Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury (40 page)

Freddie was supernatural, thought Hillmore.

“He’d have people jumping out of cars at traffic lights, salivating over his limo, going ‘Freddie, we love you, you’re God!’ He and Queen had an entire organization pumping away and costing a fortune, just to make sure they were comfortable wherever they went—before they even did a day’s work. They’d never unpack. They’d never have to worry about excess baggage, or queuing at airports, or lining up for
their duty frees. It was VIP lounges and first-class transatlantic flights all the way, with someone to cater for every whim. Which all adds up to why I think it’s impossible for a star like Freddie to have a private life. In the end, all that is going to have an effect on even the most normal person’s sanity.”

Freddie’s widely reported “Brazilian boob” was in fact exaggeration on the part of the press. Strutting onto the stage in the girlie getup that he’d worn in the video for “Break Free,” Freddie was astonished by the reaction of the audience. When they started pelting the stage with cans, stones, and other rubbish, Freddie took this to be in protest. When a huge piece of cardboard hit Freddie, Brian retreated, taking several paces back until he was level with Roger’s drum riser. Freddie, however, stayed defiantly at the front of the stage and made the mistake of losing his temper. Misinterpreting what was happening, he taunted the crowds back. Although a number of journalists reported that the locals had adopted “Break Free” as an anti-dictatorship anthem and did not approve of it being sent up by a rocker in drag, this was not what the crowd were angry about.

Dave Hogan, snapping the event for the
Mail on Sunday
’s
You
magazine, described the occurrence as a “complete misunderstanding.”

“Usually, at gigs of that size, fans would all rush to be closest to the front,” Hogie said. “But on that occasion, the organizers had built such a high stage that those at the very front weren’t getting a look-in. They couldn’t see anything at all, it was happening above them. Some were trying to hoist themselves up to watch the band, but the security guys kept coming along and stamping on their fingers. Then Freddie came out as the transvestite in his wig and boobs, just as there was a surge of fans sitting on other fans’ shoulders to try and see. There was a flurry of stamping security guards, and an onslaught of angry fans picking up gravel from the ground in the stadium to chuck at the security guards in protest. No one was throwing stones at Freddie. On the contrary, they loved him. But it was written up as fans booing and stoning Freddie because of the way he was dressed. Imaginative reporting, let’s call it,
by journalists who were only trying to get a headline. Fair enough. But Freddie, I have to say, did his usual and went down a storm. He wasn’t stoned; I can vouch for that personally. I was right there in front of him. But why let the truth get in the way of a good story!”

Installed in great style in the presidential suite of Rio’s Copacabana Palace hotel, Freddie held court.

“His room was where all the American presidents had stayed,” remembers David Wigg. “He asked me up there for drinks. It rained heavily, and there was mud everywhere, but Freddie’s attitude was always ‘the show must go on.’ That night, I went to dinner at his invitation. Mary Austin was there—she always sat on his left, while his current boyfriend always sat on his right. Afterwards we all went off to a disco (Alaska, the most popular gay disco in Rio at the time). The night went on until about four a.m. I had to write my article for the
Express
, and thought I’d better get some sleep. I went over to Freddie to congratulate and thank him before I left. ‘Where are you going?’ he said. ‘I’m going to walk home to my hotel,’ I told him. ‘You jolly well aren’t!’ he replied. He snapped his fingers. ‘Steve! You take David home in
my
car, and don’t drop him outside, see him
in
to the hotel.’ Freddie was so well mannered, sensitive, and caring. All his family were like that—the parents, the sister, all of them. He was so old-school British, which was very unusual for a rock star.”

To Paul Prenter fell the dubious task of picking out men that Freddie might fancy. Few resisted the invitation “to join Freddie Mercury at his personal private party in his hotel suite.” Most onlookers agreed that Prenter’s duties had taken on a sordid dimension. Not only was he responsible for rounding up talent—usually young male prostitutes known as “taxi boys”—but for procuring copious quantities of alcohol and cocaine.

One former taxi boy, a blond, blue-eyed Jew named Patricio, joined Freddie at his private parties on several occasions. Having traveled from Buenos Aires to Rio to try his hand at acting, Patricio had fallen into prostitution through destitution and despair. He would make one more
significant journey in his lifetime: to Israel, to die of AIDS. Patricio, by his own admission, had a number of sexual encounters with Freddie.

