| malicedoom 20.05.2011 07:53 |
From all I've read (and I've read quite a bit) and sifted through, it sound like the true story regarding Freddie's health pretty much follows what Jim Hutton put down in his book. Freddie had already gone 'full blown AIDS' by 1987, when he came down with Kaposi’s sarcoma and had himself tested to find out what it was. Most sources state that by the time those lesions appear, the immune system likely has already been severely weakened - I assume that means you've already gone full blown AIDS. This is interesting to me because I had always thought Freddie had simply found out he was HIV positive in 1987 (it even states this in the book included with the Freddie Mercury Solo Collection - which I was reading over again the other day). The fact is, his illness was far more advanced by the time he realized what was going on and was tested. So Freddie made it another 4+ years with full blown AIDS? That's pretty amazing. I realize he had access to the best health care available, but I'm still surprised and happy he was able to last that long, as I didn't think that was even possible given what medical science had to offer back then. I guess what I'm trying to get across is all these years, I've been thinking "Man, if Freddie could have held out another year or so, he might still be around becaue of the advances that were made that can now keep a person HIV positive for countless years." - when in fact, if he was already full blown by 1987, it's pretty incredible (and great, of course) that he was able to last as long as he did. |
| marvinp01 20.05.2011 20:53 |
Nice to read a meaningful topic every now and again. That is incredible thanks |
| jamster1111 21.05.2011 11:52 |
In regards to when he exactly contracted the HIV, it is unknown but a lot of people (including Peter Freestone, his personal assistant) believe he caught it as early as 1979 or 1980. This is because it takes a while to develop. But, I know almost for sure he started suffering from HIV related symptoms during the Magic Tour as you can tell her looks much more frail compared to the year before that. So in other words, it is unknown how long Freddie lived with HIV, but he definitely had the disease before 1987. |
| mooghead 21.05.2011 16:03 |
20 years later and people are still speculating.... ffs.. |
| And91 21.05.2011 23:19 |
Some time ago a friend sent me a pic who seen something in Freddie's arm during Live Aid gig. Look at the pic. link This can be some birthmark or probably he hit something, but it looked Kaposi's Sarcoma in early stage too. I dont think it can be kaposi but either way the image is there. It is a frame captured during Hammer To Fall. Someone believe it was Kaposi's sarcoma? At that time ? PS: Is well known Freddie developed Kaposi's Sarcoma. To record the clip of "These are the days" he had to put a very heavy makeup in his face to hide the disease. Still visible anyway link It's sad to talk about it, but are facts |
| Gregsynth 21.05.2011 23:59 |
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| Gregsynth 22.05.2011 00:15 |
Why do people say he looks "frail" on the Magic Tour anyway? To me, he still looks all muscular and in shape (if anything, he looks more puffy in the face). You want a frail-looking Freddie? Look at his last couple videos. link link In those pictures, I don't see a frail man--I see a guy who looks good! |
| And91 22.05.2011 00:46 |
For me, Freddie looks strong in Magic Tour. For me, he is still good shape at that time. There is a clear example of how the disease progresses in the period 1987 to 1988. We can see an energic Freddie in his first appearance alongside Montserrat Caballe at Ibiza Ku Club in May 1987 to sing Barcelona. To me, he looks like Freddie from Works Tour without Moustache. Energic and strong. This is the Freddie who touring with Queen all those years ago. link But if you get the video of second presentation of Barcelona at La Nit, in Out. 1988, Freddie looks different. About a year and five months separate the first presentation of the second, but for Freddie seems that passed a lot of years. Apparently he have lost a part of energy that he had. link |
| plumrach 22.05.2011 04:57 |
@and91 I always thought the mark on his arm was just a bruise |
| Thistle 22.05.2011 06:33 |
Ah, I've been beaten to the Live Aid point - I always thought it was a lesion, too... |
| john bodega 22.05.2011 10:34 |
You can see his AIDS scars in the video for "Bohemian Rhapsody", which is incidentally what the song is all about. |
| Ruperto Pesto - FER 22.05.2011 21:34 |
