Queen Unseen (19 page)

Brian stayed in a duplex suite on his own, while John and I always had room numbers 826 and 828 or 828 and 830, with connecting doors. I installed a music sound system and a small TV monitor and video player for John, which often entertained both of us. The management of the hotel were very tolerant of our behaviour, and the constant stream of weird and wonderful companions and guests filing past reception at any given time. Stumbling in one morning at about 5.00 am, we discovered we had a football, so began kicking it around the lobby, trying to recreate our World Cup triumph of 1966.

The night manager came rushing up: ‘My friends, my friends, please, if you want to play
ze fussball
then please play here,’ he said, gesturing to the lobby area.

Huh – where was the logic? I thought the Germans were famed for it? 

‘Nein, it is better you play here because when you play upstairs you wake ze guests – please to continue!’

Some disgruntled guests did complain about the continuous noise coming from one of our suites, so the hotel management immediately recommended that they leave.

We had a favourable deal with the hotel management based on us paying the bill on departure in full, in cash – the deutschmarks I received from Jeeves at Coutts Bank.

‘Uhh, this is a bit embarrassing, Herr Manager – I can’t pay the bill, can’t even pay the extras. We’ve spent all the cash going out and… things. But I think the band are probably good for the money’.

‘Ah, you had ze big fun! Ja? Kein problem, Herr Hince – just bring it with you next time.’

A hotel manager who for fun drove double-decker buses around the Nürburgring racetrack. Competitively. Now that’s big fun!

As the hotel got to know our pattern of work and play, they would never send maids to make up our rooms until evening, so we could slumber uninterrupted during daylight. A delirious Paul Prenter once claimed that his stash of coke had been stolen by the maids and replaced with salt and that another batch had gone ‘off’ – so he had to throw it away! And so he was left with nothing. This did not please Fred, who fancied some now that the cupboard was bare – Fred’s cash surely having paid for it anyway. It is true that drugs can alter the mind… Little was seen of the hotel in the severe Bavarian winters, when we would come home just as it was getting light and go back out again as it was getting dark – and we didn’t even get weekends off. It was usually mid-to 
late afternoon before we left the hotel for the studio and an English breakfast fry-up.

The musicians rolled in separately and Fred either dragged or bounced in. When he dragged himself in, he made no comment, just a grunt and you knew to keep quiet and give him Tabasco sauce with his eggs – to kick-start his day. When he bounced in, it was safe to ask how he was.

Sometimes he would ask first: ‘D’you get fucked last night?’

‘Yeah, as it happens I did,’ I would smile.

‘Me too! Me too!’ he would cackle.

Forget the eggs, get the vodka out. Fred could handle it. I thought I could, too.

Munich ’86
Magic
tour. Back in the Hilton – party time! On the morning of show day I felt dreadful. I was now over 30 (just) and disappointingly my body did not bounce back the same way any more. I had already taken aspirin and a hot shower in an attempt to wake up, but this hadn’t done the trick, so as a last resort to kick-start the body I had a glass of fizzy Brausen Tabletten Vitamin C, thoughtfully placed in the room’s minibar. By the time I reached the lobby, my already upset stomach was having serious problems accepting the gaseous orange potion. I was going to throw up very soon – but where? Entering some bushes outside the entrance, I retched into my tour jacket. Oh dear. As I passed the concierge’s desk on my way back in to sit down and relax, he grinned broadly: ‘Are you feeling better now Herr Hince?’

I haven’t been back since.

While we are on this ‘sick in Munich’ subject… In 1984, preliminary rehearsals for
The Works
tour were in the Arri 
Film Studios where a new drum roadie for Roger was being introduced. ‘Shag Nasty’, as he was to be known, was taken out and shown the delights of Munich. ‘Shag’ seemed to be holding up well to his inaugural test, when Brian May offered him a lift back to the Hilton in his Mercedes. With Brian and Jobby up front, ‘Shag’ clambered into the back, where he lay down and threw up all over the seat.

Next day:

Roger Taylor: ‘Shag, have you been tuning my drums?’

Shag Nasty: ‘Oh no, Rog! I know how particular and precise you are about the kit and would never dream of changing your settings – I just tightened them up a bit.’

Employment terminated at the end of the tour.

