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[upbeat music]
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♪ Buddy, you're a boy, make a big noise ♪
♪ Playing in the street, gonna be a big man someday ♪
♪ Mud on your face, big disgrace ♪
♪ Kicking your can all over the place, singin' ♪
♪ We will, we will rock you
♪ Yeah, sing it
♪ We will, we will rock you
- [Interviewer] You have a very extrovert stage act
by any standards.
Will you be able to go on with-
- You mean I flaunt it?
- [Interviewer] You're over the top.
[upbeat music]
- Each song that we do has a different sort
of meaning to it.
So I mean it is rock and roll,
it has that sort of label from the 1920s
Vaudeville to the heavy, the real sort of raw rock and roll
to the ballad to, you know.
[upbeat music]
♪ School babe
♪ Your Mamma says you don't
♪ Your Daddy says you won't
♪ And I'm boilin' up inside
- People wanna know about Freddie above all that.
No one's asking me questions about Roger
or Brian's private life [chuckles].
[upbeat music]
- And I think as time went on the stage persona
really took over from the original individual.
And he lived this larger-than-life character.
♪ Give me all your love tonight ♪
- He would be thrilled to know that I've been asked
to talk about him years after his death.
♪ We are the champions
♪ No time for losers
♪ 'Cause we are the champions
♪ Of the world
[crowd cheering]
[attendees chattering]
[gentle music]
- The manager of the group Queen Jim Beach
decided it would be a good idea
to do a photo collection of my brother.
But naturally, he only had all the pictures
from when he was famous.
So he approached my mom to see
that if she'd got any old photographs
if she would like to help out in this.
And naturally, my mom loved the idea
and started digging in, delving into the old photographs.
[gentle music]
- I've always been intrigued by show business artists
who become their own image.
Very few people who were Freddie Mercury fans
know he was Farrokh Bulsara.
And indeed, if you bear in mind that I got to know him
in 1974, I never heard anybody call him Farrokh.
It's rather like Elton John, you didn't call him Reg.
Once he decided he wanted to be Elton,
you called him Reg at your apparel.
And Farrokh wanted to be called Freddie.
Within music, everyone was calling him Freddie.
- By the time I met him, he was definitely Freddie.
And in fact, it was some time before I realized
what his original name was
because he still had a passport in his birth name.
But he lived his character.
He was Freddie Mercury and that was all he wanted to be.
♪ One voice, one hope, one real decision ♪
♪ Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa ♪
♪ Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah
[upbeat music]
- His parents had come from India.
They'd only gone to Zanzibar so that his father
could continue his job with the British government.
And when Zanzibar won its independence,
they then moved to England.
They were Zoroastrians.
And I know that to many Zoroastrians
is a matter of great pride that Freddie Mercury
is their great rockstar.
- I was at a place called the Chateau Del Aviv,
which was just outside Paris.
And Bowie was recording Pin Ups
and his co-producer and engineer was a guy called Ken Scott
and he was affiliated with a company called
Trident Audio Productions who had Trident Studios
in the middle of London Soho
where they recorded Transformers,
Ziggy Stardust, All the Young Dudes,
a whole bunch of slew of stuff around that time.
Anyway, they also, they had a studio
but as a sidebar, they had a production company
and they signed a few acts to the production company.
And during that visit, Freddie mentioned to me
that they were interested in working with me.
This would've been, I suppose like August, September of '73.
And for whatever, you know, I was like in my own modest way,
a hot photographic commodity for what
that was worth back then which was a lot less
than it is now because of the glam thing.
And especially because of David, Lou, and Iggy,
and my connection there, so they were big fans,
and especially Freddie.
I think Freddie, well he was always the driving force
behind the visual aspects of Queen.
[upbeat music]
- Freddy being interested in music from an early age
would've known that there had never been a pop star
called Farrokh.
When you think that Freddie persuaded Brian and Roger
to rename Smile Queen,
taking it up a level
of both audaciousness [chuckles] and status.
