Freddie Mercury: The Biography

by Laura Jackson

  ‘It began when Dave Clark appeared in the House of Commons and put his name in,’ says Dudley Fishburn. ‘The morning-coated doorman rushed up to me excitedly, saying, “Dave Clark of the Dave Clark Five is here to see you!” Dave explained that he represented a group of friends who wanted to have a statue of Freddie Mercury erected in Kensington. I immediately thought it was a great idea. I was always in favour of it, and still am, even though it all came to nothing. To me, Freddie was plainly as great a figure as those nineteenth-century generals who have statues erected to them all over the place. Many’s the time when I am walking through Kensington that I’ve been stopped by groups of German or Japanese tourists all wanting to know where they can find Freddie Mercury’s house.

  ‘As the provision of a statue rests entirely with a local authority, I wrote to the leader of that particular authority on behalf of Dave Clark, and there followed a considerable three-way correspondence. But the idea met with a democratic decision not to allow one. I felt it was a particularly foolish decision, because although mostly these fall by the wayside through lack of money, that wasn’t the case here. The finance was in place and amounted to quite a sum, so that not only would it have been erected properly but safely maintained thereafter. Their refusal didn’t make sense.’

  The other bid for a statue memorial came from Bill Howard, Mercury’s former neighbour, who didn’t have the support of any MP, nor of the Queen fan club. But he did find public enthusiasm for his plans when he conducted a street survey about them. His contention that Freddie Mercury was the biggest credit to the Kensington borough in fifty years, however, failed to cut any ice with the council, and his application, too, went into oblivion.

  But the statue highlighted other problems with the suggestion that gay rights campaigners would be angered by any plans to immortalise Freddie Mercury. According to one spokesman, Mercury was never any kind of icon in the gay community, for the simple reason that he never came out. ‘They are likely to hold that against him for some time,’ he added.

  These feelings were an extension of an ongoing debate over the timing of the announcement of the star’s statement, so near to his death, that he had AIDS. While some hailed it a brave and honest act, others, including a few from the pop world, accused Mercury of betraying the gay cause. They argued that the statement’s timing was far from courageous – and that he ought to have admitted to having the disease long before, thus bringing it out earlier for open discussion.

  Refusing to get embroiled in this debate, the rest of Queen concentrated on perpetuating Mercury’s legacy through commercial releases. In late November 1992 The Freddie Mercury Album, a collection of existing solo tracks, peaked at number four. Days earlier, the star’s old hit ‘The Great Pretender’ had been revived, and the following month saw the single ‘In My Defence’ reach number eight. But it wasn’t until the following July that of all the posthumous releases, Freddie Mercury would hit his first solo number one with the single ‘Living On My Own’.

  Originally from his debut solo album Mr Bad Guy, the star felt the song was highly characteristic of himself. In one of his more maudlin moods, he once explained why. ‘I have to go around the world living in hotels,’ he said. ‘You can have a whole shoal of people looking after you, but in the end they all go away.’

  Throughout 1994 there was much talk of a final Queen album to include previously unreleased Mercury recordings. By early 1995 the word was that Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon were busy, either in Metropolis Studios or at May’s home studio, putting the finishing touches to Mercury’s lyrics. They were using the same modern techniques as the three former Beatles were employing with previously unreleased John Lennon tracks. The ex-Queenies were to add their contributions live in the studio to the material Mercury had managed to leave behind.

  Anticipation was high among the band’s worldwide legions of fans, as well as in the music industry. When the first single was announced, there was consternation when it emerged that it was to be ‘Heaven For Everyone’: a Roger Taylor number from his solo band the Cross’s 1988 debut album Shove It. It had then featured Mercury as guest lead vocalist. Rerecorded, this time including input from Brian May and John Deacon, on its release in late October it still went straight in at number two.

  Two weeks later the long-awaited album Made in Heaven emerged, and it went straight in at the top, holding off Madonna, Oasis and Elton John among others. After a career of having a tough time with the critics, it was largely acclaimed, with some reviewers even declaring that it was a pity Mercury wasn’t around to enjoy what was being hailed as the best Queen album for years. It quickly went double-platinum. Despite strong competition, the album survived in the top five, weeks into 1996, unlike, to the surprise of many, the hugely hyped The Beatles Anthology 1, which boasted Lennon’s much-vaunted unreleased recordings.

