by Mark Blake
Queen’s US tour was due to start in July, but the Milton Keynes show would be Morgan Fisher’s last with the band. Maybe it was the daily meditation sessions, maybe it was the teetotal lifestyle. ‘I was all set to go to America,’ he recalls. ‘So I went on holiday and I was lying on a beach when a telegram arrived from the Queen office: “Terribly sorry, Morgan, but we don’t need a keyboard player for the US tour.” I was furious. I had all the songs we were playing live on these cassettes. So I went back, piled them on the floor and jumped up and down on them, until there was miles of tape everywhere. Then I made sure I got my money.’
In truth, Queen always had every intention of touring America with a keyboard player, and had already lined up Fisher’s replacement. A Canadian session musician by the name of Fred Mandel had been hired for what was being billed as the Rock’n’America tour. ‘Queen were too embarrassed to say, “Sorry, Morgan, something is not right, we would rather get someone else,”’ laughs Fisher. ‘I never asked them why: I was too bloody repressed.’
Fred Mandel had been working with Alice Cooper and had co-written their 1980 album, Flush the Fashion, which had been produced by Roy Thomas Baker. ‘I was asked to go to this office on Sunset Boulevard to meet Gerry Stickells,’ says Mandel. ‘We sat down, talked for about two minutes, and then Gerry said, “Oh, you’ll do.” I said, “What? Don’t you want to hear me to play?” He said, “No, that’s OK, I just want to make sure you’re OK to hang out with.” I went to Montreal on the Sunday, had two days’ rehearsal. On Wednesday, I met Freddie Mercury for the first time in the dressing room of the Montreal Forum and walked out to play in front of 7,000 people.
‘I had a week to learn how to play a new synthesiser,’ he adds. ‘I was also playing bass as John was doing rhythm on a couple of tracks. Things like “Back Chat” and “Body Language” were pretty challenging. It wasn’t like learning a couple of pop tunes. Nowadays I’d baulk at taking something like that on. But back then I was ignorantly blissful.’
When Queen rolled into Boston for a gig at The Gardens, the Mayor declared it ‘Queen Day’ and awarded them the keys to the city. In New York for two nights at Madison Square Gardens (one less than on The Game tour), they agreed to a rare in-store appearance, showing up at Crazy Eddie’s, an electronics store. A photograph of the band, surrounded by TV sets and banners for Hot Space, captured some uncomfortable body language; this was not the sort of promotion Queen were used to doing. The aftershow party at Madison Square Garden was another night of excess, and included female mud wrestlers. But all was not well. Hot Space wasn’t selling. Too dance-oriented for US rock radio, the album wasn’t getting airplay. It had peaked at number 22, and, despite the tour, was slipping down the charts.
Queen’s opening act was Billy Squier, whom they’d first met at a promo dinner on the US Mott The Hoople tour. Their paths had crossed again when Mack produced Squier’s Emotions in Motion album. Squier had a pretty-boy image and played sophisticated hard rock, which, like Queen, was big on harmonies and dynamics. To salt the wound, Emotions in Motion was speeding up the charts as quickly as Hot Space was going down. ‘Whatever disappointments the members of Queen may have been feeling, they never took any of it out on me,’ insists Squier now. ‘In fact, I remember Roger Taylor coming up to my room after our show in Boston, to thank me for “saving our ass on this tour”.’ As Taylor recalled: ‘I remember suddenly realising we weren’t packing them in quite as much as we used to.’
Nevertheless, Squier was a rabid Queen fan and was in awe of Freddie Mercury. ‘I used to stand and watch him and think, “How do you do that? Just how do you get away with it?”’ Queen’s show still had ‘Now I’m Here’, ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ and ‘We Will Rock You’, but there was also ‘Body Language’, ‘Staying Power’ and Freddie’s moustache.
‘One reason Queen were able to be so adventurous over the years was because they established their rock credibility early on,’ says Squier, ‘and they maintained a healthy dose of it along with whatever else they were exploring musically. Hot Space upset this balance and left American audiences wondering what they were listening to, and Freddie’s dramatic image change undoubtedly contributed to the band’s woes. When Hot Space came out, there was a fair degree of homophobia. Queen’s male audience likely felt betrayed, or duped … or both.’
