Free Freddie Mercury by Peter Freestone

passion for athletics! From my point of view, I think Carl Lewis was actually quite pleased himself to be travelling in the lift with Freddie Mercury. I think the only thing that perhaps Carl envied Freddie was the fact that Freddie had the bigger suite on the higher floor in the hotel and neither of them knew, of course, of their shared interest in collecting fine crystal glassware. On April 24 at Groenoordhalle in Leiden, Freddie had no intention of spending the night in such a sedate town when there was so much more on offer in the nightlife of nearby Amsterdam. We had taken Freddie’s ‘going out’ clothes with us so there was no need to return to the hotel after the show. We went straight out and hit the bars of that liberal city.
    In Wurzburg on May 9, we toured this amazing old German town. Freddie happened to want a haircut and he had flown Denny, the fashionable hairdresser from Sweeneys in Beauchamp Place, out from London. Denny ended up staying for about four or five days. One of the more expensive haircuts in the world. Hotels aren’t cheap! Freddie was nevertheless very happy with the haircut.
    For someone so fussy about his hair, there was never any rhyme or reason behind Freddie’s choice of hairdressers. As any paranoid body with a double crown knows, a new hairdresser is made aware in great detail of the presence of the double crown, something which any decent hairdresser would notice immediately. I remember Freddie was once most offended when someone announced: “Oh! You’re losing your hair!”
    “I’m not!” was the indignant retort. “I have a double crown!” When Freddie’s hair was long, he was constantly fighting the naturallycurly unruliness. Video shoots were an occasion when he would pay great attention to his hair and take full advantage of whoever happened to be doing hair and make-up on that day. He considered the fashion for short hair a great boon because it meant the end of ‘the dreaded curls’ and of course when he met Jim Hutton, it was a show of faith in Jim’s ability that Freddie – indeed the whole household – would have their hair cut inhouse. It was not the usual case of famous people going to famous hairdressers.
    Wurzburg, very close to Hamelin, where the other Pied Piper performed, was a charming town. It was typical of German gothic fairytale magic and Freddie loved it.
    In Vienna we stayed in an amazingly grand hotel near the Opera House. I really believe that the best of the Viennese hotels compare easily with the grand old dames of Paris. The performance at the Stadthalle was also filmed in its entirety as were many of the shows on this tour. The presence of film and television crews never fazed Freddie either before or during the show. Being filmed never meant that he was conscious he had to give a better performance because all his performances were simply the best he could do on that day anyway.
    There’s a great difference in having a show filmed by television, however, and the required press photographs which were routinely taken at each concert. One of the strict instructions laid down by the band was that press photographers were allowed close access to them only for the first two songs because Freddie realised that he would have to perform for those cameras ranged at such close quarters to the stage which might have meant the larger audience missing out on some of his more usual elaborate gestures that would not have been capturable at such close range. When the tour moved to England, ‘Las Palabras De Amor’ came out as a single. It was Brian’s acknowledgment of the Spanish speaking countries. The band never played it on stage while I was there and the general enthusiasm displayed to the song’s release was at best underwhelming. Why this inoffensive little song never received the full backing of an accompanying video and the usual push is a mystery. Perhaps that old enemy, time, reared its ugly head again?
    On June 5, the band were scheduled to