Freddie Mercury: An intimate memoir by the man who knew him best Page 10

  I have to emphasise that whoever their personal responsibility might be to, all these three foundation crew members were very fond of Freddie. I remember when the infamous Bill Reid was the boyfriend in attendance for one of the sessions in Montreux. Nobody liked him and nobody less than Crystal, Ratty and Jobby. Reid’s very presence put their backs up to the point where they took great enjoyment winding him up. Bill Reid had a penchant for cocaine which was in extremely short supply in Switzerland. It was actually unobtainable. The lads used to make an obvious show of passing little packets to each other when Reid was in their vicinity and in the end he was convinced that they were excluding him from what he perceived was their enjoyment of an illicit drug. Matters then escalated to the point where he could stand being taunted no longer and complained to Freddie about his crew’s cruel behaviour towards him.

  Freddie, knowing nothing was going on because nothing could go on, was immediately dismissive. “Oh! Don’t be so stupid!”

  Another wheeze the lads dreamed up was that each time that Bill Reid was anywhere near any of them, they would start singing the Alfred Hitchcock theme. This came about because they thought Bill looked not unlike the cartoon caricature seen at the beginning of the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

  In Montreux, everyone including the tape-op made teas or coffees or large vodka-tonics as the band members required. The studios themselves were very quiet. For this reason, contradictorily, the band were not comfortable recording there all the time in the early days of their ownership of the place, precisely because of the complete lack of excitement. However, in the latter days, all the band, and especially Freddie, loved recording there precisely because it was so quiet and there were no distractions; no one there to come and ogle, stare and point at him. More often than not, food would be sent out for or they would all go out and have dinner before returning for a late session. In Musicland in Munich there was a fixed kitchen and on more than a few occasions my culinary skills were called upon to rustle up a simple little three course dinner for ten!

  In Montreux, we stayed at the Montreux Palace Hotel which was at the opposite end of the town to the studios and it took us a good ten minutes to walk there. This gives you a good idea of both the size of Montreux and how quiet it was. Imagine Freddie walking for ten minutes across the centre of London! He did once try walking from Garden Lodge to Mary’s flat in Phillimore Gardens but actually only managed to get part way up the top end of the Earls Court Road before he had to turn back and come home because even in that short distance, people had started to come up and ask him for autographs. He was never allowed to make it.

  The band were already part of the Montreux municipal furniture as they were all recognised as being local businessmen and we know how much the Swiss like business.

  There was no technical reason why the recording schedule was split between Munich and Montreux. A change of scene was as good a reason as any. In Munich, we were staying at the Munich Hilton where there was the PPP and the HH, the Presidential Poofter Parlour and the Hetero Hangout. Guess who was billeted where? No particular fuss was made over our being there. It was all part of a day’s work, both for us and the hotel staff.

  As far as the creation of other tracks on Hot Space is concerned, ‘Staying Power’ sticks in my mind and illustrates the degree of international to-ing and fro-ing that can be involved in making an album. One night I was told that the following morning I was booked on the eleven o’clock flight to New York to take a slave/master tape of ‘Staying Power’ to Arif Mardin in the Atlantic building. I gave Arif the tape about six p.m. He worked overnight so that he could record the brass arrangement he had written in order that I should be able to leave the morning after to return it for further work by the band in Europe.

  Passing through the security metal-detector and the hand baggage X-ray on four separate occasions was no fun, trying to get officials to believe that what I was carrying was what it was and could not be exposed to possible electronic damage. “Please! It must be taken round the outside!”

  Needless to say, I never let the package out of my sight. In existence, there must still be somewhere a version of the track with the alternative words which Freddie composed for ‘Staying Power’… I think Fucking Power came into it somewhere. Follow the lyrics through and everywhere he sings, “I’ve got…”, substitute ‘fucking’ for ‘staying’!

