Queen Unseen (5 page)

‘Sorry Ratty – we've already told him.'

‘And I've told you! No way! That side of the stage has to be kept clear for me to work.'

‘Ratty…'

‘No, absolutely no way – do you hear me?'

‘It's Mick Jagger!'

‘Oh, all right then. What would he like to drink…?'

An Englishman's home is his castle and an English roadie's castle is the stage – his fortress and safe haven, secured during show time by Queen's minders, a mixed bunch of wall-to-wall muscled Americans and likely lads from London's East End: Big Paul, Big Doug, Tunbridge, Big Wally, Wally Gore, Big Terry, Big Black Vic – in fact, all the US-born minders were very BIG lads indeed. At one time in 1981, all three minders on tour were called Wally – the three Wallies! Minder Mad Jack, a scary martial arts expert, once saw a seedy-looking figure lurking beneath Fred's piano and pounced to drag him out. That shadowy character was me. Jack didn't last the tour.

Another short-lived minder was a muscle-bound chap whose revealing photos were discovered in a gay magazine – and handed around the crew of course.

The band party also included, at Fred's request, a physiotherapist from Munich who had looked after Fred when he was recuperating from a knee-ligament injury, inflicted in 1984 during his tour of duty in the city's bars and clubs. Fred was understandably nervous that his knee might
not stand all the punishment he gave it on stage. Freddie Mercury was many things, primarily a musician who sang and performed on stage with the stamina of a professional athlete. Did he train? Did he work hard to get in shape prior to gruelling tours? Did he have a disciplined exercise and diet regime? No. A few stretches occasionally and an enormous self-belief. And a few vodkas.

Dieter Breit, the physiotherapist, was known as The Fizz and deemed a luxury in some quarters, but rescued Fred and several shows when the Mercurial knee went during a performance in Hanover later in '84. He also sorted out Roger's badly sprained ankle after a fall in Sun City weeks later. Touring is hard on the body and The Fizz regularly worked on my back when it ‘went'. Usually after being thrown across the lobby of a hotel by one of my large drunken American crew mates!

So, load out took varying times depending on the state of my back, the liggers, access for the truck, the local crew and whether we were staying in town and had the incentive of a good party to go to. Load out could take several hours, but in Tempe, Arizona, where the truck backed directly up to the stage, and we had a very efficient local crew, it took around 45 minutes from Queen leaving the stage to the band gear truck doors being closed. A 45-foot trailer. A foot a minute, a personal record. Packing trucks is a grubby and unpleasant procedure, punctuated by banged shins, scuffs, splinters, bruises and trapped fingers. As I packed the truck, I always made sure I had cigarettes and drinks at the back of the truck to smooth the way with the locals. Truck packing was never fun, just a task that had to be done in high spirits in order to 
get it done, but when it was cold, damp and we encountered sub-zero temperatures, it was a truly miserable experience. Yugoslavia in 1979, midwinter: Fred presents me with a gift to keep warm while packing the truck – a brightly coloured matching set of woollen hat and gloves. I was touched. Woven by local craftsmen and bought from some Eastern European artisan co-operative shop? No: the local branch of C&A, Zagreb.

It was while loading a truck as a teenager that I acquired the origins of my nickname. Called on to do all the dirty jobs, including crawling in the gap between the top of the stacked gear and the truck roof, to slot some small item into the puzzle, the truck driver on this particular Mott The Hoople tour in 1974 said that with my long, lank greasy hair and skinny body I looked like a rat scurrying about. ‘The Rat' as I was called became ‘Ratty', courtesy of Brian May at my first Queen rehearsals a year later – and it stuck. When on the first day of rehearsals Fred was told his new roadie was one of the guys who had worked for Mott, and was called the Rat; with a twirl and flick of the Mercury wrist, adorned with a silver snake bracelet, he replied pompously: ‘Oh no! – I shall call him Peter.' Didn't last long.

Fred, being Fred, put his own embroidery on my nickname, and with a French slant, I became ‘
Ratoise
'. Or occasionally when he wanted to communicate with the common man (me) and get his attention, he would shout in a mockney accent: ‘'Ere – Rats!'

