Freddie Mercury: An intimate memoir by the man who knew him best Page 14

  Looking back after Innuendo was finished, it had been two decades since the members of Queen had started to work together. Their recording story had changed so much over these years. From having the lion’s share of the hits on the earlier albums, Freddie saw the other members’ share of the tracks increasing. He always said, “Brian writes more songs, but I have more hits.” He wasn’t bragging or boasting in the slightest, he was merely stating a fact. It is absolutely true that on the earlier albums Brian is credited with several more compositions.

  Over these years, Freddie never closed his eyes to change. He never let Queen follow fashion except for the one lapse into disco in Hot Space. He was always innovative with his music. As far as I know, the ability to create music is something you’re born with. It’s not something you can learn in school. He was one of the lucky ones to have been born with a surfeit of this talent which he never wasted. At the time of his death, there was still so much music left in him. It was his one regret. Apart from the obvious… Oh! That as well!

  A studio is a place of work and while the locations for these places of work might sound so wonderfully exotic, once inside the studio and control room, you could be anywhere in the world. The desks look the same, the baffles look the same, the people are the same. It seems hard to believe now that there was a time that I had never dreamed that I would see the inside of a studio. To actually create masterpieces in this environment, it could surely take a lot out of a person. In the end it did…

  Chapter Three

  Remembering that the video medium itself was in its infancy, Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is now accepted as the first of rock music’s videos to stand on its own as an integral production as well as a tool to promote the product it was designed to support. Queen, and therefore Freddie, always felt themselves under scrutiny as far as this visual part of their work was concerned. Each video production thereafter had to be more innovative or at least remarkable enough to maintain their position as leaders of the pack.

  As can be seen from the call sheet for ‘It’s A Hard Life’, keeping the band sweet for a video shoot was an operation which required great delicacy and diplomacy. For a start, they were always called last for make-up and wardrobe and this call was always left as late as possible. This still didn’t prevent them from having to sit around for an hour or two before the first shot but it did stop them from having to be there by six o’clock in the morning which, had that been the case, could have easily meant that by eight o’clock the shoot would have been cancelled as by then they would have stormed off the set and gone home.

  When a band hires a film or television studio, what is provided often varies. Some come with plush dressing rooms with all mod cons and either a refectory or canteen and others sport one caravan for wardrobe, one caravan for make-up and one caravan to relax in and many other variations in between including luxury mobile homes and Winnebagos. Whatever was provided by the studio, if the shoot was in England, Freddie would always take his own catering with him. He learned fast.

  I had very little to do on ‘Save Me’, the first of the videos in which I was involved. I was mainly around with a drink and a hairbrush and I can say nothing about the conception of it. Animation was used as well as the live footage from the concerts at the Rainbow, Finsbury Park (now closed as a concert venue) – where the filming of the sequence took place where the dove is never quite caught – and then at Alexandra Palace.

  ‘Play The Game’ was filmed while I was doing the wardrobe for the whole band and the video production company used their own specifically contracted wardrobe department and thus I wasn’t required on set.

  ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ was filmed during the American Tour while the stage set was erected but shooting took place before the actual show. Basically, the director just filmed the band performing the song half-a-dozen times. It started off as an accident when Freddie put on a different cap for one of the takes whereupon Freddie decided that he liked the idea and started changing both caps and vests which accounts for the apparently strange costume continuity of the final cut. The trendy baseball caps adorned with various additions like bull horns et cetera caught Freddie’s fancy.

  ‘Flash Gordon’ I wasn’t involved with as the filming had substantially been completed before I was employed. It takes a hell of a lot longer to finish a film than it does a music video.

  ‘Under Pressure’ was a combination of Bowie and Queen and it was obvious that getting them all together for a video would be difficult and so the work was made up of stock filmed footage from libraries of various social pressure situations. The egos and schedules of all the participants pre-empted any joint creativity and so it was left to the director.

  ‘Las Palabras De Amor’ was performed live at Top Of The Pops in London. There never was a proper video for this single and all visual evidence of its performance subsists in the TOTP recording. The song only ever reached seventeen in the British charts. The band had it easy for this show because, generally, performing at TOTP requires attendance at the studio all day. Queen were allowed to turn up at about five in the afternoon which gave them a short time to rehearse but the advantage that they only had to sit around for an hour or so before they actually performed. Gordon Elsbury was the show’s director in the studio with whom Freddie got on very well.

  ‘Calling All Girls’ from 1982 featured the band each dressed in white. It was filmed in studios near Wandsworth Bridge and seemed to me to be a piece dedicated to George Orwell and 1984, which in real life was still a date two years into the future. Big brother is watching. It’s about a rebel in a computer society. Many robot policemen appear to capture and abuse Freddie. Sounds like one of his dreams come true? I can remember seeing the band running down a corridor. There was also a cage, with Freddie trapped inside, all wire mesh and bars, until the rest of the band appear to cause a computer malfunction and Freddie escapes. All very weird and all very much of its time. Perhaps, along with ‘Radio Ga Ga’, the most derivative of the band’s video catalogue.