So similarly changing your name from Bulsara to Mercury
while you're choosing the name of one of the gods.
So you are elevating yourself
in terms of your image at least.
And this is an amazing case of personal reinvention,
but it worked.
- We were told that there was a really good band playing
at Imperial College.
And I went along with some of my friends from EMI
and one of two other people
not really knowing what to expect.
This would've been November 1973.
And I was absolutely blown away.
I don't think I've ever seen a new band play like that.
The place was absolutely packed.
- You can see it's this microscopic stage.
And Freddie is performing like he's already in a stadium.
I mean he's big, he projected big.
- In the early days, there was a tradition
that they always wore black and white on stage
and Freddie would be incredibly careful.
Everything matched, everything fitted.
He would have black and white painted fingernails
and he loved what was always referred
to as Freddie's frocks.
And he would come out in the most amazing things.
Zandra Rhodes designed some for him in the early days,
one with wings like an angel.
And it was a long time before they changed that
for a very long time.
It was always black and white.
The others weren't quite as flamboyant,
but that was their theme.
- In those days, you didn't necessarily
have great expectations of the first album.
And quite often if you had a hit,
it kind of skewed the process.
We released "Keep Yourself Alive" off the first album
and the album went okay.
And by, I guess three or four months into it,
we'd made a modest impact because by that time
the Imperial College gig had happened
and the first press started
and it was just a little whisper building.
- Well, Roger was in a way
the most obvious rockstar material.
I mean the girls loved him.
This cute little blonde fellow.
And Brian was more cerebral but looked terrific
and he's still got that incredible mop of hair.
Freddie, of course, was the flavor of the time
because he was Mr. Androgyny.
His bisexuality was pretty much acknowledged,
but that was very fashionable at the time.
I mean, David had made sure that androgyny and bisexuality
were extremely fashionable.
So even all kinds of people that weren't the least bit gay
would be running around acting like they were gay
because you actually got the hottest babes that way.
- Anyone looking back at the early years of Queen
have to understand the context of the time.
Being in a group was like participating
in the social network of that time.
This is before the internet so there were none
of the social networks.
And the way that young people related to each other
and communicated was through music.
And you expressed your views through the type
of music you liked through the earnest
and excited communications you had with your friends
about the latest records.
The DJs on the radio were the human incarnations
of Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn.
And the music had a role in society.
- Queen and Freddie's writing in particular
was very different from other people
in that he could explore so many different avenues.
The fact that he could relatively early in his career
write something like "Killer Queen"
which is actually really an unusual record.
You didn't fit what was going on at the time.
You couldn't put it alongside, you know,
other comparable bands like Roxy Music or whatever
and say, well that's kind of that sort of thing.
It was just a unique record.
♪ She keeps her Moet et Chandon in her pretty cabinet ♪
♪ Let them eat cake, she says
♪ Just like Marie Antoinette
♪ A built-in remedy
♪ For Khrushchev and Kennedy
♪ At anytime an invitation you can't decline ♪
♪ Caviar and cigarettes
♪ Well versed in etiquette
♪ Extraordinarily nice
♪ She's a Killer Queen
♪ Gunpowder, gelatine
♪ Dynamite with a laser beam
♪ Guaranteed to blow your mind
- They wanted a black and white theme.
They wanted a gatefold and they wanted to feature the band.
So that was my brief.
I was working with Mott the Hoople at the time,
David had put them on the map with All the Young Dudes,
he's song he wrote and the production of it
and Queen got some gigs supporting them.
I photographed both bands performing live.
And afterwards, I sat with Freddie
and I showed him this picture of Marlene Dietrich
and suggested that that should be the approach
for the black shot of the band.
Well, he loved it.
I mean, whether it was the shot
or whether it was the fact that it was Marlene Dietrich,
"I should be Marlene, you know."
I mean he, he immediately responded.
He corralled the rest of the band
and they went along with it.
There was the black shot and then there was the white shot.
