Freddie Mercury (8 page)

Concert video productions designed for retail was a concept still in its infancy. Music videos were of course being made but mainly for promotional purposes on television. This concert film project was another first for Queen.

This concludes my first and most epic tour with Queen. From here,
I’ll try to provide some of the highlights and the lowpoints of the years of the band’s performances that remained.

At the Hallenstadion gig in Zurich on April 16 and 17, the band stayed in one hotel, the Dolder Grand, a very ritzy affair on one side of the lake, while the rest of us stayed in another, a much more modest affair nearer the stadium. At this point, Freddie and I weren’t sharing the double bedroom suites. This was one of the very few occasions when the band party itself was split up.

While in Brussels on April 22 and 23, we travelled in the hotel lift with the American track athlete star Carl Lewis. Freddie could hardly contain his excitement. By the time he got to his suite, he was squealing after their exchange of grins. I don’t think that any of us up to that point realised how great was Freddie’s passion for athletics! From my point of view, I think Carl Lewis was actually quite pleased himself to be travelling in the lift with Freddie Mercury. I think the only thing that perhaps Carl envied Freddie was the fact that Freddie had the bigger suite on the higher floor in the hotel and neither of them knew, of course, of their shared interest in collecting fine crystal glassware. On April 24 at Groenoordhalle in Leiden, Freddie had no intention of spending the night in such a sedate town when there was so much more on offer in the nightlife of nearby Amsterdam. We had taken Freddie’s ‘going out’ clothes with us so there was no need to return to the hotel after the show. We went straight out and hit the bars of that liberal city.

In Wurzburg on May 9, we toured this amazing old German town. Freddie happened to want a haircut and he had flown Denny, the fashionable hairdresser from Sweeneys in Beauchamp Place, out from London. Denny ended up staying for about four or five days. One of the more expensive haircuts in the world. Hotels aren’t cheap! Freddie was nevertheless very happy with the haircut.

For someone so fussy about his hair, there was never any rhyme or reason behind Freddie’s choice of hairdressers. As any paranoid body with a double crown knows, a new hairdresser is made aware in great detail of the presence of the double crown, something which any decent hairdresser would notice immediately. I remember Freddie was once most offended when someone announced: “Oh! You’re losing your hair!”

“I’m not!” was the indignant retort. “I have a double crown!” When Freddie’s hair was long, he was constantly fighting the naturally
curly unruliness. Video shoots were an occasion when he would pay great attention to his hair and take full advantage of whoever happened to be doing hair and make-up on that day. He considered the fashion for short hair a great boon because it meant the end of ‘the dreaded curls’ and of course when he met Jim Hutton, it was a show of faith in Jim’s ability that Freddie – indeed the whole household – would have their hair cut inhouse. It was not the usual case of famous people going to famous hairdressers.

Wurzburg, very close to Hamelin, where the other Pied Piper performed, was a charming town. It was typical of German gothic fairytale magic and Freddie loved it.

In Vienna we stayed in an amazingly grand hotel near the Opera House. I really believe that the best of the Viennese hotels compare easily with the grand old dames of Paris. The performance at the Stadthalle was also filmed in its entirety as were many of the shows on this tour. The presence of film and television crews never fazed Freddie either before or during the show. Being filmed never meant that he was conscious he had to give a better performance because all his performances were simply the best he could do on that day anyway.

There’s a great difference in having a show filmed by television, however, and the required press photographs which were routinely taken at each concert. One of the strict instructions laid down by the band was that press photographers were allowed close access to them only for the first two songs because Freddie realised that he would have to perform for those cameras ranged at such close quarters to the stage which might have meant the larger audience missing out on some of his more usual elaborate gestures that would not have been capturable at such close range. When the tour moved to England, ‘Las Palabras De Amor’ came out as a single. It was Brian’s acknowledgment of the Spanish speaking countries. The band never played it on stage while I was there and the general enthusiasm displayed to the song’s release was at best underwhelming. Why this inoffensive little song never received the full backing of an accompanying video and the usual push is a mystery. Perhaps that old enemy, time, reared its ugly head again?

