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

Love,’ and ‘We Will Rock You,’ and ‘WeAre the Champions,’ thundering away . . . to a simple guy like me, this was all just mind-boggling. Then later on, once it had got dark, Freddie and Brian back on stage together, just the two of them, performing that wonderful ballad ‘Is This the World We Created . . .?’ They had recorded it quite a while before Live Aid, hadn’t they, but it was as if they had written it especially for the occasion. The words were so right, and the way Freddie sang them was just magical. It moved me to tears, as Freddie often did.”
    At last, Jim, who died from cancer in January 2010, nineteen years after Freddie’s death, had seen his rock-star lover at work.
    “He gave it everything up there. He amazed me. Then, when he was off, he seemed glad it was done. ‘Thank God that’s over,’ he laughed. Another large vodka, and he was calm. We did stay until the end to catch up with everyone, but Freddie didn’t want to bother with the after-show party at Legends nightclub. Instead, we went home to Garden Lodge like an old married couple, to watch the rest of the American leg on television.”
    Conspicuous by their absence that day were Freddie’s own parents. Although often in attendance at Queen’s UK concerts, they chose instead to witness this spectacle at home.
    “It was such a huge event, it would have been too complicated,” recalled Freddie’s mum Jer, suggesting that she and Freddie’s father, Bomi, would have been overwhelmed by both the crowds and the logistics of getting to and from the stadium. “So I watched it on television. I was so proud. My husband turned to me and said, ‘Our boy’s done it.’ ”
    From the viewpoint of professionals charged with transmitting and recording the event, Freddie’s contribution had been little short of sensational. Mike Appleton, former executive producer of The Old Grey Whistle Test —the influential BBC television rock series—remembers Mercury’s performance as “fascinating.”
    “For a start, he was not even supposed to go on. Doctors had already said that he was too ill to perform. His throat was terrible, from a cold or something. He wasn’t well enough, but he absolutely insisted.It happened that he and Bono of U2 wound up as the most successful performers of the day.
    “It was so interesting to see Freddie through the monitors—I was shut away in a sweltering OB truck all day long. We were literally building a program live on air as we went. Come five o’clock and we were flipping live to JFK—alternating twenty minutes here, twenty minutes there, let’s put an interview in here, a live bit from earlier there, some highlights of the first hour in this slot . . . it’s actually very exciting television, and the only way I like to work. Freddie simply came on, took immediate possession of the stage, coolly and calmly, and then proceeded to take possession of the audience.
    “Queen had at that point been off the boil for a while, having made no significant impact with an album for some time. The Live Aid experience wound up putting them back on the map, and had the same effect on the music business as a whole. Overall, sales went up. Live Aid proved to be a tonic for the entire industry. As Freddie was the out-and-out star of the day, he was undoubtedly the main ingredient of that tonic. He was more dominant that day than I’d ever seen him before. The day may have belonged to Bob emotionally. It definitely belonged to Freddie musically.”
    Mike later received the BAFTA [British Academy of Film and Television Arts] Award for Live Aid as Producer of the Best Outside Broadcast.
    Dave Hogan, who captured the show in stills, shares Appleton’s opinion.
    “Only six of us were chosen as Live Aid’s official photographers,” reveals the fabled Sun lensman known as “Hogie” (who is no stranger to a splash headline himself—“Maimed by Madonna” was his Warholian moment).
    “We were shooting for the Live Aid