Freddie Mercury: The Biography (30 page)

‘Freddie was always surrounded, even at parties in his own home, but what I did notice at these affairs was that he seemed
to have to live out the whole fantasy all the time. He had lots of people looking after him, ready to do his bidding at all
times – he carried the “star thing” into his private world, too. I mean, you just knew that he’d never, in a million years,
ever do the washing-up himself, for instance. He loved the mystique, I think.’

The care that Mercury took to ensure the excellence of his intimate dinner parties left an impression on Mike Moran. ‘There
was nothing cheap about Freddie,’ he declares. ‘It always
had to be the finest champagne and food, and his attention to detail was amazing. He’d personally triple-check everything.
I’ve been at his house, about to leave to come back later for dinner, and found Freddie fussing about the table, checking
place settings, china and cutlery and getting himself into a state. I’d say to him, “Hey, Fred. It’s only us,” to which he’d
reply, “Oh, that’s not the attitude” – and carry on fussing.’

Through working together so closely Mercury and Moran developed a strong bond. ‘He was an absolute sweetheart – fab, considerate
and kind, and a very loyal friend,’ says Moran. ‘He was an intensely private man and kept about him only a very small circle
of friends. My wife and I were fortunate to have been two of those. We went to all his anniversaries, like birthdays, and
never missed his Boxing Day dinner parties.

‘In lots of ways he was a happy man. He thoroughly enjoyed his beautiful home and the company of his friends, loved his big
garden and, of course, his cats. When Tiffany, the long-haired Persian, died Freddie was absolutely heartbroken. He was a
highly intelligent man too. He read avidly and had a vast knowledge of art and history.’

These sentiments are echoed by Tim Rice, who says, ‘I found Freddie a very sophisticated and charming man. I mean some evenings
at his house were sort of boisterous – he was a great entertainer in private, too – but he was always jolly and eternally
generous. And he had a great knowledge of artistic things, of Japan in particular, but art in general, and was an absolutely
fanatical follower of opera.’

Socialising at home was about the limit to Mercury’s strength that summer. Although he did slip abroad for a holiday, he avoided
his usual haunts and headed instead for the tranquillity of a rented lakeside house in Montreux. There he spent hours watching
the television or taking slow walks along the shore with Jim Hutton. At home he stepped up his now regular visits to his parents,
too. Because of their son’s rejection of their way
of life, relations between them had been strained for a long time. Parsees consider homosexuality unclean, and Mercury’s reputation
for wild, decadent behaviour had caused a rift. But his family remained very important to him, and he helped them whenever
he could. Healing the breach, he obtained the finest medical treatment money could buy when, at one point, Bomi Bulsara took
seriously ill.

His parents occasionally came to visit at Garden Lodge. This was a world of splendour away from the same modest semi in Feltham
from which Mercury had gone to school. They refused his frequent offers to buy them a new home. During these visits a charade
was staged for their benefit, whereby Jim Hutton was introduced as the gardener, and there was no hint of their true relationship.
No word of his illness, at least at this stage, reached them either. Although with their son’s weight loss and the marks on
his skin, even if they didn’t specifically know what was wrong, it must have become clear to them that he was not well.

Mid-October would finally see the release of
Barcelona
and also the single ‘The Golden Boy’. Before that, on the 8th, Mercury took part in what would be his last live performance.
La Nit was a huge open-air festival, held in Barcelona, on the Avinguda de Maria Cristina – the equivalent of the Mall in
London – that would officially launch the four-year run-up to the 1992 Olympic Games. Mercury and Montserrat Caballé were
to perform with the Barcelona Opera House orchestra and choir on an enormous stage set in front of the beautiful fountains
in Castle Square. For organiser Pino Sagliocco and Tony Pike, there to enjoy the spectacle, it was a night to remember – and
not just because, at the last moment, Mercury had to mime.

‘Freddie was anxious about the whole thing,’ says Pino Sagliocco, ‘but he had worked on the project with Mike for a whole
year, and he admired Montserrat so much that he never
stopped saying that this was a dream come true for him. He was possessed about it. Everyone had thought I was a lunatic matching
these two, and people made attacks on why Montserrat was doing this, but there was nothing wrong with cross-culture. It worked.
Freddie was an extravagant personality. Montserrat is recognised as a diva, but Freddie was also a diva. Both were great artistes
and totally inspired.

