Freddie Mercury: An intimate memoir by the man who knew him best Page 4

  We’d flown first-class from London. The band party in those days always flew first-class while the crew went economy and usually on a different plane – on this occasion directly to Vancouver – not unlike the Royal Family! It had been arranged that the band would all meet up in Los Angeles before flying to Canada, as they were much more familiar with Los Angeles and the nightlife suited them better. It was the first time I’d seen anything of Los Angeles other than the area around the USC campus which is the location of the Shrine Auditorium where the Royal Ballet had performed. LA is such a huge sprawling metropolis that I had no idea even where Hollywood was, although I obviously knew it existed.

  The only place Freddie was ever a classic tourist was Japan. Things Japanese were an all-consuming passion for him, whereas wherever else he stayed in the world was merely a bed for the night. Hence I didn’t really get to see any more of LA during that visit. Due to Freddie’s nocturnal habits, he tended to get up very late but I still had to be up and about during normal shopping hours to gather in anything he or the others in the band had specifically requested the night before, anything from a pair of jeans which he’d seen someone wearing or to stock his fridge with a drink someone had introduced him to. I have to emphasise once again, that at this point I was still working for Queen as a whole rather than specifically for Freddie. So there were other calls on my time.

  Because Freddie had been to LA before, he knew of specific items which were more easily available there and by the time we arrived he had made a list of purchases I was to make. The boots, of the boxing variety, he used to wear on stage and white Levi jeans were just two examples. The jeans available in London tended only to be cream.

  Howard Rose was the tour’s North American promoter and agent who worked out of Los Angeles. Apart from management, all bands have arrangements with independent agents and promoters such as Howard who negotiate times, dates and schedules with the owners of the individual concert venues. The requirements of such a huge institution like Queen were vast. It wasn’t merely a question of the four people standing on stage, it was a logistical problem involving upwards of a hundred personnel: the Queen crew plus the crew hired specifically for the day, the stage builders, the lighting riggers, the electricians. The band’s requirements were set out in what was known as a rider, a set of conditions attached to the contract between them and the venue’s promoter. Queen’s rider included the following: a dressing room with sufficient comfortable seats; a full-length mirror; and at least twenty hand towels.

  The food requirements were that before the show a selection of cold meats and salads were to be available and for after the show, a quantity of hot food was to be provided, which generally consisted of savoury finger buffet food to be kept hot by small paraffin heaters beneath the metal serving dishes.

  The drinks section of the rider included four bottles of champagne, two bottles of vodka, a bottle of Jack Daniels and a couple of other types of spirits, two dozen beers and an assortment of soft drinks, including tonic water and mixer drinks, bottled mineral water and fruit juices – and this list was just for the use of the band.

  So, fully victualled, crewed and equipped, the tour was due to kick off in Canada.

  June 27-30: Vancouver, The PNE Coliseum

  The band rehearsed on 27th, 28th and 29th and did the show on the 30th. Suffice to say that a great deal of very hard work goes into making any successful tour and it was no different with Queen. Work by the crew before and after a show and obviously by the band during the show. As you will see from the following itinerary, there were a lot of back-to-back shows. If you take into account the amount of travelling involved between venues, more often than not journeys which began immediately after a show, the band walking off stage into a limousine and on to the airport, only to be able to change out of their stage clothes on the plane, you can understand how tired everybody was by the time they got to bed in a new hotel, often in a different state. This might also explain why Freddie had no tourist tendencies. There was just no time.

  I’m not going to bore you with a fully detailed breakdown of everything that happened over the next five months on this massive tour but there will be points in the itinerary when I’ll enlarge on anything which I think will open up further insights into how Freddie worked as a man and also how his mind worked. There are many books detailing the Queen tours. I am not going to attempt to match them although at the end of this personal memoir of this great world tour, I’ll fill you in on some of the more pertinent highlights of other tours in so far as they relate to Freddie.

  July 1: Seattle, Washington. Show Day

  2: Portland, Oregon. Show Day

  3-4: Los Angeles, California. Days Off

  Whenever you read Day Off, it usually meant that we were for once able to spend the night in the same city in which the band had just played instead of taking the money and running, as Freddie loved to say.

  July 5: San Diego, California. Show Day

  6: Phoenix, Arizona. Show Day

  7-13: Los Angeles. Two Show Days. The Forum

  Freddie hated performing in the big cities of any country because the reception which the crowd accorded Queen was usually so much more blasé and muted than in smaller cities. Every band and entertainer in the world goes to the major cities, thus contributing to a glut of big shows which means audiences are spoiled for choice. Also, it is in cities like LA, New York and London where a band feels they are under even more intense pressure than usual to do a great show because they will also be entertaining their peers, all of whom will have come along basically to check out the competition. As I’ve already emphasised, one of the maxims Freddie lived by was, “You’re only as good as your last performance.”

