Queen Unseen (23 page)

Exceptions to the rule of ‘live’ performance or staged studio videos were for ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘Spread Your Wings’. These were both shot together in the grounds of Roger’s newly acquired country estate. As the property was technically not yet his, and he didn’t have the keys, we were allowed to use the grounds by the vendors but not the house. Or even the toilets if I remember…

Thick snow covered the ground, and it was bleak and very cold, which did not please Fred. While the video set was being finalised and between takes, Fred warmed himself up with tots of brandy inside his Rolls-Royce parked conveniently in the driveway. He wanted some gloves to wear, but there were none available and no wardrobe person either. As a joke I offered him my ‘roadie truck-loading’ pair. These were standard issue for the stylish roadie at the time; American rodeo gloves in light beige soft leather, with a drawstring to tighten them at the wrists. These would be bought at 76 truck stops in the USA and then fastened on to a dog clip with bunches of keys and other paraphernalia that hung from the belt loop on your jeans. Mine were filthy dirty, had gaffer tape repaired fingers and written on both of them in thick black felt pen to avoid any confusion of ownership was ‘RATTY’. Fred gratefully accepted my offer and wore them on the video.

The Game
was the band’s biggest album in America with
two number one hit singles; ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’, the first single, had a video shot in a small TV studio in Dean Street in London’s Soho, between studio recording sessions to finish
The Game
in Munich. It was choreographed by Arlene Phillips of Hot Gossip fame. This was the band getting back into ‘theme’ videos and the 1950s-style song had the band in leather jackets and a motorbike as a prop. It worked very well, as once again Queen changed their image and moved forward. They all now, with the exception of Brian, had short, sensible haircuts that your mum would be happy with. Brian was playing the new black Fender Telecaster I had got for him and was wearing some wraparound sunglasses that made him look like a tall insect. Between takes, Fred was having his hair greased down with KY jelly by a stylist, when he shrieked: ‘What a waste’, and brought the entire population of the studio to a standstill with laughter.

There were two very fit female dancers who were dressed provocatively in black waistcoats with tight black satin shorts, black seamed nylon stockings, black suspenders and black patent high heels – a blonde and a redhead. Oh yes! Is that too much information?

There were also two male dancers, who were very light on their feet but seemingly had no real interest in the girls. At the end of the shoot, the director wanted a shot with rows of hands clapping together, to use with the section of the song that featured handclaps. The catwalk that Fred and the dancers were performing on then had symmetric rows of holes cut in the top decking and the sides taken off, so the ‘volunteers’ could squeeze in. The side panels were then
replaced to make it all look neat, and on cue sets of hands appeared from the holes and clapped in time (some of the time). As a ‘volunteer’ who sat on a hard studio floor with my body hunched over and hands contorted over my head in a confined space I was not at all comfortable, but it did give me a wonderful view of ‘blondie’ and ‘the redhead’ as they wiggled above in their sexy black gear. I seem to recall that the enticement to get the crew to be boxed in and clap was that we could keep the dancers’ underwear after the shoot had wrapped – the
female
dancers’ underwear. I have so many photos from that video I could seriously consider starting a website for people who like that sort of thing…

The video for ‘Play the Game’ was done at the same studio on the second attempt. We had originally arrived with all the gear early one morning, only to be told that Fred was feeling unwell and the shoot was cancelled. This video was eventually shot against a Chroma Key background, a rich blue backdrop that can be replaced electronically by different imposed backgrounds and effects during editing. The set was minimal, a small drum kit and riser and one small amp set up for John and Brian, and was reminiscent of a sixties TV pop show. John played a new Kramer bass he had been given by the company and Brian played a cheap Stratocaster copy. I had bought two for him as he was going to get mean and moody at one point in the song, wrestle with Fred and then sling the guitar across stage and begin smashing it. Not quite The Who.

The video opens with Fred’s silver Shure stage microphone hanging in space, and in an attempt to make it look like a fancy radio mike I put a connector in it without the cable, and
rammed a bit of wire coat hanger in to give it an antenna. Fred appears to pop up from the bottom of the screen, and as this was the first video with him sporting his newly grown moustache he looked like a lost walrus surfacing!