“The boys who were chosen joined Freddie back in the privacy of his hotel suite, which was very luxurious and overlooked the hotel pool,” he remembered.

“First we drank, and then snorted some cocaine—there was a little low, wooden table with the lines of cocaine already chopped out, all prepared. Next, we’d shed our clothes and enter Freddie’s room, where he would greet us, wearing just his dressing gown. Throughout proceedings, Paul (Prenter) remained fully clothed. Freddie engaged in sexual activity with each in turn, in front of the others. When he was tired, Prenter paid the boys and asked us to leave. Freddie was always passive. When you start being gay, you tend to be active. But if you are popular, and everyone wants to go with you, you turn passive, as it’s the easiest way to have fun. To act like “the man” is very tiring. Most gay men come to prefer the ‘female’ role.”

Freddie had grown addicted to casual sex. According to Patricio, the star was not even turned on by it most of the time. The wilder the evening got, he said, the more impassive Freddie appeared.

“He did not even seem to be enjoying himself. Just going through the motions.”

Many such parties were held down in Rio, all concluding the same way. Freddie’s quests for kicks had exceeded what he could handle. He continued to crave the outrageous, if only for its own sake. His relentless indulgence in all manner of excess proved one thing: that he was tired. He could have anything money could buy, but he had to work harder and harder for pleasure. Loveless sex was all very well, but the excitement had faded. It is hard to imagine that he wouldn’t have despised himself at times for such self-indulgence, but he seemed driven to it. He could not stop himself. Something, soon, would have to give.

“When Paul and Barbara were both around,” admits Peter Freestone, “it became a competition as to who could provide the more outrageous spectacle, until it all reached burn-out point. Freddie had long
since lost interest, but he was too polite to say anything. He’d always had such enormous fun doing those things before, and of course people didn’t expect him to have changed.”

A huge performers’ party was held on 12 January at the Copacabana Beach Hotel. It was a rowdy affair, televised to millions across South America, during which even normally dignified Brian ended up in the pool. Queen took to the stage again on 19 January, to close the festival. Queen had made history yet again, and not for the last time.

The band arrived in Auckland on 5 April for the start of their New Zealand tour. They were met by anti-apartheid protesters still inflamed by the Sun City fiasco, who demonstrated at the airport and outside their hotel. Freddie barely noticed, preoccupied as he was by the UK release of his second solo single, taken from the debut solo album which many believed would never see the light of day. Although the record made Number Eleven at home, it made zero impact in America. All four band members began to confront their worst fear, that their reign in the States might actually be over.

There was further disruption on the New Zealand tour in the shape of Freddie’s old mucker Tony Hadley. Spandau Ballet had recently completed a two-month tour of Europe and were in for a round Down Under. Promoter problems had resulted in the New Zealand leg being canceled, with loss of earnings for many involved. In Auckland, Tony was under strict instructions from his manager Steve Dagger to lay low. This stance did not come naturally to Tony—especially not with his drinking pal Freddie in town.

“It was rare indeed for Freddie to go on stage drunk,” said Spike Edney. “Queen’s first gig at Auckland’s Mount Smart stadium, after a ridiculous afternoon spent with Hadley, was one of the few times.”

Tony turned up to surprise the band. “I checked into their hotel, rocked up at the sound check, had a chat, then Freddie and I went back to the hotel together, and wound up in the bar for a drink. The next thing, Freddie’s saying ‘Let’s get some Stoli.’ We sat putting the world to rights, exchanging rock ’n’ roll war stories, while we did the whole
bottle of vodka. Neat. Then he was saying, ‘Come on, darling, up to my room, I’ve got a bottle of vintage port.’

“By then, we were both off our heads,” winces Tony.

“Freddie then says, ‘You’ve
got
to come on stage tonight.’ ‘I don’t want to intrude,’ I said, although I was up for it. ‘No no no,’ he insisted, ‘it’ll be great.’ He got on the phone to Roger and John. ‘Tony’s coming on stage with us tonight, OK, darling? Wonderful.’ It seemed fine by them. ‘The only problem we might have is Brian,’ Freddie confided. ‘He tends to get a bit funny about these things.’ So he called Brian and came on all diplomatic: ‘Brian, darling, Tony’s coming on stage with us tonight and we’re going to do “Jailhouse Rock”—OK? Tony, love, Brian’s on, and he’s absolutely fine about it.’ Then I remembered. ‘I don’t know the bloody words, mate,’ I told him. ‘Never mind,’ said Fred, all jolly, ‘I don’t fucking know them either!’ ”

The drunken pair sat down to try and learn the song. Half the words they made up, and the rest they guessed. Then Tony staggered off to get some sleep.