To break the tedium of recording, we went out in the evening, firstly to Cafe d’Accord in Schwabing, or Cafe München on Leopold Strasse, where the manager would delight in giving us the house speciality – a large bottle of regional schnapps that had a shrivelled viper in it. The viper was put in alive and the bottle capped. As the dying reptile reacted to the toxic alcohol, it spat its venom (and probably shat too) into the schnapps – charming! Local folklore deemed that if you drank a glass of this tipple each day you would live to be a hundred. Longer than the viper anyway.

That ritual was a prelude to going to the Sugar Shack, a club that did not play typical disco music. It was quite unique, and, in all the years of frittering time away in the evenings, we had never found anything that fitted the bill the way The Shack did. Situated over several floors of an old
terraced building in Herzogspital Strasse it had, in the best club tradition, a discreet door in an alcove where, upon ringing the bell, a little hatch opened revealing an anonymous pair of eyes that cut through the gloom, to check if you were worthy of entry. Once the door sprang open, we would stride past the cloakroom, acknowledge the door staff and race up the winding staircase edged with tiny lights, to the entrance of the ‘arena’ (the more vain of our group would take a little longer as they checked their hair in the mirrored walls on the stairs). The mood was dark and subtly lit around the bar and seating areas, with brighter lighting effects aimed at the central dance floor. The sound was excellent and always loud, the music gutsy and rock oriented. Bernd the DJ never spoke. He just played continuous album tracks and a few singles. The material he played was great – with lots of obscure imported stuff. A lot of inspiration was drawn by Queen from the Sugar Shack.

The Shack was a very ‘up’ place that stayed open till 4.00 am (officially), with great sounds, atmosphere and alcohol; our unanimous preference was for Moskovskaya Russian vodka in the green-labelled bottle. What else could you ask for? WOMEN. Munich did not disappoint, it had some of the most beautiful, classy, chic, friendly, sexy, fun and accommodating girls in the world: The Hat, The Boxer, The Toucan, The Belgian Airline, The Budgie, The Biker, The Dustbin, The Secret, Legs, Harold’s Bird, Horace, Bridget Bardot, The Gargantuan, Adolf, Fang, The Tree, The Hairdresser, Roy Orbison, Baby Baby, Mickey Mouse’s Ears and The Top Barmaid. A mixed bunch of females one could say. There was a laddish points system in place for scoring,
with the highest accolade being a full five points for pulling a Sugar Shack barmaid. Brian has recently spoken about the ‘deep emotional trouble’ for all of us in Munich. And he’s right, I was not in any kind of permanent relationship then, but I did want one, and I came very close in Munich – on a few occasions.

One of the guys who worked at the club – I’ll call him Otto – was a tall, lean, tough-as-nails type who wore the obligatory leather trousers and an open-necked silk shirt and gold medallion. A great guy with a dark past who would do anything for you, though he had a habit of breathing hot stale air against your ear as he barked at you in the din of the club: ‘But listen, I tell you, I tell you!’ Otto had spent time in prison, but you never asked what for, or how he got the scars around his body, barely visible in the club’s dim lighting. There was rarely any trouble in The Shack. We would make frequent visits down the back stairs to his office for refreshment; producing some restricted imported substance, he would inform us: ‘This one – he is a good one, you take him and you don’t feel so much, then he creep up on you and get you – HA HA HA HA.’ He was usually spot on.

One major reason Queen enjoyed The Shack was that nobody bothered them for autographs, stared or pointed at them or made them feel uncomfortable with their status. They were treated well, but not as a sideshow. Fred would often show up late at The Shack, as the gentlemen’s clubs he frequented closed earlier. Then ‘family and friends’ would stumble together down the back stairway and into the dawn light. Driving out down the one-way strasse, we’d be on autopilot returning to the hotel; however, one winter, when 
driving back in John’s Volvo, we took the exit ramp up towards the Hilton, hit some black ice and began skidding wildly. I couldn’t control the heavy car as it bounced dodgem style off cars parked parallel on either side, before coming to a halt. ‘Don’t kill us, Ratty,’ I recall John saying. I didn’t, and we were all fortunately unhurt and got out and were surveying the damage when we were forced to skip aside to avoid another car that came sliding out of control towards us. This was repeated by other cars including Brian, and his roadie, Jobby, in a BMW. John’s solid Swedish car was still drivable, so we continued the short distance to the hotel, and once inside congregated in Fred’s suite for a soothing drink. Roger and Crystal came bouncing in, having seen the damaged Volvo, and asked what had happened. They then boasted that they too had hit the ice, but the combination of superior driving, the four-wheel-drive Range Rover and the magnificent drum department had saved the day!

