Freddie Mercury (38 page)

The band would go out socially together when they were, for example, recording and occasionally they would go out to a nightclub together but usually their relationships stayed within the work aspect and very rarely strayed outside. If any of the band as individuals had a party, the other members of Queen were invited and would attend but there was never a regular social relationship between the members of Queen like, once a week, let’s all go out and eat… I have an idea that things developed in this way after the advent of Paul Prenter because after this, Freddie had someone on tap who could always accompany him to the bars and clubs. When Freddie had someone permanently in his life, he would be more likely to socialise with the
other band members because he wouldn’t be looking for a sex partner for the night.

To conclude this section, I have decided to recount what I can class as my personal memories of five of the most significant moments of my life with Freddie. I list them in no particular order except the final episode, which I count the most and unforgettably important. There was a photo session in Ibiza which for some reason sticks out in my mind, a hasty packing of bags in New York, the launch of the
Barcelona
album at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the gala concert attended by HRH Prince Andrew and then there was the fifth…

The photo session in Ibiza took place at the same time as the Ku concert. The shoot happened in the grounds of the hotel in which Montserrat was staying on the newly developed port area. Both Freddie and Montserrat were to be presented with replicas of the ship Santa Maria by the organisation which was in charge of the quincentennial celebrations regarding Columbus’ discovery of the New World. Freddie took four or five different outfits because he couldn’t make up his mind what to wear. His were a combination ranging from the very informal – white jeans and various brightly coloured shirts – to the formal, duck-egg blue and green suits. One he’d bought in Japan and the others had been made by David Chambers. There were a variety of shirts which all accessorised the suits varying from strongly and brightly coloured to white. Five different ties completed the wardrobe. Just goes to show a lot of hard work goes in to achieve the casual, thrown-together look. Hardly a case of, “I just picked the first thing I found in the wardrobe!”

It was to be one of the more casual shoots which had been set up to provide photographs for the promotion of the
Barcelona
album and single and also to give this Columbus Group some focus of identity.

As usual, Freddie was nervous as he always was on any occasion when he was to meet Montserrat. It was something I always found strange. It would take him only moments to get over any nervousness he might have felt but it was always the same scenario. His nerves would show in his talkativeness in the car going to the rendezvous and this’d happened each time he went to a photo session, a recording session… anything. But he was adept at making the atmosphere immediately as relaxed and happy as possible although it was always a bit of a performance and inevitably, at the end of any such get-together,
he would say, “Well I wasn’t really worried about it in the first place,” which was really his way of saying to himself, “What
was
I so worried about?”

It was the setting, the Spanish sunshine… The formal pictures which were this session’s precursor had been taken by Terry O’Neill and were used specifically for the
Barcelona
album cover and while it was an enjoyable enough session, it was indoors and was a formal photo shoot. The Ibiza one was so much more relaxed. Montserrat had brought various floral patterned frocks in many colours but the ones they settled on were brown flower patterns on a white background. If Montserrat is known for another passion other than her family and her music it is shopping! Something both Freddie and she had in common and a subject about which they would always compare notes. Rooms had been arranged for Freddie in order that make-up and hair could be done easily. Montserrat was staying there anyway.

It was such a happy day. It was fairly early by Freddie’s standards. It was only champagne that flowed. It just glows in my memory as a very happy day.

The incident concerning the hasty packing of bags occurred early one morning in New York. Just prior to this episode, Queen had been touring in South America and had finally arrived in Venezuela. Just before the tour started Freddie found himself very much attracted to a barman called Richard in The Works on the Upper West Side but for all Freddie’s efforts, the man remained immune to the Mercury charm offensive. Out of sight, out of mind was never really one of the phrases which summed up Freddie’s attitude. Out of sight, to the back of the mind was more apt. In Caracas, Freddie found himself much drawn to a swarthy Latino called, I think, Eduardo who kept Freddie occupied for a couple of nights. Just as we were about to leave Caracas, Freddie promised Eduardo a trip to New York so that he could come and see Freddie. Due to Eduardo’s commitments, he wasn’t able to make the trip for a couple of days until the following weekend and this delay eventually proved to be his downfall.