  Singled out for special praise in Made in Heaven was the track ‘A Winter’s Tale’. Penned by the lakeside in Montreux, the ballad was the last song Mercury had ever written, and it was released mid-December as Queen’s bid for the Christmas number one. But, for others, the album’s highlight was ‘Too Much Love Will Kill You’, a Brian May solo single sung with great poignancy by Mercury.

  In late 1995 both Roger Taylor and Brian May paid special tribute to Mercury’s last courageous working months. They revealed how, doggedly determined to push his pain-racked body to the limit, he had sometimes needed to fortify himself with a few shots of vodka before getting up to sing. The track ‘Mother Love’, on which the singer’s vocals soar to incredible heights, was the last number he recorded.

  Brian May marvelled, ‘This is a man who can’t really stand any more without incredible pain and is very weak. There’s no flesh on his bones at all – and yet you can hear the power, the will that he’s still got.’ Mary Austin revealed that it had taken Mercury a very long time to accept that he had AIDS, and May believes that, even to the last, the star, his friend, thought a miracle might save him. But, of course, none had come.

  When once asked how he would like people to remember him professionally, Mercury had flippantly replied, ‘Oh, I don’t know. Dead and gone? It’s up to them. When I’m dead, who cares? I don’t.’ But the sleeve of Made in Heaven, undoubtedly Queen’s most personal album, had carried the legend: ‘Dedicated to the immortal spirit of Freddie Mercury’.

  In the coming years, further honours followed. On 25 November 1996, in the Place du Marché, Montreux, Switzerland, overlooking Lake Geneva, a three-metre-high bronze statue of Mercury in classic pose – legs apart, mike in hand and his right fist triumphantly punching the air – was unveiled by Freddie’s father, Bomi Bulsara and the opera star Montserrat Caballé. The plaque on its plinth read Freddie Mercury Lover of Life – Singer of Songs. The statue was the work of Czech sculptor Irena Sedlecka, and had been commissioned by May, Taylor, Deacon and Freddie’s family and friends, some of whom attended the small dedication ceremony. Then, in 1999, the Royal Mail issued a Freddie Mercury stamp as part of their Millennium series. The entertainment category of this series also included stamps of the footballer Bobby Moore, actor Charlie Chaplin and a Dalek from the TV series Doctor Who. But Mercury’s 19p stamp caused some controversy. It featured an on-stage, bare-chested Freddie in scarlet leggings but drummer Roger Taylor could also be seen in the background. According to convention, the only living people permitted to appear on a British postage stamp are members of the royal family.

  Having considered himself very firmly a member of rock royalty, Freddie did not live to see his band enter the coveted Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Queen’s induction to this echelon took place on 19 March 2001 at the sixteenth annual dinner held at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Jer Bulsara accepted her son’s award at the glittering event during which fellow inductees included Paul Simon, Aerosmith and Michael Jackson.

  It was around this time that news broke in Britain that there was to be a West End stage musical structured around Queen’s music, called We Wi
ll Rock You. The multi-million-pound musical, scripted by comedian and novelist Ben Elton and directed by Christopher Renshaw, opened at the Dominion Theatre in London’s Tottenham Court Road on 12 May 2002. A smash hit, it has become the theatre’s longest running show which, including additional productions staged around the world, is estimated to have been seen by more than 10 million people to date. A year later, Freddie’s father Bomi Bulsara died, leaving his mother and his sister Kashmira to witness how his memory continued to be kept alive.

  It was perhaps inevitable that the runaway success of We Will Rock You would whet the appetite among Queen fans to see the band perform live once more. In the aftermath of Freddie’s death there was a widespread acknowledgement, if not assumption, that there could never be Queen without Mercury at its helm. But by autumn 2004, rumours were circulating of a band reunion with one or two famous singers said to be set to step into the void. In January 2005, that someone turned out to be former Free and Bad Company lead singer Paul Rodgers, a powerful and distinctive rock front man. For diehard Freddie fans it was a bittersweet prospect – to have Queen revived as a live act but without Mercury’s dominant presence. And indeed, they were big enough shoes to fill without Freddie having been voted that year as the Greatest Male Singer of All Time in an MTV poll.

