Freddie Mercury: The Biography by Laura Jackson

Author:Laura Jackson [Jackson, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780748129072
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2011-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

NINE

Shifting Sands

Mercury’s intention to keep in touch with Tony Bastin had to be put on hold for the first quarter of 1980. Work at Musicland Studios, on both Queen’s new album and the Flash Gordon soundtrack, kept him in Munich; a situation that suited him. The city’s reputation for a notoriously uninhibited nightlife was well deserved, and Mercury formed some of his closest friendships there. But weeks of excess, of combining heavy recording sessions with hectic nightclubbing, had begun to take their toll. It was fortunate that, in March, Mercury had to make a quick return trip to London.

The new single ‘Save Me’ had been greeted by the rock critics’ usual disdain, but it scarcely mattered. Reviews had long ago served as the least reliable gauge of the band’s global popularity. ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’, in addition to having topped the US charts, had repeated this success in five other countries. But Mercury’s flying visit to Britain was not business, nor was it purely pleasure. He was primarily honouring a promise to Kenny Everett to make a rare television appearance on one of his zany weekly shows. As Everett announced contenders for the ‘British Eurovision Violence Contest’, a leather-clad Mercury joined him on set, holding a can of carbonated drink. He promptly yanked off the can’s ring pull, so close to Everett that the fizzy contents spurted all over his face. ‘Good start,’ quipped Everett and carried on talking to the camera. Clearly unscripted, Mercury sprang on the comedian, wrapping his arms and legs around Everett’s body and unbalancing them both. As they crashed to the studio floor, they rolled around in a mock brawl.

Mercury’s friendship with Everett would survive into the mid-eighties, but tales would later surface of their acrimonious split after a bitter row over drugs. This, however, appears to owe more to fiction than fact. In 1995 Kenny Everett died of AIDS, but his agent, Jo Gurnett, says, ‘Kenny admired Freddie like mad and adored everything he did. They were very good friends. Their falling out is a bit of a grey area, but I know that it was a minor disagreement between them, after which they just seemed to drift apart.’

‘Freddie’s career took him away a lot, and certainly Ev’s television work occupied most of his time, too. Kenny didn’t see Freddie latterly. He would have liked to, but it was just one of those things. Then Freddie was too sick, and Kenny himself was too sick … I remember Kenny, in the late stages of his illness, when he knew he was dying, saying about Freddie and their lost closeness, “Oh, well, we’ll all be up there together, and maybe then we will make it up.”’

For some time Mercury’s London base had been a comfortable flat at 12 Stafford Terrace in Kensington, but he had succumbed to the lure of owning a status symbol luxury mansion. He had no desire actually to move house – content simply to possess something sumptuous of his own.

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