Queen Unseen (8 page)

Looking back at black and white contact sheets of a time when I could fit into 30-inch-waist Levis with room to spare, and when I thought International House of Pancakes was fine dining, the girls still look good. When lying on my back in my hotel room – unable to sleep, and having counted all the lines and circles on the wallpaper patterns, I’d try to remember all the girls I’d met on my travels in order of appearance – and marks out of ten. I just ended up getting confused – I should have made notes in the itinerary.

The indoor gigs in America varied enormously, from traditional-style theatres holding a few thousand to vast arenas – the sports facilities or civic centres that hold up to 20,000 plus.

The War Memorial Auditorium in Syracuse, New York, was quite unique in that it had a fixed proscenium arch, theatre-style stage and a cavernous hall. The novelty of this 
place was two small stars and stripes flags fixed to the walls either side of the stage. Before the start of the show, the house lights would be dimmed and the flags picked out by spotlights. Electric fans blew them in a gentle breeze, while a recording of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ played through the house PA system.

Most of the audience would stand and sing along, some with hands on their hearts. Now there’s patriotism for you!

In contrast to the older theatres was the grandeur of vast venues such as the famous Madison Square Garden in New York City. This phenomenal building had its arena on the fifth floor, and to witness around 20,000 people moving excitedly to a rock band five floors up was remarkable. The concrete really trembled beneath your feet. Backstage, the hallways were lined with images of fleeting conquerors: grainy, bleached, black and white prints of Muhammad Ali and other great fighters, Mr Frank Sinatra picked out by a single spotlight, victorious basketball and ice hockey stars, plus a wealth of musical talent from Liberace to the Rolling Stones. To perform at The Garden meant you had surely made it in America – big time.

There is something for everyone in New York and in whatever quantities you like – day or night. After one particular show at The Garden, the planned after-show backstage entertainment included female mud wrestling. When hearing the plans for this, Fred wanted to have dwarves with moustaches in leather shorts to serve the drinks. In New York – NO PROBLEM!

Backstage at The Garden was usually a celebrity circus, with guest appearances from Bob Marley to Andy Warhol to 
Liza Minnelli. I joined the late tennis star Vitas Gerulaitis, with a mutual friend, for a ‘lifter’ in a backstage room. His death was a tragic loss of a very nice man.

The end of a particularly long US tour culminated in New York where we received a bonus in the form of green $100 bills, which were soon converted into a bag of white ‘burble dust’. Several of the crew sat around a room high up amid the luminescence of Manhattan with a map of America placed under the glass top of a table. The pooled powder was then laid out to follow various routes from the east coast over to the west. You chose your combination of highways and freeways and then hoovered up the road. Geography – never my best subject.

New Orleans is an American city that conjures up the spirit of fun and good times, and many good times were to be had in the historic French Quarter; the small section of faded French façade with US polish, as if the future is desperately trying to hang on to a small part of its inherited past – before it’s too late.

The Marie Antoinette Hotel (one of Fred’s favourite) was a regular place of lodging for rock bands and it was located close to Bourbon Street, where there was lots of cruising of every kind. The one thing you could always be sure of seeing in the quarter was a transvestite or two. In fact, there were shoals of them and they were
very
convincing. New Orleans was teeming with TVs. There was a perverse curiosity from even the most hetero of the crew towards these ‘Shims’: is it or isn’t it? One of the crew’s full-blooded American ex-football
players pulled the most gorgeous blonde at a party and whisked ‘her’ back to his hotel room.

Some of us had our doubts.

‘So what did you do?’ he was asked incredulously.

‘Well, I was pretty out of it by then and she did look gorgeous, so I just asked for a blow job.’

‘She’ happily complied and our mate’s formidable size ensured nobody dared accuse him of being a poof.

I was awoken early by members of the same sound crew leaving the hotel on their way to nearby Baton Rouge. ‘Ratty, quick, quick, get down to room 103 and bring your camera and flash!’

