Freddie Mercury: The Biography (4 page)

‘Freddie always took stock of what was going on, but he never copied another performer. Freddie was always Freddie, very angular,
very showbizzy about everything he did and entirely his own creation.

‘He was also continually concerned that he looked just right. He was never scruffy and yet to my knowledge he only had to
his name one pair of boots, one T-shirt, one pair of trousers, one belt and one jacket. Still, he remained immaculate. As
to the person inside? I would say non-stop in his life, both on and off stage, Freddie put on a performance.’

When Ibex travelled north to play gigs, Smile would invariably join them for moral support, if they weren’t engaged at Imperial
College. It wasn’t always easy to find a reliable mode of transport for both bands and their friends, and at times they risked
their lives driving up and down the motorway in vehicles little better than deathtraps. But it was good fun – and good experience.

Mercury’s most memorable gigs with Ibex were probably when they played at the Bolton Octagon Theatre in August 1969, followed
by an appearance at an open-air festival the next day in the city’s Queen’s Park. ‘I brought along this guy I knew called
Steve Lake,’ says Ken Testi, ‘who was seriously into photography, experimenting with light shows and liquid slides, which
were very advanced for the time, and he took some great shots of Freddie in this amphitheatre in the park. The seating was
like orange segments behind a pool, and there was one memorable shot of Freddie in full flight striding the stage totally
à la
Queen. It’s an image that’s stayed with me ever since.’

The Bolton gigs proved to be a significant milestone in the
development of the band’s image. Mike Bersin vividly recalls getting ready for the lunchtime gig. ‘We had decided to go to
town dressing up. I wore a gold lamé cloak, which, when the time came, I felt a twit wearing – but Freddie stood out a mile.
He’d been backcombing his long hair to make it stand out more, and before going on he’d been twitching at himself in the mirror
for ages. I eventually yelled at him, “For God’s sake, stop messin’ with your hair, Freddie!” To which he retorted, “But I’m
a star, dear boy!” There’s not a lot you can say to that.’

According to Bersin, it was hard to tell if Mercury suffered any pre-performance nerves. ‘He would get more jokey than normal,’
he recalls, ‘which was maybe a form of psyching himself up, but the male society in bands then was definitely insult-based,
and we’d all be slagging each other off. Freddie would take the piss out of people something rotten and, in turn, they took
the piss out of him. He loved it.’

It was around this time that Ibex decided they were tired of the exhausting motorway shuttle back and forth between London
and Liverpool. Disappointingly it didn’t look like much was happening for them in the capital, even with the advent of their
colourful new singer; so taking a vote, they agreed to stay for a while in Liverpool. Mercury didn’t like this arrangement,
but his desire to remain in the group meant he had to go along with it. Based up north, he managed to maintain his links with
Smile because they would often hitch-hike to Liverpool to see him play, staying with him overnight at his digs.

His lodgings had been found through one of their friends, Geoff Higgins, whose mother was catering manageress at the Dovedale
Towers Banqueting Halls, 60 Penny Lane. Higgins explains, ‘At this time “Tupp” Taylor was heavily into Jethro Tull and was
dying to learn the flute so that he could incorporate it into the band’s repertoire, and he asked me if I could play bass
for Ibex instead for a while, which I did.

‘Initially my mum had been shocked when I came home at the way I was dressed but nothing fazed her for long. She liked all
my London friends, but she just adored Freddie, thought he talked ever so posh, and he was wonderfully courteous to her. Behind
and slightly to the left of the main tower at Dovedale there was an enormous flat on two floors, which was where I was living,
and when Freddie was looking for digs, he had to look no further.’

Mercury may have missed Kensington and longed to return there, but he did enjoy Higgins’s company: ‘We all by now semi-suspected
that Freddie’s sexuality was different from ours,’ Higgins recalls, ‘but then again at that time Liverpudlians classed all
Londoners as fucking fruits anyway, so you couldn’t go by that. Freddie stayed with me at Penny Lane, but he never once came
on to me.’ Geoff Higgins admits that this was a huge relief, considering his vivid memory of the time they had first met.

‘The first words I heard Freddie say,’ he explains, ‘was when Bersin had invited me some months before to kip on the chaise
longue in his flat, when I was in London to do interviews for a few colleges I was hoping to get into.

