Freddie Mercury: An intimate memoir by the man who knew him best

by Peter Freestone

  The set for The Works was a re-working of a scene from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis with gigantic wheels rotating at the back of the stage. It was daunting for Freddie with all the different levels and stairs but he loved the challenge. There were more places for him to pose. He seemed to have recovered from the ligament damage in his knee that he had sustained while indulging in some rather silly horseplay with his friends in the New York bar in Munich in April.

  This accident had left him in plaster from mid-thigh to his ankle. He had lifted someone up and totally by accident someone else had knocked his knee sideways at which point he collapsed on the floor in agony. He was taken off to hospital where he was X-rayed and it was found the knee wasn’t broken. Much to his horror, he was told that his leg would be in plaster but even that impediment still didn’t totally stop him from going out in the evenings.

  While he was thus plastered, his old friend Elton John was in town performing and insisted on Freddie coming to a show. Because of his obvious disability, Freddie was planted on the side of the stage behind the PA system and, throughout the show, Elton was threatening to drag Freddie out on stage but in the end had to make do with dedicating ‘I’m Still Standing’ to Freddie, a dedication delivered with a wicked grin. Not long after the plaster had been removed, Freddie actually worked on the video for ‘It’s A Hard Life’ and the only noticeable moment when he favours his damaged leg is in the last shot where he sits himself down on the steps.

  The tour started at the indoor Foret Nationale in Brussels. The band were there for one show and used the afternoon before the show to film footage for the ‘Hammer To Fall’ promo. The show itself was then filmed so that crowd scenes could be included in the video. There followed nine shows in Britain and Eire. The Wembley show was the first time Freddie wore the infamous wig’n’boobs. He had time to put these on as ‘I Want To Break Free’ was scheduled to be the first encore. The display went down so well that Freddie decided that he would continue using it in all the following shows. It was my job to make sure that prior to the short time it was on stage, the wig looked decent. The second of these Wembley concerts fell on his thirty-eighth birthday and as the next day was a day off, he had a party in Xenon, the nightclub of the moment. There are photographs I’m sure you’ve all seen of Freddie blowing out the candles on the huge Rolls Royce cake which was presented to him that night.

  This was the occasion where the birthday cake was stolen. It was in fact stolen by one of the acts who had been axed from performing at the celebration cabaret because of the large gay content of their show. The act were so pissed off that although they were compensated, they decided to steal the cake on their way home. Sweet revenge!

  The tour reverted to the European continent, embracing Germany, Italy, France, Belgium and Holland. One incident that really stands out in my mind took place in the Europehalle, Hannover. As usual, throughout the show, security for each member of the band is positioned around the stage.

  I was stationed at the door-flap of the dolls’ house talking to Freddie’s bodyguard, when we both saw him fall. At first, neither of us could be sure whether it was intentional or not but then we saw him in pain. We both ran on and, between us, picked him up and brought him back to the dolls’ house.

  As you can imagine, there was total confusion as the band were just over halfway through the show. Freddie decided immediately that he couldn’t let the fans down and just leave. So, with rapid discussion with the rest of the band, the band crew and Gerry Stickells, he decided there were about three more songs that he could perform while sitting at the piano. As there were never doctors or first aid people specifically assigned to the band on duty backstage, Freddie intuited that it was a repeat of the old Munich ligament injury to his knee. There was no point in him taking painkillers and so, between the security man and myself, we carried Freddie back on stage and placed him on the piano stool. I can only guess at Freddie’s feelings at that point, but I could feel the wave of emotion from the crowd as we carried him on and he then explained what had happened and what was to happen. They roared their approval at his courage. The show, after all, must go on!

  After the three songs, Freddie was carried straight into a car and taken directly to hospital where X-rays showed that the damage wasn’t as bad as Freddie had thought, that he would be able to continue the tour, very heavily bandaged, provided he didn’t put too much pressure on the joint.