Later in the video when he is covered in water, he really does become a ‘bull walrus’. The ‘flame’-coloured background idea for the video was an extension of that particular single’s picture cover. I had taken some group shots of the band crammed on to a chilly balcony of somebody’s room in the Munich Hilton. I was experimenting with some ‘grad filters’ that put varying degrees of tint and colour into the top of the photo – in this case, the sky. Fred liked the idea, but, when he saw the finished shots, which included ones I had done for fun of rushing water in the adjacent Isar River, again using the coloured ‘grad’ filters, he got excited. He held a group shot that had been approved up to a light bulb and slid different background shots against it. When he had shuffled the background into the desired position, it was secured with clear tape and sent to the Creem design company to get a composite transparency duped. That was the cover of the finished single sleeve and the image used for various other PR. So the background is actually coloured water, not flames as so many people believe.

While recording
The Game
in Munich, Queen would alternate between Germany and London studios, where they were recording the soundtrack to the
Flash Gordon
movie. And a resulting video was shot for the ‘Flash’ single at Advision studios in the West End.

Music videos were now what accompanied every Queen single, and did at least spare the band from appearing on
Top
 
Of The Pops
to mime in front of a mixed bunch of spotty youths, who gawped at the artists on stage. However, we did make a couple of trips to BBC Centre in White City, with a minimal amount of equipment, to perform ‘Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy’ in 1977 and ‘Las Palabras de Amor’ in 1982. I always hoped that Queen’s dressing room was close to the one used by Pan’s People; the resident female dance group who were used to interpret one song during the show – usually in skimpy outfits and using their lithe bodies in an appealing way.

How many adolescents have gazed at the TV on a Thursday evening, waiting for them to come on and thought ‘Whooaaaah!’? I can tell you I did. And they were even better in the flesh! There must be something about female dancers…

Hot Space
videos were not particularly memorable; ‘Backchat’ and ‘Calling All Girls’ were done at the same time at a TV studio in Wandsworth, south London. A trip to Canada was arranged for the ‘Body Language’ video – which was originally banned for being too raunchy.

When ‘Radio Ga Ga’ was chosen as the first single from
The Works
sessions, Fred took assertive control – ‘We must do a huge video, as the song deserves it and we have become a bit complacent with videos, so we must do it BIG – and spend BIG.’

The mammoth video was shot at a small TV studio in St John’s Wood and at Shepperton Film Studios on a stage that had previously housed Queen tour rehearsals. It was another milestone for Queen, with a huge set and hundreds of handclapping extras from Queen’s fan club, cut with classic black and white footage of Fritz Lang’s
Metropolis
movie. In 
the ‘Ga Ga’ video there is one small shot that involved Fred parting a building with his bare hands. High on a scaffold, Fred stood in macho pose as the polystyrene set was pulled apart and the crumbling debris fell, as smoke and dust swirled around him. The smoke effects were not working well so the assistant director called through his megaphone for more assistants to fan and waft the smoke with boards. Meanwhile, Fred was relaxing up his tower with a cigarette and the harassed assistant director sensed that Fred was getting impatient because things were not speeding along, so he urgently shouted into his speaking trumpet with a
cut-glass
accent: ‘More wafters, more wafters – we must have more wafters!’

This sounded more like ‘woofters’, at which point Fred giggled with laughter, tottering precariously on his high perch and shouting down: ‘Me too, dear, me too!’

The video for ‘I Want To Break Free’ was done over two days at Limehouse Studios in London’s Docklands and a studio in Battersea. The ballet bit with Fred sporting pointed ears was done later. This video was a brave tongue-in-cheek move by the band and was well received – except in America, and as they declined to do an alternative video for the US market it was an indication of the beginning of the end for the band’s popularity there. This was tragic as
The Works
was a very good album and the live show that accompanied it was probably the band’s best, and deserved to be seen by America.

The second day of shooting ‘Break Free’ was the
dressing-up
day, and, while Fred could always be guaranteed to revel in such camp drama, the others got into the spirit 
surprisingly well. John was happy to be dressed as a grumpy old grandmother but drew the line at having the make-up artist apply currants and sultanas to his face to look like warts and moles. Brian, though convincing in his part, was probably not going to give up his day job to ‘tread the boards’, and Roger was just a bit too convincing as he shaved his legs for his part as a schoolgirl. The atmosphere in the studio was very good and everybody appreciated that the rock stars with alleged big egos could make fun of themselves. It was a typical move by the band to show that they never stood still and were always striving for change and to surprise.