And91 wrote: Some time ago a friend sent me a pic who seen something in Freddie's arm during Live Aid gig. Look at the pic. link This can be some birthmark or probably he hit something, but it looked Kaposi's Sarcoma in early stage too. I dont think it can be kaposi but either way the image is there. It is a frame captured during Hammer To Fall. Someone believe it was Kaposi's sarcoma? At that time ? PS: Is well known Freddie developed Kaposi's Sarcoma. To record the clip of "These are the days" he had to put a very heavy makeup in his face to hide the disease. Still visible anyway link It's sad to talk about it, but are facts ------------------- ------------------- No, that scars in live aid were not Sarcoma...this marks you can notice if you watch the gigs in Argentina in '81 or in Rock in Rio in '85. You can see scars if you look at Freddie's forehead while he sings WATC in Budapest. |
| LAP 26.05.2011 00:53 |
I have read in a few books along the way that Freddie was interviewed in 1986 and he stated he was tested for AIDS late 85 and that he was OK and he is fine...either the results were dubious (as this was common in the mid 80's with AIDS tests) or Freddie was trying to just throw journos of the scent of rumours beginning to surface! Personnally I think in the "I want it All" clip he looks OK, however older with the greying stubble, somewhat he looks tougher, meaner and serious for business! I like the look. We can see on the close ups however if we want to be picky that there are blemishes and signs of KS trying to be hidden by the thick layer of make up. In the 'Scandal" clip he looks very thin and his hair has also thinned out. So, I thibnk as the year 89 progressed through each video release after "Breakthru", Freddie is increasingly looking unwell! |
| malicedoom 26.05.2011 07:45 |
I'd agree. I never really thought he looked ill in The Miracle video until recently when I looked it again - both the video itself and some stills of him with the band and the kids. Freddie had a very sad/ill look in his eyes at times (from late '89 on) and I saw it appear in one of the stills from The Miracle video shoot. He must have been feeling awful at the time. |
| monsieur mercury 27.05.2011 16:52 |
And91 wrote: For me, Freddie looks strong in Magic Tour. For me, he is still good shape at that time. There is a clear example of how the disease progresses in the period 1987 to 1988. We can see an energic Freddie in his first appearance alongside Montserrat Caballe at Ibiza Ku Club in May 1987 to sing Barcelona. To me, he looks like Freddie from Works Tour without Moustache. Energic and strong. This is the Freddie who touring with Queen all those years ago. link But if you get the video of second presentation of Barcelona at La Nit, in Out. 1988, Freddie looks different. About a year and five months separate the first presentation of the second, but for Freddie seems that passed a lot of years. Apparently he have lost a part of energy that he had. link An interesting post. I agree that Freddie looked really good during the Ibiza performance in May 1987. If anything, he looked in better shape than in '86, hence your comparison with the Works tour rather than Magic. But I disagree with your second point. I think Freddie looked fine at La Nit. If he seemed fuller in the face, then that was precisely how he looked in '86. Indeed, if you put a moustache on him, I reckon he would look exactly how as he did in the 'Time' video. I don't think he displayed vastly reduced energy levels either. He seemed pretty animated during 'the fire of nations' part. In any case, it is hard to compare the two performances because they were in different contexts. I believe the King and Queen of Spain were at La Nit. Perhaps he wanted to look more statesmanlike there. I don't think Freddie looks at all bad until The Miracle video, when the weight loss becomes visible in his face. |
| YannickJoker 29.05.2011 00:01 |
LAP wrote: In the 'Scandal" clip he looks very thin and his hair has also thinned out. ==== His hair had already thinned out a few years before that, he just did his best to hide it. And look at Live Aid, it's a huge combed mess. Try freeze-framing the Breakthru video, there are two or three very brief frames where you can see how bald he was by then and it's much worse than you'll ever see it when he combed it neatly. |
| NickGreen 13.07.2017 12:17 |
I understand he had a double crown so it might appear like a bald patch but it isn't, though just ageing can make it more apparent. |
| mooghead 13.07.2017 12:33 |
Why would you resurrect this shit? |
| Oscar J 13.07.2017 13:26 |