  We were still living the itinerant life of tax exiles having toured to promote Hot Space. Part of the American leg of that tour involved the band’s use of a very special aeroplane. The plane which had been initially booked was found not to be airworthy and so a substitute was rented at very short notice from a very special place. The Lisa Marie was furnished by the Elvis Presley Organisation and we used this delightful personalised jet for several weeks. It was the closest Freddie ever got to meeting Elvis. It would have been his dream come true. At a later date, Lisa Marie actually gave Freddie a scarf which had once belonged to her father. It was a treasured possession, one which certainly did not end up in the loft!

  In summer 1983 we moved to Los Angeles for an indefinite stay. An initial period of eight weeks had been mooted for the start of the recording of the album which would become known as The Works.

  Brian, Roger and John, all being family men, had bought houses in Los Angeles to ease the emotional strains of being tax exiles. It was easier for them to be with their wives, partners and children and, obviously, these became the reasons why this next Queen album was being commenced in California. It was also Freddie’s gesture of goodwill to the others because previously they had always acquiesced to his choice of recording location.

  Our party, Freddie, Paul Prenter and I moved into a rented manybedroomed mansion at 649 Stone Canyon Road, not far from the Bel-Air Hotel. We had been led to believe that previous occupants of the gigantic bed in the master suite included Elizabeth Taylor which especially thrilled Freddie who was the ultimate movie buff. More recently, George Hamilton had resided there while filming Zorro The Gay Blade. Mr Hamilton had apparently learned to crack his whip by the same pool around which we were to be found lounging so often. Coincidentally, by the way, the house was pink.

  I was ensconced in the servants’ quarters which suited me admirably as basically it was my own little house attached to the big one. Little did I know that it was a foretaste of what would be happening five years later when I was living in the mews house attached to Garden Lodge. We only had a few days to settle in before the first recording session was booked at the Record Plant in Hollywood. All the usual Queen road crew were there to give some familiarity to these new surroundings and Mack was there to lend continuity amongst the American studio personnel.

  But a studio is a studio is a studio…

  As usual there were no songs pre-written. The band knew this had to be a ‘good’ album because Hot Space had been, shall we say, generally less well-received than some of their previous albums. I don’t know about any other bands, but with Queen, things followed a cycle. Product, reviews, sales, the reaction of both the public and the industry to their work. Jazz had been the first in the latest cycle. Sales had built up from the original Queen album but had dropped off at Jazz. They had built up again with Live Killers and The Game. These figures had continued rising until Hot Space, where sales fell off.

  Because America is the largest market for any rock band, the performance of an album in that territory is always taken as the touchstone as to whether an album is ‘good’. Freddie’s maxim was the same whether it was to do with a show or a record and that was, “You’re only as good as your last…” Whatever. He applied this literally to every one of his activities including the bedtime ones.

  The record-buying population on either American coast was always receptive to Queen as this population was comparably more densely packed than the remaining three quarters of the American public who live in the middle of the continent and often in scattered communities. Large mixed communities are more prepared t
o accept the unusual. It takes a lot more to upset and shock the packed cities. Queen has always been a very radical band. A lot of the Queen phenomenon had, after all, been designed from the outset to be more than slightly shocking. However, as the band were soon to find out, it does not do to cross the people of what is commonly termed The Bible Belt of middle America. It is largely due to this population’s rejection of the band – due to the horrified reaction to the video accompanying ‘I Want To Break Free’ – that Queen never toured America again. While Queen’s records were still bought, sales were never quite as big again until the most recent Queen album, Made In Heaven.

  Freddie’s composition ‘Keep Passing The Open Windows’ was originally created for the film Hotel New Hampshire. Anyone who has read the book will remember that the song’s title is a phrase of the dialogue which keeps cropping up. The film project had come about when the British film director Tony Richardson heard that the band was in Los Angeles. He approached Freddie and asked him if he would write some tracks for the film. ‘Keep Passing’ was intended to be the title track of the, as yet unmade, film. After hearing the finished track, although he liked it, Richardson decided that it would be easier – perhaps cheaper? – to use already composed classical music. Cheaper?

