Mercury: An Intimate Biography of Freddie Mercury Read Online Free PDF Page A

party.”
    Quo’s Francis Rossi disagrees.
    “I don’t subscribe to the theory that Queen were on the point of breaking up then. They seemed like they were getting on all right to me, and we knew the boys in the band pretty well. All bands have differences. They were certainly united in their commitment to the Live Aid cause.”
    The backstage area was nonetheless rife with rumors about Queen being on the verge of breaking up.
    “It showed,” insists Bernard Doherty.
    “Not when they went on, though. If there were differences, they were intelligent enough to put them aside to get on with the job in hand. And they went out there and won. Queen had the wow factor. What else do we remember about Live Aid? The sound going down on the Who. Bono getting in the zone, losing the plot and confounding the others by breaking the rules of performance that day—none of the rest of U2 would talk to him after that.”
    Despite Live Aid turning out to be the performance that established U2 as a stadium group with a superstar future, it almost went horribly wrong. Not only did they play a self-indulgent fourteen-minute version of their “heroin song” “Bad,” from the 1984 album The Unforgettable Fire , but Bono punctuated it riskily with blasts of Lou Reed’s “Satellite of Love” and “Walk on the Wild Side,” as well as by bits from the Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday” and “Sympathy for the Devil.” This leftroom for only one other song, causing their finale “Pride (In the Name of Love),” an eventual global mega-hit, to be ditched. Then Bono spotted a young girl whom he apparently thought was being crushed in the crowd when the audience, reacting to the singer’s charisma, surged forwards. At the time, it was reported that he had signaled desperately to stadium stewards to pull her free, but that the stewards had failed to understand . . . so Bono leapt from the stage to reach her himself, then hugged her, comforted her, and wound up dancing with her. Subsequent interviews with fans—he kissed and danced with more than one on the day—have revealed that this was more likely a stunt on Bono’s part, to demonstrate how brilliantly he could connect with an audience. Whatever it was, it became an indelible image of Live Aid, resulting in all of U2’s albums reentering the UK charts.
    “On the day, though, they really thought they’d blown it,” said Doherty. “Simon Le Bon did blow it, with the bum note of all time. Then there were the critics drooling over Bowie. Phil Collins, playing both Wembley and JFK courtesy of Concorde—though I think a lot of people wished he hadn’t bothered, not least the hastily re-formed Led Zeppelin, who he drummed for at JFK. As for Queen, they did exactly what Bob had asked them to do. I watched from the wings and I was blown away. I was behind Freddie, looking over his shoulder onto the piano, just a couple of feet away from him. I stood watching the audience with some trepidation. You never know: even the greatest acts in the world bomb, and you don’t know why.”
    We needn’t have worried. Queen drew from every influence, every which way. They gave it all they had. So many other supreme performers flooded back into my mind at that point: Alex Harvey, the great glam rocker of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band. Ian Dury and the Blockheads. Mick Jagger. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders. What Freddie displayed better than on perhaps any other occasion was instinctive star quality, as well as a phenomenal grasp of what makes a must-watch show. He conjured up all the genius of vaudeville. It was as if he had studied and absorbed the best-kept secrets of every definitive artist whohad gone before him and sorcered a little of all those greats into his own act. It was quite a formula. The ultimate peacock, Freddie seduced us all.
    Not, admits Doherty, that he knew Queen were making history that day.
    “Not on the day, no. I had headphones on, and a walkie-talkie—no mobile