That's some hilarious thread digging right there, especially just to mention a receding hairline. |
| Invisible Woman 13.07.2017 15:54 |
That he knew with certainty that was HIV positive would he go on a Magic tour and exhaust himself? I don't think so. |
| Saint Jiub 13.07.2017 19:07 |
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0171x1k He definitely knew he was HIV positive prior to the start of the Magic Tour in June 1986. Per Mary Austin at the 23 minute mark of the 2011 BBC interview (see above link). "The last tour he knew and it was really hard work for him. Working through the emotional pain; Knowing it was going to be his last tour" ... |
| Invisible Woman 14.07.2017 03:59 |
And because she so said it must be 100% true? Mary actually don't say "he told me" or "he did a test and found out that he had HIV or AIDS". And Jim?How he didn't notice anything?How could Freddie continue to live with him and act like nothing had happened,lie to him for months and hide such a serious thing and Jim do not suspect anything? What kind of person was Freddie? I don't believe in that.I don't idealize anyone, but this is just incomprehensible to me. |
| Sebastian 14.07.2017 07:45 |
Not to mention memories do get blurry after a few decades. I think there's an interview somewhere where Brian gets wrong the date of his father's passing. His. Own. Beloved. Father. If it can happen to a clever Renaissance man with a PhD in astrophysics who eats and exercises properly and stays away from pernicious substances, it can also happen to anybody else, including Mary... to whom the exact timeline of the Magic Tour is probably not a big priority. |
| YAWN 14.07.2017 10:05 |
Mary has two different versions of his coming out story, so I'd take her statements on when he became ill with a pinch of salt. She either just got the dates wrong, or she wants Freddie to sound like he deliberately withheld information about his HIV status to a partner. Hopefully it's just memory issues. |
| Saint Jiub 14.07.2017 22:02 |
Panchgani wrote: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0171x1k He definitely knew he was HIV positive prior to the start of the Magic Tour in June 1986. Per Mary Austin at the 23 minute mark of the 2011 BBC interview (see above link). "The last tour he knew and it was really hard work for him. Working through the emotional pain; Knowing it was going to be his last tour" ... The below is a more complete quote from a reputable website ... http://www.queenlive.ca/queen/86-08-09.htm In a 2011 interview with the BBC, Freddie's longtime girlfriend Mary Austin revealed that he did know during the last tour that he had AIDS. "The last tour, he knew, and it was really hard work for him, working through the emotional pain knowing that it was going to be his last tour. Watching him walk off stage, I feel pain now. Just that look of him walking off. I looked at him, he looked at me, and it's that knowing that this has to be the last one." ... It seems to me that Mary's specific and vivid memory of the end of the Magic Tour is extremely unlikely to be a false memory ... |
| kokax 15.07.2017 07:24 |
there was an interesting discussion in this thread : link |
| KennyGXtrem 10.02.2019 01:47 |
Here’s the thing, I think freddie would’ve gone on tour wether he new he was HIV positive or not because he told himself he wasn’t gonna care about the disease and he was just gonna keep living to the fullest |
| spiralstatic 10.02.2019 16:26 |
It's morbid to think on these things & we can never know the answers, but I think it's only natural too that we should wonder. All I've read from his friends is that once Freddie got into the gay scene, he loved it and took to it like a duck to water - entirely, doing everything with everyone, as wildly as could be. My impression is therefore that it's most likely Freddie contracted HIV in the first period of time he was being wildly promiscuous and having a lot of unprotected sex with many different partners, quite likely in New York. I don't know exactly when that was, but I'm guessing the late '70's or if he was incredibly lucky, early '80's? Either way, sadly for him and for us and for everyone of that era, too early a date that he or anyone could possibly have known or escaped their future. Of course it could have been years later, but if he's having an awful lot of unprotected sex with different people in an area where HIV was spreading, logic seems to dictate to me that it's more likely he'd contract HIV sooner rather than later. Sadly (or happily - if it was going to happen anyway, maybe oblivion is better?) at the time not a single person could have known of course that there