As well as a poor-selling album, there were other issues to contend with. Inevitably, there was a growing distance between Mercury, thirty-six years old and still living the life of a man ten years younger, and his bandmates, with their wives, girlfriends and young families. Rock ’n’ America covered thirty-three dates in three months. As Brian May put it, ‘You were always trying to find a work/life balance. There was a continual life-or-death battle going on there.’ May found touring an emotionally dislocating experience, and had earlier told the band that where possible he no longer wished to travel by private plane. Onstage in New Jersey, after breaking a string on the Red Special, he broke another on his replacement guitar. In a rare fit of pique May threw the instrument into the wings.
Backstage, Fred Mandel would overhear what he tactfully calls ‘discussions’ over how certain songs were going down. ‘My little joke was to walk into the dressing room and say, “Hey! I really enjoyed playing that song tonight”, and then walk out and listen to the arguments. There was still a rock ’n’ roll element to Queen, but it wasn’t like Guns N’ Roses – always talking about downing a fifth of Jack Daniels. With Queen, you could just as easily find them arguing about the wingspan of a butterfly.’
Mercury, however, had grown weary of touring and was becoming prone to increasingly irrational outbursts. One night, fired up after another fracas with Bill Reid, Freddie rounded on Gerry Stickells and told him that the front row of the audience that evening had been too ugly. ‘Apparently, he didn’t want to see that at a Queen show,’ recalls Peter Hince. ‘He said we’d need a casting session before we let them in. And for ten minutes, he was serious.’
Ex-Ealing art college student Mark Malden visited Mercury in his dressing room after the opening night in Montreal. Malden was still living in Canada, and the two had maintained contact since meeting again in 1977. But this time it was different. ‘The dressing room was very dimly lit and Freddie had changed his clothes, and all his entourage were dressed identically to him,’ says Malden. ‘When he spoke it became apparent that I wasn’t speaking with Fred but with “Freddie Mercury”. I’d never seen him like this before and I was shocked.’ Matters weren’t helped by the fact that Mercury sat on his hands, being spoon-fed spaghetti from a bowl by one of his aides. ‘I didn’t recognise this person. This was someone else.’ When Mercury made a cutting remark to him, Malden walked out.
In a repeat of what Alan Mair had experienced with Mercury two years before, Malden heard footsteps in the corridor behind him. ‘It was Fred. I stopped and turned. He walked up to me and said, “I’m sorry, Mark. I didn’t mean it … When this is all over we’ll see each other again.” When I looked back behind him I saw Paul Prenter at the dressing-room door with a smirk on his face.’ Prenter’s pernicious influence on Mercury was becoming more and more apparent. ‘He was extremely controlling and he led Freddie by the nose,’ believes Malden. ‘There were so many users and hangers-on around Fred, so many advantage-takers.’
Rock ’n’ America ended with two nights at the Los Angeles Forum, playing to an audience that included Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson. But despite such a glittering guest list, Queen’s fortunes hadn’t improved. Their last UK single ‘Backchat’ had stopped outside the Top 40, while their US single, ‘Calling All Girls’, had stalled at number 60. Though none of them knew it at the time, the LA Forum shows would be the last time Queen with Freddie Mercury ever played in the United States.
As always, Queen could console themselves with Japan, where Hot Space had been better received. Queen played six shows in October despite Fred Mandel being felled by such bad jetlag he telephoned his wife convinced he was si
ck. ‘It was the first time I’d gone overseas with any band,’ he laughs. ‘We got into Narita Airport, the rest of them all went off to clubs, and I went to bed and woke up an hour later in a pool of sweat.’ Mandel wasn’t the only one feeling the pressure. Onstage in Osaka, Mercury struck up the piano intro to ‘Spread Your Wings’, and then stopped. He simply couldn’t remember the chords. With the tour finally done, the band members returned to their separate lives. As Brian May would later admit: ‘We hated each other for a while.’
CHAPTER NINE
Huge Plastic Falsies
‘What am I going to do in twenty years’ time? I’ll be dead, darling! Are you mad?’
