My pal Freddie Mercury
David Wigg was a great pal of Freddie Mercury for almost two decades. Here he reveals how Bohemian Rhapsody, the blockbuster movie about Queen, has captured all its frontman’s swagger and vulnerability
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 has 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. Our first meeting in 1975 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 spoilt! 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.
He 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 wasn’t 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’m a sort of chameleon – I change. I have moods. I’m a person of extremes.” F REDDIE (real name Farrokh Bulsara) was born in Zanzibar to parents who were Parsi Indians. After revolution broke out in the country, where his father was working in the British Colonial office, the family moved to England.
In his teens Freddie studied art and sold clothes at Kensington Market while trying to forge a career in music. As the film shows, he 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 and he also wrote their first No 1 hit, Bohemian Rhapsody.
The song was almost six minutes long, unheard of at the 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, DJ Kenny Everett.
Kenny loved it and played it over and over on his 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 threw outrageous parties, and once I’d been accepted into his court the fun really started as he invited me along. One of the most memorable, the Black and White Drag Ball, was held in Germany.
The men had to dress as a female star and the women (Turn as a over) famous male but
everyone had to wear black and white only. One married couple arrived as a zebra.
He flew over all his friends from London and put us up at the Munich Hilton. Before the all-night party began two make-up artists arrived to transform his guests, who were then transported to the bash by horse and carriage.
Freddie, wearing a harlequin costume and military jacket, greeted everyone at the nightclub he’d hired and had decorated in black and white wallpaper. Some guests were wearing very little.
His personal assistant, Peter Freestone, who used to work as a dresser for the Royal Ballet, vividly remembers another party in New York where mud wrestlers were recruited to entertain the guests.
Another, at London’s Kensington Roof Gardens, was staffed by people who were entirely naked except for body paint.
“He just loved themes,” Peter recalls. “Hat parties in particular. Once I had to go out to buy a load of hats and feathers and plastic flowers for a Mad Hatter’s party at his home for his 40th. Then I’d spend hours decorating them so the guests could have something special to parade in. It was a hoot.”
Another birthday party I attended was at the fashionable Pikes Hotel, Ibiza, where Wham!’s Club Tropicana video was filmed. Freddie took the place over, and to add to the fun he sent out an invitation to any over-the-top transvestites staying in Ibiza Town.
Hundreds turned up! Even when part of the hotel’s thatched roof caught fire and the fire brigade turned up, the party continued. One guest had stupidly lit the tape of a floating balloon, which had landed on the roof and set fire to it.
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 ’80s 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. I’m a true romantic, but at the same time I have a hard exterior so it’s difficult for people to get through to me.”
Money and fame didn’t make it any easier.
“I attract all the wrong kind of people,” he admitted. “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. To be honest, the more you make the more miserable you become. “
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 f**king the world.”
But throughout all his ups and downs there was one person who was a constant in his life. Mary Austin was his soulmate, the only person Freddie ever truly loved.
They met in 1970 when she was 19. One day she happened to wander over to the stall he ran with Roger Taylor in Kensington Market. Freddie invited her to come to see their band and when she agreed a lifelong relationship began.
“I remember Freddie’s massive black hair, which made him look like a cavalier,” she recalled to me of that first meeting. “He was like no one I’d ever met before. He was confident and I’ve never been that confident. We grew together. I liked him and it went on from there. It took about three years for me to really fall in love.”
Mary and I subsequently became good friends too. Over the years she’s confided much to me about her unbreakable bond with Freddie, how she nursed him through his Aids illness and struggled to come to terms with his death.
In his will Freddie left Mary his Kensington home and a 50% share of all his wealth and future income from records and publishing, a fortune far removed from her childhood.
Her parents were both deaf and lived in a modest terraced house in Fulham, London. But she and Freddie soon moved into a tiny bedsit in Kensington.
“We had so little money then that we could only afford one pair of curtains and so we hung them in the bedroom, and we had to share the bathroom and kitchen with another couple,” she recalls.
