NOW THAT’S A KIND OF MAGIC
David Wigg was a great friend of Freddie Mercury for 16 years. Here he reveals how a blockbuster new film about Queen has captured all its frontman’s swagger and vulnerability
It’s been eight years in the making, but now Bohemian Rhapsody – the story of Queen and Freddie Mercury’s meteoric rise to global superstardom – is about to hit the big screen. Writer DAVID WIGG was a personal friend of Freddie’s for 16 years. As such he’s followed the progress of the film from the beginning and believes it will be well worth the wait. the trailer has had 11 million hits on Youtube, hardly surprising given that Queen’s 1981 Greatest Hits album has sold over 25million copies worldwide. the project has not been without its challenges, though. It’s had three leading men and led to a spat between Brian May, the Queen guitarist and co-producer of the film, and Ali G creator sacha Baron Cohen, who was originally cast as Freddie. When he left in 2013, Baron Cohen said the producers were more concerned about the band’s legacy than portraying the wartsand-all truth, prompting May to hit back. ‘sacha became an a***,’ he said. Ben Whishaw, best known as Q in the recent Bond films, then came and went, and finally two years ago Us actor Rami Malek, who won an Emmy for his role as a tortured cyberhacker in tV thriller Mr Robot, took over. Here David tells how it feels to see Freddie brought back to life, and reveals his memories of their times together…
Settling into my seat at the cinema a few months ago I saw parts of my life flash before me. For two mesmerising minutes I sat spellbound – along with the rest of the packed auditorium – as the trailer for Bohemian Rhapsody lit up the screen, and my great friend Freddie Mercury exploded back into life.
The film tells the story of the most flamboyant frontman rock music’s ever seen, and the tortured private life that turned him into a virtual recluse. It features the foot-stomping anthems that stole the show at Live Aid, the drink and drug-fuelled parties, the bitter disputes, the heart-rending affair with the only woman he ever loved, and the tragedy that shook the world. I knew Freddie well throughout much of this period and I can say that Rami Malek, who plays him, has captured brilliantly the mercurial combination of swagger and vulnerability that made Freddie who he was.
And mercurial he certainly was. I knew Freddie for 16 years, and our first meeting gave me a glimpse of how temperamental he could be. He came storming into his dressing room after a concert in Manchester where I was waiting to interview him, picked up a clothes iron and hurled it at a full-length mirror, smashing it to pieces. Well, I thought, he’s obviously not superstitious!
His outburst had been sparked by a faulty microphone, and although the audience were unaware anything was wrong, Freddie blew his top. When he’d calmed down, I asked if it was worth getting so wound up over a problem the public knew nothing about. ‘Some people can take second best, but I can’t,’ he said. ‘If you’ve got the taste for being number one, then number two isn’t good enough. I’m spoiled! If anything goes wrong, it’s no good bottling it up until tomorrow. So we shout at each other and break a few chairs to get it out of our system. Tonight my mic kept going off, it’s like someone pricking you with a pin all the time – irritating.’
Despite his anger, Freddie and I instantly hit it off and I enjoyed interviewing him on many occasions in the US, Ibiza, Munich, Paris and London. Although he was famous for the way he dominated a stage with all the force of a hurricane, off stage I found he was entirely different. All the flamboyance was replaced by a man who was overtly shy and suspicious of people he didn’t know, a man who guarded his privacy with tenacity. He feared people might be disappointed that he was not the larger-than-life character they saw on stage and felt trapped by his own image. ‘I don’t want to shatter the illusion that’s been created on stage,’ he explained to me once. ‘I had to choose between shutting myself away to keep everyone guessing or trying to be myself. I’m a sort of chameleon – I change. I think it’s a combination of a lot of characters that make up a person anyway. I have moods. I’m a person of extremes.’
Freddie, whose parents were Parsi Indians, came to England at 17 after the family fled the revolution in Zanzibar where his father was working in the British Colonial office. He studied art and sold clothes at Kensington Market while trying to forge a career in music. As the film will show, Freddie first met Brian May when he went to watch his and Roger Taylor’s band Smile. After their lead singer left, Freddie joined them and the legend was born. It was he who came up with the name Queen – when he wanted it, Freddie always got his own way – and he who wrote their first Number One, Bohemian Rhapsody. The song was almost six minutes long, unheard of at the
I’M A PEACH, BUT ONCE I’M BETRAYED I’M AN OGRE
time, and the record company thought no radio station would play it. Freddie refused to cut it and instead got an advance copy to his friend Kenny Everett. Kenny loved it and played it over and over on his Capital Radio show – it went on to become the UK’s third biggest-selling single ever.
