Freddie Mercury: An intimate memoir by the man who knew him best Page 16

  This page and over: Freddie filming the notorious video for ‘I Want To Break Free’.

  Freddie with Peter Freestone.

  Freddie with Mary Austin.

  Freddie with Winnie Kirchberger.

  Peter Freestone, Paul Prenter, Freddie, Kurt Raab and Barbara Valentin.

  Freddie with Trip Khalef.

  Freddie in bed with his cats at Garden Lodge in the autumn of 1981.

  Watching ‘The Miracle’ for the first time in maybe five years had me in tears. I can’t explain why but perhaps juxtaposing Freddie, who in hindsight we now know had only a limited life left, with the young child who had his whole life ahead of him was why I found it so affecting. The band didn’t have a great deal to do in this shoot and only had to act as they normally performed on stage. The real stars are the kids and I defy anybody not to find their performances any different from Queen’s. The boys watched many videos over and over again to perfect their technique. The band were given an impromptu performance by the boys at one point during the filming and the four men gave the kids a standing ovation. I don’t think anybody on set could believe how good the young boys were. Certainly not Queen.

  The video for ‘Breakthru’ was shot during an incredibly hot two summer days and I remember vividly Freddie complaining on the morning of the second day how he had had very little sleep the previous night in the stiflingly hot hotel rooms which, in the midst of the English countryside, of course had no air-conditioning.

  The video was filmed on a steam train on the Nene Valley private railway in Cambridgeshire, which provided Freddie with all the cool air he required. However, although the train appears to be hurtling along the tracks, it reached only a maximum of some thirty miles an hour. Debbie Leng, Roger’s partner, who opens the video, was Freddie’s choice for the enigmatic masked beauty. He thought she fitted the bill perfectly.

  The one part of the video that neither Freddie nor Rudi nor Hannes were ever happy with was the opening sequence where the wall bursts open. Because of the onrushing train and the air pressure building up in the tunnel, the polystyrene block wall collapses moments before the train breaks through which detracts from the initial shock of the explosion. Freddie thoroughly enjoyed making this video, even spontaneously effecting the dangerous unrehearsed pull-up stunt over the side of the moving train.

  In the ‘Invisible Man’ video, directed by Rudi and Hannes, the band are characters from a young boy’s computer game which come to life. This was another of Joe’s days on duty and suited him down to the ground due to his affinity and expertise in computing. Perhaps he was the reason behind the idea. The job of the person left behind in the house – whether it was Joe or me – was to have a hot meal ready for the workers when they arrived home whatever time of day or night that might be.

  ‘Scandal’ did not turn out to be a huge hit and the band weren’t very impressed with the video, having had limited time to get it together.

  ‘Innuendo’ involved no filmed reality of any members of the band. Characters were drawn in various artistic styles using as models previous filmed footage of the band. These characters therefore did all the acting that was needed. Freddie was always very impressed whenever he watched this video for he acknowledged the amount of work which had gone into making it.

  Departing from tradition, this video was the work of Jerry Hibbert and Rudi Dolezal and I think the only Queen input was that it used ideas from the Grandville cartoon on the Innuendo album cover. The juggler is projected on the walls of the Metropolis Studios in Chiswick and the idea for the doll’s house and the commedia del arte characters came from the video creators.

  ‘Headlong’ which was the second single from Innuendo, was filmed in Metropolis Recording Studios in London where the band were completing this, their last proper album. The initial sequence is projected on the outside wall of the studio as was the last, the same site as the video of the title track of Innuendo which preceded this. It was filmed in the same year as all the last videos and it seems strange to see it now as Freddie really looks quite well. The performance footage was the first part of the filming and then a day was spent in the control room and in the relaxation suite. You can see by Freddie’s face that he was really enjoying himself. Come to think of it, on the whole he thought that making videos was the fun part of his job. It was his escape from his real world. While the band as a whole accepted by now that they would never tour again, they wanted to maintain the perception that they were still a performing unit.