I did both setups and I had to light them very carefully
'cause I wanted to make it a little bit more dramatic
than the Marlene Dietrich shot.
So I wanted to hood the eyes so that the shadow
really encompassed the eyes and I had to get them,
all four of them arranged in the correct way
so I could do this.
And I was up and down on a ladder and they were buzzing up
and down in the makeup.
I mean, they were very like, you know,
wanted to look fabulous.
And of course, I wanted them to look fabulous too.
And I actually did a lot of shots.
And afterwards we reviewed them and for quite a while
the rest of the band were a little bit,
they thought maybe that word pretentious
was sticking in their head and they weren't sure
that the black shot was the right shot.
I think because it was a very powerful image,
obviously it was.
Of course, they duplicated it two or three years later
for the "Bohemian Rhapsody" video.
♪ Is this the real life
- When we got "Bohemian Rhapsody", we were concerned.
♪ Is this just fantasy
- Everyone was in shock.
♪ Caught in a landslide
♪ No escape from reality
- It was crazy.
♪ Open your eyes
♪ Look up to the skies and see
- What on earth do they think they're doing?
It's so long, it's three records in one.
- Never heard anything like it.
♪ I'm just a poor boy ♪ Poor boy
♪ I need no sympathy
- Just a song.
You can't call it something as grand as an opera.
It's a piece, it's a mini-opera.
- I was the idiot who said, why don't we ask them
to do an edit?
And the response was a couple of words.
♪ To me
- [John] And of course the rest is history.
♪ Mamma
♪ Just killed a man
♪ Put a gun against his head
♪ Pulled my trigger, now he's dead ♪
♪ Mama
- I don't think there was ever a disagreement
because nobody ever asked our opinion and didn't need to.
- He said to me, "Oh, we made a short film
yesterday afternoon with Bruce Gowers.
And of course the reason they'd made it was
because they couldn't do it on "Top of the Pops"
because they couldn't do that many overdubs,
they couldn't do the segments of styles, and so forth.
But to be on "Top of the Pops",
they wanted to give them this clip.
So they made a short film.
Well, that short film happened to revolutionize
the way that music is consumed.
Because neither MTV or VH1 would exist
had it not been for that short film.
- The whole thing was quite extraordinary.
And again, I think people weren't quite sure how to take it
but once they saw it, they realized just how good it was.
- The point about Freddie was that he was, you know,
he obviously had some strand of eccentricity
about his lyric writing and some very left-field things.
I mean, the music itself was so bizarre
that you had no idea what the lyrics meant
and really who cared.
- I think one of the interesting things about Queen
is that their songs wrote into such interpretation,
but I'm not gonna say on camera
who I think it's about [laughs].
- Bohemian Rhapsody was basically, I was writing three songs
and they were going to be different
and I just couldn't finish them.
And I just thought, oh, damn it,
I'll just put the three together.
[gentle music]
♪ Any way the wind blows
- We just about do all our own production.
And we have Roy Baker who sort of co-producers with us
and all the four albums have been a co-production with him.
- Do you feel that the "A Night at the Opera"
is perhaps you're reaching now,
you've reached a climax at a certain stage
in your career?
'Cause I believe it's definitely the best
that you've ever done.
- Thanks. - Yes.
- I think it's possibly the peak so far
because it's the most successful.
But I mean, we hope we're gonna get better.
- Next one will be better.
- It is gonna be difficult,
especially with "Bohemian Rhapsody" being as large as it is.
- [Interviewer] Well, a kid wrote me a letter about that
and said, "I study demonology and Satanic things.
Why do they use Beelzebub?"
- Oh.
- [Interviewer] I suppose that's a legitimate question.
- Why do we use it? - Yeah.
- It's just a, I mean, why do we use anything?
I mean it doesn't necessarily mean I study demonology
and things.
I just love [laughs] the word Beelzebub.
[all laughing]
Great word, isn't it?
[drowned out by laughter]
- [Interviewer] Actually the letter was signed
at the Cloven Hooves at the time.