As the millions started to roll in, Freddie bought his magnificent mansion in Kensington. He liked nothing better than to surround himself with a close-knit group of friends, preferring to give dinner parties than go out to clubs as he had done in what friends called his ‘wild days’, as the band were starting out. I asked him how he felt at this point. ‘I think it’s just having a good time, to be honest,’ he told me. ‘In the early part of my career it was very serious and caught up in being successful and thinking this is how a star behaves. Now I don’t give a damn. I want to do things my way, and have fun doing it. If I approach everything in that way, it comes out in the songs.
‘In the end being natural and genuine is what wins. I’m not worried about making mistakes and things like that. If I didn’t do this, I wouldn’t have anything to do. I can’t cook. I’m not very good at being a housewife! This is in my blood. If I didn’t do this I’d be very vulnerable – so I’d better keep doing it.
‘I don’t have to do it. I’ve made a lot of money, I could live beautifully and wonderfully for the rest of my life. But I want to earn my keep and I want to be doing something creative. I have a nervous energy that has to be doing something. I can’t just lay in bed. I think that’s a waste of time. I don’t read books. Basically, I write music and I just want to keep doing that.
‘I know nothing else. To me it’s a normal life. It’s like winning the pools – the difference is I win the pools every day! Success makes it easier to be outrageous, but if all my money ended tomorrow I’d still be the same person. I’d still go about the same way, like I had lots of money. That’s what I used to do before. That’s part of me and I’ll always walk around like a Persian popinjay. And no one’s going to stop me, honey.’
The one big disappointment for Freddie was that he found it difficult to form a loving relationship. At the height of his fame in the 1980s, he confided to me, ‘At this point, no one wants to share their life with me. And I do [want someone]. But I think it’s not easy living with me. Maybe I’m trying too hard. I think about it a lot. But in one way, I think, the more mishaps I have the better the songs are going to be. Once I find a lasting relationship, bang goes all the research for wonderful songs. Maybe I’m a very tragic person. I don’t know why.
‘You can be so loved by so many thousands of people, yet you can be so lonely. And that makes it worse because most people think: “How can somebody like Freddie Mercury be lonely? He has money, cars, chauffeurs, the lot.” But sometimes that kind of loneliness is the hardest to bear.
‘I’m a true romantic, but at the same time I have a very hard exterior so it’s difficult for people to
YOU CAN BE SO LOVED BY SO MANY, YET BE SO LONELY
get through to me. And I attract all the wrong kind of people. A few times, when people have got through to me, they’ve betrayed my trust, or once they’ve got the Gucci watch they’ve disappeared. When it comes to love – whether you’re a rock star or a bricklayer – you’re equal. It just so happens that I’m successful and I have a lot of money. When that’s the case you find yourself in a very vulnerable position because whatever you do, they tread all over you. To be honest, the more you make, the more miserable you become. It attracts all kinds of wrong people. I’ve always been petrified of being alone, but I have to be totally comfortable about a situation before I step into it. But I’m a softie really – I’m a peach!
‘When I’m trying to get a relationship together I’m the nicest person you could meet, but the moment I find someone’s betrayed me I go the other way. Once I’m betrayed, I’m a n ogre.’
The film also covers the period where Freddie shuns Queen in pursuit of his solo career, before reuniting with his bandmates just in time for Live Aid in July 1985. ‘Like others who’ve had success, it’s changed me,’ he once told me. ‘I’d be a fool to deny that it changed me into being a bit snobbish, even arrogant. That was a stage where I thought I was the biggest – I was just “it”.
‘But then I came to realise success can be handled in a different way. I paid more attention to making people realise that I’m normal. So success did change me and then it changed me yet again. You just can’t win in my situation and that’s what it is. The only happiness I can create is with my money. Money can’t buy happiness, this is true, but you can get happiness from it. But finding really true friends in this business is hard.’
