It was while singing ‘Hammer to Fall’ a fortnight later in Hanover that Mercury slipped awkwardly on a flight of stairs. He carried on with the show, but when doctors examined him later it was clear that he had damaged some knee ligaments. He was advised against performing – but with just a handful of dates remaining, the star ignored their warnings and finished the tour. Five days later Queen landed in Bophuthatswana.
They were committed to a dozen dates at the Super Bowl, and tickets had sold out in a day. However, on the first night Mercury was scarcely warmed up, when his voice, which lately had been troublesome, threatened to seize up. Aware that he was in difficulty, the rest of the band tried to rally him, but Mercury’s voice only got worse. ‘Fred walked off after three songs. He was in agony,’ Edney recalls.
Having lived on the road for several years, Mercury could never be accused of having neglected his comforts. He toured in the height of luxury with his personal valet, a masseur and a chef. Apart from his use of cocaine as a stimulant, his travelling medicine chest boasted an array of vitamins and tonics, specially selected to help him maintain the high energy levels he required to keep going. But despite all this, and the pre-tour physical training, his weak spot was his voice – and the small, persistent and painful nodules on his vocal cords that beat him every time. Frustrated, Mercury once rasped, ‘They disappear but return like corns. It’s misusing the voice that does it.’
The specialist summoned to examine Mercury couldn’t have agreed more, and Queen had no option but to cancel the following four nights. ‘It caused a big scandal because there was no time to reschedule dates, but it just couldn’t be helped,’ says Edney. Angry ticket-holders were one thing, but there was worse to come, as many people felt that Queen had failed fully to think through the political implications of playing in South Africa.
Mandla Langa, cultural attaché and ANC spokesperson, says: ‘People were infuriated. Queen came into South Africa at a time when we didn’t need any external influence which could lend respectability to the Pretoria regime. Sun City was always regarded as an insult to any right-thinking South African and to perform there, in the midst of poverty and rage, cannot be rationalised as Queen doing their bit to break down barriers. The people who attended those concerts were overwhelmingly white, and institutions such as the South African Broadcasting Corporation revelled at their new-found connection with the Western world and gave Queen maximum airplay … People here have long memories, and their music has never been embraced by black activists.’
For their pains Queen were placed on the United Nations blacklist of musicians who performed in South Africa – although their name was later removed – and in Britain the Musicians’ Union came down hard on them for flouting their rules. Unmoved by an impassioned speech from Brian May when he faced the Union’s General Committee in person, they fined Queen heavily. The band paid up, but only on condition that the money was donated to charity.
Having left for Munich straight after the tour, Mercury was as keen as the other band members to put all this behind him. For the first time Queen had decided to release a Christmas single, and work on it had begun at Sarm Studios in London. ‘Thank God It’s Christmas’ was started during Mercury’s absence in Munich. Later May, Taylor and Deacon flew to Germany with the tapes, where Mercury added vocals. It was released on 26 November but failed to reach the top twenty.
The battle for that year’s Christmas number one was won almost as soon as it began for 1984 was the year Band Aid emerged with their charity single ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’. In early November Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof had been deeply moved by a special televised report by the award-winning BBC’s foreign affairs correspondent Michael Buerk on the Ethiopian famine. Inspired by this he had hatched at short notice an ambitious plan to produce an all-star record, from which no one involved would take any profit.
Two weeks and many phone calls later, thirty-six established rock artists gathered, in the same Notting Hill studio Queen had lately used. They were there to lay down the song that had been hastily co-written by Geldof and ex-Ultravox singer Midge Ure. The stars included Cliff Richard, Phil Collins, Sting, Boy George, George Michael, Status Quo, Duran Duran and Paul Young. But Queen hadn’t been invited; a fact that greatly upset Mercury, who later revealed, ‘I would have loved to have been on the Band Aid record,’ adding, ‘I don’t know if they would have had me on the record anyway. I’m a bit old.’
Age, though, had nothing to do with it. One reason, cited by the charity organisers, why Queen hadn’t been asked was because the band had been on tour at the time and were unavailable. But this was not the case. What was true was that the clouds of controversy over the South African shows still hung over their heads – and perhaps this played its part. Or possibly, knowing that Mercury’s voice was more distinctive than the others, it was considered inappropriate to have any one individual’s stamp on what was intended to be a joint effort.