On arriving back in New York, battle plans were drawn up by The Master. Richard from The Works was going to capitulate. Only total surrender would suffice. A visit to The Works had become a regular event on our nightly schedule and on each visit Freddie and Richard were beginning to get on better and their friendship developed. On
the Friday night, Eduardo duly arrived as planned and we went out to eat. Eduardo announced that he was feeling very, very tired. He had been working all week and had come straight to the plane from work. Freddie told him, “That’s fine, dear. Get the car to take you back to the hotel and I’ll just go for a little drink and I’ll be back soon.”

Well, this little drink took us of course to The Works. At this point, I really believe that Freddie fully intended to return to Eduardo at the Hotel because he wasn’t a hundred per cent sure what would happen with Richard but Richard picked this night to call Freddie’s bluff and accept his invitation to come home with him. Suddenly,
panic!!

There was no way that Freddie was going to let Richard get away which was a distinct possibility had Freddie deterred him and postponed the date. But what could he do? I suppose the easiest thing was to book another room at the Berkshire Place but Freddie’s mind didn’t work like that. He figured he was already paying out a thousand dollars a night for the suite he had so why should he pay out more? Eventually, at four or five in the morning, we came up with the following plan. As Eduardo had a return ticket, I was deputed to book him on the first flight back to Caracas. Then, back at the suite in the Berkshire Place, while Freddie and Richard were uncontrollably giggling in the kitchen, I had to go and wake Eduardo in the bedroom with the flimsiest of excuses. My script read that Freddie had met up with friends and had gone to Connecticut because of some work that was going to be happening. Eduardo hadn’t unpacked too much and so after his bags were together, I escorted him downstairs to Freddie’s waiting car which took him back to the airport.

I had never in one way felt so bad about the job in hand in my life although on the other hand, I couldn’t help laughing to myself at the sheer farce of the situation. Talk about bedroom doors banging. It was a scenario worthy of Neil Simon as the master wrote in
California
or
Plaza Suite.
It could have been this little stint in the kitchen which gave Freddie the idea for the kitchen in Garden Lodge because he had the same style of kitchen cabinet built and installed, the ones made by Boffi in lacquered oxblood.

I have to observe that the said Richard’s surname might have played some small part in this episode. His surname was Dick and Richard predictably became known as Dick-Dick. He and Freddie had great fun together while their passion lasted but it was no great love affair.

And poor Eduardo!

I have to mention here the odd habit which developed during private, non-Queen travel of always missing a flight we had quite seriously booked with all intentions of catching it. All very well except that our partying schedule usually outlasted the curfew which we would have to have stuck to in order to have caught the flight. I don’t think we ever caught the first flight we had booked. My first job on returning to the hotel early in the morning was always to rearrange the flight plans.

The third event in my litany concerns the launch of the
Barcelona
album in Britain which took place one lunchtime in the Crush Bar at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Montserrat had flown in just for the day and we collected her en route from the Inn On The Park where she had booked in to change her clothes. Once again, the event might have been a military manoeuvre. Timing was all-important.

I think the occasion was important for me because the Opera House was where I was working when I first met Freddie but this time, I wasn’t merely a backstage worker I was one of the causes of the event that was taking place front-of-house. I had worked at the Opera House for four years and very rarely in that time had I experienced anything to match the feeling I had when I walked with Freddie and Montserrat up the famous red-carpeted stairs to the Crush Bar with flash bulbs popping at our every step. It’s so hard to describe this feeling but I wish everybody could feel it at least once in their lives. I felt that I had come a very long way.

I think it was a landmark day for Freddie too. It was as though the Opera establishment had opened its ranks a little to let him in. I don’t think he would have ever deemed that they’d accepted him but it was a huge step for Mercury even though only a small step for opera.