was the slightest chance this could happen. I suppose the only positive is that they were spared the knowledge of the future and could enjoy freedom for those few years before AIDS was known about without fear? As for diagnosis, all we can say is that I don't think Freddie was 100% certain (or at least 100% believed it) until 1987. I suppose for me there's something about the notion that Freddie's sexual abandon continued till '85 that makes me personally wonder whether a part of him didn't fear from the time of the first whispers of AIDS were around *I might have this* & he might've thought if he had contracted HIV, he had most likely contracted it already, so why not just carry on having fun? Maybe a mixture of that and *It couldn't possibly happen to me*? My impression is that Freddie was an optimistic and positive person, so I can only hope that he suspected he was HIV positive as late as possible, for his sake and that once he knew he had AIDS, he believed there was still hope for as long as possible. I think he must have had some idea his chances of being HIV positive were high early on when AIDS was known about, but by that point and at that time there was nothing he or anyone could do, so the best I can hope was that he was able to put any such worries out of his mind until they became unavoidable. Obviously there are other issues here involving did Freddie suspect he could be ill and continue to have unprotected sex.... and you know it's hard to even talk about that, because thinking "I might have this" is worlds apart from knowing you do, and at the time why would people want to know before anything could be done to help and when tests were so unreliable anyway. I mean, surely Freddie did infect many people unknowingly and I would hope he infected no-one knowingly. If we hope he discontinued having casual sex once truly suspecting he might be HIV positive, it ties in with him suspecting it in late '85-'86 (but surely Freddie wouldn't potentially infect Jim if he truly believed himself highly likely to be HIV positive?) In any case, what can you do - I suppose at the time everyone was taking risks of being infected &/or infecting someone else. I know Jim Beach has spoken that Freddie didn't want to know for sure. And why would you want it proven to you at that time? The thread kokax linked is interesting as Freddie abruptly leaving Munich and returning to Garden Lodge and changing his lifestyle entirely in 1985 certainly speaks of a change in some way in his mind, if not necessarily in his knowledge of anything in relation to himself. Though he may not have known he was HIV positive until later, I would suspect he had that feeling inside himself where you know or at least fear something is deeply wrong, whether thats due to any tests or just knowing yourself at least in 1986, but fairly likely by the time he left Munich. I think Freddie toured as long as he physically could and then continued to write and record music as long as he could. If he did suspect he was ill before The Magic tour, but felt he could still tour, I feel like it would only push him to tour all the more, knowing it could be his last. But that doesn't mean that he did know, or if he feared it at all, how small or definite that fear or knowledge was. None of us can know the exact dates for anything else, but there must have been time when he suspected he was ill before anyone else knew and before knowing for certain himself. I personally can only hope his nature was such that he could genuinely tell himself there was no problem until forced to confront it. |
| spiralstatic 10.02.2019 16:29 |
. |
| Sweetandtenderhooligan 12.02.2019 19:49 |
The spots on his arms during Live Aid look like sex bruises- they are perfect finger prints. So enough with this |
| mooghead 12.02.2019 21:19 |
"The spots on his arms during Live Aid look like sex bruises" Wow. End of thread. ;-) |
| FunLovinCriminal 13.02.2019 01:51 |
One thing that has always been overlooked when it came to Freddie leaving Munich is that AIDS was already erasing large numbers of gay men in any city on both sides of the Atlantic. Being in gay clubs at that time wasn't as much fun as it used to be, because fear was looming. Also, by 1986 it had been common knowledge how the virus was transmitted and gay men had already taken to using condoms. Whether Freddie knew at that time that he had been HIV+ himself or not - he knew for sure that the time for being careless was over. That, to me, is the most likely reason for him returning to London and settling down with Hutton. |
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