I smelled mischief in the air and duly responded, being hushed as I approached the door in question. The biggest and meanest of the crew had not appeared in the lobby at call time and his phone was constantly busy, so the rest of the crew resorted to hammering on his door, but still no response. They got a pass key and opened up to find what I was to record on film: two naked bodies passed out on top of the still fully made and unused bed. One was our missing sound guy and the other a beautiful young blond girl with lovely pert breasts and – male genitalia!!

They were lying close together, his arm around ‘her’ and in the other hand a bottle of Jack Daniels gripped firmly by the neck. The phone was stretched tautly by its extended curly cable from the bedside table, and nestled on his black carpet of a hairy chest. The curtains were drawn and the bedside lamps still glowed, filling the room with a ‘romantic’ light. I had never seen anything like it and neither had the others. The intensity of my flashgun or whirr and click of the motor-driven
camera did nothing to disturb the sleeping ‘babes’, so, with the shot in the bag, I scuttled off to pass on my experience to the rest of the band crew.

The tour manager had prints made – which were widely distributed. A different disgruntled transvestite approached our tour bus as it was leaving in the early morning, screaming and ranting as ‘she’ hammered on the door. We decided to keep the doors locked. ‘She’ then proceeded to rip the large metal silver eagle motif from the front of the bus – literally tore it from the riveted mount! With the silver eagle under her arm, she ran off down Bourbon Street, pursued by a very angry bus driver…

New Orleans is the city of jazz, so, in autumn ’78 during Queen’s appropriately named
Jazz
tour, there was a large Halloween party thrown at the Fairmont Hotel.

The party was full of press, media, record company people, VIPs, etc. who were expecting to be entertained by all manner of exotic girls and entertainers, and there is a
much-publicised
photo of Fred autographing a girl’s naked bum during this revelry. By now, I had been educated in this
cross-dressing
caper and given a list of clues to look for when determining the true gender; check the hands, the Adam’s apple, the ears and, of course, listen carefully to the voice. I took this advice and pondered on it as the object of my desire perched on my knee at the party tried to put a long wet tongue in my ear.

‘Ratty, I’m telling you – it’s a fuckin’ geezer,’ someone whispered to me.

‘No – really?’

‘It’s a bloke!’

I made my excuses and left to board our bus for the long journey to southern Florida.

Our crew bus was being filled up with barrow loads of booze wheeled from the party and the jolly atmosphere continued on board. As we were preparing to leave, one girl already on board said she wanted to come along with us.

‘Yeah, but is it a bird or a bloke?’

Somebody offered to confirm the true gender by checking up her long, flowing skirt – with his head. No problem to the lady. He exits the skirt and nods: ‘Yeah, it’s a bird – but look at this!’

In his hand was a backstage pass that she had secreted in her knickers. Why? Now you don’t see that every day. Another slinky, lingerie-attired blonde was invited to join us on our journey into the unknown, but replied in a low baritone voice, ‘I can’t go to Miami in a slip!’

God bless America.

Queen parties were infamous, but one story stands alone as incorrect. On this particular incident, at ‘that’ party in New Orleans, there were allegedly dwarves circulating among the guests with bowls of cocaine strapped to their heads for the consumption of the revellers. As I have stated on the BBC documentary
Queen – Days Of Our Lives
, it’s complete bollocks! The story has no doubt been circulated to add drama to the Queen legend, and even Brian and Roger have stated they hadn’t witnessed the bizarre scene. Apparently, the dwarves also had straws in their top pockets in order for people to take the drug. Once again, bollocks! Anybody who has any experience in the imbibing of this particular recreational pastime would know that, if cocaine
was in a bowl, you would not use a straw, but a tiny spoon, the corner of a credit card or guitar pick. As Roger and others have accurately said on record, there was a dwarf at the 1978
Jazz
party in New Orleans, but he lay underneath piles of cold cuts and sliced meat – and quivered when people approached the table. That’s it!