  ‘Body Language’ as many people know was originally banned. This video, shot in April 1982, was the first time I realised that so much of the end product was the result of Freddie’s input. It was definitely a case of the full Freddie, the ideas being mostly his which the director put into effect. Because by this time I had become solely employed by Freddie and was personally on hand, I had never fully appreciated before how extensive his involvement was.

  The original concept of the posed and choreographed male and female bodies, sexily clothed but sufficient to ensure coverage of all the rude bits, was spoiled by the decision to put out the video with more of the red ‘censored’ arrows over so much of it. This was done to comply with the censorial attitudes of the time. Only twenty-four years ago and yet, now…? Freddie’s concept, intended to come over as intensely sexual, was tame compared with what is commonplace nowadays.

  He was involved from the very first and certainly with the casting of the various characters including the large black ladies doing the sexy dance routines in the showers on the sauna set and especially the lady in green satin and sequins who falls into the cake, the last shot of a twenty-four hour marathon filming session. The shot could only be done once as there was only one cake. Freddie also insisted on having the LA-based dancer Tony Fields who at that point was part of the famed show Solid Gold, which was the American version of Britain’s Top Of The Pops and makes the Solid Gold dancers the equivalent of Pan’s People. Except they were very much better!

  The shoot was done in Toronto even though the casting and the major crew had been recruited in Los Angeles. It was cheaper to fly everyone to Toronto for the two day schedule. The kerchief on Freddie’s wrist which he occasionally used on stage in addition to his sweatband was one of a large collection which we bought at various Los Angeles sport clothes stores like the Sports Locker on Santa Monica Boulevard which was run by my good friend Gary Jeske.

  Then came ‘Backchat’, also taken from
Hot Space. It’s a sort of non-video. There is a huge piston-pumping performance from Freddie in a partially flooded factory. It only took a day as it was a ‘performance’ video and I’m afraid it shows. Freddie was in a white track suit from his own wardrobe, cavorting around the piston poles and pipes like he was Felipe Rose on the bar at The Anvil. The others are placed bemusedly around him and just let Freddie get on with it. I really think they had no idea of what Freddie was driving at and it appears on tape that their minds are elsewhere on more important things. None of them apart from Freddie were dancers or movers of any description and this was the main reason why they had no appreciation of the basic disco idea behind Hot Space. As usual they took their lead from Freddie. Why on earth did Freddie pick up the wrench (spanner in English)? He certainly wouldn’t have known either what it was for or what to do with it. No wonder he throws it away so quickly like a hot coal.

  The ‘Radio Ga Ga’ video was an excuse to have access to the footage of legendary German director Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, licence for which permission had already been negotiated so that Freddie could appear on Giorgio Moroder’s soundtrack for his musical reworking of this classic silent movie. Watching the video again having not seen it for many years, I realise what an incredible piece of filming it is. The inter-cutting of original Metropolis scenes updating it to the Second World War, especially the superimposition of Freddie’s features on the robot’s and then the sequence featuring the band in the flying car in the futuristic scenes, works very well.

  The band’s involvement was filmed over two days, one day at the Carlton TV Studios in St. John’s Wood and the other at the Shepperton Studios where fan club members were recruited to be part of the crowd of workers and worshippers. The day at Carlton was directed by David Mallet with whom Freddie had a great working relationship. David knew instinctively where Freddie was coming from artistically and he loved working on Queen videos because he knew that even if it was the simplest concept he would be up against a challenge which would also stretch him artistically.

  The sequence involved the band dressing up in leather trousers and red crepe bandages, a wardrobe overseen by Diana Mosely who had been introduced by David Mallet as costume designer. The band spent most of the day in dressing rooms and when they were actually on set in the car, they were just sitting in it against the technical blue background as the actual ‘flight’ process of the car seeming to fly down the avenue of buildings would be added later by means of a special effects department.

  This video was also, I believe, the first occasion on which old footage of the band’s previous videos was used interspersed with the current filming showing their very substantial past, their present and pointing the way, therefore, to the possibilities of the future. Little did they know that the results of the next day’s filming at Shepperton would stay with them forever. The handclapping sequence has now become the stuff of the Queen legend. In fact, while making the video, when the band persisted in getting the sequence wrong, the crowd was so knowing and well-rehearsed that they were able to put the band right. Some years later, I’ll never forget Freddie’s amazement when the band started the chorus of ‘Radio Ga Ga’ in the Live Aid Concert and the whole stadium began the entire clapping sequence independently of Freddie with no prompting from the stage at all. Probably many of those present for the video were also at Wembley.

  ‘I Want To Break Free’ was another David Mallet epic which was filmed at Limehouse Studios over the course of three days. The first day was the Coronation Street segment. Freddie was never a huge fan of any soap but if he was at home at the right time, he would sit and watch Coro. Freddie’s character was therefore loosely based around that of Bet Lynch. But before everybody says, “But Bet Lynch was blonde…,” Freddie knew he would have looked silly in a blonde wig. So, instead he looked silly in a dark one. This video proved a lot of things to Freddie. The first was that he couldn’t walk in very high heels. An assortment of sizes of high-heels were provided ranging from a five-and-a-half inch heel to the two-inch variety which is what Freddie ended up wearing.

