by Mark Blake
‘Somebody to Love’ had been released as a single in November as a trailer for the album. Within three weeks it was at number 2. Kenny Everett conducted a joshing interview with Mercury on air, between playing the whole of the new album, while A Day at the Races was launched with a soirée of free booze and food at Kempton Park racetrack. The 86-year-old Groucho Marx sent a telegram at Pete Brown’s behest congratulating the band (‘I know that you are very successful recording artists. Could it, by any chance, be your sage choice of album titles?’) Bruce Murray attended a playback party for A Day at the Races, and ran into Mary Austin. It was the first time Murray became fully aware of the significant changes in his old schoolfriend’s life. ‘I knew he was gay, but I also didn’t know,’ offers Murray. ‘That was the night that Mary told me they were splitting up. She said, “I think the pretence has gone on long enough, Bruce.”’
On 1 December, Queen were booked to appear on the early-evening TV show Today With Bill Grundy. When Mercury had to make a rare visit to the dentist (his first in fifteen years), the band pulled out, leaving EMI promoter Eric Hall with a problem. In Queen’s absence, Hall offered EMI’s latest signing, the punk rock group, The Sex Pistols. Plied with free booze and encouraged by Grundy, the band swore like naughty schoolboys. The fallout was extraordinary: the show attracted a record number of complaints and caused a Liverpudlian lorry driver to smash his TV set in disgust; Grundy’s TV career was over, and The Sex Pistols became household names overnight.
The next day the Daily Mirror blazed with the headline “THE FILTH AND THE FURY” and asked ‘Who are these punks?’ Musically, they took their cue from The Who, The Rolling Stones and American garage-rock: short, sharp songs with a nihilistic message. It was punk’s anti-fashion that caused more concern: cropped hair, ripped clothes, anarchist slogans … The image and the idea for The Sex Pistols had both been cooked up by their manager Malcolm McLaren and his girlfriend, the designer Vivienne Westwood, in their boutique, SEX. The shop was on the Kings Road, just a few doors down from Freddie’s favourite gay haunt Country Cousin, but Pistols’ singer Johnny Rotten, with his bleached hair and blank stare, was a world away from Mercury and his rarefied existence.
In the late 1960s, rock music had moved away from three-minute singles to forty-minute albums and musical experimentation. In the late 1970s the pendulum swung back again. Punk didn’t require 180 vocal overdubs or a virtuoso guitarist, and claimed to hold up a mirror to real life. In 1976 Britain was in the grip of an economic crisis, with widespread unemployment and inflation at 13 per cent. In 1977 it would get even worse. Many musicians from the punk era would grow rich, famous and complacent, and inverse snobbery was rife, but a band singing a song called ‘The Millionaire’s Waltz’ and toasting an audience with bubbly was seen by some as incongruous, and even offensive. Queen defended their music as ‘escapist’; critics deemed them ‘out of touch’. In November, as Queen released the single ‘Somebody to Love’, The Sex Pistols released ‘Anarchy in the UK’.
Queen’s already fractious relationship with the music press would become worse. New Musical Express now had a weekly readership of around 200,000, and its writers had been championing punk for some time. There was a backlash against the likes of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, but it was Queen that attracted the most disdain. Nick Kent, writing for NME, denounced A Day at the Races as ‘grotesquery of the first order’. But what Kent objected to most of all was the singer: ‘Almost everything bearing the composing moniker of one F. Mercury seems to drip with that cutesy-pie mirror-preening essence of ultra-preciousness.’
Eight years before at Ealing art college, Fred Bulsara’s fascination with harmony singing had bemused some of the blues-loving students. A year later, when he was singing in a band of his own, he’d insisted on including unfashionable Little Richard covers in their set, while Shirley Bassey’s ‘Big Spender’ had been a mainstay of Queen’s show for years. The clues were all there. Mercury loved the unexpected, and had no intention of being restricted by the rock format. Early on, he’d told one reporter, partly in jest, that Queen ‘were more Liza Minnelli than Led Zeppelin’. His songwriting and performance on A Day at the Races suggested as much, with a side order of Chopin, Mozart, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Noël Coward. This wasn’t just rock ’n’ roll. On A Day at the Races, more than any Queen album before, you can hear why, nearly thirty years later, Mercury’s music would be performed on the West End stage. But it was too much for some.
