by Jim Hutton
Mercury and Me
Jim Hutton with Tim Wapshott
Copyright © 2013, Jim Hutton and Tim Wapshott
CONTENTS
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Foreword
1 Freddie Who?
2 Make Your Mind Up
3 A Rare Deceit
4 A Yen to Shop
5 You’re Fired
6 Overtures and Beginners
7 Duckingham Palace
8 The Retreat
9 Pruning Pals
10 Letting Go
11 No Escape from Reality
12 Living on My Own
For my family,
Martha and Stephen
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are many people I would like to thank for helping me get this project off the ground. First and foremost, I would like to thank Dominic Denny for all his endeavours on my behalf. Without him there would be no book.
Next, I should like to thank Tim Wapshott for helping me channel my thoughts. I should also like to thank my literary agent Giles Gordon at Sheil Land Associates.
There are so many I feel I would like to acknowledge for supporting me and my book but, before doing so, first may I apologise to anyone I omit by accident. So, my heartfelt thanks to the following: John Alexander, Dr Gordon Atkinson, Liz Bennett, Bloomsbury Publishing plc, John Deacon, Joe Fennelli, Leslie Freestone, Peter Freestone, Terry Giddings, Julian Hedley, Robert Kirby, Sonia Land, Debbie Leng, Philip Loveday, Brian May, Billy Mullen, John Rowell, Dominique Taylor, Roger Taylor, Nicholas Wapshott, Misa Watanabe and, last but by no means least, Jacky Gunn and all the members of the Queen Fan Club.
Finally, most of the photographs which appear in this book are from my own collection. However, I would like to thank Richard Young and Misa Watanabe for additional pictures.
Jim Hutton
London W12
August 1994
INTRODUCTION
Jim Hutton was the man Freddie Mercury called ‘my husband’ back in the Eighties, long before such things were conceivable let alone actually, and rightly, possible. Had he lived, Freddie Mercury would have been 67 this year. And his long-standing lover Jim Hutton would have been 64. The lives of both men were tragically cut short through ill health.
Jim, who believed it was Freddie who had infected him with HIV, actually went on to outlive Freddie by 18 years. But Jim was a heavy smoker, which cannot have helped matters, and he finally succumbed to debilitating lung cancer on January 1, 2010, just three days shy of what would have been his 61st birthday.
Jim Hutton seemed to be the unlikeliest of partners for the world’s most extrovert rock superstar. In many ways he was the complete opposite of his showman lover. For an Irishman, Jim seemed especially quiet and reserved, and he could be painfully shy in company. The relationship that blossomed between them was equally improbable – how could a modest gentleman’s barber satisfy the planet’s most eccentric rock performer? And yet, Jim not only could but he did.
In 1993 and 1994 I helped Jim to write this memoir of his remarkable life with Freddie. Jim did not sell-out. He did not feel he had in him a great showbusiness kiss-and-tell to luridly tout around the book publishers. His reason for wanting to write ‘Mercury and Me’ seemed to be that he knew it would be hugely cathartic, a way to exercise his enduring grief. He saw it as his chance to finally come to terms with his loss and all that he had been through leading up to - and after - Freddie’s premature death.
I liked Jim Hutton very much. He might not have been a natural in the glittery world of celebrity, but he remained true to himself and fiercely independent. Unsurprisingly, after almost a decade around Freddie, some of the singer’s sparkle had rubbed off and he tried his best to bounce back in good humour.
Just as it had been at Garden Lodge in Kensington where he had lived with Freddie, when Jim first settled in west London after Freddie’s death his pride and joy was the garden. His small suburban garden at Ravenscourt Park may have been infinitely smaller than the grounds at Garden Lodge, but they were just as impeccably tended. Jim had, as they say, the touch.
Jim had told me when we worked together on the book that while he had lived with Freddie he had often endured snide comments from one or two of those around the singer. Such shabby behaviour was apparently amplified in the weeks that followed Freddie’s death – one even cruelly claiming that Jim had never even been Freddie’s lover. It was repugnant treatment of someone who at the time was very clearly in mourning.
Some, it seemed, struggled to hide their envy that Jim had enjoyed a unique, loving and enduring special friendship with Freddie, while for all their efforts they had remained mere colleagues, acquaintances or employees. Jim added that later some apologised for their abhorrent behaviour. It said so much of Jim that he had instantly forgiven them their painful transgressions as he tried to move on with his life.
For all the comings and goings at Garden Lodge over the years, no one intimately shared Freddie’s life more than Jim Hutton. Mercury had resolutely maintained a generous open-door policy with his friends and family at Garden Lodge. Under his tenure, it was a home of warmth and love. But a series of events in quick succession dealt Jim blow after blow.
Eventually Jim found that living in London without Freddie was too much to bear and by the end of the Nineties he had quietly slipped back to Ireland. His home there was the one place – perhaps the last place – Jim Hutton could really find lasting solace with his memories of the enigmatic Freddie.
I would speak on the phone to Jim from time to time once he had permanently moved back to Carlow. He had definitely found a form of contentment and peace there that was so obviously missing all the time that he had remained in London. Being surrounded by his large family (he had nine siblings!) became very important to him. It was hugely comforting, he told me. His love for Freddie clearly never diminished but I think by then he needed the reassurance of unconditional love that one’s blood relatives usually offer best.