The excitement of touring the USA was tempered by an edge of menace, omnipresent across the continent. America has always been associated with violence, be it cowboys and Indians, gangsters or even Clint Eastwood movies. The assassinations of Kennedy and Martin Luther King were stark reminders from my early youth but they had been too geographically removed to really affect me. Now, however, I was older, somewhat wiser and walking on the ‘grassy knoll’ in Dallas itself. Coming from a village ‘bobby on a bike’ background, I was disturbed by the constant reminders of personal danger; doors in hotels with spy holes and security chains, convex mirrors in the elevators, thick plexi-glass screens in cabs that separated driver and passengers, signs that stated that the driver/attendant only carried $20 in change; cops and guards with heavily polished
wood-handled
guns on display, so near you could touch them.

The things in America that disturbed me initially quickly became the norm, but I never got complacent and was always aware that my marvellous cruise through exhilarating waters could quickly turn into rapids, where strong currents could pull you off course and drag you devastatingly on to the rocks. One distraction from the 
ever-present
‘edge’ in America was the fascinating variety of local radio stations. Many were purely rock oriented, which was great after having limited and mostly chart-biased radio back in England.

The US stations played continuous music, with little patter or interference from the DJs. You could regularly hear the stuff you would have to go out and buy at home. Great. There were also countless other music stations catering for different styles and tastes. I was particularly amused by the Country & Western ones in the South where the accents were slow, lazy drawls that were both affectionate and abrasive.

The country acts had the most bizarre names and so did the songs. My three all-time favourites (artists unknown) were: ‘I’m So Depressed I Don’t Know Whether to Commit Suicide or Go Bowling’, ‘If You Want to Keep Yer Beer Cold Put it Next to My Ex-Wife’s Heart’ and ‘I’m Going to Hire a Wino to Decorate My Home’.

Lay preachers also broadcast on radio and it was hilarious imagining the scenes as they ‘healed’ people live on air.

The afflicted would be brought up on to a stage and the Good Reverend would cure a minor ailment by a combination of the laying on of hands, vocal bullying and hysteria. Stiff legs would seemingly ease and so would mild back pain. The Good Reverend, upon greeting the sick, would ask what particular problem ailed them and state that he would surely help their bodies to be cleansed and cured through God – and a donation to his particular church to continue God’s work would be most gratefully accepted.

He introduced one woman on air, who told him she was blind.

Startled, the Rev enquired of her, ‘Blind?’

‘Yes, sir, that’s right – I can’t see.’

‘Nothing?’

‘No, sir – I can’t see nuthin’ at all.’

There were pauses as you imagined the Reverend cursing his aides: ‘How in hell did you let
her
get up here!!?’

Not to be undone, he whipped the congregation into a frenzy, proclaiming, ‘We will all work together with the Lord to bring back your sight – do you believe?’

‘YES.’

‘Do you believe?’

‘YES.’

‘Do you believe? You MUST believe!’

‘YES.’

Amid the terrific noise generated, the Reverend was

shouting, screaming, stomping and addressing his subject vociferously: ‘Can you feel my hands?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you feel the heat?’

‘I can.’

‘Can you feel the power of the Lord?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you feel the mists clearing?’

‘No…’

‘OK… now, everybody, work together right now with the good Lord to help this unfortunate woman – that’s it! Feel the power of healing – tell me my child, can you see anything clearing, anything coming through now?’

‘NO.’

Third time lucky.

‘Feel the power, feel the love, can you see the powerful light of the Lord breaking through?’

‘NO.’

Cut to commercial break and wait for the off-air fireworks to start.

North and South Carolina and Georgia were firework country, where all year round roadside stores offered a variety of loud and exciting, colourfully packaged gunpowder – some equivalent to about a quarter stick of dynamite. Lethal weapons. Were any safety warnings heeded by the mature responsible adults that we were? No. Two sides emerged and took up arms against each other – inside the tour bus. Small rockets and bangers were slid under the door between the lounge and bunk area and other exploding devices were thrown into areas of conflict by leaning out of the windows as we sped down the highway. One bus ride to Memphis in ’78 was via firework country, where we eagerly stocked up. On arrival that evening, a group of us went straight to the parking lot to ignite our new toys, as others stayed in their rooms and fired rockets across the busy freeway. After a fine display that embroidered the balmy Tennessee evening, the air was punctuated by the ‘
whip-whip
’ sound and blue flashes of police sirens approaching – fast. Time to lie low.