‘I was fast asleep one day when in walked these two blokes. It’d been howling a gale and raining, and one of them dashed to
the big mirror over the fireplace and squealed, “Oh, my God! Have I been out looking like this?” and I thought, well, I’m
not going near that one, that’s for sure! It’s strange that we went on to become such good mates.’

What surprised Higgins most was that for all Mercury’s posturing antics he was, in reality, a very sensitive bloke. ‘Fred
was also a very good confidant,’ he reveals. ‘If I was feeling crap, he was good at noticing it – and drawing me out to talk
about what was bothering me – and he’d always get me back on track. He was like that.

‘He was a couple of years older than me, which seemed to
make all the difference, and it wasn’t only with me either. He’d be there if anybody in the gang needed an ear, and, let’s
face it, at that age among blokes it’s not often that someone notices, let alone cares. But Fred did, and he was very good
at helping. He was a terrific listener.’ As with much in Mercury’s personality, this side of him mostly remained hidden, swamped
in public by the outlandish clowning that he was allowing himself more freedom to express.

Mercury began to feel he had been in Ibex long enough to try to change something he considered important – the group’s name.
Mike Bersin recalls the way he went about it: ‘He phoned me up one night saying that the others in the band weren’t happy
with the name Ibex, and, if I didn’t object, the rest wanted it to be changed to Wreckage. I said that if that’s what everyone
else wanted, then it was fine by me. Two days later we met up at rehearsal and discovered that all our equipment had already
been stencilled with the new name. It transpired we all got the same call that night! Having said that,’ adds Mike, ‘Wreckage
was a good choice. It probably said more to people. Not many knew what an Ibex was and cared even less, I guess. But Freddie
knew if a name sounded right.’ What was interesting about Mercury’s manoeuvrings was that he managed to give the illusion
of democracy while neatly getting his own way and not upsetting anyone in the process.

While Smile frequently came to Liverpool to watch Ibex play – and to perform themselves, as Ken Testi would occasionally arrange
gigs for them too – Mercury and the others returned equally often to London. Testi was frantically busy fixing up Wreckage
with work, often at the last minute. ‘This whole period was pretty hectic,’ he recalls. ‘I didn’t know sometimes whether I
was coming or going. Once we’d all been in London, and I’d hitched up to St Helen’s because I’d decided to go to college there.
I’d literally just got in the door when
Mike phoned to tell me that they’d had word that they were booked for the next day and asking if I could return to take them
up in a van they’d borrowed. Nothing daunted, I grabbed a snack and started thumbing a lift back to London, arriving late
that same day.

‘Early next morning I hoofed it round to Imperial College, picking up Freddie en route, who was supposed to help me load the
gear. It was a science college and not particularly set up for music, but they had a small rehearsal facility on the third
floor of an obscure tower with a spiral staircase, and the gear was stashed at the top. Well, while I humped down a big bass
cabinet on my back and all the other heavy gear, a trip at a time, in total Freddie managed three journeys; one carrying the
maracas, the second with a tambourine, and the third time he took down a music stand that we didn’t need. When I told him
so, he replied with a gigantic sigh and a flick of his wrist, “Oh, could you possibly take it back up, then.” He was bloody
useless, but never mind he was there in spirit.’

All this effort was in aid of a gig at the Sink in Hardman Street, a basement club below the Rumbling Tum, which Geoff Higgins
remembers well: ‘The Sink was so small and clammy, it made the Cavern look like the Empire State Building. It wasn’t licensed
to sell alcohol, but they got around that by selling bottle tops at the door, which you then exchanged downstairs for ale.
Anyway, that night Freddie was up to his usual tricks, cavorting about. We were always telling him, “For God’s sake, man,
stand still! It’s really uncool to be poncing about the stage like that!” You just didn’t do that in Liverpool, and we were
forever telling him that he was embarrassing us, but Fred didn’t take any notice. He was really into the look of things.’

It was just as well that he was concentrating on their image because, according to Higgins, the sound was way off. ‘I taped
that gig, and Wreckage were doing a Beatles number but
giving it a mega over-the-top Wishbone Ash-type treatment, and Fred was lost. He was way off tune.’