The following morning, I flew to Japan, accompanying John, Roger and his assistant Crystal for a three-week promotional tour of the Far East, Australia and Los Angeles for
The Works
album.

The other single from
The Works
was ‘It’s a Hard Life’ – a grand pompous affair that the band hated – which was done at Arri studios in Munich. Fred might have loved dressing up in very theatrical, poncy costumes, but the others looked very uncomfortable in theirs. The whole look did not befit the direction they were going in. Fred’s deep-pink, shiny and risqué figure-hugging outfit with large eyes and antenna attached made him look like an overcooked tandoori king prawn.

Q
ueen were never in London for long, so itching for adventure we would be back on the road again. The very essence of touring is the constant travel, and moving the team of personnel from city to city. A vast range of transportation was utilised by Queen tours, from Concorde and private aeroplanes to cross-channel ferries and mini-cabs (and there is no truth in the story that one of the crew thought that Hertz Van Rental was a Dutch racing driver). The band always travelled in style and luxury;
first-class
air travel and a limousine on terra firma. Separate limousines – one each.

During our extensive travels, the crew spent many long hours on commercial airlines; in the days when the
non-smoking
section of vast 747 jets was just a few rows at the back. These were also the days when airline stewardesses
would share their Hawaiian grass with you – taking clandestine draws while crouched in the aisle when the movie was playing. Smiling and giggling, the airlines were not spared our special humour; the Belgian carrier Sabena was nicknamed ‘Such A Bloody Experience Never Again', Australia's Qantas was ‘Queers And Nancies Trained As Stewards', and America's Northwest was commuted to North Worst. In the USA, the band progressed from commercial flights to touring by private charter aeroplane, the first one they used being the Lisa Marie, a converted Convair 880 that had been Elvis Presley's own personal plane.

The crew travelled separately to Queen and generally in customised tour buses, which had evolved in America with the Country & Western circuit. One of our drivers was Sherri, an attractive, ‘built for comfort not speed' southern gal, who took
no shit
from anybody and kept a stout
police-issue
nightstick under her seat in case there was. There wasn't. Another US bus driver we shared happy times with was Bob ‘Hot Rod' Williams, a middle-aged man who had been a Country music star himself, and still loved going on the road. He gave me the business card of a friend of his: Rudd B Weatherwax, the trainer of TV dog Lassie. On the front is a photo of Rudd and Lassie and on the reverse Lassie's paw print.

The front of the bus housed a lounge and TV area, in the middle of the bus corridor was a toilet (sorry,
rest room
) and then towards the rear were the bunks; 12 in total, two or three high and six on each side, into which we were slotted for the purpose of sleep. In the rear was a smaller lounge for bodily abuse sessions. Couches could be pulled out to make 
a giant bed and became the domain of The Love Rug, where backstage passes were sometimes exchanged for sexual favours. These vehicles were the crew's home-from-home for months on end, and the vast distances meant we would not see a hotel for days, and would have to resort to showering, shaving, shitting and sha… shampooing etc., in dressing rooms at venues.

A small bag of necessities was kept in our bunks, with our main luggage stashed in the bay under the bus. Twelve drunken, sweaty males sleeping in a confined space highlighted the need for pine-scented air fresheners and fully open roof vents. Leaving your socks and footwear out was taboo, as was dumping in the toilet (the chemically tinged smell never really leaves). Good bunk positions were claimed with the same fervour as German holidaymakers putting towels on sun loungers at dawn. Lower bunks (away from the toilet) were better, being closer to the centre of gravity, and didn't sway around like the top ones. It was advisable to sleep with your feet facing the front, unless you wanted a neck injury when the bus braked sharply. There were no electric trouser presses onboard, you would simply put all your smelly clothes at the end of your bunk, opposite your head. Removing your clothes on a fast-moving vehicle while tired and drunk or stoned is tricky, and a dozen guys of varying size and shape preparing for bed like this is funnier than any West End farce.