Freddie Mercury, Melody Maker, 1984
Back in 1966, Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)’ could be heard ringing out of Isleworth and Ealing pub jukeboxes. As a student, it’s unlikely that the nineteen-year-old Fred Bulsara could ever have imagined living in an apartment that overlooked the bridge celebrated in the song. But in early 1983, Freddie Mercury purchased a forty-third floor apartment in the Sovereign Building at 425, East 5th Street, and from his balcony he could see 59th Street Bridge.
New York, like Munich, was now Mercury’s playground. When in Manhattan, he would be ferried from club to bar in the company of four male friends whom he called ‘my New York daughters’. With Bill Reid gone, Mercury would soon fall into another tempestuous relationship, this time in Munich with a restaurateur named Winnie Kirchberger.
The beginning of 1983 found Queen basking in the luxury of having several months in which to do nothing. But before long, all of them, bar John Deacon, would start solo projects. In Munich, Mercury was approached by Giorgio Moroder and asked to contribute to the soundtrack to a proposed re-release of the 1926 science fiction movie Metropolis for which Moroder had acquired the rights. Mercury agreed, and the two would compose the song ‘Love Kills’, on which most of Queen ended up playing. By March, Roger Taylor would be back at Mountain Studios working on a follow-up to Fun in Space. A month later, Brian May checked into Los Angeles’ Record Plant to work on his own album. Deacon, meanwhile, had other matters to occupy his time: his wife would soon be pregnant with their fourth child, Joshua. All would present a united front to the outside world, insisting that Queen had not split up, but that they were taking a temporary break. As Mercury quipped: ‘It would be silly to start a new band at forty.’
Apart from having the freedom to make solo albums, there were other benefits to being a member of Queen. Through most of 1983, Roger Taylor would extend his unofficial role as the band’s resident man-about-town. Taylor would captain a team on the UK TV show Pop Quiz, beating rival team captain David Gilmour. His love of speed now extended to include a new hobby: powerboat racing. But a trip to Monaco to watch the Grand Prix was less successful. Taylor, accompanied by drum tech ‘Crystal’ Taylor and Status Quo guitarist Rick Parfitt, accepted an all-expenses-paid trip to Monaco from a TV producer making a documentary about Formula 1 team-mates, Derek Warwick and Bruno Ciacomelli.
The producer wanted to film a couple of rock stars at the Grand Prix; in return, the stars were promised a Lear jet to Nice, with champagne and caviar, followed by a helicopter ride to Monaco. No such perks were forthcoming, and after a marathon flight from Biggin Hill Airfield and even longer car journey through France, an inebriated Taylor and Parfitt briefly ended up in jail.
Brian May’s more sober pursuits included a stint working with Scottish heavy rock band Heavy Petting, briefly pitched as Polydor Records’ answer to Def Leppard. May and Mack would produce the group’s debut album, Lettin’ Loose. The album didn’t sell, but the band, like Def Leppard, were from a generation of younger musicians that had grown up on Queen in the 1970s. As the 1980s wore on, more and more bands would materialise, naming Queen, and May in particular, as an inspiration.
At the end of 1982, Queen’s overseas deal with Elektra had begun to unravel. They refused to re-sign with the label for Australia and New Zealand, and by the spring of 1983, had done the same for Japan. Queen signed with EMI for all three territories which just left their Elektra deal in the United States. Mercury, in particular, had been unhappy with Elektra’s handling of Hot Space (although, within a year, Taylor was telling interviewers that ‘Hot Space was a step in the wrong direction’). Privately, the singer had informed the others that he would not make another album for Elektra. Jim Beach began negotiating Queen out of the remaining deal, while setting up a one-off solo deal for Mercury with CBS in the UK and Columbia in the US. By October, Queen would be signed to EMI affliliate Capitol in America, having paid $1 million to Elektra to be released from their existing deal.
The first Queen-related release for Capitol would be a mini-album, Star Fleet Project, credited to Brian May and Friends. ‘This is not a Queen album. This is not a solo album. This is a record of a unique event,’ read the sleevenotes. The album came out of a jam session between May, keyboard player Fred Mandel, bass guitarist Phil Chen and drummer Alan Gratzer (both moonlighting from the US rock band REO Speedwagon). May’s extra-special friend was guitarist Eddie Van Halen, whose titular band had co-opted some of Queen’s musical derring-do and whose lead singer, Dave Lee Roth, rivalled Freddie Mercury in the posing stakes.