  It was from this point on that a newcomer was included in Freddie’s entourage, namely Dieter Briet, a qualified physiotherapist who had come highly recommended to Freddie in Munich. Dieter was tall and thin and gangly. He and his family lived on the outskirts of Munich and the poor man spent much time trying to interest Freddie in the benefits of actually partaking in sports. In the beginning, he didn’t realise that Freddie’s sports were played mainly in the bars and at home at night and very much in private.

  Dieter’s love of sports was to be rewarded in the following section of the tour which took us to Sun City in Bophuthatswana, one of the South African homelands, now Northern Transvaal. Dieter’s main job was an hour and a half before the show to manipulate Freddie’s leg and, obviously, to be around during the show. Much of Dieter’s free time, however, was spent windsurfing on a massive man-made lake that was part of the hotel complex, a pastime he very much enjoyed. He was even trying to encourage Freddie onto a board. He didn’t succeed.

  The band went to Sun City because they had secured a record-breaking run, another notch on Queen’s bedpost of achievements. It was also one of the few places within reach of the boycotted South Africa where the band knew they could perform to multi-racial audiences. This was the only opportunity that many South Africans – be they Cape Coloured, Indian, Chinese or white as well as the native black population – would have to see Queen or any other of the Western mega-bands in the foreseeable future. Providing, of course, that they could afford it!

  Had the band known before how much international fuss would be caused by this visit, they probably would still have gone ahead with the engagement because as far as they were concerned it was a chance to give enjoyment and entertainment to people who, because of the Musicans’ Union ban, had been completely ignored. Who, we wondered, gave the Musicians’ Union the right to decide what and who the people in South Africa could see? Although he would never have thought of it or mentioned it, it is ironic to remember that Freddie himself had been born and brought up in Zanzibar and partially educated in Africa, like Gandhi. If anything, Freddie could have been said to have been making a statement and taking a stand with his South African fans.

  As far as politics was concerned, Freddie had an abhorrence of bands like U2, for example, who used their fame and celebrity status to put over their political views. Freddie was aware that he could say anything and it would be reported round the world and could be construed (or misconstrued) in any way that a particular party or media organ might want. To my knowledge, he never once went to vote at any election be it parliamentary or local even though he was always on the electoral roll. Because Garden Lodge was my home and I was therefore registered to vote in that constituency, I always voted. He was always interested in my voting and in what was happening generally in politics but he himself remained aloof. Had he voted, it would have been for a Conservative government as he had already lived through a period where his income had been taxed at 83% by a Labour administration which had tempted many of his peers to a life abroad as he himself had done for several years. However, he never publicly voiced any of his own political opinions as he regarded political opinions as relevant only to the individual and to tell the truth politics never figured very highly in his thought processes. As far as the annual budget meant, he waited for his accountant John Libson to explain to him what the salient points were regarding his own position.

  The band had been booked to do eleven shows in Sun City although in the end, they performed only seven. This was entirely due to Freddie’s vocal chords. He’d always had li
ttle nodules on them but while surgery had been mooted at various times, he had never wanted to do anything about the condition for fear of losing what he already had. This time, after the first show, his throat had really tightened up. A doctor was called in and gave Freddie that panacea of all evils – some steroids – and told him he couldn’t sing for a few days. Freddie, being Freddie, took the advice but at his own pace and, therefore, performed a show when he shouldn’t have done. This necessitated a further break.

  The hotel was part of the Sun City complex which consisted of two main areas, one being the hotel and a few one-arm bandit machines and then, a very short drive away, the Superbowl which incorporated the remainder of the gambling facility and also a theatre with shows that would rival the Paris and Las Vegas experiences. Freddie rarely left his hotel room while in Sun City so it really was no more than a luxurious prison. He was worried about his voice and as has been shown earlier he hated the thought of letting down the fans. If there was any chance of performing, he would. Freddie had persuaded Winnie Kirchberger to leave his Munich restaurant for a while and come with him to South Africa and so he wasn’t alone. Freddie even persuaded the hotel management to provide a small two-burner gas cooker so that Winnie could rustle up lunch for Freddie. It was really very sweet, seeing Freddie being taken care of by someone who was fond of him and Freddie was delighted. He invited ‘guests’ for lunch on at least two occasions when ‘my husband, the chef’ was cooking.