Furthermore, while NME dismissed Queen as ‘masters of style, void of content’, Mercury seemed to fuel the fire, claiming that his music was disposable and throwaway, likening it to a Bic razor, even a used tampon. ‘There was more to this than meets the eye,’ said Brian May. ‘It’s like when Fred was first asked if he was gay by a writer and he said, “I’m as gay as a daffodil, dear.” It neatly sidestepped the whole question. The fact that he said his song was disposable dispelled any pretension and stopped him having to talk about it. I knew Fred pretty damn well and I know a lot of what was going on, and there’s a lot of depth in his songs. That false modesty shouldn’t mislead anyone. Even the light stuff and the humour had an undercurrent.’
Despite NME and The Sex Pistols, Queen celebrated the New Year with A Day at the Races at number 1 in the UK album charts. In January, Queen flew to Milwaukee for the opening night of their American tour. Their support band would be Thin Lizzy. It was an inspired pairing. Formed in Dublin by lead singer and bass guitarist Phil Lynott, Thin Lizzy played hard rock, tempered with folk, blues and Celtic ballads. Lizzy had enjoyed a Top 10 hit a year before with ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’, and had just released a new album Johnny the Fox, but their plans had hit the skids when guitarist Brian Robertson was injured during a fracas at the Speakeasy.
With Robertson temporarily out of the band, Lizzy had reinstated their old guitarist Gary Moore. Lizzy joined the tour in time for a gig at Detroit’s Cobo Hall. Mercury was clearly in his element. His entourage now included a 250lb American bodyguard, his masseur, personal assistant Paul Prenter (appointed by John Reid Enterprises, who would go on to become Freddie’s personal manager), and Dane Clarke, a show-dancer that Mercury had picked up and who was now on the payroll as his hairdresser.
Thin Lizzy’s tour manager Chris O’Donnell was stunned by what he saw: ‘He had this coterie of people around him, and it was all “Yes, Freddie”, ‘No, Freddie”,’ he says. ‘Dane Clarke would prepare his clothes, take him to the car, put him onto a plane, and then into another car, and then on to the soundcheck. Most people would soundcheck at five o’clock, then have a meal from backstage catering with the road crew. But Queen would sit down after a gig and have a full meal with silver service. After a while, Brian and Roger got fed up with it and were asking to go with us to hang out at some clubs after the show. This left Freddie sat alone at this huge expensive meal, furious that his band had abandoned him. He had this concept that you always had supper after a first night … so he decided you should do it every night. I had never encountered anything on that level.’
On 28 January, the tour reached Chicago, encountering sub-zero temperatures, snow and ice. The band’s equipment trucks had been delayed from the previous gig. But despite the cold, Mercury ignored the promoter’s plea and refused to allow the audience queuing outside into the venue until Queen had completed a lengthy soundcheck. ‘The others didn’t do anything because Fred ran the show,’ recalls O’Donnell. Later, at the gig, Queen came under attack from a dozen eggs hurled onto the stage, causing May to slip over during ‘The Millionaire’s Waltz’, after which Mercury berated the audience (‘You motherfuckers!’), putting paid to their usual second encore.
Behind the scenes, Phil Lynott was impressed by his Queen counterpart’s behaviour. ‘Freddie set Phil off on a very difficult trail,’ says Chris O’Donnell. ‘He got it into his head that if you were not difficult you wouldn’t get anywhere. But being difficult and demanding isn’t so easy when you’re in the support band and it c
an’t be so easily accommodated.’
Temptation on tour would also contribute to the end of Mercury’s relationship with David Minns. America, more than England, allowed the singer the freedom to indulge himself. Interviewed in 2004, Minns admitted, ‘Freddie was clearly having flings with other people.’ During the tour, he took up with a 27-year-old chef named Joe Fanelli.
‘We were on tour in the States and suddenly he’s got boys following him into his hotel room instead of girls,’ said Brian May. ‘We’re thinking, “Mmmm …” and that really was the extent of it. I always had plenty of gay friends, I just didn’t realise that Freddie was one of them until much later.’
‘The thing is, I remember Freddie before Queen,’ adds O’Donnell. ‘It was interesting how you can invent this androgynous personality. Boy, was he a hustler. Hanging out at Kensington Market, hanging out with Mary Austin, with whom he was in a loving relationship … But there was not a smidgeon of Freddie being gay. It wasn’t until he signed with John Reid Enterprises and moved into that circle, with Elton, that he became more flamboyant and found more of an expression in the gay community.’