If it were the latter reason, this didn’t cushion Mercury’s disappointment at not being part of what turned out to be the biggest-selling single in Britain ever. Especially now that Queen had come under fresh fire from the critics for having released a batch of singles that were all tracks from one album. Shouts of fan exploitation were heard and contributed to an unhappy end to Queen’s first year back together again.
ELEVEN
Wembley Wizard
The humble way in which Mercury expressed his disappointment at being left out of the Band Aid recording signals a change in his demeanour from the mid-eighties onwards. ‘I was caught up in being a star, and, I thought, this is the way a star behaves,’ said Mercury. ‘Now I don’t give a damn. I want to do things my way and have fun.’ And, certainly, close friends and acquaintances, who knew him in his last six years, independently testify to a man in many respects more placid and mature. Queen’s first public-relations consultant, Tony Brainsby, detected a marked change in Mercury, when they ran into each other around then.
‘Freddie had gone to see Peter Straker appearing in a play,’ Brainsby recalls. ‘He was wearing a beautiful suit and looked very elegant that night. I wasn’t meeting Freddie the rock star, but the sophisticated gentleman. What struck me most was how much he had mellowed. He wasn’t fighting for stardom and recognition, clawing his way back from Queen’s financial set-backs. He had become a charming, congenial man who enjoyed going to the theatre. He was a different person altogether and relaxed, perhaps not professionally but certainly personally.’
Professionally there was no time to relax, for on 12 January 1985 Queen were to headline at ‘Rock in Rio’, a rock festival held near Rio de Janeiro that was billed to outshine even Woodstock. Staged at a custom-built arena in the mountains at Barra da Tijuca and organised by Brazilian businessman Roberto Medina, the other guests on the star-studded bill included AC/DC, Ozzy Osbourne, Yes and Iron Maiden. Maiden’s lead singer then, Bruce Dickinson, vividly remembers the event:
‘The whole thing was an incredible circus. It was the first time I had been associated with anything that came near to Beatlemania. There were crowds besieging hotels, long-lens cameras poking into the poolsides and everything. Originally Iron Maiden didn’t want to do “Rock in Rio”. We were in the middle of a winter sell-out tour of America, and it would’ve meant cancelling a week’s gigs to go to do one spot in one show. So we put really ludicrous terms to the organisers, like we wanted to be paid the equivalent of five sold-out shows, recompensed for lost merchandising sales, air freight costs, etc. They also wanted us to do two nights, and we said we’d only do one. But they just said OK, and it was a case of, well, I guess we’re doing it then.’
Iron Maiden, formed nearly ten years before and named after a medieval torture instrument, had survived the stagnation in the heavy metal scene in the late seventies to emerge as perhaps the most definitive example of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. With a hugely energetic delivery, the band’s stage act by now was spectacular with elaborate lightin
g effects easily to rival Queen’s. The single performance they had agreed to give was the one directly before Queen closed the first night.
‘Everyone was helicoptered in to the site,’ says Dickinson, ‘but because of the opposition from town they weren’t allowed to fly at night, so it was, like, five hours getting back in traffic. Anyway, once there we found a set-up like we’d never seen. There were roving gangs of security guards, all of whom looked in really bad moods.’
Like anything Latin, the show was behind time, but on top of that Maiden were fifteen minutes late in getting on stage. Dickinson explains: ‘It was all pretty hairy. There was a furious row going on in the hallway, right outside our dressing room. Two gangs of security guards were going mental, waving pistols at each other, and their guard dogs were all snarling and tugging on their leads.
‘We were hiding like cowards, scared to step outside. Then, like something out of Monty Python, our own security guy eventually poked his head cautiously round the door and said, “Hey, guys! Would you mind giving it a rest until we get on stage?” And they did! They all shut up, and we hurried past, but as soon as our backs were turned, they all started up again!’