“I got down the gig that night, and everybody was going to me, ‘What the hell have you done to Freddie! He’s off his head!’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘we’ve been boozing big-time.’ They all frowned at each other. ‘But Freddie
never
boozes before he goes on stage!’ someone said.”

Never before had a harder time been had of it, getting Freddie ready to go on stage.

“At the time, everyone was wearing those Adidas boxing boots with lots of laces, which tie up quite high—because they feel good and are great for running and jumping about on stage,” Spike says.

“That night, Freddie was laid out on the sofa backstage. Tony Williams, one of the wardrobe assistants, and Joe Fanelli were dressing Fred together, because Fred was too out of it to do it himself. They’d got his gear on, and then his boots. But when he stood up and went to walk forward, he couldn’t. The announcement came: ‘Tape’s starting now!’—by which time we were all supposed to be at the side of the stage. And
Freddie went, ‘You stupid c***s, you’ve put my tights on back to front!’ The next moment he was lying on his back like a beetle with his legs in the air, Tony and Joe going like maniacs trying to undo these laces, so that they could get his boots and his tights off. They eventually got everything back on the right way, and we went hurtling down the stairs, the intro tape having finished and all this smoke filling the stage. We made it by the skin of our teeth.

“Fred, bless him, was so out of it that he was going to fly,” adds Spike. “He was ad-libbing, making things up, singing crap, for about the first half hour of the show. Roger had his head down, couldn’t look at anyone. Brian’s staring wildly, like, ‘What the fuck’s going on here?’ By the time we’d made it halfway through the show, Freddie had sobered up a bit. It went great after that, amazingly. Until Hadley came on.”

Smarting from a telephone conversation with his manager, who was angry to hear that Tony was keeping anything but a low profile, Tony was dying to get in front of an audience.

“I was standing at the side of the stage while Queen were playing, still trying to remember the bloody words to ‘Jailhouse Rock,’ ” he laughs.

“Freddie came across and draped himself over Spike’s piano, hissing, ‘Hadley, you bastard, I am so pissed,’ in front of forty-five thousand people. There I was, mumbling away to myself like an idiot, with a few key words scrawled on my hand: ‘wardens . . . county jail . . . party . . . jailhouse . . . rock.’ I couldn’t get the lyrics into my head. Eventually, Freddie went ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Tony Hadley!’ The crowd went crazy, I rushed on and launched into the bop-bop bit of ‘Tutti-Frutti.’ Wrong song! And Freddie’s going, ‘Yeah! All right!’ and Brian’s going, ‘What the fuck is
this
?’ The rest of them were just pissing themselves. Freddie and I didn’t care, we were just giving it loads. Simulating sex with Brian’s guitar while he was playing it, the lot.”

The Melbourne gigs were sedate by comparison. Four nights at Sydney Entertainment Centre towards the end of April, to be followed
by six shows in Japan, were rendered the more enjoyable by news that Elton John was in town. Freddie, Elton, and Roger wasted no time in painting the tiles pink, in advance celebration of Freddie’s solo album.

“Freddie Mercury could out-party me, which is saying something,” commented Elton. “We’d be up for nights, sitting there at eleven in the morning, still flying high. Queen were supposed to be catching a plane, and Freddie would be like, ‘Oh fuck, another line, dear?’ His appetites were unquenchable.”

The band’s final show in Sydney happened also to be Columbia Records’ release date of
Mr. Bad Guy
. Again, Freddie was wearing his heart on his sleeve in his songwriting. A flash and funky departure from the original Queen sound, the most telling tracks were “Living On My Own,” “There Must Be More to Life Than This,” and the plaintive ballad “Love Me Like There’s No Tomorrow,” which he had written for Barbara Valentin.

Although the album went in at Number Six in the UK, it was an unmitigated disaster in America. While “I Was Born to Love You” scored reasonably, “Made in Heaven” went nowhere—despite the compellingly pompous promo video directed by David Mallet. Presented as a ballet performance on a formal curtained stage, it featured Freddie in red and black bondage gear and a flimsy red cape atop a huge rock. Negligibly clad ballet dancers climbed up the rock and all over each other to get to him, until it fractured to reveal a beautiful blue revolving Planet Earth.