Freddie Mercury: The Biography (20 page)

That summer, Mercury left with Queen to commence a mammoth tour. Starting on 30 June at the PNE Coliseum in Vancouver, it
would end on 1 October with four consecutive nights at Madison Square Garden. It was during an internal flight between Boston
and New York that Mercury met the handsome airline steward John Murphy. A former soldier, Murphy possessed the he-man physique
guaranteed to catch Mercury’s eye. Although they were to strike up a rapport, they slept together only once, in Mercury’s
Manhattan hotel suite. Their friendship, however, lasted several years. As with Joe Fanelli, who became one of the star’s
closest confidants, being discarded by Mercury as a lover didn’t necessarily mean the end of the association. Mercury had
an uncanny knack of turning yesterday’s lovers into loyal companions.

The tour was arduous, while airtight security left the band cocooned to the point of suffocation – especially now that they
travelled everywhere in private planes. Pete Brown recalls: ‘Every day it was a case of arriving on a private airstrip, being
ferried from the tarmac by limo to some plush hotel, hotel to gig and back the same route. It created a rarefied atmosphere
that was driving them all mad.

‘People imagine that it’s a glamorous life, but it’s a damned
hard slog. Someone would ask me, “How was Boston?” and I’d reply, “Boston had orange curtains and a blue bedspread.” They’d
look at me funny, but that was what it was really like.’

To alleviate the strain, they took a couple of breaks, just long enough to get off the treadmill – and go home if desired
– before returning to the relentless gigging. After one break, in August, John Deacon’s ‘Another One Bites the Dust’, was
released. Again it was a departure for Queen, but its distinctive bass line overcame fans’ resistance and made it the darling
of the discos. It was universally a smash hit, selling 4.5 million copies in America alone. There it presided at number one
for five weeks, one of three Queen singles to go platinum in the USA.

Since the song depended heavily on a combination of this powerful bass line and a piece of tight drumming, it was not easy
to perform live. But ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ was so popular that it couldn’t be left out of Queen’s repertoire – and,
besides, the number gave Mercury an invaluable opportunity. His delivery of ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ revitalised his status
as a sex symbol. His performance had an ambiguous appeal to all genders.

At the Forum in Montreal, a well-toned Mercury stalked on stage to a wild reception, wearing only a pair of white shorts,
a white baseball cap and a red neckerchief. The shorts were so tight that they later elicited some risqué queries from the
press. The star took pleasure in declaring, ‘I don’t have a Coke bottle down there. It’s all mine.’ Barefoot and thrusting
out his hairy chest, he ad-libbed during the tricky instrumental section, moving closer to the edge of the stage, repeatedly
taunting the audience with the urge, ‘Bite it, bite it hard, baby!’ while he rubbed his taut lower stomach in simulated ecstasy.

In October 1980, at the end of their most gruelling tour to date, Queen returned to Britain. A European trip was scheduled
for six weeks’ time, and there were finishing touches to be made to the film score before then. At home, Mercury spent
his nights with Tony Bastin and his days, during early November, at London’s Anvil Studios. The cover concept for the album
was his work, and he spent time experimenting with designs. When Queen went to Zurich to rehearse for their tour, Mercury
surrounded himself with his usual entourage, whose hard core by now included Joe Fanelli, Paul Prenter and Peter Freestone.
Only this time his lover went too.

‘Flash’s Theme’ came out shortly afterwards as the single from the soundtrack album, and by making the top ten it far outstripped
Elektra’s choice in the US; ‘Need Your Loving Tonight’ languished at a disappointing forty-four in the Billboard chart.

On 8 December
Flash Gordon
was released to rave reviews. Any pleasure from this, however, evaporated when Mercury heard that John Lennon had been shot
– apparently by a deranged fan – on his return from Record Plant Studios around 11.00 p.m.. It wasn’t just a brutal lesson
on the dangers of how extreme adulation can mutate into fatal obsession. Recalling Hendrix’s demise a decade earlier, with
Lennon’s death Queen felt they’d lost a hero. The following night at London’s Wembley Arena, in tribute they played Lennon’s
‘Imagine’. They were so distressed that Brian May forgot the chords and cut to the chorus. This threw the overwrought Mercury
off his stride. If the audience noticed, they didn’t care; many were themselves already in tears. Mercury’s own mark of respect
to Lennon was ‘Life is Real (Song for Lennon)’, which would later surface as a B-side to ‘Body Language’.

