Freddie Mercury: The Biography (2 page)

As far as any bullying was concerned, with his rudimentary boxing skills the young Freddie Mercury was capable of taking care
of himself and this didn’t seem to leave him with any residual problem. Homosexuality he viewed differently. Although he later
became renowned for his camp and outrageous behaviour in public, Mercury was in fact an intensely private man. Considering
his worldwide fame, he granted relatively few interviews, and when he did, he gave little away about either his upbringing
or his homosexuality.

At St Peter’s, it appears Mercury felt not so much confronted by the unorthodox sexual behaviour of his peers as just gradually
more aware of it. He once confessed, ‘I’ve had the odd schoolmate chasing me. It didn’t shock me. There were times when I
was young and green. It’s a thing schoolboys go through. I’m not going to elaborate any further.’

He later privately admitted to his first homosexual encounter at St Peter’s, but the matter-of-fact way in which he accepted
the situation would suggest that he had no regrets, nor any particular resistance to it. It is in any case unlikely that he
would have felt able to confide in his parents: the Zoroastrian faith considers homosexuality morally detestable.

Doubtless Mercury prided himself on his ability to handle his secret so well. In later life he would become fond of stressing
the fierce sense of independence that school life had vested in him. That independence – which may have done nothing more
than sow the seeds of an acute vulnerability – was soon to be put to the test. Due to the political unrest in India at the
turn of the decade, his parents were among those who decided to leave the country. Packing up their household
belongings, they moved to England, settling in Feltham, Middlesex.

Located not far from London’s Heathrow Airport, Feltham must have been a culture shock for the highly charged Mercury, brimming
with teenage energy and already bright and experienced beyond his years. In appearance, accent and temperament he must have
felt different, and in his neighbourhood he was treated as such. From the start he suffered from ignorant bigotry – made the
butt of constant ridicule and abuse. His first reaction was to retreat into a shell. But, recognising that he was there to
stay, he realised it would be impractical for him to hide away. Applying his well-developed streak of self-discipline, he
worked out a simple plan of attack.

Since his narrow-minded tormenters saw him as a funny foreigner, he played the Persian popinjay for them and parodied himself
ruthlessly. This took the sting out of their tails, effectively robbing them of their fun. But, brazening it out took its
toll, and at home he became unhappy and insecure, desperate to fit in and yet aware that he was different. Perhaps the insecurity
and alienation Mercury experienced at this time fuelled a need in him to seek attention as a form of acceptance. But, the
more extrovert his behaviour became, the more he inwardly developed a sensitivity and reserve.

On arriving in Middlesex, the Bulsaras had stayed initially with relatives, until they moved into a small semi-detached Victorian
house near Feltham Park. Unknown to Mercury, less than five minutes walk away lived a couple, Harold and Ruth May, whose only
child, Brian, was already a budding guitarist.

The move to Britain was a drastic change for everyone. Bomi Bulsara had exchanged his privileged diplomatic position for a
mundane job in the accounts department of Forte’s. It was effectively, he considered, a demotion. Gone were the servants to
pamper them, gone, too, the glorious weather. Reality for
Mercury was a drab bus ride to his new grammar school in Isleworth, where the mickey-taking took on epic proportions. This
is one period of his life that Freddie Mercury later refused ever to discuss.

Not surprisingly, this third home move in fourteen years – with the attendant unhappiness and disruption at a crucial time
in his educational life – resulted in Mercury’s school grades slipping. He managed to pass just three GCE O levels, in art,
history and English. But this in itself wasn’t much of a blow. For a long time Mercury had preferred music and art to purely
academic subjects, for which he had never shown any pronounced aptitude. Besides he had no intention of pursuing a place at
university.

He had no desire to work manually for a living either. At seventeen he held down a couple of summer jobs, one with the catering
services at Heathrow and another handling crates in a local warehouse. At the warehouse Mercury was so workshy that his colleagues
ended up taking on his share of the work on top of their own. His feeble excuse was that, as a musician, he couldn’t possibly
roughen his hands with toil.

