Читать книгу Somebody to Love - Matt Richards - Страница 23

Combined with his confidence, a certain degree of fate and good luck seemed to be following Freddie’s career. ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’ hit the Top 10 just as Queen were embarking on a major UK tour – a tour that had already been planned to promote the new album, Queen II.

The tour kicked off at Blackpool’s Winter Gardens on 1st March 1974 and would feature Queen wearing stage costumes designed by Zandra Rhodes. ‘Freddie had loved the tops I did for Marc Bolan,’ she remembers, ‘and what I was doing with a variety of fabrics right then, and he came to me knowing very much what he wanted.’¹ Freddie would later reveal that he needed a look on-stage to make him feel more secure. Again, it was his attempt to create a personality that distanced himself from the boy from Zanzibar. Freddie Bulsara was no more, and hadn’t been for some time. He was now Freddie Mercury – and Freddie Mercury only – and the costumes, styling, look and performance helped him to cultivate this alter ego.

However, despite his change of name and the adoption of another character in the form of his stage persona, it seems deep down Freddie was still concerned about his sexual orientation and how the rise in the popularity of the band might be affected if his sexuality was revealed. During downtime at one of Queen’s concerts on their UK tour, and basking in the glory of their newfound success with ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’, Freddie confided his fears to his friend Pat Johnstone, who helped to run Queen’s fan club: ‘He said, “Patti, I really need to talk to you. I really need to talk to you. I’m in love with David.” I said, “What do you mean? You live with Mary.” He said, “I’m gay and I can’t tell anyone because it will destroy everything.” And I just said, “Well, as long as it doesn’t destroy you, that’s all that matters.” We sat there drinking cocktails and I didn’t know what to say. Come out? Don’t come out? What should I say? He loved Mary. He never stopped loving Mary. She was the loveliest, sweetest person. She loved Freddie and would have done anything for him – we all would have.’²

By the time the tour ended in Birmingham on 2nd April, 1974 Queen had cemented their reputation thanks, in part, to the prominence of ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’ in the charts, the notoriety Freddie was gaining from his live performances and the release of the second album, Queen II, which had climbed to number 5 in the UK album charts. But critical reaction to the album was mixed, with Disc saying Queen II was ‘going to be a hit album’, while Rolling Stone magazine declared it ‘a floundering and sadly unoriginal affair.’³ Meanwhile Record Mirror wrote, ‘This is it, the dregs of glam rock. The band with the worst name have capped that dubious achievement by bringing out the worst album for some time.’

Despite such reviews Queen had had a single in the Top 10 and an album in the Top Five: they had arrived. But Freddie was keen to highlight the amount of work the band had done in getting to where they were now: ‘To most people it must have seemed like an overnight success story, but really we’d been going for a while, doing the club circuits and all that, without having a recording contract. From the very start there were always business pressures of some sort or other. It was like a real obstacle race. I will always maintain the fact that for a major successful band, it’s never plain sailing, otherwise there’s something wrong about it. If it’s too easy you hit your peak and then that’s it.’⁴

But Queen hadn’t hit their peak yet: far from it. In fact, they were still a support band when they flew to the US in April 1974 to undertake a 40-date tour with Mott The Hoople. The new album, Queen II, had only reached number 83 in the US album charts and the single ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’ had failed to chart altogether, but the band saw the tour as a potentially great experience after their shared UK tour. Yet once again, while on foreign soil, disaster struck. Brian May collapsed and was diagnosed with hepatitis. Queen’s participation in the tour was over after just 20 of the 40 shows and the whole band flew back to England to be replaced by Kansas for the remainder of the tour.

Despite leaving the tour early, Queen had made a vivid impact on Mott The Hoople singer Ian Hunter: ‘They planned the whole time,’ he says. ‘Like, if we haven’t made it to such and such a level in two years, we’re out of here, and they did exactly what they said they were going to do.’⁵

Back in the UK, with Brian May hospitalised for six weeks and writing material from his hospital bed, Freddie, Roger and John began work on the next album. Roy Thomas Baker would, once again, produce the album and it would be recorded at both Rockfield Studios in Wales and Trident Studios in Soho. Brian would only visit the studios in Wales occasionally with the plan to return to fill in the guitar and additional vocals at a later stage on the album, which was titled Sheer Heart Attack.