By the year’s end Queen became the first band to enter the
Guinness Book of Records
– listed among Britain’s highest paid executives. This achievement in no way diminished their desire for new territories,
places where the spectacle of their live extravaganzas would be appreciated. In Rio de Janeiro their manager discussed arrangements
with local promoters for a tour that would start in less than two months. The year 1981 was to mark the beginning of their
love affair with South America.

Before that, in early February, the band returned to Tokyo. After the Japanese film première of
Flash Gordon,
Queen performed five sell-out gigs at the Budokan. The country that had started Queenmania had lost none of its enthusiasm,
as shown by the annual polls in
Music Life
magazine. Mercury was voted top of his category, as was John Deacon, while Brian May and Roger Taylor took second place in
their sections. Queen itself won the top award for best band, which added to Mercury’s delight at being back in his beloved
Japan.

Mercury had been fascinated by Japanese culture for years. By now rich enough to indulge himself, he had become a serious
collector of Japan’s art and artefacts. Heaven for Mercury was a shopping blitz there, when he spent money like water – and
sometimes with no thought about how he was going to transport his purchases home. The downside of being away was that he missed
his precious cats and had lately taken to making long-distance telephone calls to talk to them at all hours of the night.

Ten days separated this tour of Japan from their first visits to Argentina and Brazil. Mercury took advantage of the break
to go to America to conduct some overdue business. His love of New York and his frequent trips there meant that he now wanted
somewhere permanent to live in the city. He purchased a sumptuous apartment on the forty-third floor of a skyscraper at 425
East 58th Street, which he’d eventually furnish with priceless art treasures.

Queen were scheduled to play just seven gigs in South America, three at the vast Vélez Sársfield football ground in Buenos
Aires and two at Brazil’s Morumbi Stadium in Sao Paulo. Mercury later confessed to nervousness at the challenge, admitting,
‘We had no right to expect the works from an alien country.’

But in the course of three weeks they had played to record-breaking audiences, and that tour marked their status as among
the prime instigators of stadium rock. Queen didn’t invent this – the Beatles had packed New York’s Shea Stadium in 1965 –
but the sixties had only the tinny public-address Tannoy, while Queen were experimenting with the new and sophisticated sound
systems. The sheer scale of these events required this new technology.

This trip was certainly unusual. Before Queen arrived, the Argentinian intelligence service had taken a close interest in
the tour. The country’s unstable political climate made the concerts a likely target for a terrorist attack. Argentina’s president,
General Viola, also contributed to the heightened sense of occasion with a government delegation to greet the band. The mass
hysteria at the airport was televised live on the national news.

There were special celebrations in Buenos Aires for Queen. These included a party at the home of the president of Vélez Sársfield
– at which the band met the country’s soccer demigod Diego Maradonna – and dinner at General Viola’s official residence. Being
treated as a visiting dignitary probably pleased Mercury no end, but perhaps his deepest joy came from their first gig on
28 February. In the middle of ‘Love of My Life’, he stopped singing at the usual point, when, as ever, the largely Spanish-speaking
audience took over and sang back to him in word-perfect English.

The road crew experienced a few scares as they organised the transport of tons of valuable equipment through dense jungle.
Then at the Brazilian border they encountered an overly bureaucratic customs official. Jim Beach and tour manager Gerry Stickells
were worried that the band’s equipment could be confiscated by corrupt officials and made elaborate plans for it to be spirited
away immediately after the final gig. But, for all that, the last night at Morumbi turned out to be remarkable, and not only
because the band played before the largest-ever paying audience in the world. The brief tour itself also grossed
approximately $3.5 million. The prospect of returning later in the year was appealing.