  The new band comprised Brian May, Roger Taylor, Paul Rodgers, keyboard player Spike Edney, guitarist Jamie Moses and Danny Miranda on bass. John Deacon did not participate. With everyone keen to stress that Freddie was not being replaced and that Paul Rodgers would continue to pursue a solo career, this line-up was billed as Queen and Paul Rodgers. Commencing in spring 2005, on and off over the next four years they toured or performed individual gigs around the world until, in May 2009, Paul Rodgers announced that, for the foreseeable future at least, his collaboration with Queen was over.

  Far from the limelight and in a very different way, time had run out for some people whom Freddie had once counted as friends, lovers or just acquaintances, many of whom had sadly died fairly young. Freddie’s long-time lover Jim Hutton had reportedly been battling cancer towards the end of his life. Succumbing to complications from broncho-pneumonia, just days shy of his sixty-first birthday, Jim died in Ireland on 1 January 2010.

  Nine months later, news of a more uplifting kind arrived when, after years of rumour and speculation, a big screen biopic of Freddie Mercury was finally officially announced. Talk of this project had first surfaced in late 2006, when Johnny Depp was tipped by the media for the lead role. But then again, just months earlier, similar rumours had circulated that the versatile Kentucky-born actor was due to portray the late Michael Hutchence in a biopic of the INXS front man. All Brian May could confirm in 2006 was that discussions surrounding a biopic of Mercury were at an early stage. The meat on the bones came in September 2010.

  The film was the result of a partnership between GK Films, Tribeca Productions and Queen Films and, it was revealed, the screenplay for the untitled movie would be written by Peter Morgan. Nominated for an Academy Award for his work on both the Queen and Frost/Nixon, Morgan is currently considered one of the hottest screenwriters in the business. For some people, the startling news was that the starring role had gone to Sacha Baron Cohen.

  Born in 1971 in Hammersmith, London, Sacha Baron Cohen studied history at Christ’s College, Cambridge, before becoming an award-winning actor, famous for his fictional comedic characters: rapper Ali G, Austrian fashion reporter Bruno and Kazakhstani journalist Borat. According to Peter Morgan, it was Cohen who approached him to write the screenplay, a prospect that did not completely grab him at first, as he thought he might be limited in how much of Mercury’s famously colourful life could be encompassed with an actor in his late thirties portraying a star who had died aged forty-five. Further parameters kicked in when Peter opted to steer clear of covering Mercury’s debilitating illness and harrowing death, effectively knocking out the most poignant and drastically changing years of the star’s life. ‘I didn’t want to write about a man dying from Aids,’ Morgan flatly stated.

  That said, Morgan identified a very fertile period of Freddie’s life that entirely energised him – from early in Queen’s career up to the band’s legendary performance at the historic Live Aid concert on 13 July 1985 – a period that also saw Queen embroiled in the controversy surrounding their 1984 appearance at the Sun City Super Bowl in South Africa and included the creative conflicts that set in with the band, leading to Mercury breaking away to pursue his solo projects before returning to the fold. ‘I’m essentially writing about the most painful time in the band’s history,’ Peter stressed to the media.

  Couple Sacha Baron Cohen’s stock-in-trade brash comedy with Freddie’s flash flamboyance and leave out the intense human tragedy of his illness and death, and it would be easy to anticipate a gag-filled depiction of a wildly outrageous rock star. But Peter Morgan emphasised from the start that he planned to pen a drama that would at times be painful in its portrayal of the reality behind the dazzling public face of Queen. Graham King of GK Films enthused to Rolling Stone: ‘Peter Morgan is going to write an amazing script. Sacha fits the bill. All the ingredients are there.’

  Both Queen and solo Freddie Mercury songs will feature in the film but it was unclear in the months following the breaking news if Sacha would be performing the songs or lip-synching to Mercury’s vocals.

  King called Queen’s music a brand all of its own; a statement that is hard to argue with. Not only does the RIAA estimate Queen’s total global record sales at 300 million, Queen is officially Britain’s biggest music act, having taken that mantle from the Beatles. Although Freddie, so much the linchpin of the band, died in 1991, he manages to live on strongly through Queen’s commercial success and the generations of new devotees that stream nightly out of the We Will Rock You stage musical at the Dominion Theatre, the entrance doors to which are dominated overhead by a figure of Freddie in full throttle.