  At the time of the filming of ‘I’m Going Slightly Mad’, Freddie knew he was ill and knew he looked ill. While talking various ideas through with Rudi Dolezal he knew he had to come up with a way of disguising his appearance. He used the black and white film and excessive make-up and wig to create the right over-the-top effect. It worked to a point but nothing could really cover the gaunt appearance of his face.

  For a change in a Queen video, the visuals followed virtually word-for-word the song’s lyrics. This production was very much an implementation of Freddie’s ideas by Rudi and Hannes Rossacher. The character was inspired by silent movies and mime artists and the surrealism came from making visual that which was literal. The screw, the daffodils, the banana tree… Freddie wearing his slippers for the majority of the shoot was the only outward sign of the pain he was in making this film, as he was finding it difficult to wear tight shoes although when he does wear shoes, the clownishly pointed pair were a fashion statement that we had picked up on our last holiday on Ibiza.

  The most observant of viewers will notice that the gardenia which he wore in his buttonhole actually changes over the period of the video. Filming was to take one day as Freddie knew that his physical resources would limit him to that. Gardeners amongst you know that once the gardenia flower has been picked it takes only a fairly short time for it to start turning cream and then yellow. Though the video was being filmed in black and white, the colour change would have been obvious so rather than noticing this difference, they decided it would be less noticeable to replace the flowers. We used three during the course of the filming and there were a further two on stand-by.

  The band knew by now of Freddie’s illness and were full of admiration for his perseverance in completing the video. Even at this stage he was not about to let things get on top of him. Freddie fully expected this to be the last video he would make. In fact he was to make two more. The making of ‘Slightly Mad’ really did take a lot out of him.

  ‘Show Must Go On’, another compilation movie, was a promotion for the Greatest Hits II, Flix II and Pix II. It contains footage from Princes Of The Universe, the fuller length video made with Christopher Lambert for the Highlander project at which Joe Fanelli was in attendance, not me. However, there is one small scene from the ‘Calling All Girls’ video which was never available due to the lack of interest in the record. There are clips also from ‘Scandal’, a video with which Freddie was very disappointed. He always thought it was just plain boring. It was the one video where he wasn’t around from the onset of the creative process and I have to say, his absence of input showed.

  ‘Days Of Our Lives’ was the final video in which Freddie ever appeared and I wasn’t on set. Seeing the end result, I sometimes think it should perhaps never have been made. If you play that after even something like ‘Headlong’ you can see how frail and ill he looks. On the other hand, I think it was good for Freddie to do because it proved to him that he was still able. He loved the waistcoat which he wore for this shoot. It was a present from Joe’s friend Donald McKenzie who with the help of Joe had managed to get hold of photos of all Freddie’s cats and had given them to a friend of his who had painted them onto the silk body of the waistcoat.

  Another way you can tell that Freddie wasn’t well other than his mere appearance was the fact that he didn’t move. Any performance video of the band has the cameraman in trouble as he tries to figure out where Freddie is going to move next. In this, Freddie just stands there. At this point,
it was sheer agony for him to be walking because of the huge lesion on the ball of his right foot. A scab had formed and the edges had hardened and were digging into his flesh each time he put any weight on the foot. In fact, Jim Beach had organised for an animated video to be made to side-step the possibility that Freddie wouldn’t have been well enough to appear on set and this video, beautifully created, was not shown or available in Britain for quite a while. In the end of course it was far from a thrownaway investment.

  Freddie’s awareness of this safety-net video persuaded him to actually perform in front of the cameras one last time. He hated the idea of being remembered as what he regarded as a pencil drawing, a mere cartoon.

  Chapter Four

  I suppose, because of Freddie’s background in art – he gained a diploma in graphic design from Ealing Technical College as it was called in those days – it was only natural that he was very closely involved with the artwork and set design of anything to do with Queen. I have to emphasise his qualification was in graphic design. He wouldn’t class himself as an artist, as in the paintbrush and palette variety. He knew he was an artist in as far as his singing, his performance, his composition and his design ability were concerned. They all started with an image in his mind. He saw it as his job to make these mental images a reality. However, there are some quite creditable examples of his graphic artwork around but none available to the public as far as I know. Except one: Freddie really could draw.