  I, who was therefore let out of the luxurious prison, had many a fun adventure in Sin City – sorry, Sun City – but thought it politic not to tell Freddie too much!

  Although the band toured a couple of times in Australia, it was not a frequent port of call for them. One of the reasons – it has to be said – was Freddie’s aversion to full-strip body searches to which he had been subjected on his first visit to that continent. Although I wasn’t actually present, he often told the story of how he got very drunk with Tony Hadley before appearing one night on the tour.

  Early in 1985, the band flew back to South America for the Rock in Rio festival. The Copacabana Palace Hotel acted as HQ for this visit. Freddie’s personal guests on this occasion were once again Barbara Valentin and Winnie. Barbara had been to Rio earlier, in her capacity as German movie star and gave Freddie many enjoyable hours, regaling him with stories of her past adventures in the art movie houses of the world.

  The audiences of between two hundred and fifty and three hundred thousand people were the largest the bands on this bill had ever played to. It seems odd now to reflect that Freddie’s need for emotional conflict wasn’t evident on these two occasions. Perhaps because he knew he had two shows, he thought the conflict would arise on the second one. The lack of communication due to Winnie’s paucity of English and Freddie’s unsophisticated German may have been a factor in the relatively unruffled emotional atmosphere. It was sometimes comical to watch the arguments happening with Barbara as the translator for both parties. Both Freddie and Winnie would be screaming at Barbara who had to do her best to try to sort out the jumbled words and jumbled emotions. It was a far cry from her original film performances as the Diana Dors of the German silver screen.

  Because we were in Rio for so long, Freddie did actually manage to go out on three or four occasions but it was one of those situations where, when Freddie left the hotel, at least one other car had to accompany him with onboard security. It became such a farce, his attempts to get in and out of nightclubs, that eventually he gave up and had many long-night parties in his suite.

  There was a massive party organised by EMI given at the Copacabana Palace but which Freddie refused to attend. There were many occasions where he hated being on show and these sort of industry parties were just such events. Freddie would have been the first to have shown up at a band-organised party but as this was just another excuse for the record company to show off their wares, the band would have to be available to be poked and prodded by the record company’s unparticular guest list, all the people who had been promised favours by record company executives. Had this been a purely professional affair, Freddie would have displayed no such disregard. Having never been one himself, Freddie consistently expressed his disdain of those whom he regarded as liggers, a human sub-species which contained two categories – the Professional and the Business liggers. The former he didn’t object to as these were mostly his peers. The latter came under the umbrella appellation of ‘Record Company’ and as such to be reviled.

  Freddie was there to perform for the crowds who had paid.

  Understandably, he believed he had earned the right to do and behave as he wanted. Put in any position where he was under scrutiny or where he had to be on his ‘best behaviour’, he felt very uneasy. He was very much an impromptu person. Because of his natural spontaneity, he hated being in the spotlight on unfamiliar territory – for example, when he was asked to meet the President of Argentina. On the other hand, in his own home, he could and would be the perfect host and gentleman. This trait must have been born from his schooling. At a boarding school, life is so regimented. You are under the continual gaze of masters while at school and matrons in the dormitory so much so that you constantly rebel against any perceived authority in later life and this I can attest to as I also attended a boarding school in India very much like Freddie’s.

  More than anyone, because of his fame, Freddie was forever being scrutinised and he was very sensitive to it. Many’s the time I have seen him come in after one of the enforced attendances that he couldn’t get out of, throw off the outer layers of his clothes and let rip with the pent-up frustration of the previous few hours and swear and curse about anyone and everyone…

  “It’s the fucking last time I’m going to fucking well go to anything like that for anyone! Fuck ’em!”