Back in the UK for a short period before work on their new album was due to commence in Montreux, Mercury picked up where
he had left off with Tony Bastin. While abroad the star had been fooling around with men and drugs, and Bastin wasn’t as naive
as to believe that Mercury had been faithful to him – but still their relationship continued to thrive. When he chose to be,
Mercury could be very romantic and admitted, on occasions, to feeling intensely vulnerable when he imagined himself to be
in love. He would lavish diamonds, luxury cars and substantial sums of cash on his man of the moment and felt that his best
creative work flowed then, too. Yet he was also prone to dramatic outpourings on the raw deal he believed he suffered in affairs
of the heart.

‘Love is Russian roulette for me,’ he once mourned, adding, ‘No one loves the real me inside. They’re all in love with my
fame, my stardom.’

On the whole he was probably right. But since he could commit serial infidelity from within a relationship, he contributed
greatly to the emotional hollowness of which he often complained. For all that, his passion for Bastin was real and would
endure for several months more.

By summertime, work was almost done at Mountain Studios. The final album was a disappointment to many fans, but these sessions
were to produce Queen’s first number one single since ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. At the Swiss resort, among the select few with
whom they frequently socialised was David Bowie.

Resident sound engineer Dave Richards invited Bowie over to the recording studio, where an impromptu jam session started.
No one thought much of it until they realised they were co-writing a song. ‘Under Pressure’ would be finalised a couple of
months later in New York and released on 26 October.
Bowie was to reveal that parts of the single made him cringe, but neither his fans, nor Queen’s, shrank from buying it, and
it catapulted to the top of the charts.

It was in New York that Mercury celebrated his thirty-fifth birthday; for the next few years his parties would prove legendary.
Although he had purchased a luxury apartment in the city, he took over a floor of the Berkshire Hotel in which to host the
event and flew over all his closest friends by Concorde. Typically lavish, it went on non-stop for a spectacular five days.

Queen regrouped mid-month in New Orleans to rehearse for their return trip to South America. With its first date in Venezuela
at the Poliedro de Caracas, the tour was called ‘Gluttons for Punishment’. This turned out to be rather apt. Touring the world
meant frequent and unusual media experiences, but the slot on the live pop TV show Jim Beach had booked for the band was among
the strangest. The show featured a string of lookalike stars, and when Queen were announced, there was confusion about whether
or not they were the real thing.

Mercury had refused to appear on the show alongside his bandmates and he must have been relieved that he had refused to go,
when the show degenerated into an even worse fiasco. An excitable man rushed on camera and grabbed the mike, announcing that
the statesman Romulo Ethancourt had died. A two-minute silence was ordered. Moments later a second man rushed on and announced
that he hadn’t died at all. As all this happened in rapid Spanish, none of Queen knew what was going on, and they could only
squirm with embarrassment.

More serious than being shown up on live TV was the fact that Ethancourt did die later that night, a development that plunged
the country into mourning. Airports closed, stranding Queen, with their gigs cancelled, in the middle of a politically inflammatory
situation. The country was ripe for revolution, and it was easy to believe the tales of how people – especially
foreigners – just vanished off the streets. There was great relief when the airport reopened, allowing the band to fly back
to safety.

After this the three forthcoming Mexican dates, due to start on 9 October, were not very appealing. Their nerves were still
jangling when during the first of the gigs, at the Estadion Universitano in Monterey, the audience began pelting them relentlessly
with rubbish. Boots, bottles and batteries rained down on Queen. The band remained on stage for one of their most energetic
performances, as Mercury, Deacon and May darted from side to side to avoid flying missiles. Roger Taylor, although further
back, was a static target behind his drums and particularly at risk.

Fleeing off stage at the end of the show, they felt dejected by the worst reception of their careers. They were astounded,
then, when gleeful officials came over to congratulate them. Apparently the crowd’s behaviour was the traditional show of
appreciation. Of the two remaining Puebla dates, they played only the first, as tax complications meant they would not get
paid. It was the excuse they needed, and the band boarded a flight for New York, vowing never to set foot in Mexico again.