- Oh. - Same sect.
I belong to that one.
- Are you sticking pins in effigies and that?
- [Interviewer] The next single
is coming off "A Night at the Operas"
"You're My Best Friend", I understand
and already we're getting a lot of requests for that.
But it's entirely different in structure
to "Bohemian Rhapsody" and that's what makes
the album attractive to me. - Yes.
This is Johnson. - Yeah,
John wrote the track. - Yes.
- I mean that's probably one thing in the group
that we all do write, which lends to the variety
of our albums, you know.
It's a very good thing, I think.
- [Freddie] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- There've been several songs on your albums
instead of being involved with death and all this sort
of stuff, is that just an accidental thing or?
- [John] That's Freddie's morbid mind.
[all laughing]
- One of my docile moods actually.
- I think they had this amazing sensibility
and curiosity and it was something about
the chemistry between them.
They were very energetic, they were very curious people.
They were very intelligent.
I think to give due respect, they were very bright
and they fed off their success
that only made them like a band like The Beatles,
they didn't wanna stay stuck anywhere.
- The main problem Queen had with the press
is that they were immediate descendants of the Beatles
because when the Beatles stopped in 1970,
Queen make their chart debut only three years after.
So they wouldn't be taken as revolutionary artists
because they weren't.
So it seemed.
They were working in the same format
as someone who had already been the definitive artist
of popular music.
- To some extent, it's no publicity is bad publicity.
If there's controversy, then you've got profile.
You can build on that you can make a plus out of that
because it's a talking point.
And I think over the years, that was always the case
with Queen until they reached the national treasure status.
- In the early days of popular music,
the two greatest stars were Enrico Caruso and Al Jolson.
And that is because both of them could be heard
in every corner of the theater without amplification.
'Cause they were working before amplification.
[upbeat music]
♪ Don't cry, Tootsie, don't cry, ah ♪
♪ Goodbye Tootsie, goodbye
- Freddie's voice can be heard.
♪ Pressure, pushing down on me
♪ Pressing down on you, no man ask for ♪
- He would walk out on stage
and he could control the audience immediately.
There was something about him.
And of course, especially a little while later,
a lot of their songs were anthems in a way.
I don't think I ever met anybody who came out
of a Queen concert disappointed.
Now, perhaps I'm biased because I suppose
in a way, I became a fan.
I tried to be objective, it's kind of hard.
I think that they just wanted to do the best
they possibly could for as much of the time
as they possibly could.
And I think they achieved that.
[upbeat music]
♪ Hey
♪ Radio
- Everybody
♪ All we hear is radio ga ga
♪ Radio goo goo
♪ Radio ga ga
♪ All we hear is radio ga ga
♪ Radio blah blah
[crowd cheering]
♪ Ay-oh
♪ A-a-a-a-a-ay-oh
♪ Ay-oh
♪ Ay
♪ Oh
♪ Ay
- I think Freddie was a very affectionate person.
He was a very kind person.
He would always come 'round, make sure people were okay,
he just liked people.
And if you were a friend or family of Freddie's
then he was wonderful.
And I think he felt like, I genuinely think
he felt like that about his fans.
He was talking directly to them.
And I think that they felt that.
And I think that's why he had
such amazing control over the audience.
Even if it was just for those few moments.
He absolutely loved them.
And I think it was mutual.
- And when I asked to think of a verb
to describe Freddie on stage,
I think of strut.
Like a peacock or some beautiful rare creature,
just strutting across the stage,
not afraid to dominate.
♪ One, one, one
- The way he had that unique mic thing
with the bit hanging down, but not on a stand.
He moved about the whole time and that gave him the freedom.
I don't recall him ever standing there.
He used that mic, that mobile mic.
He was a great instinctive performer
who loved to be in front of an audience.
- He has very good annunciation
so everyone can understand what he is saying.
And you can hear it a long way away.