  We were not amused.

  “I’m not going to waste this track. It’s going on the album!”

  It was during this period that Freddie met up with Michael Jackson. Michael invited Freddie over to his house in Encino on Hayvenhurst Avenue. Freddie just couldn’t believe what he saw. It was a brand new Tudor mansion! Security was incredibly tight. There was a tower at the entrance in which a burly guard or two sat menacingly. We had arrived in a hired limo. Just the two of us. Each window casement of the house was framed with a string of fairylights. This house was the predecessor of NeverLand and housed Michael’s mini-zoo. He soon took us on a guided tour after he’d met us outside the house.

  Michael was accompanied by the man who engineered at the recording studio attached to the house. Michael was very proud of the place and it was really quite fun having him as the tour guide. Although this was at the time when Michael’s father was persona non grata, we were introduced to Michael’s mother and his two sisters, Janet and Latoya. Michael’s brothers of course all lived away from home with their own families.

  We then had a tour of the house and en route visited the bedroom, where there was an enormous fish-tank which contained a large snake. Freddie, who did not like snakes in the slightest, noticed with great relief that the lid was secured tightly and was also weighed down by numerous bricks. While Michael adored his snake, he obviously preferred to be safe than sorry.

  Freddie couldn’t help noticing that Michael’s bed was only a mattress and was on the floor.

  “Why do you sleep on the floor!” Freddie exclaimed. “You can afford a bed, can’t you?”

  “I prefer to be closer to the earth,” Michael replied in his soft, sing-song voice.

  “But you’re on the first floor!” Freddie retorted in amazement.

  One thing that impressed Freddie was the way in which Michael had his triple platinum disc award for the album Thriller just leaning up against the wall in the bedroom. Freddie thought it showed great style. As Freddie himself was never one to show off, he used his own gold and platinum awards rather as wall covering as opposed to the trophies which some people’s awards become.

  Included in the tour was the video library which from what I could see contained just about everything which had ever been released on video including recent music work. There was a room which had a large TV monitor specifically for screening these tapes. There was also a vast room that contained numerous arcade video games. You have to remember that these were the days when Moonbuggy was the latest craze. Michael and I played against each other on one of these machines, a primitive version of tennis. There was a black paddle and a white paddle and these were manoeuvred to hit a white spot, the ball, back and forth. Unintentionally, Michael assumed the white paddle and I took the black and he remarked profoundly that we’d done a race reversal. I thought that was very touching.

  Passing through the kitchen, Freddie finally plucked up the courage and asked Michael, “Would you mind if I have a cigarette?”

  I was surprised that it had taken Freddie so long to ask. At that time, he was smoking something in the region of forty cigarettes a day. I could tell from this that Michael was obviously someone of whom Freddie was in awe because I’d never known him be so reticent before. This only happened once more to my knowledge but all that is to come…

  “Yeah, sure,” Michael said but he looked a little perplexed, the reason being that he did not own an ashtray. Help was at hand in the shape of Michael’s mother who produced the lid of an empty preserve jar which Freddie could carry around with him.

  One area of the house which Michael was very proud of was the cinema which doubled as a chapel for church on Sunday mornings.

  Rather than Michael go to church, church came to Michael. I thought it was commendable that Michael had retained his faith to such an extent. It certainly was a very luxurious church with very comfortable seats set out in auditorium style.

  The tour then took us outside into the grounds. Freddie was not prepared for what was to come. It was summer in LA and so Freddie was wearing a pair of clean white jeans. But they weren’t to remain clean for long. We were taken through an extremely muddy enclosure where the llamas were kept. Freddie knew to be wary of them spitting at him but while avoiding their heads he couldn’t help but walk through the mud. So, the clean white jeans and sparkling boots soon became very brown indeed as he picked his way as daintily as he could on tiptoe, shrieking at the horror of the mudbath. Michael, in plain jeans and T-shirt, was obviously used to it. In another part of this beautifully landscaped garden, swans were swimming in a large pond.

