Mercury and Me

by Jim Hutton

  The day the Sun ran the story I went back to work at the Savoy, to my humdrum routine at the barber’s shop. The day didn’t go well. I was to learn, to my horror, that the concession had been sold. I met the new owner, but wasn’t very impressed with him and was even less so when he appointed his brash little brother as manager. Life at the Savoy began to get rocky. The new management tried to change the business from an old-fashioned gentlemen’s barber shop into a trendy cut and blow-dry place. My life at work was fast becoming unbearable, but at least I had Freddie and Garden Lodge to come home to.

  For Christmas that year, Queen had agreed to release an album of live versions of many of their hits, called Live Magic. They had also agreed to take the best part of a year off to give them each a chance to recharge their batteries as well as pursue solo projects.

  Their decision prompted stories in the press that they were on the brink of splitting. Stories to that effect were constantly circulating but they were never true – far from it. Sometimes when Queen worked together I could tell from Freddie’s mood that there had been arguments, but these occasions were rare and only to be expected. In the heat of the moment each of them may at some point have said they were leaving, but it was never meant to be taken seriously. They were four highly creative artists; being temperamental from time to time went with the territory, and each would hold out for his own views. When they did get badly wound up they would soon work out ways to defuse the situation and, when needed, Freddie could be the most diplomatic peace-maker.

  With so much time suddenly on his hands I thought Freddie would want to go out clubbing, but quite the opposite happened. Like me, he became a stay-at-home. We began to lead a very quiet life together at Garden Lodge. Most Saturday evenings Phoebe and Joe went out and left the two of us cuddled up on the sofa watching television. Some nights we’d even be in bed by ten o’clock, though that never meant Freddie got up any earlier the following morning. Freddie liked to have a cup of tea in bed around eight in the morning, then doze for an hour or two before getting up.

  At home Freddie loved being surrounded by photographs of everyone close to him, most in silver frames. The grand piano in the lounge was covered in forty or so – pictures of me, Joe, Phoebe, Mary, Barbara, Peter Straker and, of course, the cats. Freddie and I also had photographs either side of our bed.

  One night in bed I was flicking through an old album of photographs of my family. Freddie sat next to me and pored over each picture. In particular he liked one black-and-white picture of me as a young boy with my family.

  The next night he produced a new silver frame he had bought. ‘This is for your family photo – and I know just where it’s going,’ he said. He stood the picture on a small circular table in the bedroom. It would always be the first thing he saw when he got up.

  Paul Prenter was one of the Family as far as Freddie was concerned. He was a long-standing friend who had worked for Queen as a manager for about eight years but been made redundant. To help Prenter out, Freddie had asked him to work for him on some of his solo projects. Towards the end of 1986 Prenter seemed fairly down on his luck, so Freddie decided to give him a great time. He invited him to stay for Christmas and New Year at the flat in Stafford Terrace. And as he was broke, Freddie gave him money so he could go out as much as he wanted over the holiday.

  The Saturday before Christmas was grey and overcast, but Freddie was in a sunny mood. He told Terry to get the car ready; we were going shopping at Harrods. Freddie decided it was to be a shopping expedition for expensive perfumes and after-shave lotions, but nothing else. The perfume department at Harrods was soon in consternation, with Freddie adding bottles of every shape and size to his order. He had assembled enough to drown half of Knightsbridge. But then there was an embarrassing moment.

  Freddie handed over his American Express card with a flourish and the smiling assistant scurried away to get the huge sum sanctioned, only to reappear looking decidedly uncomfortable. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ she said to Freddie, ‘but you’re over your limit. Do you have any other identification?’

  ‘I’m Freddie Mercury,’ said Freddie Mercury.

  ‘Yes sir,’ she countered. ‘I know that, but American Express don’t.’ The transaction was refused and Freddie was not pleased. Freddie never understood the meaning of the word ‘no’. He was great like that. Joe, Terry and I pooled our cash to pay for the stuff in the meantime.