Well, this turned out to be immensely useful
when Queen would do stadium gigs or beach gigs
or outdoor gigs where they had tens of thousand
or even over a hundred thousand people.
- There are very few people whose voices
are immediately recognizable.
And I think Freddie is one of them.
Freddie had the most incredible voice.
He had a wonderful range, he had a depth,
he had a richness and a power in it, I think
that meant that the songs they'd written,
I don't think anybody else could have sung.
And I find it very interesting that there have been
very few cover versions of Queen songs.
And I suspect they frightened people
because it would be very hard to copy what Freddie did.
- Several of the great singers of all time
consciously use their voices as an instrument.
Frank Sinatra, for example, learned to use his voice
from listening to Tommy Dorsey, who was the leader
of the band that he was in in 1940.
♪ I long to kiss you
♪ But I would not dare
♪ I'm so afraid
♪ That you may vanish
- [Jim] And he noticed that Dorsey, a trombone player,
had great breath control,
which enabled him to draw out long notes.
And he wanted to draw out long notes in singing
so he learned breath control.
And Freddie could do the same thing
because he realized his
voice was like an instrument.
♪ If you
♪ Are but
♪ A dream
[gentle music]
- Freddie was extremely interested in people who had power.
Liza Minnelli was an obvious influence.
Her style of belting.
He loved a belter.
The ultimate, of course, was Montserrat Caballe.
[singing in foreign language]
I went to the Covent Garden Opera House to see a recital
by Montserrat Caballe, the great Spanish diva.
And I looked to my left and not far away,
there's Freddie in a box seat and he's going.
And he's so excited.
He's like a schoolboy.
♪ Barcelona
♪ It was the first time that we met ♪
♪ Barcelona
♪ How can I forget
♪ The moment that you stepped into the room ♪
♪ You took my breath away
- He's thrilled to be in the presence of this woman
whose voice he loved.
Well it was no surprise to me at all
that he shortly there afterwards recorded with her
'cause he was into it.
♪ Let the songs begin
[singing in foreign language]
♪ Let the music play
♪ Ah
- He loved the way that this woman
who did not look glamorous,
could become a glamorous character
strictly through the use of her voice and her attitude.
This was Freddie par excellence.
Freddie at "Live Aid" is probably the best domination
of an audience I've ever seen.
[crowd cheering]
- They were looking around saying, "Well, they've done it,
haven't they?"
You know, it was extraordinary.
♪ We will, we will rock you
♪ One more time
♪ We will, we will rock you
[upbeat music]
- They're stealing the show.
All the artists backstage who had
of course their own egos, their own sense of pride,
they're stealing the show [laughs].
And they were.
♪ Shivers down my spine
♪ Body's aching all the time
- And you hear the audience going completely nuts.
And you see on the monitor,
Freddie doing this impromptu duet
with a BBC cameraman.
♪ Every night, every day
♪ A little piece of you is falling away ♪
♪ But lift your face the western way ♪
[upbeat music]
- And everybody said they stole the show.
It just proved that they were undoubtedly
one of the best live band's there's ever been.
- Queen really did rule the world for a short period.
[upbeat music]
[crowd cheering]
- The media get excited about all kinds of things.
I mean, you can argue it's none of their bloody business
but they're gonna make it their business anyway.
So what are you gonna do about it?
- Freddie and indeed the band generally
were very single-minded and also didn't necessarily
suffer fools gladly.
The band, and Freddie in particular, is very flamboyance,
if you like, invited negative comments from people
who like their rock and roll to be more down and dirty.
- Freddie was as nice a person as you'll find.
Extremely generous to his friends.
Threw great parties.
And consumed too much of life.
He took to the gay scene in New York in the late '70s,
like David Attenborough would take to a nature film,
to forms of wildlife.
- When I first went to Freddie's home,
he was living in a flat in the Kensington area
with his girlfriend, Mary Austin.
And he was still the best of friends
with her 'till the day he died.
Even as she and Freddie grew apart in some ways
they became the very best of friends.