At Isleworth Polytechnic one A level in art was all that Mercury needed to get into art school. His parents were reluctant
to encourage this ambition, as they had nurtured different plans for their son. Mercury’s need to gain acceptance in his new
surroundings had not been shared by his parents, who had clung to their old culture, customs and beliefs. and consequently
it hadn’t taken long for a vast difference in outlook to divide the generations. Mercury, driven initially by his need to
integrate himself into British life, now found that his parents’ beliefs held little allure for him – and he couldn’t see
them playing a relevant role in his future. Concerned that the bohemian atmosphere of art school might further distance him
from them, his family wished to dissuade him from going there. But by nature Mercury was a good
manipulator. Years later Brian May reflected that the star was the most self-motivated man he’d ever known. In 1966 his sights
were set on art college – and Mercury usually got what he wanted.

By 1965 Britain had really begun to swing. There was an explosion in the arts – photography, fashion, theatre and the rest
– spearheaded by music, with the main battle for chart supremacy enacted between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Hardly
a town in the country remained untouched by the new spirit of freedom, and London, which seemed the centre of the universe
at the time, was definitely its hub.

More than ever rock stars were the new icons, and throughout the sixties Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones, the epitome of
that glamorous era, would elevate dressing to an art form. His androgynous style: frock coats, fedora hats and Berber jewellery,
became the prototype for later generations of pop stars. Out on the London scene that fired his imagination, Freddie Mercury
recognised the importance of making a visual statement to complement the music. By the turn of the decade, having found an
outlet for his flair for flamboyance, he would alarm other band members with his determination to encourage them to wear women’s
clothing on stage.

By the mid-sixties the American writer Ken Kesey introduced a new dimension to all the excitement and experimentation of the
decade by holding Acid Test parties. A manmade drug so new that it hadn’t yet been declared illegal, LSD, more commonly known
as acid, was at the heart of it. Psychedelia with all
its garish colours and complex patterns was beginning, and Freddie Mercury was drawn to it.

Just after his twentieth birthday in September 1966, Mercury won his parents round and enrolled at Ealing Technical College
and School of Art in west London, on a graphic art and design course. He also subsequently moved into his own flat in London’s
Kensington. For many the option of art college was little more than a glorified doss, a front for hanging out with friends
and indulging in the more important business of talking, preferably making, music. But by then successful chart-toppers John
Lennon and Pete Townshend were both products of art school – Townshend was even a graduate of Ealing College itself. Art school
was beginning to be considered the classic training-ground for sixties British rock stars, and Mercury saw its function clearly.
‘Art schools’, he said, ‘teach you to be more fashion conscious, to be always one step ahead.’ With his A grade pass in A
level art he had arrived in style.

Grammar school, however, had made Mercury wary of college life, and he was quite timid for his first year or so at Ealing.
Former tutors recall him as unassuming and in no way remarkable, except for his annoying, perhaps nervous, habit of giggling,
sometimes uncontrollably. One ex-student later starkly referred to Freddie as having been a talentless drip, while another
remembers with affection his considerate nature.

By 1967 with his raven-black hair now fashionably long, Mercury wore velvet jackets, skintight trousers and platform shoes,
together with lots of silver jewellery. As this was the style of the times, he didn’t stand out: indeed there were others
who were far louder in their dress and behaviour than him, which with hindsight has baffled those who knew him then. Many
would never have credited Mercury with the ability to fulfil his desire to become a rock star. Just as no one would have guessed
at his sexual past. Since leaving Bombay it appears that there had been no more homosexual encounters, though he was not
known to party with girls either. He kept himself aloof – but not out of touch.

Mercury’s art and design course had a good reputation, and his year’s intake of students turned out to be talented. He studied
a variety of options, including ballet, which thrilled him then and later, when he would briefly become involved in dance.
But it was music that anchored him, never more so than in the summer of 1967 when he fell under the spell of the dynamic American
guitarist Jimi Hendrix.