  Outwardly outrageous yet inherently insecure, Mercury had myriad unfathomable facets and to capture truly his complete essence in something like two hours of screen time will undoubtedly prove a stiff challenge. But as a colossus of rock in his own lifetime, for Freddie to be immortalised in a major motion picture will thrill Queen and film fans around the world and will propel his star to even dizzier heights that may even have satisfied the mercurial man himself.

  Index

  FM = Freddie Mercury; MA = Mary Austin; JD = John Deacon; KE = Kenny Everett; JH = Jim Hutton; IC = Imperial College; BM = Brian May; RT = Roger Taylor; BV = Barbara Valentin

  Academy Awards (Oscars) 87, 161, 220, 251

  AC/DC 177

  Acid Test parties 10

  Adams, Bryan 184, 244

  Aerosmith 84, 259

  AIDS 28, 142, 144, 192–3, 205, 218, 225, 240

  Catholicism and 252–3

  charities 246, 249–50, 252

  deaths associated with 192, 205, 235

  FM confides having 210, 236, 258

  FM denies having 210, 213, 232, 234, 235

  FM diagnosed with 209–10

  FM receives treatment for 235, 240

  FM stops taking medication for 240

  FM tested for 193, 204, 209, 218

  FM’s death and 242, 252, 256, 261

  FM’s fear of 211

  FM’s official statement on 241, 256

  press coverage about 204, 211, 218, 235, 239

  public awareness of 246, 249, 252

  AIDS Awareness Day 246

  albums (FM):

  Barcelona 219–20, 224

  The Freddie Mercury Album 256

  Mr. Bad Guy 180, 187, 256

  albums (movies):

  Flash Gordon 136, 143, 148, 149

  Highlander 190, 194, 196

  albums (Queen):

  A Day at the Races 113

  Flash Gordon 143, 148

  The Game 145

  Greatest Hits 69, 153, 236, 246

  Greatest Hits II 240

  Hot Sp
ace 158, 160, 168

  Innuendo 211, 221, 234, 236

  Jazz 134–5

  A Kind of Magic 196

  Made in Heaven 257, 258

  The Miracle 229, 230, 232

  News of the World 126, 132

  A Night at the Opera 102–3, 105, 106, 110

  Queen 60, 62, 65, 67–9, 71, 82

  Queen II 71, 80–4, 86

  Sheer Heart Attack 89, 94, 97

  The Works 168

  All American Alien Boy 107

  ‘All God’s People’ 206, 221

  ‘All the Young Dudes’ 250

  A&M Records 59, 124

  American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR) 250

  Andrews, Anthony 191

  Andrews, Bernie 66

  Andrews, Georgina 191

  ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ 147, 179

  Ant, Adam 161

  Anthony, John 16, 51, 58

  anti-apartheid 171–5, 196, 261

  Anvil Studios, London 148

  Apollo Theatre, Glasgow 89

  Appleton, Michael ix, 69, 251

  ‘April Lady’ 21

  Arden, Don 93, 95

  Ashton, Sir Frederick 139

  Ashton, Mark 62

  Aspel, Michael 126

  Austin, Louie 55

  Austin, Mary:

  FM’s death and 237, 241–2, 247

  FM’s illness and 210, 241–2, 258

  FM’s love for 1, 18, 19, 27, 34, 44–5, 53, 90, 93, 110, 114, 142, 144–6, 155, 159, 183, 198, 248

  FM’s will and 247–8

  JH introduced to 183

  son’s birth 234

  Ayres, Kevin 48

  Bad Company 260

  Baker, Ginger 14

  Baker, Roy Thomas 58, 60, 65, 86, 107, 125, 137

  ‘Bamalama’ 60

  Band Aid 174, 175, 176, 181

  Baron Cohen, Sacha 2, 261–2

  Barcelona 88, 207, 208–9, 215, 217, 224

  Barcelona (album) 219–20, 224

  ‘Barcelona’ (single) 210–12, 215, 217–18, 220, 221, 226, 227

  Barcelona Opera House 224