  At this point in the Queen touring schedule, I bowed out, as Freddie’s new house, Garden Lodge, had taken on a life of its own, requiring someone permanently living in to organise the comings and goings of workmen and decorators. I relinquished my touring role to Joe Fanelli. I’d had a ball but being away from home for so long when you consider I’d started in late 1979 and had not spent much more than a matter of months in England since then, I think the time had come to settle down while Freddie continued to bear the royal standard around the world.

  However, I was still to be involved with Live Aid.

  Although Joe was to take care of Freddie and his needs for Live Aid, I was sent on ahead to Wembley, earlier that afternoon of July 13th 1985, to check the layout of dressing rooms, et cetera. I actually spent a fun couple of hours chatting with other people, both crew and performers, I hadn’t seen for a while. The atmosphere was electric. Because of the sheer size of the show – size meaning both the concert length as well as the associated collective ego – many things happened on the spur of the moment.

  While nothing was left to chance, it couldn’t be foreseen when there’d be an electrical or satellite failure or some other such catastrophe. By the time that Freddie and the rest of the band arrived, I knew where everything that they would want was located including the watering hole for both bands and crews and the Hard Rock Cafe’s marquee, both of which were being used by everyone, performers and crew alike.

  There was a limited amount of space for dressing rooms and, if I remember rightly, there were six that were used in rotation as each band, when they finished its performance, immediately vacated their dressing room to allow the next band to move in like a version of the Royal Variety Show at London’s Palladium theatre. I could sense tension with Freddie but I think this was purely because of the enormity of the occasion. It didn’t take long for him to be laughing and joking with everybody else backstage whom he knew. Tony Hadley from Spandau Ballet, David Bowie, Elton, the Status Quo entourage… It really was a rendezvous for so many old friends, veterans of a lifetime in rock’n’roll. Remembering that so many bands spent so much of their time on the road, very often, friends will only meet when their paths
cross on tours.

  One thing made Freddie apprehensive about performing this gig and that was that due to timing, the band would have to perform in daylight. He disliked the light because you have to work so much harder for people to see anything. The daylight bleaches the performance, making the spotlights that were working redundant. Even make-up became a useless artifice to communicate the intensity of his personality. Everything would be working as per a normal show but from the audience’s point of view, nothing was much apparent on stage as far as subtleties of performance went. Then again, Freddie was never one for subtleties on stage and it showed in his subsequent performance.

  This daylight aspect no one else seemed to have quite worked out for they all give good but unenhanced shows. Freddie knew he had to compensate for this bleached-out effect and very soon had everyone in the stadium – not only the crowd but everybody backstage – in the palm of his hand. The available television footage doesn’t quite capture the feeling backstage. Even the other performers gladly conceded that Queen had given the best show.

  He basically knew he had to channel his usual two-hour show energy into a performance of a mere twenty minutes. The sight of the packed stadium clapping in time and in unison to ‘Radio Ga Ga’ was mind-blowing for us backstage and so what it must have been like for Freddie who was controlling it, I have no idea. He must have felt at that point that he could have controlled the world for the whole world, it seemed, was attending upon him that day. He came offstage totally exhilarated and felt he could have done the performance another six times over. Freddie had been under the impression that once he and Queen had done their bit and he and Brian had performed ‘Is This The World That We Created?’, he would be able to get off home. This was not to be. Just before the finale where everyone was expected to attend and sing, the performers were informed that they should, with respect, all go to the Wembley Conference Centre and remain there for an hour so as to allow traffic to die down. This would make the job of the police much easier. This enforced hiccup also allowed time for Freddie to meet up and chat for a long time – a good half-hour – with George Michael whom he admired. The feeling was definitely mutual. Freddie also chatted to Bowie for a while.