Once on stage, Dickinson said, ‘We were all nervous, and I didn’t think the monitor engineer was very good. We couldn’t hear ourselves properly, and I got upset, as you do at twenty-three in front of 500,000 for the first time.’ But it was a good show for them ultimately.
After Iron Maiden, Mercury had to lead Queen on stage. He was presumably a little edgy himself, because the schedule was running late and his adrenaline was pumping at the prospect of performing before a record-breaking crowd. ‘Rock in Rio’ was not the first time that Bruce Dickinson had met Mercury; that had happened in Sydney.
‘It was when I’d first joined Iron Maiden, first time on tour in Australia and Queen were there,’ he says. ‘Things were going incredibly well, and I can’t remember how it came about, but we ended up being invited to Queen’s after-gig party. We all ended up the worse for wear, of course, and Freddie was being very quietly outrageous, as was his way.’
Bruce Dickinson watched Queen’s closing performance in Brazil during the early hours of the morning. It did not go according to plan. ‘Two or three of their numbers didn’t go down well with the crowd,’ he recalls, ‘then when they launched into “I Want to Break Free”, they didn’t really take to Freddie dressing up in women’s clothes, but Freddie obviously didn’t understand what was wrong.’
In Mexico an audience had hurled rubbish at Queen as their show of appreciation, but the cans and rubble now rained down on them alarmingly. Hiding his confusion behind a false heartiness, Mercury brushed aside the props and carried on singing. He worked hard to ensure that they earned encores, but the confidence with which he strode the Brazilian stage belied his inner distress.
Dickinson reveals, ‘When Freddie came off stage, he broke down in tears. He just had no idea why the audience had reacted like they did. Someone was quick to explain to him that “I Want to Break Free” was regarded as a freedom song there, and they had resented him sending it up, but he was very upset.’
That Mercury hadn’t guessed this came as a surprise to Dickinson. To his knowledge, the star had experienced something similar before. ‘He got the same reaction once in America to “Another One Bites the Dust”,’ says Dickinson. “There is a white, homophobic – bonehead – bunch of people in the States, and there was a large minority who’d kinda worked out that Freddie wasn’t one of us, if you know what I mean? When that minority grew, it put the lights out for Queen in America for a time.’
Of Mercury himself, Dickinson maintains: ‘He was fantastic. Everyone says now how unique he was, but he really was. He managed to carry it off with camp aloofness and yet be taken completely seriously, which is quite an achievement. He was so good that he could be schmaltzy and take the piss out of himself, then, in a heartbeat, turn it around and stop the show with a number like “Who Wants to Live Forever”. Now that’s a front man.’
When for the second and last time Queen closed the show in the early hours of 19 January, there wasn’t a bust or wig in sight. Brazil’s Globo Television had covered the festival, and Queen purchased the rights to their own performances with a view to a future video release.
Back in England Mercury lost himself again in the gay clubs, where the latest dress code was the ‘high clone’ look, comprising tight blue jeans and a white singlet. Suitably attired and having grown back the requisite bushy moustache, Mercury mostly frequented Heaven. It was here, towards the end of March, that he was to run into Jim Hutton for a third time.
According to Hutton, Mercury had been after him for months. Yet it was Hutton who switched socialising from Vauxhall to Charing Cross. In this venue, heaving with clubbers, Mercury is said to have spotted Hutton instantly and approached him once more with the offer of a drink. Queen had just headlined at the world’s biggest rock festival – all of which had received substantial coverage in music magazines – and Mercury’s debut solo single ‘Love Kills’ had been a massive hit in the gay clubs. Incredibly Hutton maintained that he still had no idea that Mercury was a famous rock star. However, instead of the curt response he had delivered a couple of years before, this time Jim Hutton countered by offering to buy Mercury a vodka. The star accepted Hutton’s offer with the appalling gambit, ‘How big’s your dick?’
Resilient to such crassness, they danced most of the night together, then Hutton returned with Mercury’s crowd to the Kensington flat. Fairly drunk, Mercury took time as always to cuddle his two cats, Tiffany and Oscar, before snorting more cocaine and eventually drifting off to bed with his date. In the morning they exchanged telephone numbers, but it would be summertime before they were to meet again.