  Among the reservoir of scents Freddie bought that day was a lake of Lagerfeld eau de cologne for me; it was the only stuff I wore. The huge bottle made the one on my bathroom shelf look like a free sample. Freddie also gave me a presentation pack of the complete Lagerfeld range, which I still haven’t managed to use up even though I’ve worn it every day since.

  Christmas 1986 was an altogether more lavish affair than our first at Garden Lodge. On Christmas Day we welcomed to our home Mary, Paul Prenter, Trevor Clarke and someone who had by now become one of the Family, Peter Straker; in all about twenty of us sat down to Christmas lunch. As the dining room was too small we laid two tables running the length of the lounge. After lunch we duly began sharing out the mountain of gifts beneath the tree. I gave Freddie a silver tissue box cover I had found in a little antique shop just around the corner from the Savoy.

  Then on New Year’s Eve we had a party at Garden Lodge which both our guests and most of the neighbours would always remember. I’d bought fireworks for Guy Fawke’s night but had not used them, so we decided we’d let them off to see in the New Year, 1987. Phoebe and I spent most of the day setting the fireworks up in the garden; I placed hundreds of sparklers in the stone urns either side of the front door. As midnight approached, Phoebe and I got to work. I used a blowtorch to light the sparklers. Our firework display lit up the sky and our neighbours cheered and applauded with us at each burst of colour overhead.

  For my thirty-eighth birthday a few days later Freddie wanted to give me a piece of jewellery, a chunky gold bracelet. I knew it wasn’t my sort of thing, but he disagreed. So we went off to see some in Cartier’s, in Bond Street. Fortunately they had none in stock. Instead our eyes fell upon two incredible rings which had been commissioned but not bought: the smaller one was an 18 carat gold signet ring with a platinum top. I tried it on but it was way too big. We aborted the shopping spree.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Freddie said. ‘We’ll get something for your birthday, but you might not get it on your birthday.’

  Freddie asked me whether I wanted a party at Garden Lodge, but, after the case of the missing vase the year before, I firmly declined. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m going to take you out instead.’ We went instead to Pontevecchio’s, a restaurant not far away from the house in Old Brompton Road, Earl’s Court. I also invited Joe, Phoebe, Mary and Peter Straker. It was going to be my treat. Just after I’d called for the bill, however, I felt someone gently tapping my knee underneath the table. I looked down and it was Freddie’s hand full of cash. I whispered to him: ‘No, I’m paying for this.’

  When we got back to Garden Lodge there was another surprise. While Freddie and I squashed up together in a big armchair, opened a bottle of champagne and, for the umpteenth time, toasted my birthday, Joe and Phoebe slipped out of the room. They turned down the lights and reappeared with an incredible birthday cake in the shape of a koi fish with a solitary candle flickering on top.

  A few days later I was working in the garden and Freddie came over to me. ‘Here’s a signed blank cheque,’ he said. ‘Go and buy yourself a piece of jewellery from Cartier’s.’ So I returned to Bond Street, picked out the ring I’d tried on with Freddie, and asked them to make it smaller.

  When I got home Freddie wanted to know what I’d bought as my birthday present.

  ‘That ring we saw,’ I told him.

  ‘Lovely,’ he replied.

  On Valentine’s Day we both sent each other red roses delivered to Garden Lodge. In bed that night Freddie was in a romantic mood; he could always be much more romantic than me.


  ‘I love you very much,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘Do you love me?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I love you,’ I said.

  At the end of February Freddie was releasing his solo single ‘The Great Pretender’, a cover version of the Platters’ hit. He recorded it at the Town House Studios in west London, and worked on the project with Mike Moran, whom he’d first met on Dave Clark’s musical Time.

  The night before the video shoot, Freddie asked me to cut his hair. After that I would cut it every couple of months right up until he died. He’d sit on a chair in the dressing area in the middle of the bedroom. Freddie always left it entirely to me how I cut his hair, and, though we were surrounded by mirrors, he never once glanced into them to see how I was doing. I tended to give him a slightly tighter, more traditional trim than he had been used to previously, but he never complained.