  He felt he only had to bungle a high note and rumours started spreading that he was losing his voice and not performing like he used to. Although no one was ever allowed back stage before a show, it was common knowledge who would be out front that night because a star’s staff would have booked tickets either, in our case, via GLS Productions (Gerry Stickells, our Tour Manager’s company) or through the aegis of the local promoter. Saying this, in all the time I knew Freddie, he always relished a challenge and it was a very rare occasion that he didn’t come out on top.

  July 14-15: Oakland, California. Two Show Days

  16-20: Los Angeles. Days Off

  21-August 4: Houston, Texas

  At this point there was a two-week break in the tour and I went off to visit friends in Houston before flying back to LA when the tour resumed.

  Basically the band’s set – the sequence of songs to be performed that night – was the same in successive shows. Where the tour played more than one date in a city, then the set would change slightly. If anything, Freddie would give a better show out of the big cities because he was more relaxed. His dialogue with the audience, counting the audience as one party and he as the other, was always spontaneous at every show. Freddie followed no script, unlike some performers such as Michael Jackson or Barbra Streisand. Queen shows were always different. Freddie loved singing ‘Love Of My Life’ because of the feeling he got when the audience joined in. And seeing the flames from all the waving lighters in the audience during the ballads gave him a huge buzz.

  August 5: Memphis, Tennessee. Show Day

  6: Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Show Day

  7: New Orleans, Louisiana. Day Off

  Freddie loved New Orleans. It wasn’t only because you could drink twenty-four hours a day, it was a lot to do with the music and overall feeling he got from the city. He always stayed in the same hotel, the Royal Orleans in the middle of the old French quarter, and was thus surrounded by New Orleans jazz all day long. It’s a city that truly never sleeps and we loved exploring all-night bars. One thing I learned almost immediately from Paul Prenter was that an essential component of Freddie’s touring requisites was the Spartactus Guide to places of gay interest. This international publication would list all the bars in all the cities in all the coun
tries in the world. There is a separate guide for the United States and Freddie always set time aside for this essential reading. If truth be known, I think these were the only two books he ever read from cover to cover in all the time I knew him.

  August 8: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Show Day

  9: Dallas, Texas. Show Day

  10-11: Houston, Texas. Show Days

  12: Atlanta, Georgia

  I really thought I’d lost my job in Atlanta, Georgia. We were there two nights, the day before the show and show day itself. On the first night, as usual, Freddie, Paul and I went with our car and driver out to the bars. Paul got lucky early on in the evening and Freddie waved him and his date off for the evening. For the first time I was left with Freddie as alone on the streets as any two people can be with a limo and a driver in tow! I was quite aware of the responsibility with which I had been implicitly entrusted.

  Up until this point, Paul had never gone home leaving Freddie behind. Paul had given me complete instructions of where else there was to go and the telephone number of the hotel if it was absolutely necessary to get in touch with him. Freddie decided that we were going to stay in the bar where Paul had left us and then started drinking with a vengeance. He was the boss so I didn’t feel I could tell him to slow down. At about four o’clock in the morning after many spearmint schnapps, Freddie decided it was time to go home. I think it was more in gestures than in words that he communicated, because he couldn’t string more than two words together at that point. We got back to the hotel and as we were going up in the lift to Freddie’s suite, he almost collapsed in my arms.

  I managed to get him into his room and mostly undressed and onto his bed. And this is where the real problem started. He was hallucinating that the room was spinning around him and wanted to be sick. He tried to find the edge of the bed but here was another problem… The bed was round so he was trying to find a straight edge over which he could safely vomit but he was going round and round the bed desperately seeking the straight side and leaving little pools of barff all round the circumference.

  I couldn’t believe what was happening and thought to myself, ‘Well, this is it! The first time I’ve been left to look after Freddie and he ends up like this!’ I called Paul to the bedroom and he just laughed.

  “Don’t worry about him,” he said, “he’ll sleep it off.”

  I cleaned up as much as I could and left Freddie to sleep as he was soundly out of it by this time.

  Early the next afternoon, I was called to Freddie’s suite and I really did think that my end was nigh but as I walked into the room, breakfast had been laid out and instead of my cards, I was given orange juice and toast and we spent breakfast laughing about the previous evening.

  We were, thankfully, amused.

  August 13: Charlotte, North Carolina

  14: Greensboro, North Carolina

  I’m not sure whether it was in Charlotte or Greensboro but it was in one of those cities where we had our first taste of a Howard Johnson.

  Howard Johnson was the man who started the chain of motels which now links most of America. This really was the best hotel the city could provide. The band and party were lucky enough to be on the top floor which required a special key in the elevator which separated us from the ordinary business man or woman of the town. One of the first things Freddie did on arriving at a hotel was to order pots of tea. I firmly believe that the hotel really did try to accommodate his wishes but after about half-an-hour, all he had in his room were four tea bags, four waxed paper beakers and an open jug of luke-warm water.

  We were definitely not amused.