When undressing, it was like the scene in the showers after a sports event, catching a sly glance to see how you measured up against the others. The British guys sported colourful hipster briefs or Marks & Spencer's pants. The Americans, however, 
were very conservative in their choice of undergarment, which was reminiscent of what your granddad wore. The US ‘smalls' were not. They were an ample, white(ish) garment, often thermal, with heavy stitching. This was the first time I had witnessed underpants with the waistband so highly cut that they could pass as polo necks. No wonder they found it hard attracting the opposite sex.

A skill that had to be quickly mastered was ‘bus surfing'; keeping your balance in the central corridor as the bus lurched towards our destination. Any change in speed could propel you into the walls, door well or windscreen. Another skill was to pee into the toilet of a bus that's hurtling down the highway, where aim was vital. All men know the feeling of a full bladder in the early morning, when your todger is a far different fellow to the acorn you went to sleep with. It has developed a mind and size independent of your wishes. Staggering into the bathroom, you prop yourself with one hand against the wall while the other holds something you are now proud of. ‘But please go down a bit – will you?' Too painful to bend it, you wait and hold it in, till the angle is achievable and release – OH… NO! It's sprayed all up the lid and seat and over the floor and – did I hit the wall as well? Imagine this feat on a moving bus…

The Bus Monster: A mythical beast that materialised in the depths of the night and
got you.
The result of the attack was a dry mouth, sore eyes, bunged-up nose, stiff body, sluggishness and a total lack of spark. You felt absolutely dreadful. The monster mainly attacked during the first few journeys of a tour as you adjusted to living in this unorthodox manner once again. To counter disturbed sleep, 
I had legally obtained a large tub of 5 mg Valium tranquillisers, and would dole them out to people, giving a Churchillian V sign.

‘Oooh, Matron – is it “V” time?'

‘To the power of five or ten?'

‘I'll be a devil – to the power of 15.'

‘Nurse – the screens!'

Brian, Roger and John each took up our challenge to spend an overnight trip on the crew bus (once – and with their minder in tow). Fred was always promising, but sadly never did. I'm sure it would have been a lot of fun. Fred certainly liked his fun; he liked to laugh and he definitely enjoyed life.

‘Ratty, do you have any rolls of gaffer tape? I need to take some to the hotel.'

‘Of course, Fred, a case full – do you want black or white?'

‘Oh – black! Definitely black.'

‘No problem, is it to fix your suitcase or something?'

‘Uuuh – no…' he cackles.

We used gaffer tape (black) to rig up curtains for privacy on our first US tour bus, which was basic and noisy with roughly converted metal army bunks. At this time, wardrobe mistress/master ‘Dashing Dane Clark', an ex-dancer from Las Vegas travelled (rather quietly) with the crew. His bunk was directly below mine where notes would be left. Not by my hand, I add! ‘Hi, Dane, come up and see me some time, love Ratty.' No response. We all got on well with Dane, and he would cut the crew's hair on days off.

I once spent a tense night on that bus wondering if I was going to turn into a hairdresser or dancer, due to a pill I had taken. ‘Who's up for some of these? They're really great,' 
someone had said. Being young and foolhardy I had popped one of the tablets. The laughter immediately started, as I'd taken female hormone pills and spent a lonely night lying on my back, regularly checking my nipples for growth.

For a trip from Vancouver, down the west coast of Canada to Seattle Washington – just across the border in the USA, we were travelling in a substitute vehicle – a standard Greyhound-type of bus. It was an early-morning run and we were all dead tired and there were no beds or areas to lie down on, just cramped upright seats to try to get some rest in. Dick ‘Dirt Ball' Ollet, our technical guru, was feeling particularly delicate that morning, so he crawled up into the overhead luggage rack and flaked out. It was only after passing through immigration into America that we realised he was still up there. Dick was British and living in Los Angeles at the time, on a special type of US exchange visa. Unfortunately, as he had no US entry stamp to balance his exit stamp to Canada, he was in the eyes of the US immigration still in Canada and not residing on American soil. He would now have to re-enter the United States – but without leaving…

Europe didn't generally give us those particular types of cross-border visa issues, and European bus drivers were resourceful and experienced. However, occasionally you were concerned by who was at the wheel. In the middle of the night, when the bus is parked on the side of the autobahn and the driver sitting at the wheel holding a joint in one hand and studying an upside-down German Falkplan map 
through tinted sunglasses, the term ‘right man for the job?' might come to mind.