‘I never saw anyone with such belief as Freddie. He was professional all the way and he always delivered 100 per cent. Not
many have the drive to make something happen. But he was unique in that way, and it was a privilege and a pleasure to work
with him. For me, having built this Ibiza ’92 show, it was great to have Montserrat and Freddie open it – all that power of
music. It was a piece of art.’

Although Sagliocco describes La Nit as magical, putting on the actual show, he admits, was hell: ‘The universal feeling in
my camp when it finished was, thank God! I financed it with mainly Japanese money. I assembled the artistes and had great
difficulties in sorting problems out, like one performer at the last moment would refuse to go on stage with another and so
on.’

Among the other participants in the colossal event were Jerry Lee Lewis, Dionne Warwick and José Carreras, as well as Rudolph
Nureyev – who also had AIDS. With this being Mercury’s first public appearance for a long time – and the rumours rife about
him – some sections of the press were in their element, trying to link Mercury with Nureyev. ‘The stories were bullshit!’
confirms Sagliocco. ‘Freddie and Rudolph were never involved. They never even said hello.’

Mercury and Montserrat Caballé were to close the show with two songs, but the nearer the time came to take the stage, the
edgier he got. Tony Pike recalls that ‘Freddie had been extremely nervous earlier when he was introduced to the King and Queen
of Spain, anxious about how he looked etc. As time
marched on, Peter Freestone was the only person he allowed near him for about the last half an hour. We kept out of his way,
but I caught sight of him – and he was pacing up and down dressed in his suit, deep in thought and lipping various phrases
from the songs.’

It is impossible to tell whether it was nerves or ill health, but just prior to joining Caballé on stage, Mercury complained
of a sore throat and insisted that they should mime. With two such experienced stars, this might have worked. But, much to
Mercury’s great annoyance and embarrassment, a technical hitch made the tape play too slowly and so mismatch the lip-sync.
His friends maintain that either no one really noticed, or they didn’t care.

‘It was a fabulous setting in the old place,’ says Pike, ‘and a magic moment in entertainment when, just as Freddie hit that
last “Barcelona!”, the sky exploded with fireworks.’

While Pino Sagliocco maintains, ‘I honestly never found out why it was suddenly to be mimed. The song was very complicated
and to perform at that level perhaps it made it easier, but no one cared because the occasion was so wonderful.’

During Mercury’s brief stay there, Pino Sagliocco was among those who could not help but notice the change in his friend;
the dark marks on his face, now hard to disguise despite the heavier make-up. ‘Freddie always showed integrity,’ he says,
‘even when he was dying. But there was a feeling about him right then of being totally closed in in his own world. He wanted
to write and record, and not tell the world his troubles. Perhaps he feared coming up against prejudice. And, anyway, no artiste
wants to be seen that way.’

Jim Hutton had accompanied his lover to La Nit. Says Sagliocco, ‘He and Freddie were very happy together. They were established
and a really close couple. Jim was like a wife to Freddie, and Freddie loved him dearly.

‘I would say that Freddie was too generous to some people.
When someone becomes a huge star, sometimes people around the star abuse him. And it’s often they, and not the star himself,
who is trouble. But Jim was never like that. He never used any power because of his position. He always discreetly kept in
the background.’

After miming his performance that night, Mercury then compounded the speculation around him by cancelling his press conference.
One of the few media people he did speak to was Simon Bates back in London. ‘Freddie rang me,’ Bates says, ‘and we talked
on the phone about “Barcelona”. He was very ill then, but again it wasn’t something I asked about. It was definitely not an
area to intrude upon.’

From that point on, life for the remainder of the year seems to have become increasingly stressful. Perhaps the strain of
having appeared in public – or of not having been able to perform – had brought his weakness home to him. That Mercury was
a natural showman was true during his long quest for success, and remained so as he reigned supreme at the top of his profession.
The fact that his doctors had diagnosed his condition as terminal didn’t remove any of that overnight. He was just not physically
capable of performing any more and had bleakly been forced to acknowledge this. But that is not to say that coping, emotionally,
was easy.