Inside the Crush Bar, the scenario was like King Arthur and Queen Guinevere being shown to The Round Table where both of them fielded questions hurled at them by the assembled press. There was TV footage taken of the event and considering where and what the occasion was, both Freddie and Montserrat took it in their stride.

It was as though Freddie had just ‘popped in’ to a sitting room. He looked quite relaxed in the pale blue suit. I suppose this press launch was a wonderful apex to a project which had started as something which, when finished, had it never even reached the ears of the public would not have mattered to Freddie. This was his totally
selfish project which he did only for himself but now he had the eventual added bonus that his public would have a chance to share his pleasure.

The Crush Bar seems to feature in my high points of Freddie’s life as much as it did in his own. For me, I suppose, there was always that added extra dimension of my perspective over time. Then I was invisible and backstage, now I was sharing a feted and celebrated company in the spotlight. The only occasion on which I and my co-workers had in the past been acknowledged on stage was on the occasion of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee when after the curtain call all the backstage staff were summoned on stage to be applauded not only by the house but by seventeen members of the British Royal Family whom we met afterwards on stage behind the curtain. Upon shaking hands with Her Majesty, she asked benignly, “And what do you do here?”

Time stopped still. The Royal Family departed and we were left milling around on stage bathed in a really tangible euphoria. We in turn were just about to leave when Princess Margaret returned to the stage and asked, “Has anyone seen my mother?”

Her Royal Highness was then escorted to the back of the stage where Her Majesty was regaling the assembled stage hands with stories of horse racing. It really was a most fantastic event.

Mine and Freddie’s combined royal event concerned Prince Andrew whom I had met several times before as he was a regular visitor to the opera and the ballet as was I, both being friends of the principal dancer Wayne Eagling. Freddie and I were part of a group that attended a big gala night at The Royal Opera House. Freddie’s biggest quandary this night wasn’t what he should wear but what he should do to entertain himself between the end of the gala and making his entrance, fashionably late, to the party afterwards in the Crush Bar. The fashionably late bit was accounted for by Freddie’s leaving the Opera House and driving round the block a couple of times before making the suitably grand entrance. It was in the summer, strawberries and cream were much in evidence and Freddie was introduced via Wayne Eagling to Prince Andrew. It was their first meeting. To break the ice, Prince Andrew was absolutely charming and fished out the end of Freddie’s silk scarf which had draped itself accidentally into Freddie’s glass of champagne.

Andrew wrung out the sodden scarf and they both laughed. They
continued chatting for a while during which time HRH finished his plate of strawberries and cream. Freddie noticed HRH’s discomfort at being unable to politely rid himself of his plate. At this point, Freddie turned round to me and said, “Phoebe, get rid of that plate!”

Prince Andrew looked a little taken aback and said, “Did you just call him Phoebe? I know him as Peter.”

At this point, it was Freddie’s turn to look taken aback. I think all he could utter was, “Oh!”

I duly relieved HRH of his empty pudding plate. It was true that Freddie invited Prince Andrew to Heaven along with others of the company after the party but HRH declined. Freddie and troop duly left for Heaven. I believe it was on this occasion that one of the ballerinas lay down and cavorted in the empty coffin which was a feature in one of the leather bars at Heaven, much to the chagrin of other patrons. You somehow got the impression that no one was supposed to enjoy themselves in these sorts of clubs. You weren’t supposed to be seen to be having a good time.

Through Wayne Eagling, Freddie had attended the performances of quite a few ballets. Of everything he saw, his favourite was Kenneth MacMillan’s masterpiece for the male dancer,
Mayerling.
Traditional ballets almost always centre around the ballerina and this was the first full length ballet which demanded an inordinate amount of stamina from the male principal. While Wayne wasn’t the first cast as Crown Prince Rudolf, as far as Freddie and I were concerned, his was the best portrayal. Freddie even seriously considered sponsoring a run of performances of
Mayerling
but as soon as ballet officialdom entered into private patronage, it became too involved and centred upon him and he lost interest.