Star Fleet Project had been inspired by a children’s TV show popular with Brian’s son, Jimmy. The album featured just three tracks: a rock version of the show’s theme tune, a new piece of May’s titled ‘Let Me Out’, and ‘Blues Breaker’, an epic jam credited to all of the players and inspired by John Mayall’s 1966 album, Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton; required listening for the teenage May at home in Feltham, and Eddie Van Halen, growing up on the other side of the world in Pasadena, California (‘Two words you never heard in the studio with those guys were: “piano” and “solo”,’ laughs Fred Mandel). May insisted the project was not originally intended for commercial release. But with the Queen connection, it was inevitable. Star Fleet Project sold modestly but was a gift for guitar aficionados.
Freddie Mercury’s superstar friends that year included Michael Jackson. But their brief collaboration would never be granted an official release. In the spring, Mercury would record three tracks with Jackson at the singer’s home studio in Encino, California. Jackson’s Thriller album had been released at the end of 1982. Where Hot Space had failed, Thriller’s hybrid of funk, pop and rock had succeeded. Less than a year later, it had sold in excess of 29 million copies in America alone. According to Mercury’s aide Peter Freestone, also present at the session, ‘Freddie was in awe of Michael’, and managed to curtail his chain smoking so as not to upset the host. The duo worked on three songs, with a plan to complete them at a later date. So what happened? ‘We never seemed to be in the same country long enough to actually finish anything completely,’ said Mercury vaguely. In 1987, Freddie’s then ex-personal manager Paul Prenter would sell a story to the Sun. One of Prenter’s claims was that the sessions were abandoned when Jackson caught Mercury snorting cocaine through a $100 bill in the lounge. Mercury, in turn, would say that he and Jackson grew apart after Thriller: ‘He simply retreated into his own little world. We used to have great fun going to clubs together but now he won’t come out of his fortress and it’s very sad.’
‘There’s a bit of history there,’ admitted Brian May in 2008. ‘But I do know that Fred came out of it all a little upset because some of the stuff he did with Michael got taken over by the Jacksons, and he lost out.’ Of the three songs, ‘There Must Be More to Life Than This’ would appear on Mercury’s first solo album, while ‘Victory’ and ‘State of Shock’ would appear on the Jackson 5’s 1984 comeback album, Victory. For ‘State of Shock’, Jackson acquired a new duet partner, Mick Jagger.
By the time of the Mercury/Jackson collaboration, Freddie was in Los Angeles preparing for another Queen album. Initially, the band had been offered a second film soundtrack: Tony Richardson’s adaptation of John Irving’s coming-of-age novel The Hotel New Hampshire. Merc
ury and Deacon had a first meeting with Richardson and agreed to the project. In the end, the planned film soundtrack would act as little more than a catalyst to get Queen working together again. During an eight-week stint at the Record Plant, the soundtrack idea was shelved, when Richardson revealed that the film’s budget wouldn’t stretch to a Queen soundtrack. ‘Keep On Passing the Open Windows’, a Mercury composition intended for the film, would make it onto the final cut of the next Queen album, to be titled The Works.
Eighteen months apart from each other had helped, but, as ever, tension still ran high. According to Brian May, it was only Queen’s new Capitol US deal that had enticed Mercury back to the studio: ‘Freddie was so depressed about the Elektra situation, it was doubtful if he would have agreed to make the album at all.’ Once in the studio, Mercury embraced the task. ‘Every album that’s ever come out of Queen, we’ve come up with a batch of songs, and we pick the best,’ he said. ‘If I have five songs that are better than one of Roger’s songs, I’ll say, we won’t have his one song. Roger wrote three or four songs, and as far as I was concerned, they weren’t good enough.’ Mercury instructed Taylor to come up with something better. According to Freddie, this led to him writing the album’s first single, ‘Radio Ga Ga’.
The song’s title was a play on words. The drummer recalled that his three-year-old son Luther, whose mother Dominique was French, had uttered the words ‘ca ca’ (French for, as Taylor put it ‘something that comes out of your bottom’) after his parents had switched on the radio. The title struck a chord with Roger’s misgivings about modern radio.