Leaving aside for the moment the reality that he was having to face the prospect of a horrible and premature death, no one
who had received so much adulation for so long – who’d derived such intense nourishment from it – could suddenly switch it
off. He said himself that performing live was so much in his blood that he would be vulnerable without it. And he had to have
felt its lack with an acuteness bordering on agony. His distress was causing stormy rows with Jim Hutton that shattered the
illusion of tranquillity at Garden Lodge. Some of the arguments were quite vicious, and most ended in tears. The strain of
keeping his illness to himself was clearly too much for him.

It hadn’t helped, either, that he had severed all contact with some of his friends, only to miss them terribly. The closest
friend he had been avoiding for months now was Barbara Valentin, the person he had said he felt best understood his chosen
way of life. But that was one battle he was about to lose.

‘When Freddie had suddenly quit living in Munich I knew he was worried that he had HIV,’ said Valentin. ‘I knew he went hurrying
back to London to hide – but there was nowhere to hide. Soon after the special concert with Montserrat in Ibiza, I began to
see less and less of Freddie. I rang Garden Lodge often, but he would not take my calls. That Christmas I tried again, but
this time was told by someone there to stop calling, and, I thought, OK. Fuck this.

‘But, then, about eight months later my door bell rang one day, and it was Freddie. He just stood there and said, “I can’t
stay away from you. I can’t live without you in my life. Take me in and take care of me.” And I did. He was in a lot of emotional
pain, and he
had
to work out a way to live with his illness. But it was very hard.’

By January 1989 Queen’s album was finished. Because of past rows over money, Mercury suggested that it would be fairer collectively
to credit all tracks to the band. And that, equally, the royalty earnings should be a four-way split. Work was due to start
on a new album, which would mean frequent trips for Mercury to Mountain Studios in Montreux. In the meantime his latest solo
single, prophetically entitled ‘How Can I Go On’, had just been released. It had barely scraped into the top 100 but the star
little cared.

The progression of his illness meant that the marks on his skin, where visible, as on his face, were becoming harder to hide
with make-up alone. So, to help his disguise, he grew a beard. Although not ready to share his troubles with anyone apart
from the two or three friends who were sworn to secrecy, Mercury was thinking ahead. He had decided gradually to start
utilising his vast wealth. One of his first decisions was to make huge donations to various cat sanctuaries. He would later
establish certain close friends in substantial new homes.

The first single from Queen’s new album was released on 2 May, a belter entitled ‘I Want It All’. Its video had been shot
in Pinewood Studios without an audience and was the first public recognition of how Mercury was drastically changing. Dressing
conventionally in a collar and tie and sporting designer stubble proved little distraction for the shock of realising how
much thinner he was – his face was gaunt and almost haunted under the studio make-up. He sang as powerfully as ever, though,
and despite the fact that he was clearly much less energetic, his delivery remained defiant. The single charted instantly
at number three, giving the band their highest entry to date.

Ten days later
The Miracle
followed. It was a stylish album complemented by an inspired sleeve design, the work of artist Richard Gray. Using advanced
computer graphics, Gray had created a striking effect of fusing the band’s four faces. Working on their new album, in Montreux,
Queen got together one night in a restaurant. Taylor, Deacon and May had been told no more of their lead singer’s illness
than any outsider, but clearly each harboured his own suspicions. It seems they anticipated with a sense of foreboding that
their friend was about to give them some devastating news. Perhaps he had intended to confide in them, feeling the pressure
recently of the burden of keeping his illness a secret. But, although Mercury admitted to his friends for the first time that
he was not well, he shied away from revealing the truth.

Not able to tell the band, Mercury certainly wasn’t about to confess days later, when for the first time in nearly ten years,
Queen were interviewed together on radio. It was DJ Mike Read’s coup, and for an hour he subjected all four to a question-and-answer
session. When the question arose about why Queen no longer toured, Mercury took the blame by saying
that he wanted to change the cycle of album-tour-album-tour. For many, it was an unsatisfactory reason, and as time passed
the queries kept on coming.