On June 5, the band were scheduled to play the huge Milton Keynes Bowl. Freddie’s lover at that point was a stolid and solid American from New Jersey by the name of Bill Reid. Not the tallest
man in the world, Freddie had met him in a bar in New York. In all of Freddie’s relationships in the time I knew him, his affair with Bill Reid was by far the most tempestuous and at times frighteningly violent. The day before the show, at home at Stafford Terrace in London, an argument developed from a cause that no one now remembers. While people were used to hearing shouting and screaming from the couple, they were aware that something was going on but raised voices were standard. Someone was around to jump in should it seem that the situation between Freddie and Bill was getting out of control.

This time, before anybody realised what was going on, Bill Reid had bitten Freddie’s hand between the thumb and forefinger. Freddie was in absolute agony and blood flowed from the teethmarks of the wound but he refused to have anything done about it. The Milton Keynes show was one of the biggest British shows Queen had ever done and so, in hindsight, I suppose it was only natural that some great emotional eruption would happen. As has been seen, and will be seen again, Freddie needed the catalyst of conflict to bring out his best performance. He hid to sing angry. The bigger the concert, the bigger the pain, though not always, thank heavens, physical. Paul Prenter and I did the best we could with the wound, cleaning it with TCP and any other antiseptic we could lay our hands on. I suppose the show was in the back of Freddie’s mind all the time but at this point, we were all worried as to whether the show would happen at all.

To get to the venue, we took off in a helicopter from Westland heliport. This was my first trip in a helicopter and this model seated about ten. The party included the four members of the band, Bill Reid, Paul Prenter, myself and some security. The others had gone on ahead by road. The helicopter was used because it was the only way to guarantee the band getting to Milton Keynes at all. They had been informed that traffic problems were enormous and there was no certainty that they would get there at all going by car.

The most noticeable difference between the helicopter and a plane of a similar size is the noise. Everybody’s asked to wear ear-mufflers to cut out some of the noise and it wasn’t being impolite as hearing people talk is just about impossible.

While in the car on the way to the heliport the frosty silence between Freddie and Bill was apparent, it somehow faded into insignificance during the flight which lasted no longer than half-an-hour, if
that. As we flew over the site, it was like looking down on an army of ants and in saying that I’m not being disrespectful to the crowd. You could feel the excitement building in the confined space of the helicopter both because of the journey itself – which, unless you are a helicopter pilot, isn’t a regular feature of anyone’s life – and also the band seeing all those people below them.

This was another of those ‘take-the-money-and-run’ shows. Literally, as the band were led off the stage with dressing gowns or towels round their shoulders, they were taken the two hundred or more yards straight into the helicopter which then started its engine and took off, whisking us away from the deafening applause and the blinding lights. There was, beneath us, this island of light in a sea of darkness. It’s a memory which has stuck with me.

The shorts’n’suspenders party after the show, back in London at the Embassy Club in Bond Street, was strange in that very few people who had been to the concert were there because of the distance of the show from London and the massive traffic jam which was caused on the M1 and A1 highways by the huge crowd leaving the Bowl at the same time.

We had to land at Heathrow due to a curfew on helicopter flights over London in the dark. This gave us plenty of time for Freddie to go home to Stafford Terrace, get changed into a pair of shorts and prepare himself generally for the party. While Freddie really enjoyed himself at the party, Bill sulked in dark corners. If he wasn’t the centre of attention, be it as a satellite moon to Freddie’s sun, he tended to be very depressive and morose. Finally, the other on-stage musicians in the support bands arrived. Most party guests got into the spirit and turned up in shorts or suspenders, although I think for some of them it was normal party gear anyway. The Rock’n’America Tour which followed on the heels of the Milton Keynes experience involved Billy Squier as the band’s support act. Freddie’s first meeting with him was unexceptional but it formed the basis of a friendship that was to last. Billy is one of life’s really nice guys. He and Freddie founded a mutual admiration society. Freddie liked Billy’s music so much that when Billy asked if Freddie would help out on a current album project, Freddie was more than happy to oblige.