  The story behind one of his sketches was really rather funny. Freddie was browsing through an art auction catalogue and saw some drawings by Matisse, the famous French impressionist. He looked down and the estimated price was between ten and twelve thousand pounds. He exclaimed, “This is ridiculous! I could draw something like this but it wouldn’t be worth a fraction of that! Here. Give me some paper.”

  And then, in twenty seconds, he virtually did a copy of what he saw in front of him. His purchases of paintings were always eclectic. He bought a wonderful abstract in Brazil which he hung in the kitchen for several years above the bench seat at the kitchen table. It was a long time before this was replaced by a print by the Catalan Joan Miro which took his fancy. But never fear. The Brazilian artwork was not disposed of, it was merely moved elsewhere or found a home where many of Freddie’s and our possessions ended up which was hidden away in the loft! He had more Japanese prints than he could hang in the house at anyone time and so beneath the stairs which led up to his suite, he had built a storage area in which artwork could be slid in and stored upright in purpose-made compartments until such time as he felt the need to re-hang it. The frames housing the Japanese prints were also made so that they could receive another print with ease. He was very fond of a Goya woodcut which hung in the upstairs landing at Garden Lodge.

  He must have known when he came to England in his teens that an artistic direction was the one he was bound to take. If he was going to go to college, at least by doing graphic design he would be doing something he enjoyed. The artist becomes an artist because of one thing only. Perception. A banker, walking along a street looking at cracked paving stones, would figure out the cost of repairing and replacing the broken slabs. Someone of an artistic mind, following in exactly the same footsteps, would see amazing designs and beautiful patterns.

  Strangely, you need to be both a banker and an artist to create. Freddie never let cost interfere with what he saw as a complete design. If it meant paying a little extra to get as near to perfection as humanly possible, then he was happy to spend it. He was one of the lucky few to be in a position to be the total artist. You’d only have to see Garden Lodge to know what I mean. I could be wrong but I believe that Freddie never had an ambition to be the most famous rock star or the biggest or the best in comparison to anything or anyone else. Freddie never set any specific ambitions. His ambitions were to complete the next project, whatever he set his mind to, whether it was an album or a video or a tour. Perhaps any ultimate ambition was never set in stone because he never wanted to have the disappointment of not having achieved it. Each achieved ambition became a stepping stone to the next. The feeling of having completed a project to the satisfaction of not only himself but the others in the band, spurred him on to the next goal.

  He was a great believer that the work, anyone’s work, should speak for itself. That’s why he regarded album covers as being of such importance because the punters saw the album cover even before they had heard all the music on the album. Pretend an album is like a Christmas present. When you look under the tree, don’t you go for the best-wrapped one first?

  The whole band obviously had to okay anything that was representative of the four of them but Freddie relished getting his teeth into everything artistic. The band very much liked Freddie to initiate the process of design because it gave them something to work from. Occasionally one of the others might come up with an idea which Freddie would then develop but they all trusted his eye and judgement. So often, particularly in the later videos – the master videos – there was a certain amount of trepidation as the time for filming drew near as they were wondering what they would be dressed up in and what he would make them do.

  The first album cover that I was really around for was Hot Space. Because of the title of the album, Freddie thought of the word ‘hot’ and worked on that. That really was the reason why the colours came up. They were bright, vibrant and could hardly be missed among the many other albums on display on a store shelf. The designs were made in those days to fit the twelve inch by twelve inch frame of the old vinyl album covers. Although compact discs had started to appear and were gaining in popularity, Freddie loved working with space and therefore preferred the old vinyl albums. With the new CDs, everything was small and small was not in Freddie’s nature. However, he was more than aware that anything he designed for the twelve inch square would have to be transformed down into cassette format and therefore the jump to CD was not that huge. This also gives an idea why the covers that Freddie had anything to do with are so striking.

