Queen Unseen (28 page)

After trying to distance myself from my old life, which of course included Fred, I was being drawn close to him again. I was not at all convinced that the arrangements made to cover for my departure would work to the satisfaction of Fred and John.

I had a dilemma.

I spoke to Billy about it and he was very supportive. I did not want to let him down by going off in the middle of his recording project and I still wanted to separate myself from the past somewhat and get on with my new life and career. Billy said that I should do the tour as he knew how close the bond had been between Fred and me.
After the final recording session with Billy and Fred, we all went to Billy’s favourite Indian restaurant in Westbourne Grove. Fred was a big lover of Indian food but only went to places he was known and felt comfortable in. This was not one of them. We had booked a table away from the main busy part of the restaurant, but people still quickly recognised Fred. However, he was totally cool about it as this was Billy’s choice. When Billy and Terry, who was Fred’s driver and minder, had left the table to go to the toilet (or something) leaving Fred and me alone, I said to him, ‘OK, Fred – I’ll do your tour for you.’ He was sincere in his thanks and quickly told Terry the news when he returned.

We all returned to Garden Lodge and stayed up the rest of the night, during which he thanked me again several times, telling me: ‘You can have anything you want, you know?’

Billy wanted to thank Fred for his contribution and guidance on the two songs, so went out shopping with me, and bought him a memento that would be in keeping with the Mercury style – an original signed Art Deco bronze statue of a fox, set on a marble base. Then Billy went off on a short vacation, so I showed up at Fred’s house with the gift in my arms to find Fred very excited; he always loved gifts despite it being wrapped in newspaper inside an old cardboard box. He loved the piece and fussed around to find the right spot for the fox to sit.

I had now convinced myself I had done the right thing; the overheads and responsibility of a shared studio would be covered by the tour money, and I should still have enough to keep me going for a while afterwards. 

I struck a deal with Gerry Stickells, which took about ten seconds – $100 a week more than the Australia/Japan tour of the previous year. Hardly ‘anything I wanted’ but that was never the issue or even mentioned.

It was good to see and reunite with old mates at rehearsals, but something was not quite right. The atmosphere was different and the tight family unit and camaraderie was missing. That final tour,
Magic
’86, was a totally different experience to any other Queen tour. Things had quickly changed despite my only being away for about a year. It wasn’t specifically the band or crew that I knew, but the business. The tour was the biggest out that summer and no doubt buoyed by the band’s phenomenal performance at Live Aid the previous year.

The Queen extravaganza had grown, but the normally well-oiled machine now spluttered as it had seemingly taken on too much, become overloaded and was no longer as streamlined as it had been. The tour is one I am very happy to have done, considering it was the last ever. However, I did not enjoy it in the same way I had other tours.

The size of the shows, which were predominantly outdoors, obviously meant that more people were around, but there just seemed to be too many. It had now become a game as to how important you could show yourself to be – it was now a case of collecting titles. Politics and bullshit! A ridiculous circus.

On every previous Queen tour, you knew who the owner of virtually every laminated backstage pass was, now they were tossed around like confetti – and many of them to tossers.

The situation became so absurd that for the second half of
the tour, new passes with a large number 2 printed on were issued to avoid breaches of security.

Queen were big, and the timing was right, but the band had been big for many years, and all the extra hype and spin just creates a false environment which alienates and divides.

We had all moved on a little, and, though I was back doing the same job I had done for years and still had the confidence and ability to do it, it was different. I was still loyal and professional, but this was not my ‘real’ job now.

The era was gone, and so had the special feeling created on so many tours. The show was good, but the lighting rig which Queen were renowned for was poor. Despite having a huge construction and budget, it looked like a giant Christmas tree. It was just big. It did not really do anything dynamic like the previous rigs.

At Knebworth, the final ever Queen live show, I somehow felt it was going to be the last for all of us. I had no idea as to Fred’s health condition but I just saw it as being the last show for me and for them. John was also in a strange mood and for no apparent reason threw his bass guitar hard into his speaker cabinets after the last song of the set. Before the encore I had fixed and retuned it without any problem. John apologised to me, but was seemingly not enjoying things.

The hard business side of rock ’n’ roll had really taken over and a new corporate, sponsorship era had begun. I am so glad I chose to get out when I did. There is seemingly no fun any more and the people involved now take themselves and the industry very seriously. It is important to remember that nobody I know, musician or roadie, entered the business just for money. 

Once the dust had settled after that final tour, I got back in to my studio and tried to pick up where I had left off some 12 weeks before. Shortly afterwards, I went to the grand event of Fred’s 40th birthday party. It was a ‘crazy hat’ party held in the grounds of his house and I wore the same hat with clapping hands on that he had chased me around the stage for wearing in Japan.

When later that autumn Fred recorded his ‘Great Pretender’ single, he commissioned me to shoot the cover in my studio and later the video stills. The roadie-style humour was still there on set, as Crystal and I re-wrote the opening line Fred sang, to: ‘Oh yes I’m the great… big bender!’ But despite this irreverent and ribald reminder of the past, I felt I was finally off the road. The old saying of ‘I’m with the band’ was no longer true – I was on my own.

Nobody can ever take away from me what I experienced or achieved, but we have to live in the present not the past. More photo shoots for Fred and Queen followed and invites to Fred’s lavish parties too – including private jets and
club-class
air tickets and plush hotels. This was all generously paid for by Mr Mercury. I received dinner invites to Garden Lodge and Queen Christmas and other parties still included me on the guest list. It was nice to see that I had been remembered and that everybody understood why I had left Queen to work in photography.

The world will always remember those immortal words in 1966 at Wembley Stadium: ‘Some people are on the pitch – they think it’s all over…’ and at Knebworth Park some twenty years later, and a few weeks after Queen
had played the famous old Wembley Stadium – it most certainly was all over.

The last time I saw or spoke to Freddie Mercury in person was at the 20-year anniversary party for Queen at the exclusive Groucho Club in London’s Soho. He was sat at a large table upstairs in the private back room and I was sitting at a table in the opposite corner with my girlfriend, Julie, John Deacon and his wife Veronica. I caught Fred’s eye and he beckoned me over, rising from the table to greet me as I walked towards him. He gave me a light hug and a peck on the cheek and said, ‘Thanks for coming, I appreciate it.’

That was it; that was the last time I saw him. I had no idea.

Looking back, I am grateful to have had such a great working life with Queen, and I would like to thank them. No doubt they would thank me, too. I owe a great deal to the band and to Fred especially – and I miss him considerably.

Freddie gave me so many things over the years. Not just gifts, tokens of affection or mementoes, but priceless memories too – some of which I have just shared with you. He also imparted on me the importance of self -belief and hard work to get what you want from life, and I absorbed so much of his creativity and professional ethic just from being in his presence. He believed that ‘talent will out’ and that whatever you do, ‘Do it with quality and style – darling!’