Hendrix was by now living in London, thriving under the managerial guidance of Chas Chandler. Musically, Hendrix’s arrival
was important for lots of people, and Mercury was among them. The deafening, largely improvised, rock of ‘Hey Joe’ and ‘Purple
Haze’, dominated by rapid electric lead guitar work, appealed to Mercury. Of mixed Cherokee Native American and Mexican descent,
Hendrix’s exotic gypsy style fascinated him, too, and he became a devotee. Plastering posters of his idol all over his walls,
he dressed like Hendrix and constantly sketched him.

As time went by Mercury’s obsession with Hendrix permeated his life, including his studies. After a session in the pub at
lunchtime, Mercury needed scant encouragement to climb on to his desk and cavort about in a wild impersonation of Hendrix.
Howling out the lyrics of his songs, he would pretend that the twelve-inch wooden ruler, dug suggestively into his groin,
was a guitar. He was not alone in his passion for music, and by now had some like-minded friends. With Nigel Foster and Tim
Staffell, he would occasionally practise three-part harmonies in the gents, where the acoustics were the best in the building.

Tim Staffell corroborates the view that Mercury’s early Ealing days were unremarkable. He recalls how ‘My first impressions
of him were that he was quite straight culturally. That’s to say, conservative – I didn’t ever think about his
sexuality. He was fairly reserved, and you wouldn’t have described him as being at all “in your face”, as they say. He also
had a fair degree of humility.

‘But Freddie’s persona was developing rapidly, even then, linking his natural flamboyance with the confidence he’d later acquire
from his singing. As far as being a star was concerned, I personally think he was already in the ascendant. People certainly
responded to him.’ Desperate to join a band, Mercury knew that Staffell played in one regularly and was delighted when he
finally gained an introduction.

Tim Staffell introduced Freddie Mercury to the rest of Smile in early 1969. As ever with strangers, Mercury was initially
reserved, weighing up the other band members from behind the safety of an invisible barrier. Roger Meddows Taylor, a dental
student at the London Hospital Medical School, was the extrovert blond drummer. His musical leanings had drawn him first to
the ukulele and then to the guitar, but in 1961 he was given his first drum kit and discovered that his talent lay in percussion.
During his teenage years he had experimented in a couple of West Country bands, most successfully with Reaction.

Guitarist Brian May was tall and skinny with a studious manner and a shock of dark curly hair. Mercury discovered they had
been near neighbours living just streets away from each other in Feltham. Like Mercury, May had started piano lessons young
and also reached Grade IV. Taught the rudiments of playing the ukulele by his father, on his seventh birthday he was given
his first steel-strung acoustic guitar. His first electric guitar was handmade by him and his father and christened the Red
Special.

Staffell and May went back a long way, with Staffell having joined May’s school band, as its singer, in 1964. In 1965 when
Brian won an open scholarship in physics to London’s Imperial College of Science and Technology, Staffell, too, was in
London, preparing to study graphics at Ealing Art College. When Brian May left his school band at the end of 1967, he kept
in touch with Staffell, who stayed on for a while, before he, too, quit the group. The more time the pair spent together talking
about music, the more they realised just how much they missed being in a band. Deciding to form a new group, they advertised
in Imperial College for a
MITCH MITCHELL/GINGER BAKER TYPE DRUMMER.
They were swamped with applications, but when they auditioned Roger Taylor on the bongos he got the job virtually on the
spot. ‘We did hold a second proper audition with Roger, setting up our gear and playing for real, but it was obvious that
he was dead right for us,’ maintains Staffell.

In early autumn 1968 Smile began to rehearse with enormous dedication, perfecting their musical style, while May and Staffell
also branched out into songwriting. Their nerve-racking first public appearance was in support of Pink Floyd at Imperial College
on 26 October. From there, with Roger Taylor’s contacts, they took bookings all over Cornwall. PJ’s in Truro and the Flamingo
Ballroom in Redruth became familiar haunts, but they preferred the London college circuit. Being based in the central Kensington
area of the capital, it made more sense to play at venues in London. Besides, the gigs there were better paid.