Queens’ Tragic Rhapsody

With their next two albums, Queen II and Sheer Heart Attack (both from 1974), Queen successfully caught up with them­selves. Queen II’s lavish sound and Sheer Heart Attack’s harder and more propulsive approach laid the groundwork for the ex­travagant and complex sound that marked Queen’s first triumphant period. Onstage, though, it was Mercury who was the focal point. The British press largely hated what it saw as his campy, theatrical mannerisms. But he was steadily building a powerful, un­common bond between the band and its au­dience, often engaging fans in singalongs. “What you must understand,” he once told another singer, “is that my voice comes from the energy of the audience. The better they are, the better I get.”

Recording their fourth album, 1975’s A Night at the Opera, Queen felt that their time had come. May recalled thinking, “This is our canvas, we will paint on it at our leisure.” Mercury had ideas for a ludicrously epic track. Producer Roy Thomas Baker, who had worked with Queen on their music up to this point, has told the story of the first time he heard “Bo­hemian Rhapsody”: “Freddie was sitting in his apartment, and he said, ”˜I’ve got this idea for a song.’ So he started playing it on the piano. . . . Then he suddenly stopped and said, ”˜Now, dears, this is where the opera section comes in.’ ” From the opening bal­lad section, the song soared into operetta form, then into battering rock & roll, final­ly back to a ballad. Said May, “It was [Fred­die’s] baby.” Queen and Baker worked on the track for weeks. The band overdubbed some 180 vocal parts for the song, fashion­ing its famous cathedral-like chorale sound. At one point, there were so many tracks that the audio tape wore down to transpar­ency and would have evaporated with any more recording.

When “Bohemian Rhapsody” was done, the band wanted it to be A Night at the Op­era’s first single. Queen’s manager at the time, John Reid ”“ who was also Elton John’s manager ”“ said that it could never happen without the nearly-six-minute-long track being edited. Deacon felt the same way, but Taylor and May shared Mercury’s resolve. Whatever doubts remained were dispelled when Mercury and Taylor played the fin­ished recording for BBC DJ Kenny Everett. “It could be half an hour,” Everett told them, “it’s going to be Number One for centuries.” As it developed, “Bohemian Rhapsody” be­came Queen’s first Number One British sin­gle, and it hit the Top 10 in America. In the years since, the song has routinely headed British lists of all-time best and worst sin­gles. That never daunted Mercury. “A lot of people slammed ”˜Bohemian Rhapsody,’ ” he said, “but who can you compare it to?”

Mercury wasn’t patient with those who asked him about the song’s meanings. “Fuck them, darling,” he said. “I’ll say no more than what any decent poet would tell you if you dared ask him to analyze his work: ”˜If you see it, dear, then it’s there.’ ” It’s possible, though, that the song had meanings Mer­cury simply wasn’t ready to divulge. “Fred­die’s stuff was so heavily cloaked lyrically,” May later said. “But you could find out, just from little insights, that a lot of his private thoughts were in there.” Indeed, “Rhapsody” may have held the key to Mercury’s still-se­cret life. “The song,” critic Anthony DeCur­tis has said, “is about a secret transgression ”“ ”˜I’m being punished’ ”“ at the same time that there’s this desire for freedom.”

Mercury guarded his depths closely because he felt he had to. Some thought his effete be­havior was largely an af­fectation. Photographer Mick Rock remembers Mercury “dabbling” in relationships with women (“I do know of one or two names!” Rock said). Also, Mercury sustained a pas­sionate relationship with his partner of many years, Mary Austin, a glamorous young woman he met at Biba, a London fashion house.

“He thought he liked women,” an art-col­lege associate of Mercury’s told biographer Lesley-Ann Jones. “It took him quite a while to realize he was gay. . . . I don’t think he could face up to the feelings it caused inside him.” By the time of Queen’s 1976 album, A Day at the Races, Mercury had been acting strangely with girlfriend Austin for some time. “I could see that he was feeling bad about something,” she said in the documen­tary Freddie Mercury: The Untold Story. Finally, Mercury told Austin about his new comprehension of himself. “It was a relief to actually hear it from him,” she said. Mercury would remain close to Austin for the rest of his life, employing her as his personal secre­tary and adviser, and despite his numerous subsequent relationships, he referred to her as his common-law wife. From that point on, Austin said, Mercury felt no obligation to explain his sexuality to anybody.

Nor did he tolerate cheap defamations. In Queen: The Early Years, there’s a story from somebody who had worked with Queen at a show in Manchester: “Queen had just taken the stage, and this bloke shouted to Fred­die, ”˜You fucking poof.’ . . . Freddie demand­ed that the crew turn the spotlight on the crowd and find this fella. He then said to him, ”˜Say that again, darling,’ and the bloke didn’t know what to do. . . . I saw him literally shrink this six-foot bloke down to an inch.”