull.
Then Freddie arrived and brought something else entirely to it. It was dramatic, but it worked. He also brought an injection
of culture. He was already fashionable. Not quite the peacock he later became; of course money was tight. But he had an eye
to being well turned out. Ibex had been into jeans and trench coats, whereas Freddie was more your satin-and-fur man.’

Mike Bersin agrees that ‘As a front man, there wasn’t a lot of difference then to when he became famous with Queen, except
that later he wore louder clothes and had more space to strut around. But all the movements were there with Ibex, lots of
poses, many of which I now recognise had been there right from the very start. I mean we were three guys from Widnes, all
shoe-gazing bluesmen with minimal stage presence or movement and totally religious about our music. Then along came our new
front man who was, to say the least, a culture shock. Freddie always worked extremely hard though, to instil
in us a sense of being something to look at, as well as to listen to. And even in the cramped space available to pub bands
he would strut up and down wielding the mike stand and pretending to play guitar.