On 9 April Mercury’s second solo single ‘I Was Born to Love You’ was released on CBS, followed at the end of the month by his debut solo album Mr. Bad Guy. Recorded with Mack at Musicland Studios over the previous two years, the album went gold, reaching number six in the UK charts. A melting pot of musical styles, ranging from light opera to reggae, the album would later be considered ahead of its time – but on first release it was savaged by the critics.
Mercury could ignore them, though, being preoccupied with another Queen tour of Australia and New Zealand. The trip had been dogged by anti-apartheid groups heckling them outside venues and hotels. But they had also been approached with an intriguing offer, as their session keyboard player, Spike Edney, reveals: ‘I’d briefly rejoined the Boomtown Rats between Queen’s Works tour and them going to Australia, and Bob Geldof rang me up in New Zealand. He was going on about an idea he and Midge Ure had to follow up the Band Aid single with a massive rock concert, and he wanted to know if Queen would appear on the bill.’ According to Edney, Geldof was using him as an intermediary in case Queen declined. ‘I told the band about the idea,’ he says, ‘and they were piqued by the prospect, in theory, but it seemed too unlikely a project ever to come off – and so they said no.’
Perhaps Queen were also still annoyed at having been left out of the Band Aid recording. When Edney relayed their refusal, he tempered it by saying that it might be worthwhile for Geldof to personally approach the band. In the early stages of putting together the international Live Aid show, it was not the case that all the superstars were clamouring to take part. Bob Geldof had become adept at massaging the truth as he played one artiste off another. His initial negotiating tactic with Queen was to stretch the truth, saying he already had acceptances from David Bowie and Elton John – whom he had lured in by suggesting that Queen had said yes. But for the time being the band remained resistant to Geldof’s overtures.
Queen left for a week-long visit to Japan for what would turn out to be their last tour of the Far East. By mid-May they had returned to Britain, their touring commitments for the year concluded. Mercury headed to Munich where he indulged in a different kind of play-off. His relationship with Winnie Kirkenberger had come under pressure thr
ough Mercury’s association with another man, known only as Patrick. Neither appears to have been willing to give up on the star’s attentions, and it was a less than attractive side of Mercury’s personality that, recognising this, he shamelessly enjoyed playing one lover off the other. It indicated no genuine depth of feeling for either participant in this ménage à trois. Mercury thrived on his role as the puppet master, exhibiting once again his desire to wield control.
The Live Aid project had grown beyond all expectations. From a massive concert in aid of the Ethiopian Famine at Wembley Stadium in the summer, a parallel gig was to take place at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. Queen began to reassess their position, although Geldof still had some persuading to do – or perhaps it was assuaging Mercury’s bruised ego.
Bob Geldof revealed he had traced Jim Beach to a holiday hideaway. Queen’s manager warned him that Mercury was very sensitive. Characteristically blunt and running out of patience, Geldof said, ‘Tell him that it’s going to be the biggest thing that’s ever happened.’ That had already become glaringly obvious, and too smart to resist any further Queen agreed to participate.
This ambitious live event was a mere month away when Mercury finally contacted Hutton and invited him to a dinner party at Stafford Terrace. On his arrival Hutton wasn’t entirely among strangers as he had known Peter Freestone after they had worked together in the same London department store. He was also reacquainted with Joe Fanelli, whom Mercury, with his penchant for attributing people nicknames, had dubbed Liza. Used strictly in intimate company, Mercury was Melina, as in the Greek actress Melina Mercouri, famous for her portrayal of a prostitute in Never on Sunday. Paul Prenter was also present. There appears to have been a lot of tension that evening.
Melina himself was blissfully unaware of this, though, as he was hitting the coke hard that night. This wired him up, causing him to gabble incessantly. With Mercury’s fantasy mate still the actor Burt Reynolds, he rapidly convinced himself that Jim Hutton was a near enough lookalike. Attracted to a certain vulnerability in Mercury, once again Hutton stayed the night. The following day the star went back to Munich, but from this point on Jim Hutton would become his regular lover, eventually moving in to live with him.
Freddie Mercury: The Biography Page 18