Once the truck doors were shut and padlocked, it was time to try to come down off the adrenaline rush from the intensity of marshalling the equipment at the end of an 
energy-packed show. Now we were free – until the next show. What happened next was subject to where we were going and by what method. If driving, then I wanted to get away immediately, and would not touch a drop of alcohol. If staying in town, we either headed to the hotel to clean up and splash on a bit of Brut aftershave – or, if time did not permit, we'd go in our working clothes straight to the club, bar or party. Some women like the smell of a working man – so I'm told.

Pheromones or something.

Queen often played multiple shows at venues, which gave us opportunity for a night out – after a night's work. Once the gear had been shut down and everything secured and locked away, we would go to the band's dressing room, as they would usually be there winding down. Apart from getting some free quality booze, and a post-show snack, maybe, it was also an opportunity to chat directly about any aspects of the show.

Depending on where we playing, there would be invited guests in the dressing room after the show, but never many. My mum and dad would attend shows on UK tours, usually in the Midlands or west of England areas. At the NEC Arena in Birmingham, I took my parents into the dressing room, where Fred was still lounging in his dressing gown. He immediately made a huge fuss of my mum, and sat her on his knee, asking all about her and what she had been doing. Despite not having a large family, Fred was very family orientated, and involved himself with other people's relatives with genuine enthusiasm. My dad sat outside the dressing room on some steps with John Deacon, chatting like two 
regular blokes – cans of beer in their hands. Brian and Roger also warmly welcomed my parents, recognising and remembering them when they arrived.

Mum would often embarrass me by bringing food to shows for me.

‘Mum – they do feed us, you know.'

‘You look very pale – and so thin'

‘Well, it's hard work – and I'm not thin – I'm lean – fit.'

A popular homemade item were her jars of pickled onions, which Trip Khalaf, Queen's American sound engineer, in particular loved.

He always greeted her by saying, ‘Hello, Mrs Hince.' Then he'd point at me and add, shaking his head, ‘What's it like to be the most embarrassed woman in England?'

She took it in good spirits.

If, after the show, we were travelling overnight by bus, then there was time to wind down on board until the sound crew, with whom we travelled, were ready.

Queen had normally vacated the dressing room at this point, so we would make that our first stop to see what scraps of food could be plundered.

On early tours in the mid-'70s before we had our own caterers travelling with us, there was very little. The economic promoter had got his aide to clear the remaining food once the band had left – and it could be recycled the following day, no doubt the promoter charging full whack for it. The same aide had been critical of Queen's crew, so we decided he needed to be taught a lesson. He had bought himself a smart white sports shirt and left it in the dressing room for safekeeping. It was hijacked, placed on the 
pavement outside Newcastle City Hall and set on fire with lighter fuel.

When he asked if anybody had seen his prized new purchase, he was handed a set of Polaroids showing the shirt ablaze and final charred remains. He left us some cheese and biscuits every night after that.

In Europe, we could always raid the catering area, where ‘trough time', the evening meal, was served by our regular tour caterers: Toad In The Hole of Barry Wales. Barry Wales? Not a comic character but the small seaside town of Barry Island in South Wales where the unlikely outfit all lived. Now I realise that St David is the patron saint of Wales, but are
all
the male inhabitants named after him? The company owner was Dave Keeble and his regular cooks were Dave Thomas and Dave Lewis. These three were collectively and affectionately known as ‘Dave, Dave and Dave'. As Queen tours got larger, they took an extra cook out with them called Steve, and they became: ‘Dave, Dave, Dave and not Dave!'

This Welsh quartet – also known as The Taffia, Stomach Saboteurs and Culinary Criminals – prepared generally hearty fare to sustain a hard-working crew: steaks, shepherds pie, spaghetti bolognese, chilli con carne and so on. They did, however, cater for the growing band of vegetarians – omelettes! The caterers also supplied Queen's dressing-room requirements, and Dave x 3 + 1 attempted to vary the basic menu by using local products and specialities from the regions of Europe we visited. The American contingent of the crew had continually nagged them to get turkey to celebrate their traditional Thanksgiving dinner, though the stage manager vainly tried to convince them that in Boston the 
traditional holiday food was the finest fresh lobster. He had to settle for Thousand on a Raft – known in haute cuisine circles as beans on toast. Local produce was supplemented by all the vital garnishes transported from England: Marmite, HP sauce, Worcester sauce, marmalade and English mustard.