There was to be, however, something very significant about this gig. Says Higgins, ‘Smile had been playing the pre-dip ball
at Liverpool Art College that same night, and afterwards they crashed in on our gig. No sooner had they arrived than they
got up on stage with Wreckage, which meant that that gig, on 9 September 1969, was the first time that Freddie, Brian and
Roger all played together on stage.’

Because Ken Testi was so worn out with all the travelling, he doesn’t recall much about this gig, but he does remember the
moment when Smile joined Wreckage: ‘Freddie was really in his element when he guested on a few of Smile’s numbers. He knew
all their stuff by heart, you see.’ Watching Mercury on stage, Testi maintains that apart from the odd occasion when he sang
off key – Freddie was already rapidly developing as a performer: ‘He had all the strong qualities that he would later bring
to Queen; striding across in front of the band, using all those, now familiar, exaggerated gestures. He was bloody good.’

For all that, though, Liverpool was not where Freddie Mercury saw himself getting his big break. Soon after the Sink gig,
he headed back to London with Mike Bersin and went on to graduate from Ealing Art College with a diploma in graphic art and
design. He also teamed up again with Roger Taylor in Kensington market. Brian May was by now in his second year as a postgraduate
student and still pursuing a career in astrophysics, having joined, as part of his PhD, a research team studying zodiacal
light. The work involved long stretches away, building an observatory in Tenerife. Left alone more often with Roger Taylor,
Mercury’s relationship with the drummer developed into one of his strongest friendships.

Mercury’s flat share with Mary Austin had ended while he was away in Liverpool, although she had often spent weekends with
him in Merseyside. Once he was back in Kensington, they
didn’t immediately start to live together again, and for a while Mercury was homeless, part of a shifting galaxy of friends
with no fixed address. ‘At this time no one really knew where anyone was kipping,’ Ken Testi says. ‘I remember staying in
one mate’s already overcrowded flat when there was a knock on the door early one morning, and there was Roger clutching a
mattress, hoping to doss down.’

There was nothing grand about any of their accommodation by late 1969. Most places they leased on a short-term basis, and
in any case they usually fell behind with the rent and were evicted. Finally a few friends from Smile, Wreckage and other
bands found a flat in Ferry Road, Barnes. This was only supposed to house three people, however, and, according to Mike Bersin,
when the landlady came round for the rent, everyone else would hide in the bedroom until she’d gone.

‘The flat was ghastly,’ Mike Bersin recalls. ‘There were odd chairs and a red vinyl sofa, which had burst at the seams in
places with ugly horsehair stuffing sprouting out. But we played Led Zeppelin’s first album all day, every day, on the old
monogram record player, until the needle wore out. At that age, though, it was wonderful. Lager and lime was the big drink,
and you went about without shoes on your feet, which in dog-shit covered pavements wasn’t the best of ideas, but there was
just such an amazing buzz at the end of the sixties. It was post-pill and pre-AIDS, and promiscuity felt mandatory rather
than optional. It was kind of romantic, too, jumping into a battered old van and travelling miles to play gigs practically
for free.’

Although fastidious by nature, Mercury wholeheartedly shared in the chaos of the Ferry Road flat. He thrived, too, on its
atmosphere of camaraderie, and it was here that he seriously began to write songs, as well as rehearsing harmonies with May
and Taylor. ‘Freddie loved talking music, would burn with enthusiasm when he was trying things out,’ Mike Bersin says. ‘He
had endless patience, too, and would show you anything
you needed to learn on piano. On that level you could get close to him, but probably only on that level.

‘Fred and I wrote a couple of songs together, which was quite an experience. If he thought there was a song in the offing
in you, he drove you enthusiastically all the way until you got there.’ In tribute, after Mercury’s death, Roger Taylor spoke
of how intensely he drove the others in Queen, forever determined to get the best out of them.

‘That determination to succeed was an irresistible force in Freddie from the start,’ maintains Mike Bersin. ‘And it was like
a moving train. Once it pulls away, you can’t impede it by holding on to the door handle. You either jump on and go with it,
or you step back and let go. And everyone around Freddie either went with it or they didn’t. People were forever calling out
jokingly as soon as he arrived on the scene, “Ah, here comes Freddie, the star!” but it was all good-natured.’