After driving all night and for most of the next day, all you want is to get into the hotel, desperate for a night in a bed that does not move, with sheets that do not resemble corrugated card. Approaching the outskirts of a city, hope springs eternal that shortly you will be having a refreshing shower, swim or drink in the bar. But still that naughty hotel could be elusive. Spotting it in the distance we would shout: ‘Quick – after it, before it gets away.' Our driver then decided the best ploy would be not to drive directly to the hotel, but circle it a few times, then sneak up and take it by surprise.

Despite the rabble of passengers on board, travelling through European borders on a bus was relatively simple: leave all the passports with the driver while we slept, with the added sweeteners of records and T-shirts being displayed on the dashboard, if required. But this didn't work when travelling the ‘corridor' between old East Germany and West Berlin, that decadent island in the middle of communism. This journey was always at night, and if asleep you were abruptly awoken by a machine gun thrust through the curtains of your bunk.
Guten Morgen!
The East German border guard would study your passport and visa closely, before taking them away to be processed. This procedure could take any amount of time, so the bus remained stationary, as did we, in vast hangar buildings covered in mirrors and lit by reams of fluorescent tube lighting that cast a sickly green mist. Once while we waited, an open-back truck full of Christmas trees was being searched, the guards
plunging long metal spikes into the trees at random and waiting for the screams. Happy Christmas, comrades.

My 24th birthday was on a show day in Hanover and the birthday evening was spent on the tour bus going through the bleak grimness and bitter cold of January in East Germany, on our way to decadent West Berlin. Brian May had wished me happy birthday and asked if I was having a party… With an extra six pack of beer and some cheese and onion rolls onboard the bus, we were enjoying celebrating my birthday so much we didn't realise we had reached the border. The guards strutted on board to witness us watching the climax to a video. No, no that type, it was
The Dirty Dozen
. It was probably not the best choice of film, as Allied troops were about to wipe out the German HQ with grenades, machine guns and heavy hand-to-hand fighting.

The summer choice of gig in West Berlin was the Waldbuhne which means ‘stage in a wood' – which is exactly what it was. The Waldbuhne was an outdoor venue where the stage and covering were a permanent fixture but the audience was seated in the open air. This old amphitheatre venue was built at the time of the infamous 1936 Olympic Games, and located behind the main Olympic stadium. It is recorded that the painter and decorator Adolf Hitler gave many speeches at the Waldbuhne. The construction had a narrow concrete tunnel that ran from the edge of the wooded area to the back of the stage, which was the access for the gear, and where Adolf used to arrive in secret, appearing magically and seemingly from nowhere he would glide on stage. Positioned in the walls on the sides of the stage were slits, and steps below them were where snipers would sit and
watch the crowd for troublemakers and opposers of the man with the moustache's new Reich. The whole place had an odd atmosphere and in summer was particularly hot and humid, and plagued by mosquitoes. Tony, the wardrobe man, and first aid kit holder, bought lots of cans of spray repellent and tubs of cream to soothe our exposed legs and arms. After sundown when the powerful lights in Queen's rig came on, it was a magnet for squadrons of flying insects and creepy crawlies to come out of their lairs in the dark forest – and descend on the stage. Fred was not amused to find a large moth he later described as ‘the size of a fucking pterodactyl' spluttering in his drink on top of the piano – particularly as he almost drank it!

An American crew member on his first visit to Germany remarked, ‘Gee this Ausfahrt place must be real big 'cos all the exits from the autobahn have a sign for it.'

Another time, approaching the Scottish border, we told him to be ready to get off the bus with his passport (the immigration office being a motorway service station). Europe's diversity confused him from the moment he arrived:

‘How are you enjoying England?'

‘Its real neat, but I can't understand the money.'

‘Don't worry, we're off to Sweden in a couple of days.'

‘So what money do they have in Sweden, is it dollars or pounds?'

‘No, it's their own currency: Swedish krona.'

‘Ah… so I should change it all as I go round?'

‘No just change what you need, we don't stay long in most places.'

‘So after Sweden it's Denmark, right?'

‘Yes.'

‘So what they got there, dollars or pounds?'