Replete on our masters' dressing-room leftovers, we would amble around the venue as the show was dismantled and the building rearranged for its next engagement. Walking into an empty arena at this point was a prosaic experience. A vast space, that only an hour or two earlier had transfixed a gathering of thousands with a glittering spectacle, was now a cacophony of folded metal chairs being stacked, industrial cleaning machines humming, rasping forklift trucks manoeuvring, lighting trusses and chains striking abrasive contact and a multitude of voices straining to shout and bark instructions and insults above the din. Smoke and pyrotechnic dust still hung in the air and mixed with pungent cleaning fluids, emissions from the forklifts and squashed, abandoned popcorn – it all left a sickly, sweet rasp in the throat. Tomorrow was another day and the cold concrete cocoon would house the hopes and dreams of another section of the community and their particular passions. Meanwhile, tonight, the victorious gladiators had left the coliseum and the magical genie was safely back in the bottle – ready to be unleashed again tomorrow.

The uniformed Hispanic and Asian immigrant cleaners who mopped the floors and cleaned toilets in the US arenas, with their fluorescent yellow buckets on wheels, didn't care who Freddie Mercury or any rock act was as they tried to
keep America sanitary. They just wanted to be at home with their families and the better life America and her dream had given them. The good life.

Hang on a moment – what was I doing with my
own
life? True, it was a
good life
: travelling the world with lashings of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll thrown in, but I could have been doing something worthwhile: working for charity in the third world, medical research, campaigning about global warming and pollution. These are things I have thought about since – but certainly not at the time – I was having too much fun. And just how did I get here? Where did it all start? In a supermarket in Fulham, south west London. Not stacking shelves, but amps and speaker cabinets.

An old cinema had previously stood on the site of the supermarket and, after it closed in the early 1970s, ‘super group' Emerson Lake and Palmer commandeered the building for their vast cache of equipment, renaming it Manticore. Apart from housing ELP's equipment and offices, it was hired out to the major bands of the time for office, recording and rehearsal purposes. The cinema seats had been ripped out, and a stained, threadbare carpeted slope led to the proscenium stage, which was big enough to handle large touring rock shows of that era. Despite being insulated by swathes of parachute silk hung from the balcony over the old stalls area, Manticore was a cold, dank miserable place in early November '73 when I first encountered Queen. I was working for Mott The Hoople, a great rock band, who had just returned from a successful tour in America, and I was impressed by all the US branded paraphernalia that Richie and Phil, Mott's full-time roadies, had accumulated. That
was all I really ever wanted to do – go to America. To go with a rock band would be a dream come true – with bells on. Liberty Bells.

Vast jet heaters, powered by Dalek-sized gas cylinders did little to warm the rehearsal space, so band and crew all wore heavy jackets, coats and even scarves. Mott were big at this point, probably at the peak of their career and ready to embark on an intense UK tour. After a few days in Manticore, Queen, the support act for the tour, showed up at the rehearsals. It seemed a little strange that Queen, who were signed to EMI records, should tour with a band on CBS, as support acts were usually from the same management or record company stable. However, these four guys were very keen and being pushed – hard. We may have all been shivering with cold that November in Manticore, but Queen rehearsed wearing their full stage costumes of lightweight silk, lace and flowing satin. Even John Harris, Queen's original sound engineer, wore a black velvet suit and fancy gloves to do the mixing! And just who was the strutting poseur in make-up, prancing about the stage with a chopped-off microphone stand and sporting a single chainmail glove?

Queen only had a short rehearsal time and, to be honest, I took little notice of them, as I was busy making the tea, painting things black, running errands and doing all the tasks that a young ‘rookie' of 18 years old was expected to do. Brian May was the first to be congenial to Mott's crew, and he let me try out his weird homemade guitar. I was surprised he didn't have a
proper
guitar: a Gibson, a Fender or even a Guild, like the guys in Mott The Hoople did. May also
played using old sixpenny pieces rather than plectrums, so I put it down to the fact that, as Queen were a new struggling band, he probably couldn't afford good equipment. Even his battered old Vox AC 30 amplifier stood on a rickety chair. It appeared he'd sacrificed his equipment for the Zandra Rhodes ‘dress' that Queen were into wearing at the time. However, I soon stopped feeling sorry for him when I heard him play! I had never heard sounds from a guitar quite like the high-pitched and rich-toned material Brian produced. He's pretty good, I thought. Queen had some of the feel of Led Zeppelin – but different.