Brian Southall, EMI’s head of promotion, accompanied a posse of journalists to New York for a sold-out gig at New York’s Madison Square Garden before flying on to shows in Syracuse and Boston. ‘I’m sure Freddie was “out” within the band,’ maintains Southall. ‘By 1977, there was no question of him not being gay, but it certainly wasn’t an issue. But there was very much an attitude from the others of “We do what we do, and Fred does what he does”.’ Southall recalls that the band ‘came together for the gig rather like a football team’. The rest of the time they operated individually: ‘Brian was with Chrissy, and he always travelled with English tea and biscuits. He also used to collect matchbooks. There wasn’t much frivolity with Brian.’ As well as his matchbooks, tea and biscuits, Brian carried a large map of the United States over which he had superimposed the tour itinerary to include flight and hotel details and stopover times.
John Deacon was also travelling with his wife and son. ‘I went to a Japanese restaurant with John,’ remembers Southall, ‘and he had some new fancy Seiko digital watch that had a calculator, so he could add up Queen’s royalties in four different countries. Queen, especially John, were always interested in how the business was going. I remember thinking, “Marc Bolan was never like this …”’
On a night out, Southall accompanied Phil Lynott and Roger Taylor to CBGBs, the hub of the New York punk scene. ‘There was always frivolity and fun with Roger, but also questions being asked in the house. Roger was the party animal, Brian and John were not, and Freddie was his own party animal.’ While the tour was relatively drug-free, Mercury was using cocaine. Fired up on the drug, it was easier for Fred Bulsara to ‘be’ Freddie Mercury.
Bruce Gowers flew to Miami to shoot a promo film for the next single, ‘Tie Your Mother Down’. A fortnight later, Queen sold out two nights at The Forum in Los Angeles. Between the gigs they visited Groucho Marx to present him with a gold disc for sales of A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races. It was a timely photo opportunity, with Marx dying just five months later.
After playing San Francisco, Mercury suffered a recurrence of the throat problems that had plagued Queen’s last US tour (‘I have to take it easy on the red wine,’ he told one journalist). Some gigs were cancelled – but the tour resumed for a final run in Vancouver and Alberta. Despite a mutual respect, Queen and Thin Lizzy each gave the other a run for their money. Madison Square Garden was Queen’s night; Nassau Coliseum was Lizzy’s … But as Chris O’Donnell admits: ‘However good Thin Lizzy were, once Queen came on with the full production, they wiped the floor with us most nights.’ A Day at the Races hit number 5 in the US charts, with ‘Somebody to Love’ at number 13.
The tour also reunited Freddie with one of his friends from pre-Queen days. Mark Malden from Ealing art college had been living in Canada since 1969. He bought tickets for Queen’s show at Montreal Forum and managed, after hours of waiting, to make contact with his old friend for the first time in eight years. Mercury was astonished to see him. ‘After the show I got a phone call from Dane Clarke, saying, “We are in the lower lobby bar and Fred wants you to have a drink,”’ says Malden. ‘Our conversation went on for a long time, but the first thing Fred said to me was, “So, Mark, what do you want?” I said, “I don’t want anything.” He replied, “Everybody from the college that has come to me wants something. One of them wanted me to model their clothes … I had to say no and they were upset …” At that point, I vowed I would never take anything from him.’
Malden could see the pressure his friend was under, and just how much he was being indulged by his coterie of assistants, gofers and hangers-on: ‘The trouble is everybody wanted something from Fred, and that had made him suspicious of everyone. But, to me, he wasn’t Freddie Mercury. I still thought of him as Fred Bulsara.’ The problem was, as Queen’s success grew, fewer and fewer people knew who Fred Bulsara was.
When Queen returned to the UK, they found a country divided. It was Queen Elizabeth’s silver jubilee year. To celebrate her 25-year reign, the nation’s shops were filled with commemorative mugs, plates and tea towels. It seemed as if every saleable nick-nack had been embossed with the monarch’s Mona Lisa smile. Plans were now underway for countrywide street parties in the summer. In the opposite corner, EMI’s enfants terribles The Sex Pistols were gearing up for their second single release, ‘God Save the Queen’, a song that would reach number 2 in the charts in May and which, some suggest, was deliberately denied the top spot to save embarrassment in a year of royalist celebrations.