And she married, she had children,
but their relationship never really changed.
He just had other relationships as well.
- Freddie, over the years, got more remote.
Changing lifestyle really.
When you first knew him actually personally,
quite a private person.
He was quite shy,
I don't think necessarily really comfortable
with new people and strangers.
But his other side was the flamboyant stage presence.
And I think as time went on,
the stage persona really took over
from the original individual.
And he lived this larger-than-life character all the time.
So I think by the early '80s and especially when they
were spending so much time abroad,
his whole approach to life changed.
[gentle music]
- It was fairly obvious that there was this tension
that was unresolved in him.
And even in the end, 'cause Mary came back at the end
and looked after him.
I mean, when he talks about Mary as being
the one person in his life that he truly trusted
and I've seen her on film talking about him,
when he came out of the closet and first spoke
to her about it.
Obviously, there was a battle going on inside of him.
But I'm not, that was when he came out of the closet.
But I know I have pictures of the guy
that he was hanging around already
with someone he was having a relationship with
before he finally told Mary.
So he was hanging around in '74, this particular guy.
[gentle music]
He certainly didn't wanna talk about it publicly,
any of that.
He would discuss things privately.
And I could name a couple of interesting names,
but I won't, that I happen to know
he had relationships with.
But that's not for me to discuss.
I do believe even for public figures,
that there is, you know, there's an area of privacy
that I may be privileged to have certain knowledge
but if they want to talk about it's up to them.
So I don't want people talking about
all the lured things in my youth either.
It's none of their fucking business.
Not that people are as interested, they are
cases like Lou or David or Freddie.
[gentle music]
- I think perhaps Freddie was always looking for love
which he found in many ways over his life.
I think he was always looking for perfection
which is probably a harder thing to find.
And I think he was ultimately curious.
He wanted to know what was out there to experience a lot.
And he found a lot of the things he was looking for
but perhaps not all of them.
- There was "Don't Stop Me Now"
which has become a very, very popular song in Britain.
♪ Don't stop me now
♪ Don't stop me
♪ 'Cause I'm having a good time ♪
♪ Having a good time
♪ I'm a shooting star, leaping through the sky like a tiger ♪
- And of course to this day,
Brian feels a bit uncomfortable about it
because it's a celebration of Freddy's hedonistic lifestyle.
Which was to kill him.
[heartfelt music]
I've said this several times before,
but it's just a key moment in my life
with Freddie and as a gay person.
In Heaven in the nightclub in early 1983,
I had returned from the United States
and I said, "Have you adjusted your behavior
in light of the new disease?"
'Cause, it had no name then.
And he said, with one of his flourishes, and he said,
"Darling, my attitude is fuck it.
I'm doing everything with everybody."
And I had that sinking feeling.
There literally is a sinking feeling.
I've had it twice in my life.
And that was once.
And I just felt at that moment, we're gonna lose Fred.
And I also thought that even though he's putting up
this great front, probably in the back of his mind,
he thinks it's too late.
[gentle music]
But what was tremendously unfair
to the first wave of people who died from HIV AIDS
was that they became infected when it was not known
that the virus existed.
So they couldn't know that what they were doing was unsafe.
They didn't know there was any risk.
It's very easy for people to look back on a previous era
with the mores and morals of today.
But we have to remember that the '70s
was this incredible era of sexual expression.
There was about a quarter of a century
where everything was, if not safe,
at least treatable because once you had penicillin,
knocked syphilis on the head in the 1940s,
there was no sexually transmitted disease
that was going to kill you.
So in the '70s, particularly
with the emancipation movements,
the women's liberation and the gay liberation,
people were having sex like there was no tomorrow.
It's easy to forget that today.
And then, of course, millions paid.
[heartfelt music]
Now I know that Freddie did not have a test
until the late '80s and did not demonstrate symptoms
until the second half of the '80s.
But remember there was a 10-year incubation period
on average between infection and symptoms.