  ‘Whatever you think is best,’ he’d say.

  Freddie never dyed his hair black – it was natural. He had a bald patch on the crown but never asked me to disguise the fact. He knew there was no point.

  Freddie invited me along to watch ‘The Great Pretender’ video being made after I had finished work at the Savoy, as it promised to be a great deal of fun. He was right. When I arrived the place had a party atmosphere and the loudest screams of laughter were coming from the dressing rooms. They’d been filming all day and now Freddie, Roger Taylor and Peter Straker were getting into drag. Freddie had shaved his moustache off, Terry had shaved his arms with an electric razor and someone else had shaved his chest. When the three of them got into their frocks and started prancing around, the studio erupted into hysterics. I was in tears. I’d never seen Freddie in drag before and he was camping it up like crazy.

  Just as funny, Debbie Ash was there to be filmed sitting in an armchair while Freddie jumped on top of her. During the clinches the two of them couldn’t keep straight faces and kept cracking up instead. So did everyone watching.

  Filming didn’t end until about two in the morning, and only then did Freddie tell me how the day had gone. He said that when he’d arrived, hundreds of cut-outs of himself had been set out on the studio floor, but they were not to his liking and so he rushed around adjusting each one. Such things usually had to be left to the unionised studio technicians, but in Freddie’s case they made an exception. They knew that he was the boss and would do as he liked.

  When it was eventually released, at the end of February, ‘The Great Pretender’ gave Freddie his highest solo hit. He was extremely pleased about his success, so much so that out of the blue he gave the three of us at the house, and I think Mary, too, ‘a little bonus’: another cheque for each of us to buy ourselves something special.

  The same month Freddie flew to meet opera singer Montserrat Caballé for the first time. During the Magic Tour he’d told Spanish television he was only there in the hope of meeting her, and it transpired that she had been watching the programme. She arranged to meet him in Barcelona, and he’d flown over with Phoebe, Mike Moran and Jim Beach. The two great singers met in a private dining room at the Ritz Hotel.

  Freddie said he’d had absolutely no idea what to expect except that Montserrat was prone to tantrums. She turned up late, and Freddie introduced himself by handing her a cassette and spluttering: ‘Here, I’ve got this for you to listen to.’ On the tape was ‘Exercises in Free Love’, a song he’d written with Mike Moran. Montserrat liked the demo tracks and said she would be happy to work on an album with Freddie. He came home on cloud nine.

  A week or so later Caballé was in London and Freddie invited her to a working supper at Garden Lodge. It was to be just her, Freddie, Mike Moran and Jim Beach. Freddie discovered what she liked to eat – fish and pasta – so salmon was on the menu. She arrived in an evening gown, and as she walked through the double doors into the lounge she almost tripped.

  ‘Oooh, shit!’ she squealed in a tiny, giggly voice.

  I was introduced to her before slipping off to bed for an early night. On stage Montserrat looks enormous, but a lot of it is due to the large, flowing gowns she favours. In the flesh she didn’t look nearly as big as I was expecting. And far from being awkward in any way, she was delightful: very modest, very camp and very giggly.

  Montserrat was only intending to stay for a light supper as she had an early flight the following morning, but in the end she left well into the early hours. As the coffee arrived, she, Freddie and Mike Moran began an impromptu concert around the piano. I fell asleep to the dulcet tones of one of the world’s greatest opera divas camping it up with one of the world’s greatest rock voices.

  A week later Freddie and I were off to Covent Garden to hear a recital by Montsy, as Freddie called her. Princess Margaret was the guest of honour and Freddie and I sat in a box. At the beginning of the interval I jumped up to make a dash for the Crush Bar, but Freddie grabbed me.

  ‘Princess Margaret is here,’ he said. ‘We have to wait for her.’

  I didn’t know the protocol, but Freddie did. He was an ardent royalist who adored the Royal Family. The only member of the Royal Family he got to meet was Prince Andrew – and Freddie had promptly invited him to Heaven.