Freddie composed six of the 13 songs on the new album: ‘Flick of the Wrist’, ‘Lily of the Valley’, ‘In The Lap of the Gods’, ‘Bring Back That Leroy Brown’, ‘In The Lap of the Gods . . . Revisited’ and the biggest hit on the album, ‘Killer Queen’. Together, they showed a remarkable ability to compose songs in different genres and styles. There’s the heavy, dark and aggressive tone of ‘Flick of the Wrist’, the ukulele-based vaudeville tribute to the 1920s ‘Bring Back That Leroy Brown’ and finally, the eccentric melodic debonair ‘Killer Queen’, a single unlike any other at the time of its release, and the song that catapulted Queen to international fame.

‘ “Killer Queen” was one song which was really out of the format that I usually write in,’ said Freddie in a 1974 interview. ‘Usually the music comes first, but the words came to me, and the sophisticated style that I wanted to put across in the song came first. No, I’d never really met a woman like that. A lot of my songs are fantasy. I can dream up all kinds of things. That’s the kind of world I live in. It’s very sort of flamboyant, and that’s the kind of way I write. I love it. “Killer Queen” I wrote in one night. I’m not being conceited or anything, but it just fell into place. I scribbled down the words in the dark one Saturday night and the next morning I got them all together and I worked all day Sunday and that was it. I’d got it. It gelled. It was great.’⁶

The NME said of the song: ‘It’s a turning point in that it sounds nothing like the noisy heavy metal sound to which we are accustomed from Queen, thus justifying their earlier claim of “versatility”. It’s more of a mixture of Beach Boys, early Beatles and 1920s music hall. Quite nice, actually.’⁷

Freddie would comment on it by saying, ‘People are used to hard rock, energy music from Queen, yet with this single you almost expect Noël Coward to sing it. It’s one of those bowler hat, black suspender belt numbers – not that Coward would wear that.’⁸

Composer Mike Moran was another impressed by ‘Killer Queen’: ‘I used to do all Kenny Everett’s shows. Kenny was a good friend and I remember he used to go on and on about Queen in the Seventies. It took them a while to get established, but I remember having lunch with Everett and he said, “I’m going to play something on the radio, have a listen this afternoon” and I was driving through Regent’s Park and he said, “Have a listen to this, it’s the best record that’s ever been made by anybody ever,” and played “Killer Queen”. Well, I actually stopped the car to listen to it; it’s quite a remarkable record. And I said to myself, “What on earth is this?” It’s just extraordinary; the production, the musicality, everything about it, the vocals, the lyrics, it was such a strange thing to hear at that time on the radio.’⁹

‘Killer Queen’ would earn Freddie his first Ivor Novello Award, but what was the song about? Who was the ‘Killer Queen’ of the title? And does it bear any connection to the sexual turmoil Freddie found himself in during that time? When asked, Freddie said, ‘It’s about a high-class call girl. I’m trying to say that classy people can be whores as well. That’s what the song is about, though I’d prefer people to put their interpretation upon it – to read into it what they like.’¹⁰

But Queen’s EMI plugger at the time, Eric Hall, has a different theory: ‘He [Freddie] used to be infatuated with me, I don’t know why. Was I his type? I assume I must have been. He told me that song [‘Killer Queen’] was about me. He said to me, “I’m the queen, Eric, and you’re killing me because I can’t have you.” Of course, every time I heard “Killer Queen” on the radio or saw him on Top of the Pops the first time, I knew what was in his mind when he wrote that song. The lyrics were, if I remember rightly, ‘She keeps Moët Chandon in his fancy cabinet’, I used to keep champagne in my little fancy cabinet. I had monster permed hair, like Marie Antoinette. But there was “Killer Queen” on Top of the Pops! I inspired that song because he fancied me.’¹¹

‘ “Killer Queen” was the turning point,’ Brian May recalls. ‘It was the song that best summed up our kind of music, and a big hit, and we desperately needed it as a mark of something successful happening for us.’¹²

The song was released as a single on 21st October 1974 and became Queen’s breakthrough hit, reaching number 2 in the UK singles chart and number 12 in the US Billboard Hot 100. The album, Sheer Heart Attack, hit the shops a couple of weeks later and peaked at number 2 in the UK album charts, selling over 300,000 copies. It also broke into the Top 10 in the US.