  Prior to this trial by heel, he had always thought that he had a good sense of balance but when he put his feet into any shoe with a heel over two inches, he discovered that he was wobbling everywhere. Brian May’s character was modelled, again, very loosely on Hilda Ogden, the lady with the permanent rollers permanently in place. Roger was the typical St. Trinians sixth former while John’s persona leaned heavily on ‘Grandma’ from the popular Giles’ cartoons which appeared in the Express newspapers.

  The band all had a great deal of fun doing this segment. I believe it was the first time that any of them had ever worn women’s clothes in their lives. How naturally it all came to them, however!

  While Freddie occasionally enjoyed a drag act in a pub or on stage, it wasn’t something that he would have made a point of going to see. Men in women’s clothing had never really attracted him at all. It was a surprise to me to hear when we were told the ideas for the video that Freddie had actually agreed to wearing women’s clothes. This sort of dressing-up was work. It was something that Freddie would never have dreamed of doing in his own home. Any fancy dress parties he threw featured him wearing nothing more outlandish than his stage outfits. The nearest he ever got to wearing women’s clothes at home was when occasionally he would enthusiastically urge his guests to try on his large collection of beautiful antique kimonos which spent all their time in delicate wrapping in a wardrobe. It was their yearly airing to check for moths, I suppose!

  I think it was his almost total disinterest in drag which was the reason why the now famous hat party in 1986 for his fortieth birthday remained in fact just that. People were dressed just as they wanted but in outrageously flamboyant hats. Obviously, it never stopped Freddie camping around when the mood took him as do a large proportion of British men in party mood but he never entertained the remotest thought of wanting to be a man pretending to be a woman.

  Day two of the schedule brought on the miners with the pit lamps on their heads and this cast was once again composed of willing fan club conscripts, both male and female. Generally, the fans, clad in their androgynous boilersuits, could not have conducted themselves more professionally. Considering they were in the presence of their heroes, they helped as much as possible with the filming by always being in the right place at the right time. There were surprisingly few who plucked up courage to come and ask the band for autographs but when they did, the band gave them freely.

  As per many of the David Mallet/Queen productions, this was the video equivalent of the Hollywood epic, with casts of hundreds as opposed to thousands. Considering the number of videos he made, Freddie never considered himself an actor. The making of videos was just an extension of the making of records. Although Freddie would certainly never have wanted to be Cleopatra, the idea of being the star in a biblical epic of Cecil B de Mille proportions appealed to him enormously. Perhaps that’s why the videos were always as they were. Even as a schoolboy in Panchgani for those long eleven months a year, apart from his family so far away, it must be remembered that Freddie was brought up on a diet of Hollywood films which were as readily available in India as they were in Indiana. Hollywood movies and Church of England pomp and ceremony was patently a heady combination in the heat of an Indian boarding school.

  In the mining sequence, we see yet another scene of a bare-chested Freddie. Any time he’s seen with a bare chest in a video, it can be guaranteed that there would be Joe or myself very, very close by waiting for the word “Cut!” when we would run on and cover him up. Any space the size of a film studio always felt cold to Freddie, summer or winter. Freddie was not a cold person. He always liked his warmth.

  The third section featured principals, soloists and members of the Royal Ballet company. It was also the section which was to cause almost as much legal trouble as the drag sequence caused public furore and outrage in the United States. It was this video which effectively killed off Queen in Ameri
ca. The general American public as well as quite a few industry movers and shakers in those days just couldn’t accept four grown men dressed up in women’s clothes.

  The ballet sequence featured Briony Brind, the current prima ballerina sensation at Covent Garden and Freddie’s friend Wayne Eagling who specially choreographed and participated in this section. The inspiration came from many sources including L’apres Midi D’un Faun from which was taken the idea for Freddie’s Spock-like ears and the pan pipes which we see at the opening of the ballet sequence. It is Briony whom Freddie up-ends and turns and with whom he disappears into the mists at the end of the sequence. Gail Taphouse, the soloist, was the owner of the hair and the hand at the beginning of the sequence.

  The whole exercise proved once and for all to Freddie that, while he thought himself reasonably balletic, real dancing was a very different kettle of ftsh. The dancers unintentionally made him feel as though he had two left feet. Nevertheless, he very much enjoyed filming this sequence. It gave him the feeling of being involved in the real thing.

  The legal trouble caused was not because of the L’apres Midi D’un Faun section which was choreographed by Nijinsky but from the celebrated choreographer Sir Kenneth Macmillan who noticed that some of Wayne’s choreography and costumes were very similar, if not identical, to his own as included in his ballet The Rite Of Spring. Choreology can prove many things now and subsequently Queen Productions donated an undisclosed sum to one of Sir Kenneth’s elected charities, the Institute of Choreology.

  ‘Hard Life’ was directed by Tim Pope who had made his name by releasing a single entitled ‘I Want To Be A Tree’ and this was to be his only collaboration with Queen. He was certainly qualified to reproduce Freddie’s outlandish vision of the end product. It was filmed in the Arri film studios in the centre of Munich. Freddie had damaged ligaments in his knee inside the New York Bar in Munich in this year, 1984, as was widely reported in the international press.