Once he was back in Ireland, his bungalow also became a safe haven for assorted cats and dogs. It was typical that in addition to his own cats he had affectionately befriended the local strays. His garden in Ireland, too, was well tended and, a final reminder of Garden Lodge, he added a small Japanese-style koi pool.
Jim was never very good with money and he was generous to a fault. It is no surprise that what was left of his nest-egg from Freddie soon dried up. To help balance the books he helped some of his brothers, who were builders, on the odd project. He also undertook some part-time gardening work for neighbours and friends.
Following several months of ill-health in the latter part of 2009, Jim died at home surrounded by his family on January 1, 2010. The funeral was held at a small church in Bennekerry, just outside Carlow. Jim had spent much of his childhood in Bennekerry and by all accounts it was a very happy one. It was as good a place as any to say farewell to him some 60 years on.
It seems right to now release ‘Mercury and Me’ on Kindle so that it might perhaps reach a new, if modest, audience. This is an honest and open memoir and it remains a poignant tale of gay love in the Eighties when the AIDS epidemic and backlash in Britain were both at their height. The e-book is published on Sunday November 24 – 22 years to the day that the music died when we lost Freddie Mercury.
We are marking the e-publication with a small launch party at London’s Club at The Ivy, where we hope to raise a little money for Stonewall along the way. Several of those who knew and loved Freddie and Jim will be there and we will all be raising a glass to rock’s oddest couple. They both remain sorely missed.
Tim Wapshott
London, November 2013
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sp; www.mercuryandme.com.
FOREWORD
Freddie Mercury was unique. Before I continue I admit that I am biased. During my twelve years as his personal assistant I learned more from him about art, furniture, porcelain and many more things than I could have ever been taught in any amount of lectures. Freddie’s enthusiasm for life was infectious.
I consider myself lucky to have been there with him during the good times and, although I would have preferred a different ending, I also consider myself lucky that I was one of the few he wanted with him in the final days. He was a musical genius, strong-willed, obstinate, soft-centred, caring and, above all, genuine.
One of the others was Jim Hutton, whom I have known for over twenty years. We first met across a busy restaurant counter in Selfridge’s, the department store, in 1973. Then we lost contact until I turned up at Freddie’s flat one evening for dinner and there was Jim. We hadn’t seen each other for a few years, but it seemed no more than a few weeks.
Freddie and Jim were certainly an odd couple. Because of their temperaments, life around Freddie and Jim was never what you could call easy. But at least it was never boring.
What follows will, I am sure, be of great interest. It gives a previously unseen insight into someone about whom so much has been written. It has never been in Jim’s nature to be anything other than straightforward.
Peter Freestone
London SW1
August 1994
1
FREDDIE WHO?
It had been just another ordinary weekend in London towards the end of 1983. I’d spent much of it drinking in gay pubs and clubs with my lover, John Alexander. He was a stocky lad with dark hair and I was besotted with him. Sunday night we ended up in a gay club called Cocobana, in the basement of a hotel in South Kensington, west London, and it was my first time in the place.
We were standing near the bar, drinking lager from cans. The club was fairly busy and plenty of anonymous faces were milling around or dancing to the disco beats thundering out from the speakers.
I suppose I was on my fourth lager when it happened. John went to the lavatory and this guy came up to me. I was thirty-four and he was slightly older. He was dressed casually in jeans and a white vest and, like me, had a moustache. He was slight and not the sort of man I found attractive. I preferred men bigger and butcher.
‘Let me buy you a drink,’ he said.
I had an almost full can and I replied: ‘No, thank you.’ Then he asked me what I was doing that night.
‘Fuck off,’ I said. ‘You’d better ask my boyfriend about that.’ The stranger could see he was getting nowhere with me and let the matter drop, going back to join his friends in the corner.
‘Somebody’s just tried to chat me up,’ I told John when he returned.
‘Who was he?’ he asked. ‘Which one?’
‘Over there,’ I said, pointing him out.
‘That’s Freddie Mercury!’ he said, although it meant nothing to me – not a light. If he’d been the managing director of the Savoy Hotel where I worked it might have been a different matter. But I never kept up with popular music. Although I had it on the radio all the time, I couldn’t tell one group from another, or one singer from another. I had never heard of Queen. John wasn’t annoyed that Freddie had tried it on – on the contrary, he was flattered that a famous singer fancied his partner.
John and I carried on drinking until the place closed around midnight, then we headed home to our house in Clapham, south London. Early next morning I was back at work, as a gentlemen’s hairdresser at the Savoy Hotel’s small barber’s shop concession.
Four or five months after that night in the gay club Cocobana John took me out to dinner at a swanky restaurant, September’s in Earls Court, west London.
I was sitting with my back to the door and we ate a delicious meal. I was happy with life, quite content with my lot. Then John, looking over my shoulder, said: ‘Oh, your friend is here.’
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘Freddie Mercury,’ he said. ‘The guy who tried to chat you up a few months ago at Cocobana.’