Freddie loved being back in New York for July 27 and 28 but, as was always the way in metropoli, hated doing the shows. The people in large cities anywhere in the world were getting harder and harder
to please. On August 9, a few tickets, shall we say, had to be put on hold as the personal allocation of Bill Reid, native of New Jersey, for the band was playing the Brendon Burn Coliseum in Meadowlands. I think probably to counter any possibility of Bill’s support group overwhelming Freddie, Freddie brought all of his friends from New York down, Thor Arnold and the gang, any number upwards of twenty people. He didn’t intend to be intimidated by Bill Reid’s cronies on their home turf.

In Houston, August 20, Freddie returned to a place he was getting to like. He had learned quite a lot about it from Thor who was a regular visitor and Freddie intended spending a little bit more time there when his schedule allowed. A good time was to be had in Houston and Freddie was always up for a good time.

And talking of good times, on August 25, one of the band’s more accommodating fans arrived at the Mid-South Coliseum gig in Memphis, Tennessee. Because the band were not visiting her home patch of Little Rock, Arkansas, this lady arrived in the early part of the concert day with the intention of orally catering to the physical needs of as many people as possible involved in the show. It goes without saying that Freddie had a certain admiration for this woman’s perseverance, technique and capacity!

All I remember about the Kemper gig in Kansas City on August 28 is the hotel. There was something about hotels designed in certain eras like ships. The outside of this Kansas example was curved. It was one of the first I’d been in which had glass elevators on the outside of the structure.

If the prospect provided by the local bars wasn’t good, Freddie was always happy to have an impromptu party or, if one was already arranged, to attend it. In Kansas City, one such party was arranged in the largest suite of the hotel for band and crew and assorted backstage passholders, particularly those given out during the course of the evening to male and female alike and we all know what qualifications are required for that accolade! And if you can’t imagine, get a life!

Poor Billy Squier got trapped by Bill Reid asking him the most mundane, stupid questions that no one in their right mind would ask. It almost looked as though Bill Reid would rather have gone off with Billy than Freddie that night although as anyone knows, it would never even have occurred to Billy Squier who, in his sweet naiveté,
would have just assumed that Bill Reid was merely showing interest in his music. Anyway, I remember returning to the main room at one point to find a couple of the road crew had changed clothes with their respective escorts and were dancing up and down on a big table in black mini-dresses and high heels while the ladies were holding up over-large jeans and T-shirts.

All in a day’s touring.

By September 4, the band’s progress had arrived at the PNE Coliseum in Vancouver, Canada. As a treat, Freddie had flown over four of the posse of his New York Daughters. Perhaps Bill Reid felt left out. I don’t know, because Freddie spent all afternoon in the hotel suite’s sitting room having afternoon tea. This seemed quite appropriate as Vancouver is quite the most British of all the North American continent’s cities. So, it was Earl Grey tea, cucumber sandwiches and Victoria sponge all the way. Admittedly, after the novelty of the tea party wore off, Freddie then ordered half a dozen bottles of champagne and a bottle or two of Stolichnaya vodka from room service.

After the show, we went for a short tour of the city’s bars. Even though he had his in-house entertainment, “You never know what’s round the corner,” as Freddie said.

We got back to the hotel, Thor and Lee and the others went to their rooms. I went to my bedroom on my side of Freddie’s suite and Freddie went to his with Bill. It must have been an hour or two later when I heard thundering crashes and couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was going on. Then there was banging on my door and Freddie shouting on the other side, “Let me in! Let me in!”

When I opened the door, Freddie said, “You’re just going to have to let me sleep here tonight.” I was very curious and asked what was going on. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll tell you in the morning,” he replied. Whereupon, he fell immediately asleep.

The following day, we got up and I was about to walk in to the sitting room without shoes on when Freddie called to me and told me to first put something on my feet and to be very careful; I was then to find out why. As I walked into the sitting room, the whole plasterboard wall to my left was a mess of jagged holes and the floor all around was strewn with broken glass from all the champagne and vodka bottles whether full or empty and most of the glasses which had been used for drinking.