Rolling Stone magazine said of the album: ‘Sheer Heart Attack is still, like its two predecessors, a handsomely glossy construction. If it’s hard to love, it’s hard not to admire: This band is skilled, after all, and it dares,’¹³ and the NME called the album, ‘A feast, no duffers, and four songs that will run and run.’¹⁴

To promote the album, Queen spent the rest of the year headlining a British tour as well as venturing into Europe, playing sell-out venues in Sweden, Finland, Germany, Holland, Belgium and Spain.

Despite Eric Hall suggesting that ‘Killer Queen’ was written about him and that Freddie was gay, at the time Freddie was still living with Mary Austin in London and to all outsiders, it appeared he was involved in a normal heterosexual relationship. However, during the UK tour, John Anthony, who had accompanied the band to Sunderland, was exposed to the true nature of Freddie’s sexual dilemma. After the gig Anthony had gone to bed in his hotel room and was woken in the middle of the night by a phone call from Freddie, who asked him to go to his room.

‘And there was Fred sat in bed in his pyjamas and night cap,’ Anthony remembers, ‘and these two girls standing around in his room. Fred said, “Get rid of them, Johnnypoos.” So I told them that Fred had a big day ahead of him tomorrow and was very tired and they’d best go.” As soon as they were gone, Freddie told Anthony that he was gay and wanted him to tell Mary Austin on his behalf, but Anthony refused to do so before heading back to his own room.¹⁵

As 1974 ended, Freddie was clearly embroiled in his own personal turmoil about his sexuality and Eric Hall and John Anthony were both aware of it. Soon Freddie was to begin his relationship with David Minns, a relationship Mary Austin wouldn’t find out about for some time.

The end of the year also saw Queen embroiled in a dispute about money. Despite their success of 1974, little money seemed to be rolling in to their own personal accounts. Trident had increased their salaries to £60 a week each (around £650 in 2016) but everyone assumed the band were millionaires.

As Norman Sheffield would recall: ‘Freddie had found the acclaim he’d craved all his life. He felt like a god. Unfortunately, he soon started behaving like one too. Then Freddie demanded a grand piano. When I turned him down, he banged his fist on my desk. “I have to get a grand piano,” he said. I wasn’t being mean. We knew there was a huge amount of money due to come flooding our way from Queen’s success. I explained that some of it was already coming in but the vast majority of it hadn’t arrived yet. “But we’re stars. We’re selling millions of records,” Freddie said. “And I’m still living in the same flat I’ve been in for the past three years.”

‘The amount of money we’d invested in the band was huge. We’d advanced them equipment and salaries right at the beginning and had continued to pour money into them for four years. The fact the band owed Trident close to £200,000 [the equivalent of over £2.1 million in 2016] didn’t seem to register with Freddie. I can remember the conversation. “The money will come in December,” I said. “So wait.” Then came a phrase he would make famous around the world in years to come, although no one would have known where it was born. Freddie stamped his feet and raised his voice: “No, I am not prepared to wait any longer. I want it all. I want it now.” ’¹⁶

Freddie, and the rest of Queen, weren’t satisfied and employed the services of a young lawyer, Jim Beach, to begin extricating them from their Trident contracts. These negotiations would go on for months and cost the band a small fortune, money that, at that stage, none of them had. However, that was soon to change: 1975 would prove to be the year Queen became global superstars and acquired all the trappings that came with such success, much of it due to Freddie Mercury. ‘There are many things we want to do and I feel we have a great deal of room in which to achieve them,’ he said in an interview at the beginning of 1975.¹⁷

But even Freddie couldn’t have imagined the success that 1975 would bring, primarily as a result of the creation of his own magnum opus, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.