After two years the couple moved to a larger flat. Life seemed blissfully happy but soon Mary, played in the film by Lucy Boynton, began to feel something was wrong.
“Then one day in the kitchen he sat me down and said he wanted to talk. He just came out with it, ‘I think I’m bisexual.’ I said, ‘No Freddie, I don’t think you’re bisexual – I think you’re gay.’ Nothing else was said and we just hugged.”
She decided she should move out but Freddie insisted she didn’t move too far
‘No Freddie, I don’t think you’re bisexual – I think you’re gay'
away from him.
“Eventually we found a place nearby and his music publishing company bought it for me. I could see Freddie’s home from my bathroom. I thought, ‘Oh, I’m never going to get away.’ But I didn’t mind.”
As another way of keeping Mary close Freddie made her secretary to his companies, Goose Productions and Mercury Songs, which he ran from his home. It meant Mary had to visit the house more or less every day to keep account of the royalties that were coming in.
Mary would go on to have two children with the painter Piers Cameron, and Freddie was thrilled when she had her first son, Richard. He taught the boy to say his first words – “tractor” and “guitar” – and agreed to be his godfather.
“There was definitely a part of Freddie that would’ve liked a family, a happy home and children,” Mary told me.
Freddie confided that he was HIV-positive to her long before he told his bandmates, and she was there each day to try to comfort him as he became more ill.
“As he started to lose his sight and his body became weak to the point that he was unable to get out of bed, Freddie decided to end it all by refusing to take his medication. It was Freddie’s decision – he chose the time to die,” she revealed. “He was so incredibly brave. He looked death in the face and said, ‘Fine, I’ll accept it now – I’ll go.’ But it was peaceful and he died with a smile on his face.” His death left her bereft. “I’d rather it had happened the other way round. I should’ve gone first – I’d rather he miss me than I miss him.”
When he told her he intended to leave her his mansion her first reaction was shock.
She was terrified of taking on such a responsibility and urged him to place the house, with its collection of antique furniture and paintings, in trust as a museum. Freddie considered it but decided he wanted Mary to have something permanent in her life.
“If things had been different you would’ve been my wife and this would’ve been yours anyway,” he said.
He also tasked her with dealing with his ashes and made her promise she’d never tell where they were hidden.
“He didn’t want anyone trying to dig him up as had happened to people like Charlie Chaplin,” she told me. “Fans can be obsessive.”
After his death Mary moved into his home but it was five years before she could bring herself to sleep in his bedroom.
“I’d spent so long with him being unwell and there were so many memories in that room. Memories of him suffering. I just saw this frail man lying in his bed.
“During those times I really felt such love for him. I’d sit every day next to the bed for six hours. He’d suddenly wake up and smile and say, ‘Oh, it’s you, old faithful.’ ”
As his life ebbed away, Freddie would watch footage of his performances.
“Once he turned to me and said sadly, ‘To think I used to be so handsome.’ I got up and had to leave the room.”
CATS were Freddie’s other big love and they were often the inspiration for his songs. He had six of them – some were exotic breeds and some he’d rescued from shelters. There were times when all of them would be spread out on his king-size bed, purring
Saway with contentment.
There was Tiffany, a long-haired blue point – a gift from Mary; Delilah, the cat who inspired the Queen song of the same name; plus ginger Oscar, Romeo, Miko and all-white Lily.
Once when I asked him whether he’d like to have a baby he replied, “Yes, but I’d rather have another cat!”
I asked him if he ever worried 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’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.”
The film’s recreation of the band’s performance at Live Aid, where they stole the show with a barnstorming 20-minute set, is mesmerising. 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.
Then 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. By that point Freddie had been diagnosed with HIV, but he was still hoping 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’d stop taking the drugs that were keeping him alive.
He wanted to die on his own terms. That was so typical of Freddie. The biggest tragedy of all, of course, is that if he could’ve fought on for another year the new drugs available to treat HIV might have kept him alive.
So what would Freddie have thought about this gloriously upbeat movie celebration of his career had he still been here? I think he would’ve absolutely loved it.