Inspecting the damage in the cold light of day, I noticed that one of the Volvo hubcaps was missing. I told John that, as we had effectively done a ‘runner’, we had better try to find it. As the Volvo was being fixed, we decided to return to the scene of the crime under the cover of darkness in a rented car. After parking a discreet distance away, we scoured the frosty embankment, giggling like schoolboys. We soon found the hubcap and, still laughing as if we had been scrumping apples from some farmer’s orchard, legged it back to the car, threw the evidence in the back and drove off. I reckon the hubcap now lies at the bottom of the Isar River. 

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts – and grudges. Also beware of models married to mad Greeks – and one in particular. Dangerous liaisons and smitten by lust, there was a potential Greek tragedy for a member of our team. One night, the leggy model shows up at a suite in The Hilton where we were all partying. She was black and blue from her husband’s beating and he wasn’t prepared to stop there, subsequently having a confrontation with his wife’s lover one night in The Shack. Otto intervened and, after the Greek had left, said to us, ‘I know him, be careful, he crazy, he always hold a knife, he not coming in here any more – let it be. Let it be.’

Due to leave for London early the next day we endured a scary night, with Zorba plotting violent revenge and damaging expensive motor cars. We did get out safely and our guy narrowly avoided being made into a Greek kebab.

I was involved in a love triangle with an angry DJ boyfriend who hid outside the Hilton Hotel watching his live-in girlfriend enter and then leave many hours later, while perversely another girl I was seeing was the secretary in the DJ’s office. They found out. One of these girls I knew had introduced me to Tomi, a drug-dealing Russian defector. How he defected I never asked, but I suspect he was involved with the military; the army-issue handgun on open view in his apartment was a good clue. Shit! I don’t like guns. What am I doing here? I’m a roadie – not into this kind of nonsense!

The defector lived in a one-room ground-floor apartment close to Leopold Strasse, where I found him sitting in the middle of his bed dressed only in his underpants (in fact, 
every time I visited him, that’s all he ever wore). He had long, straggly curly hair, and judging by his eyes had not slept the previous night or even the one before that. Was this one of the Red Army’s finest crack troops? Surrounding him in the small room were glass vivariums with
creepy-looking
lizards, chameleons and unidentifiable reptiles – and the tops to these tanks were open! He waved my concerns away and invited me to join him in a ‘taster’. Taking one of the playing cards that surrounded him on the bed, he crushed a small pile of coke and laid it out in three lines on a faded LP cover. After the three of us had partaken and the buzz had taken hold, I pulled out a wad of blue 100 deutschmark notes and swapped some of them for the black plastic film can and contents that had been agreed on by phone.

I subsequently visited him several times and it was always intriguing; there were rigid, staring people, who never spoke at all, secretive knocks on the door in the middle of the night, quick furtive exchanges of envelope for carrier bag, and coded phone messages. Once, when the cupboard was bare, I called up and the guy who answered said Tomi was not there. I explained who I was and asked when he would be back.

‘He is on holiday,’ was the reply.

‘So is he back soon?’ I enquired.

‘No, he is on a very long holiday.’

Aaahhhhh! The penny dropped and a minor panic attack set in. I hung up sharply. I could only presume he was now residing in another one-room home, but as he never seemed to venture outdoors he probably wouldn’t notice 
the difference until he straightened up – and realised he was in prison.

In 1984, while in Munich recording
The Works,
Queen had finally accepted the annual invitation to top the guest bill at the San Remo Festival TV show in Italy. This national institution, with the highest ratings on Italian TV, was a showcase for popular Italian acts singing to backing tracks, who were then judged. The international guest acts mimed their songs to playback. Despite being hugely popular in Italy, Queen had never played there, as during the seventies and early eighties there were often bans, riots, sabotage, theft and little chance of getting paid. With the political situation currently stable, shows were planned for the upcoming tour, and it made good PR sense to spend a few days on the edge of the Riviera and enjoy a little of La Dolce Vita.