  Eventually we got round to the purpose of our visit and ended up in Michael’s studio. State-of-the-art everything. Except… Given that Freddie and Michael were the only people in the studio, there was a limited amount of musical instruments which could be used. Freddie of course was on piano and for want of another musician, I ended up playing the toilet door!

  This came about when Michael wanted to do some work on a track that he had in mind that ultimately became ‘Victory’. As there was no drummer around – or drums come to that – and Michael was not happy with the sound that the drum machine gave, he decided that the noise produced by the toilet door slamming was much more suited to his requirements. I therefore spent five minutes slamming this door in the necessary rhythm. I also know for a fact that somewhere in the world, there is a tape of Freddie Mercury peeing in Michael Jackson’s toilet. Live! When I wasn’t banging studio doors, I went and watched videos with Janet and Latoya. Food was sent out for from a local deli at about two in the afternoon even with all the facilities of that huge kitchen. Cold cuts arrived for Freddie and I while Michael had melon. About ten different varieties of melon which, in America, is always a delicious selection.

  They worked on three tracks that afternoon. One, as I said, became ‘Victory’. I’m unsure as to the second which I think was called ‘State Of Shock’ but the third was a track of Freddie’s song ‘There Must Be More To Life Than This’ which Freddie later included on Mr. Bad Guy. Freddie only played the piano on that track while Michael sang, composing his own lyrics as he went along. In essence, they were both trying each other out, dare I say, for size. They worked for about five or six hours that day and we left about six in the evening. Freddie was already committed to a heavy schedule and it was left as a ‘Let’s get in touch soon’ job.

  In the car on the way home, the post-mortem began. Can you blame us if we dished a little?

  Freddie was impressed with the studio session and Michael’s attitude to work but thought his taste in houses left a little to be desired!

  “All that money and no taste, dear. What a waste.”

  So that was our day out in E
ncino.

  As far as our social life was concerned in LA, Freddie preferred going to the bars as opposed to the dancing clubs. We even ventured as far afield as Silverlake where Freddie first espied the man who appeared to have all-over tattoos. He was fascinated and it took him a while, over the course of a few weeks, to discover the full extent of the tattoos. He eventually found out that they were indeed all-over!

  He frequented the Spike, The Eagle, The Motherlode and all the usual bars of Boystown, that part of the city of West Hollywood bounded by Doheny and Santa Monica Boulevard. On Sundays, we would go to the tea dances at clubs like Probe and Revolver. It was harder for Freddie to go to these latter places as they played music videos and sooner or later, there’d be mother, in his full glory with his anonymous cover blown to shreds.

  One of the few record company people he got on with was the divine red-head Bryn Bridenthal who worked for Elektra Records which was still Queen’s record company before they moved to Capitol. Vince, a barman from The Eagle on Santa Monica Boulevard, was Freddie’s current beau. Even though it was only a short walk between the bars on this section of the strip, Vince came armed with a piece of equipment which Freddie just couldn’t resist and which must have been all of seven hundred and fifty cc! I’m talking motorbikes here.

  Freddie couldn’t resist a man with a bike. In Dallas, for example, we had gone out to one of the bars in a twenty-five foot stretch limo and Freddie had picked up one such man with a bike. He insisted on returning to the hotel on the back of the bike, while I, in regal splendour, was ensconced in the back of the limo trailing the accelerating bike all the way home.

  Freddie and Vince hit it off immediately and got on very well together. Vince was tall, chunky, with dark hair and a beard and I’m pleased to say that Freddie had found a friend. Vince wasn’t overtly impressed by Freddie’s fame. He wasn’t going to make any allowances for Freddie who always had to wait until Vince’s shift at the bar was over before they went on somewhere else. Freddie, of course, soon asked Vince to drop the bar work and come away with him on tour but Vince simply said no.