  He started working on the Hot Space cover in his suite in L’Ermitage in Los Angeles. Because of its title, he wanted hot colours. Also, the members of the band had to feature individually so that even if people couldn’t read the writing from a distance, they would know who the album was by. A meeting was set up with Freddie and Norm Ung, John Barr and Steve Miller who had been brought in by Elektra Records as art directors. Freddie knew which colours he wanted – the red, blue, green and yellow. At that point, he wasn’t quite sure how each band member would feature or which colour would represent each person except that red of course was a favourite personal colour of his. Not that he was averse to yellow either! He was never, however, a blue person. The red and the yellow were obvious choices of colour for the Freddie Mercury Rose which has since been developed.

  Freddie had decided that he didn’t want to use photographs on the front of Hot Space because he thought it would be difficult to compete with and follow-up the cover for The Game which had been so monotone. A few ideas were kicked around and then the idea of the four cartoons was put forward. What Freddie wanted was striking features, something for the fans to recognise in each of the four likenesses. He came up with the idea of the hair being the most distinctive feature and this was duly incorporated by the design team. At that time, short hair and moustache was Freddie’s trademark.

  At the subsequent meeting when the draft cartoons were shown to the other three band members, I don’t remember them being particularly impressed although the idea soon grew on them.

  You wouldn’t believe the amount of time that has been spent on each album, just on the letter Q. The style had to be acceptable to everybody; also, the size. There could be huge arguments over a fraction of an inch. Notice, how the Q changes on each subsequent album cover. Never in my life have I ever known one letter to have caused so much fuss. But that’s perfectionism for you. Frequently, up to ten different sizes of letter were produced on transparent overlays and yet only one
of those was going to be acceptable to all four and even then only after each had changed their minds over their first choices.

  For those of you who might be planning an album, do remember to set aside a month or two for decisions on artwork. Each Queen band member had to be given a duplicate of all written copy including lyrics and acknowledgments in case someone had been left out or a stray comma had been omitted. Try coordinating that operation while each person is six thousand miles apart. An album is the end product of many people’s input and work, from the tape-op to the printer of the cover.

  Another thing that has to be taken into account which only comes with practice is visualising what the end product should look like. Colours on the mock-up sent out for approval are very often a few shades darker than that which will end up in the shops on the finished product. Here again, in order to achieve the required perfectionism, a wealth of experience comes into play. What the band sees is not necessarily what the album buyer gets. It is therefore a huge part of the art director’s responsibility to advise the band accurately what will happen to a colour during the commercial printing process. Strong colours are notoriously fickle when it comes to reproduction.

  The cover for The Works was once again done in Los Angeles. Freddie jumped at the opportunity to be photographed by George Hurrell. Hurrell had become famous for his use of shadow in his photography. The man was a legend in Hollywood having created masterpieces with Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford and of course Garbo. George Hurrell must have been seventy-five when he photographed Queen and he was still working every day.

  It wasn’t the first time that the band had been photographed by a maestro. Lord Snowdon had turned his lens on them for the Greatest Hits cover but because of Freddie’s knowledge and love of the stars of the Thirties, Forties and Fifties, to be photographed by this master I think helped fulfil a dream. Freddie was being photographed by someone who had walked and talked with his heroes and heroines, the film stars of Hollywood’s heyday whom he had seen on the silver screen as he grew up. Freddie and his good friend Tony King started up what was to become an international game known to more than a few of his friends. The ‘B’ Moviestar game started in a bar in New York where we each had to name an actress who while being a known name had never made the ‘A’ list. The likes of Viviane Ventura, Laya Raki, Britt Ekland, Tania Elg, Viveka Lindfors – sorry, girls – but you were at the top of Freddie’s list. Even Joan Collins who has since become a household name due to her wonderful work on television.