  As the curtain rose on the second act, Montserrat walked out on stage and Freddie was spellbound. Then, at the end of the performance, for an encore, she came on accompanied by Mike Moran. She announced she was going to sing a song ‘written by two great new friends of mine’, adding, ‘and I believe the other is in the audience tonight’.

  Freddie was really surprised. His hands shot up to his eyes and he started laughing, with an expression of total astonishment on his face. The spotlights swung on to Freddie, his face cupped in his hands, and the audience rose to their feet clapping wildly. So Freddie stood up and acknowledged the applause, and sank back into his chair. He listened transfixed as Montsy performed ‘Exercises in Free Love’. At the end of the evening we went backstage to meet Montsy, and then took her back to Garden Lodge for supper.

  Later that week, when Montsy arrived in the studio to work with Freddie, things didn’t go quite the way she expected. She thought that to record with Freddie she only had to fly in, sing a few songs from sheet music and leave, but she hadn’t reckoned on Freddie’s unique way of working. He hadn’t written out any of the music for her in advance. Instead he was going to ask her to try something, then keep reworking it until they found the exact effect he was after.

  He told her: ‘Puccini and all these other composers are dead. I’m alive, dear.’

  With that, she accepted his odd way of recording. He proved a hard taskmaster. Later she admitted that in those sessions Freddie got more out of her voice than she knew she was capable of.

  On the day Queen were to receive the Ivor Novello Award for their outstanding contribution to British music, Freddie and I had a terrible argument. It didn’t last too long but it put Freddie in enough of a bad mood to call me ‘a bloody Irish witch’ as we left Garden Lodge for the ceremony. By the time we got home Freddie was all cuddles again and I put his hostile outburst down to nerves. When we got into bed that night, he apologised for the row. Then we kissed and made up.

  ‘You’re just a big softy at heart,’ he said. I was, and I think he found it an attraction; although I appeared to be very tough, behind the facade I was actually as gentle as a lamb.

  Before Easter I went home to Ireland to visit my family. I’m sure my family suspected I was gay, although I’d never said anything and I never mentioned I was Freddie’s lover. I stayed with my mum, who didn’t have a phone, so it meant I had to walk four miles to the nearest phone-box to ring Freddie. The day before I was due to fly back I rang Freddie at home. He asked when I’d be back, and there was an urgency in his voice which made me suspect something was wrong.

  ‘The doctors have just taken a big lump out of me,’ he replied. I asked him to tell me more, but he said he couldn’t over the phone; he’d tell me when I got home.

  ‘Well, do
n’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll be home tomorrow.’

  My immediate reaction was that Freddie was exaggerating a little. If he was feeling low, he had a habit of sounding dramatic over the phone to win extra attention from me.

  Next day, when I got back to Garden Lodge, Freddie was in our bedroom. As I lay in bed with my arm around him, Freddie cuddled up close and told me what he couldn’t tell me the previous day.

  He pointed to a tiny mark on his shoulder, no bigger than a thumbnail and with two tiny stitches in it. The doctors had taken a piece of his flesh for testing and the results had just come back. He had Aids.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said. I couldn’t believe it: the doctors had to be wrong. ‘Who did this test?’ I asked. ‘Come on, we’ll go to somebody else.’ We had to get a second opinion.

  ‘No,’ said Freddie. ‘These guys are the best available.’ It was true, Freddie could afford the best and would accept nothing less.

  ‘If you want to leave me I’ll understand,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘If you want to leave me and move out of Garden Lodge I won’t stop you; I’ll understand,’ he said.

  ‘But I love you,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to walk out on you – now or ever. Let’s not talk about it any more.’

  Freddie looked up at me and we hugged very tightly. The consequences of what he’d just told me never really sank in. It was something I was never prepared for, nor had any idea how to deal with. Instead I tried to put it out of my mind as much as possible.

  In many ways I was still hoping for a miracle: a misdiagnosis. Apart from ensuring our sex was safe from then on, I wasn’t worried about my own health for a moment. Freddie suggested several times that I had an Aids test myself, but I wouldn’t, nor would I give him a reason for my decision.