I looked around, trying not to be noticed doing so, and indeed there was the same man dining with friends. I don’t think he saw me.
Not long after, John and I moved to Sutton in Surrey where we rented rooms. Our landlady, Mrs Ivy Taverner, was in her seventies and John and I shared the two attic rooms at the top of her semi-detached house. It was a modest place: a bedroom, sitting room and basic cooking facilities on the landing.
But after a while we found we needed more space and we began getting on one another’s nerves. I didn’t expect much out of life but I was desperate for a harmonious, loving relationship. I became too possessive of John and he eventually saw me as a ball and chain; he was yearning for his freedom. In the spring of 1984, after two years together, we split up. I kept the rooms, and John moved out; we’ve remained friends.
I worked at the barber’s shop five days a week and every other Saturday morning. In the week I left work around six and by the time I’d got home – forty-five minutes by train from Victoria Station – and cooked myself something to eat most of the evening had gone.
I led a quiet life on my own at Ivy Taverner’s. Once in a while I might meet a friend in Sutton for a drink, but usually I kept very much to myself. I’m not a promiscuous person and never went out deliberately to pick someone up. I liked my own company more than other people’s. Occasionally I’d meet somebody and we might have a fling, but my philosophy was always ‘If it happens, it happens; if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.’ I got into the habit of going out once a week, on Thursdays as that was pay-day, to the Market Tavern, a gay pub in Vauxhall, south London. It was a long way to go from Sutton for a drink, but I regarded it as my ‘local’. I always stood in the same little corner at the bar, eying-up the bar staff with my pint before me and my packet of cigarettes neatly rolled into my sleeve. I’d stand there all night on the exact same spot, drinking a few pints and taking in the atmosphere, oblivious to everyone else. I was kept entertained by watching a bunch of strangers enjoying themselves.
When the summer months came along, it became too dull for whole weekends in Sutton so I switched my drinking night to Saturdays. I always thought I was out totally alone on those nights. Not so, apparently. Many years later, after Freddie’s death, I had a heart-to-heart with Joe Fannelli, a former lover of Freddie’s and his live-in chef, confessor and confidant. Although Freddie had a flat in London, throughout 1984 he was mostly living in Munich, Germany. Whenever he was back in London for a weekend he’d invariably end up in Heaven, the gay nightclub under Charing Cross Station.
I don’t know how, but Freddie discovered where I drank. On his way to Heaven he would tell his chauffeur, a guy called Gary, to take a detour via the Market Tavern. Freddie’s old Mercedes would draw up and Joe was instructed to see if I was on my mark at the bar. Once he’d reported back to Freddie that, indeed, this creature of habit was in place, they’d continue their journey to Heaven for the night.
If you’re Irish, which I am, then 17 March is a date which never leaves your mind: St Patrick’s Day. In 1985, 17 March fell on a Sunday, and the night before I’d been drinking in the Market Tavern with a few Irish friends. We all agreed to meet up again at the pub the next day at lunchtime. I rarely drink at lunchtime, but that day I made an exception; the afternoon soon became the evening and eventually I left for Sutton and bed. I had to go to work the next morning. I’d have probably cut someone’s throat when shaving them if I’d stayed drinking any longer.
That particular Paddy’s Day is ingrained in my memory, so I know it was the following Saturday, 23 March, that I met Freddie again. The day started much like any other. I made myself some supper, then headed out dressed appropriately for the gay scene – jeans and white vest. The look at the time was ‘High Clone’, complete with mandatory moustache. I got the tube to Vauxhall and, climbing three steps at a time, put my knees and arse out of my jeans. They c
ompletely ripped.
When the Market Tavern closed, I fell straight into the back of a minicab, driven by a regular face who was used to me slurring Sutton as my destination. That night I decided I wanted to go on partying and told him to drive me to Heaven instead. It was a very occasional haunt of mine; I’d always found it too big and impersonal for my liking.
I arrived fairly late, legless and undoubtedly on another planet. Worse still, after paying the minicab I only had £5 to my name. At least I didn’t have to pay to get in, as I discovered that a friend was on the door. I went straight to the downstairs bar and ordered a pint of lager.
‘Let me buy you this,’ said a voice. I looked up. It was the chap from the Cocobana in 1983. Freddie Thing. I’d had a fair amount to drink. My tongue had loosened up. My defences were down.
‘No, I’ll buy you one,’ I said.
‘A large vodka tonic,’ came the reply. There went my fiver in one go. If I was lucky I would be left with a little over £1, perhaps enough to get the night bus back to Sutton.
‘How big’s your dick?’ Freddie asked, laughing. It was, I later learned, a typically outrageous Freddie opening gambit.
I don’t like answering such personal questions, so I said: ‘It’s none of your business!’ If I hadn’t been so drunk I’d have told him to fuck off. But I did reprimand him on his accent, a sort of mid-Atlantic drawl.
‘For God’s sake, drop the phoney American accent,’ I said.
‘I haven’t got an American accent,’ he answered. He introduced himself as ‘Freddie’. I knew he was Freddie Mercury, but still had little inkling who he actually was, nor what he did. It didn’t seem to matter.