‘Tie Your Mother Down’ was released in March, but was a minor hit (barely making it into the Top 50 in the US). It was a surprise flop, losing out not to The Sex Pistols or any of the new punk upstarts but to David Bowie, Bryan Ferry and Queen’s onetime support band Mr Big, whose single ‘Romeo’ made the Top 5 that month.
Queen went back on the road, playing eight dates across Scandinavia and Europe, quickly followed by eleven shows in the UK. Mercury, as always, was in his element. He toasted the audience with the ever-present champagne and tossed carnations into the stalls. He switched outfits from his white kung fu jumpsuit to his tiny silk shorts and matching kimono to an exact replica of a costume worn by the Russian ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. Behind him, the rest of the band played up a storm. ‘Death On Two Legs’, ‘Brighton Rock’, ‘Liar’ and ‘Keep Yourself Alive’, for example, were flashy, bombastic, heavy metal tracks that sounded wonderful in big arenas.
At Earls Court, Queen debuted their most ornate stage prop yet: a specially commissioned lighting rig in the shape of a crown that would ascend at the beginning of the gig and descend at the end, amid industrial quantities of dry ice. The rig weighed two tons and cost a bank-breaking £50,000. Beyond the visual spectacle, the whole thing could also be perceived as a forthright ‘fuck you’ to their detractors. Behind the scenes, though, one of EMI’s senior executives recalled meeting Mercury after a show at the Glasgow Apollo: ‘He told me he didn’t understand the whole punk thing. It wasn’t music to him.’ The executive suggested that punk ‘would settle down to its place in the market. It’s only the kids telling you what they want.’ After all his onstage bravado, it seemed odd to find Freddie Mercury expressing doubts about anything.
In June, Queen released their first EP. It included ‘Good Old-Fashioned Loverboy’ backed by the older tracks, ‘White Queen (As It Began)’, ‘Death on Two Legs (Dedicated to …)’ and ‘Tenement Funster’. To Queen’s relief, it made number 17 in the charts. When pitted against the music press, Mercury remained comically defiant. Interviewed by NME’s Tony Mitchell that summer, he defended Queen’s broad musical style (‘I’m into this ballet thing’), his aloof attitude towards fans (‘What do you expect? Somebody to go round and have tea with the front row?’), and the accusation that A Day at the Races was a pallid sequel to A Night at the Opera (‘We haven’t dried u
p!’).
Writing just twelve months earlier in NME, Tony Mitchell had poured praise on A Night at the Opera. But now he felt alienated by their lead singer’s attitude. ‘I thought Queen were a pioneering rock band,’ said Mitchell, years later. ‘But Freddie Mercury treated me with utter contempt. He had lost touch with reality.’
The NME interview ran under the infamous headline: ‘FREDDIE MERCURY: IS THIS MAN A PRAT?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘Boom-Boom Cha!’
‘I’m going backstage, maybe get a blow job …’
Freddie Mercury, New Orleans Civic Auditorium,
31 October 1978
‘People think we take ourselves a lot more seriously than we do.’
Roger Taylor, the morning after, 1 November 1978
Centrepoint, the 35-storey office block, has loomed over London’s Charing Cross Road for more than forty-five years. Tourists and sightseers emerging, blinking, from Tottenham Court Road tube station have used it as a marking post for just as long. Opposite stands the Dominion Theatre. In the autumn of 1957, Judy Garland staged a one-month run of her live show here. In 2010, Queen’s musical, We Will Rock You, is enjoying its eighth year.
Above the door of the theatre, dwarfing the musical’s distinctive gold logo, stands a statue of Queen’s late singer Freddie Mercury, duplicating an original piece by sculptor Irena Sedlecka that can be found on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Regrettably, the face resembles a random selection of moustachioed men of the twentieth century, including Josef Stalin, Saddam Hussein and, bizarrely, actor Tom Selleck. However, Sedlecka’s statue recreates the ubiquitous Freddie pose, with the right hand raised in a clenched-fist salute and the left clutching a short microphone stand. The pose is enough to achieve the necessary deception. Just don’t look too hard at the face.