So if you were to say Freddie
starts showing symptoms late '80s,
if he were an average case, no guarantee that he was,
but if he were an average case,
he would've been infected late '70s.
Which makes sense with his lifestyle enthusiasms
as he'd conveyed them to me.
And that is so cosmically though in no way uniquely unfair.
That sexual experimentation should become a capital matter.
No one thought that was possible.
- By that time, he was being pursued everywhere
by paparazzi.
And, you know, the tabloids were speculating
on a weekly basis, you know,
every time he was seen in public.
So it was that time when there were a lot
of similar casualties in and around the music business.
And most of us knew somebody who was similarly afflicted.
So you kind of had the feeling what was going on.
He wasn't right.
The fact that their activities have been
so much scaled back by them, made it clear
that there was something wrong regardless
of what it was or what caused it.
He was obviously not the same Freddie.
- I think most people knew that he was ill.
I think nobody really knew what was wrong
or how long he'd been ill or how bad it was
until pretty much at the end.
- Freddie was one of those persons with AIDS
who responded by not wishing to be seen.
- [Interviewer] It would be wrong of us not to say
that he has been depicted in certain quarters
as sort of decadent, wild, bisexual, irresponsible lover.
So what was actually the truth of that?
- Yes, that's very, that definitely makes us very angry
because he was certainly, the Freddie we knew
wasn't wildly promiscuous.
He wasn't consumed by drugs.
Any of these things that people are saying.
He had a very responsible attitude to everyone
that he was close to.
And he was a very generous and caring person
to all of the people that came through his life.
And more than that, you can't ask really, you know,
as he moved from a relationship to another one,
he was always very, as I say, you know, aware
of the effect he was having on people's lives.
- We all knew that there were many people.
My PA died for heaven's sake.
I mean, it was, it was in our homes,
it was in our friendly circles,
and it was happening with such suddenness and force
that you couldn't mourn everybody as deeply
as they deserved at the moment they were dying.
In retrospect, whenever you think of one of these people,
then you experience their passing uniquely and individually.
But then because there were so many involved,
you were just trying to keep your head above water
and be good to everybody.
♪ Time
♪ Waits for no one
♪ Best not to be friends with one another ♪
♪ Or we'd have no more future at all ♪
♪ Time
♪ Waits for nobody
[gentle music]
♪ For nobody, nobody, nobody
♪ For no one
- One of the extraordinary things about Queen and Freddie
was that they had an instinctive commercial
and marketing nous.
With Queen, and I think with Freddie's writing,
it was staggering how year on year at that time
when we in the record company were expecting
and waiting for the new album knowing
that the crucial thing was, is there gonna
be a natural big hit.
That year on year, they came up with the most extraordinary,
always another step into the unexpected.
Something incredibly serendipitous.
When you, one year it was "Killer Queen",
the following year, of course, was "Bohemian Rhapsody".
Then it was "Somebody To Love" the following year.
Then it was "We Are The Champions".
And if you think about those records
which were some of the great anthems of rock,
every year we would breathe the sigh of relief
and say, "Oh, got another one."
- Now for the band, it would've been very difficult
and I give them full points knowing that something was up,
knowing that something was up
that was completely outside their own circle.
Because unlike the theatrical community
or the gay community,
the heterosexual members of Queen wouldn't know
as much about it.
They would just know he's not looking too good.
What's happening?
But because they were very much a quartet,
they stood by him to the very, very end.
And the very, very end, of course,
is that incredibly moving video.
♪ Those were the days of our lives ♪
♪ Yeah
♪ The bad things in life were so few ♪
♪ Those days are all gone now
♪ But one thing's true
♪ When I look and I find
♪ I still love you
[gentle music]
♪ I still love you
- Well, the one thing he wanted to do
was keep on working in the studio.
He was absolutely determined to keep on,
keep the group going, and to keep working.
And that actually kept him going
for a long time. - You see,
we watched earlier "Those Were The Days Of Our Lives"
and actually watching it was unbearably poignant
just to watch it.