  August 15: Day Off

  16: Charleston, South Carolina

  It was at one of the gigs around this time that Tony Bastin arrived from England to spend time with Freddie. Whenever Freddie was away from London, every now and then he had an urge to ‘call the cats’. He’d get to a hotel, we’d dial through to Stafford Terrace and he really would talk to his cats. Mary would hold Tom and Jerry in turn up to the receiver to listen to Freddie talking. This continued throughout the years with all the succeeding feline occupants of his houses. He would also talk to Tony quite a lot and so therefore although Tony’s coming was no surprise to anyone, the news that he was to be almost immediately sent home came as a complete surprise to him.

  For some time, Freddie had been aware that Tony had been using him. It had been brought to Freddie’s notice by one of those ubiquitous well-wishers that Tony Bastin had been seen out and about with a slim young blond, many years younger than Freddie. Although Tony had been showered with expensive presents, including an amazing camera complete with case and special lenses, he had not really appreciated anything; rather, he had taken all Freddie’s generosity for granted. Freddie planned his revenge by ringing Tony up and asking him to fly out to America and meet him. Tony was told that his flight would be paid for and he would be picked up at the airport. Freddie’s plan was to meet Tony at the hotel, inform him that the relationship was over and put him on the next plane home, asking Tony to remove his clothes and personal belongings from Stafford Terrace before he, Freddie, got back. The cat called Oscar whom Tony had brought with him into the relationship was, however, the one part of Tony with which Freddie characteristically could not bear to part. Tony was out, Oscar was to stay.

  Freddie always accepted that part of being Freddie Mercury was that there would be people around to exploit him. Provided he knew it was going on, he accepted it because he knew he could always turn round and say, “No!” or, “Enough!” What hurt him most was when he was being used behind his back, betrayed and yet he didn’t know about it until after the fact. It hurt a lot because the only people who could be so exploitative were those whom he really trusted and who, in their turn, eventually abused that trust.

  This was one reason why Freddie always found it so difficult to make new friends. Being thus in Freddie’s position, he rather lost friends over his lifetime. And to be seen to have had comparatively fewer very close friends at the end of his life, it explains why particularly in his last year, the press so often stated he was alone and unloved. The truth was, of course, the opposite. Despite the losses, Freddie always had a close-knit group of friends with him until the end. Of these, there were some who were kept at arm’s length because, in truth, he did not want to see them having to endure the pain and suffering which he was going through in the last year or eighteen months of his life.

  And so another one bit the dust in Carolina. Bye-bye Tony Bastin.

  August 17: Indianapolis, Indiana

  18-19th (we stayed in NewYork)

  It was during this stay in New York that Freddie met up with his own personal Viking. Thor Arnold is blond and big and beautiful and we met him in one of our usual haunts, whether The Spike or The Eagle or The Anvil or wherever is immaterial. Thor is a genuine, all-American boy. He lived, then, in Manhattan, near Greenwich Village and spent his day nursing the sick of NewYork for that was and is still his profession, though now he pursues it in San Diego.

  Freddie and Thor had a great night, enjoying each other, but the following day, Freddie accepted it as something that had been and didn’t even think to follow the night up with any further dates. Life on the road is like that and try as you might, nobody could possibly keep in touch with all the people you meet and with whom you might wish to explore a friendship further.

  August 20: Hartford, Connecticut

  21: Day off in New York

  22: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  Surprise! As well as an outbreak of Legionnaires’ Disease, Freddie and I were lucky enough to discover an outbreak of friendship. Early in the afternoon of the 22nd in Philadelphia, there was a knock on the door of Freddie’s hotel suite. I went and opened the door and couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Thor Arnold standing there.

  He came in and told Freddie that he wasn’t going to let things go just like that. Freddie was stunned because it must have been one of the first times that not onl
y had someone taken it upon themselves to arrive at one of his shows under their own steam but that Thor had also done some research and had discovered where Freddie was staying. The surprise element as much as anything else really won Freddie over. Thor stayed for the show but then had to go straight back to New York.

  Thus started what was to be one of the most enduring friendships I have known Freddie to have enjoyed and one which lasted until the end of his life. Thor introduced Freddie to three other friends of his in Manhattan, Lee Nolan, Joe Scardilli and John Murphy and more often than not it was always a crowd of six of us who went out whenever we were in New York. Freddie affectionately used to call the four Manhattan men, ‘my New York daughters’.

  It was ‘The New York Daughters’ who were with him in a suite at the Berkshire Place Hotel in 1981 when Freddie’s monarchist tendencies surfaced on the occasion of the wedding of Diana Spencer to Charles, Prince of Wales. He insisted everyone stay up, got room service to provide us with a sumptuous breakfast so that we could toast the bride and groom as they walked out of St Paul’s. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he had tears in his eyes – other than those of laughter due to a multitude of comments being passed about anything from ‘the’ dress to how dreadful other people’s outfits were. I remember it was generally agreed by everyone that the reason why all the royal family disappeared into the vestry was so that they could ‘do’ lines of cocaine in private. After all, they all came out smiling and chatting to each other in a very animated fashion. More cause for falling on the floor, laughing. I don’t know what Charles and Diana’s wedding reception was like, if it was half as good as our celebration of their marriage, they’d have been more than happy.

  August 23: Baltimore, Maryland