In the film, drummer Roger Taylor is played by former EastEnders actor Ben Hardy, while Gwilym Lee is uncannily like his character, lead guitarist Brian May, and Joseph Mazzello is cast as bass guitarist John Deacon. Game Of Thrones’ Aidan Gillen plays Queen’s second manager John Reid, who was also managing Elton John at the time, and Rev’s Tom Hollander is their third manager Jim Beach. Gemma Arterton was up for the part of Freddie’s girlfriend Mary Austin, but it eventually went to Lucy Boynton, who appeared in last year’s Murder On The Orient Express film. Mary was 19 and working in PR at the trendy Kensington store Biba when she met Freddie and they were lovers for six years before he could hide his repressed sexuality no more, but the friendship between them would last right up to the end of his life.
She once told me about the evening – re-created in the film – that she first recognised his star quality, a showcase at Freddie’s old school, Ealing Art College. ‘When he came off stage all the girls and his friends were crowding round him. Things had suddenly taken a turn for him and the band. For the first time I thought: “Here is a star in the making. He’s on his way. I don’t think he needs me any more.” I started to walk away and he came running after me. He wouldn’t let me go. That night I realised that I had to go along and be a part of it. I was watching him flower.’
When Freddie was given the shattering news that he was HIV positive in 1985 he completely changed his lifestyle. ‘I used to be extremely promiscuous,’ he told me, ‘but I’ve stopped all that. You know, the word solace came into it, and you can’t have a life of solace and go round **** ing the world. I don’t miss it, I really don’t. Everything was open to me and sex was an integral ingredient to what I was doing. It was all these things that surround the music and I was living them to the full. There was excess in everything. I was living what one would call a very full life in every direction. But I’ve stopped going out and to be honest, I’ve almost become a nun. I’ve learned the hard way. I thought sex was very important to me, but now I’ve just stopped having sex. I just like titillation now – it’s more fun!’
I asked him whether he ever worried that he might end up a rich and
lonely old man. ‘No, because I’ll be dead long before that. Anyway, it would be boring to be 70. I’ll be dead and gone, dear, I’ll be starting a new life somewhere else.’ So did he think he was going to go to heaven? ‘No, hell’s much better. Look at all the interesting people you’re going to meet down there. You’re going to be there too, you know!’ he said, slapping me on my knee. ‘I’ve lived a full life and if I’m dead tomorrow I don’t give a damn. I’ve lived. I really have done it all. I love the fact that I make people happy. Even if it’s just for half an hour. If I can bring a smile to a sour face that to me is worthwhile.’
The film’s re-creation of the band’s performance at Live Aid, where they stole the show with a barnstorming 20-minute set, is mesmerising. The production team built a replica of the old Wembley stadium at an airfield, and we’ll see Freddie storming on to the stage in front of 72,000 fans. I was fortunate enough to see it for real as I was the only journalist allowed backstage with the band that day. Freddie’s pre-gig routine was always the same: he’d swig down a neat vodka and warm up his voice with a run of vocal exercises.
His personal assistant Peter Freestone, who he called ‘Phoebe’, would have his stage clothes laid out for him and after a last puff on a cigarette, he’d charge through the dressing room door to the stage. That day at Wembley he shouted, ‘Let’s do it!’ as he ran out. He had the crowd eating out of his hand. Even though every major star had been on that stage earlier, the crowd didn’t want Freddie to leave.
By that point Freddie had been diagnosed with HIV, and of course he hoped a cure would be found in time for him to survive. But after a trip to Switzerland in 1991 to record new songs, Freddie decided he would stop taking the drugs that were keeping him alive. ‘He came back and said: “Right, this is it. I’m not taking any more of the drugs,”’ Peter Freestone told me. ‘We’d been pumping tablets into him morning and night and then he told us: “I’m not having any more of it, the only thing I’ll have are painkillers. I’ve decided when I’m going to go out.” He wanted to make that last decision himself.’
That was so typical of Freddie. The biggest tragedy of all, of course, is that if he could have fought on for another year the new drugs available to treat HIV may have kept him alive. So what would Freddie have thought about this gloriously upbeat celebration of his career had he still been here? I think he would have absolutely loved it.
÷ Bohemian Rhapsody is in cinemas on October 24. Queen In 3-D: Updated Edition, by Brian May, published by The London Stereoscopic Company, is out 23 October.