So for you fellas to be in that,
it must have been a difficult session emotionally.
- So incredibly difficult. - Yes.
It was hard, it was really,
but we were sort of trying to support him through it.
And I mean, he was incredibly brave at that time.
Obviously, he knew, you know, and we all knew at that time.
But you know, the best thing is just to get on
with life and to do it.
And he did that.
And I think he carried on very bravely, actually.
- They put out that video and there he is,
and you go, "That's not Freddie, that's a spec."
Although he could still sing.
You know, however sick he was, it was like
seeing that the disgusting-looking blabby Elvis,
I've seen footage of his last concert and he looks horrible,
but he sounds divine still, you know?
So talent is a funny thing.
Disease doesn't necessarily kill the talent
or self-destructive behavior.
And clearly, his talent was intact right up until the end.
That last recording.
- The singles from "Innuendo" are literal.
The "Innuendo" single, which is about
being written about in the press,
well, of course, they were speculating
about him in the press.
"I'm Going Slightly Mad", a direct reference
to having moments of disease
and "The Show Must Go On", which was his philosophy.
[heartfelt music]
- Well, it was a sad thing.
I mean, how could it not be?
He was a very sweet guy who died.
And I know he was in a lot, because Mary told me
that he was in a lot of pain at the end.
It was not an easy death for Freddie.
But apparently, he didn't complain.
Apparently, he was not...
And he didn't feel sorry for himself.
I don't know what else he could have done
because he, you know...
But apparently, he was in a lot of pain.
- When Freddie died, that was the end of Queen.
- There was just great sadness.
[heartfelt music]
You felt that like all the artists that die young,
you say, "Well, what would've been?"
You know, what would Buddy Holly have done?
You know, what would Eddie Cochran have done?
You think, well, what would Freddie be doing now?
[heartfelt music]
- The glamour of the world's rock stars
in a very unglamorous setting.
Rehearsals Studios west of London,
where the final polish is being put on tomorrow's show.
Casual dress was very much the order of the day.
Elton John also sporting a brand new hair look
for the big event.
A succession of stars arrived throughout the day
to practice alongside the surviving members of Queen.
For many, it's a poignant occasion.
Wembley Stadium was the scene of one
of Queen's greatest performances back in 1986.
Today, a team of 400 technicians,
including Freddie Mercury's original road crew,
were back in action preparing the giant stage.
But the organizers here hope that the message
will reach more than half a billion people
in more than 70 countries.
And despite all the glamour and razzamatazz,
it will be a serious message trying
to promote AIDS education on a truly global scale.
♪ No time for losers
♪ 'Cause we are the champions
[crowd cheering]
- Thanks, Freddie.
We just wanted to let you know we were thinking about you.
Stay safe.
♪ Of the world
[crowd cheering]
[heartfelt music]
- He would love it.
He would be thrilled.
He would be thrilled to know that I've been asked to talk
about him years after his death.
He would be so excited [chuckling]
and in a conspiratorial way,
he would say, "Oh, I love this."
You know, he'd have that little shoulder thing.
I once said to him, when "I Wanna Break Free" was new,
there was a point where Freddie,
who was in drag doing the vacuuming,
went from one room to the next
and as he crossed the wall in the set,
he did a little double time so that there was
the minimum time spent out of vision.
It was a very professional thing to do.
So he was almost entirely in camera.
And I said to him, "You know, my favorite part
of 'I Want To Break Free' is when you go into double time
between the rooms."
And he said, "Oh, I'm so glad you noticed that.
It's my favorite part."
You see, he was thrilled to be a professional.
Being Freddie Mercury allowed him to be the professional
and the legend that he wanted to be.
I could say I would love to be Arthur Rubinstein,
the great concert pianist.
Well, although I have a piano, I'm not a great pianist.
But Freddie wanted to be a great diva esque figure,
a legend.
And being Freddie Mercury allowed Farrokh
to be that person.
[heartfelt music]