| NickGreen 21.05.2017 16:39 |
In case you missed it, it's also behind a paywall so I thought I'd share it folks, enjoy- carries on below. Brian May exclusive interview: Queen, debauchery and Freddie mercury Brian May does a great Freddie Mercury impression. He leans forward in his chair, clasps his hands together conspiratorially and channels the high-speed, staccato delivery of the greatest showman of the late 20th century: “ ‘I had an idea … you know Michael Jackson did this album and it’s called Bad?’ Yeah, Fred. ‘Well, the album we’re making, we could call it Good.’ ” May laughs. “He would always knock you sideways. Sometimes it was great and sometimes it wasn’t.” The visitors to Freddie’s dressing room started to change from hot chicks to hot men. It didn’t matter to us — why should it? May, the guitarist in Queen since their 1970 inception, remembers when Mercury finally announced to him that he was gay, “years after it was obvious”. “In the beginning, the band lived on a shoestring. We couldn’t afford individual hotel rooms, so I would share a room with Freddie … There isn’t a lot I don’t know about Freddie and what he got up to in those days — which was not men, I have to tell you. It was fairly obvious when the visitors to Freddie’s dressing room started to change from hot chicks to hot men. It didn’t matter to us, why should it? But Freddie had this habit of saying, ‘Well, I suppose you realise this, that or the other,’ in this very offhand way, and he did say at some point, ‘I suppose you realise I’ve changed in my private life?’ “And years later, he said, ‘I suppose you realise that I’m dealing with this illness.’ Of course, we all knew [he had Aids], but we didn’t want to. He said, ‘You probably gather that I’m dealing with this thing and I don’t want to talk about it and I don’t want our lives to change, but that’s the situation.’ And then he would move on.” Dredging through old memories has been the subject of May’s latest project: a compilation book of his personal collection of 3D photos from his time striding around the globe during Queen’s heady reign of stadium-rock supremacy. The accompanying words mark the first time any member of Queen has written about their experiences in the band. It is harrowing to read of Freddie’s final days and the devastating effect the HIV virus took on his body before he died in late 1991. “The problem,” May writes, “was actually his foot, and tragically there was very little left of it. Once, he showed it to us at dinner. And he said, ‘Oh Brian, I’m sorry I’ve upset you by showing you that.’ And I said, ‘I’m not upset, Freddie, except to realise you have to put up with all this terrible pain.’ ” Equally hard is May’s belief that the “magic cocktail” of drugs that has since stopped Aids becoming a death sentence was discovered just too late to save Freddie. “He missed by just a few months,” May sighs. “If it had been a bit later he would still have been with us, I’m sure. It’s very …” he breaks off sadly. “Hmmm. You can’t do ‘what if’ can you? You can’t go there because therein lies madness.” Honestly, I had expected to meet a sanctimonious old git. May has been dubbed “the world’s grumpiest rock star” thanks to his online blog, Brian’s Soapbox, on which he posts pious rants about politics, the press, badger culls and animal rights. There are flashes of the same hectoring tone in the book. But it must be a mean trick of the typing, because in real life he seems a terribly gentle and pleasant soul. I meet him in Windlesham, Surrey, in the vast pile where he has his offices. The bookshelves are lined with antique cameras and 19th-century volumes of Punch. In the middle of the room is a female mannequin wearing a sweeping Victorian crinoline skirt — another of May’s esoteric interests. He wanders in wearing clogs, gardening trousers and a woven red jacket, almost as arresting as his bright grey corkscrew barnet. Under the jacket is a white shirt, unbuttoned dangerously low for someone who turns 70 in July. Bohemian chain pendants clatter against nipple as he leans in to say hello. He is very tall — or maybe that’s just the hair — and frightfully easy-going. Tea is arranged and he briefly excuses himself. I assume he’s gone to use the facilities or take an urgent phone call. But after 20 minutes I look out the window to see him tottering around the back garden taking pictures of his rhododendron. Has he forgotten me? When he finally returns, it’s with a box containing his treasured collection of “stereoscopic” (3D) cameras and some of the original slides he took. He shows me one of his favourites: a picture of Freddie and the Queen bassist John Deacon on a private plane in 1977. A blonde woman gazes at Freddie from the seat next to him. “That’s Mary, his long-term girlfriend.” Despite Mercury’s sexuality, Mary Austin was his longest relationship and the woman he called “the love of my life”. “They were still very close right to the end,” May nods. “He took care of Mary in his will.” We look at another photo of Freddie having his make-up applied before a show. “You just feel he’s so close there, don’t you?” May smiles. “It’s almost painfully real. He was this strange mixture of flamboyance and shyness,” he says, remembering his first impressions of Mercury. “He had already built this image around himself, which was very confident and colourful. He was a rock star long before he made a record. In the old days they would have called him a dandy. And more recently a metrosexual. He was like a peacock, a person who brought his own fantasy to life.” Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar, east Africa, to Indian Parsi parents in 1946. He had already started calling himself Freddie before his family came to England, fleeing the Zanzibar revolution for Feltham in west London when he was 17. May grew up a few miles away in leafy Hampton, a studious only child who would later quit a PhD in astrophysics at Imperial College London to pursue his rock’n’roll dreams. (He eventually completed it 36 years later in 2007, specialising in zodiacal dust.) May tells me about the day he met Freddie. The guitarist was already in a university band called Smile. One day Smile’s singer unwittingly brought his colourful, outspoken mate from Ealing Art College to watch a rehearsal. “Freddie was full of enthusiasm, really fired up,” May remembers. “He loved watching us. Then, on the other hand, he was: ‘But you’re doing all of this wrong. Why are you just standing there looking at the floor? Why aren’t you giving a show for people?’ ” Was he angling for the frontman job himself? “I think so. He was very complimentary to me. He said, ‘You should be my Jimi Hendrix.’ Freddie loved Hendrix, he followed him everywhere, he was like a disciple.” A band, Queen, was born with Mercury as singer. I had no idea how revolutionary his crowd interaction was until May explains that most audiences going to watch a rock band in the early 1970s would sit on the floor, nodding. “These days groups encourage audience participation, but Freddie asking people to sing along was almost uncool in those days. It was viewed as something that might happen in cabaret. What we did, if you want to be crass about it, is we amalgamated rock with music hall. That’s why we wrote We Are the Champions, We Will Rock You and Radio Ga Ga — it was consciously allowing the audience to be part of the show.” Then there were the outfits. May’s book features some beauties: early 1970s Freddie in flowing locks and Zandra Rhodes’s white pleated “winged” capes; gay-icon Freddie, barechested in black leather trousers and black leather biker hat; “Mediterranean prawn” Freddie with his porno moustache, bouffant wig and strappy red leotard. |
| NickGreen 21.05.2017 16:43 |
Wasn’t he scared of getting beaten up? “No, not really. There were times when we went, Fred, are you really going on in that? I think the maroon sequin shorts were close to the edge as far as we were concerned. But he loved to outrage people. We were very much a people’s band. If people stopped us in the street and got excited, it was generally bricklayers or truck drivers. Freddie had an amazing way of being in contact with everyone, making people feel like their inner selves were going to come out. We liberated a lot of people.” Mercury the daring peacock, May the soft-spoken brainiac … it is hard not to see them as two polar opposites, but May disagrees. “We were all striding around the world being big-time rock stars, but actually we’re quite fragile inside. It’s probably the reason we’re rock stars, because it’s a big compensation thing, playing a loud guitar or strutting around singing. You do it because you want to feel confident, you want to find yourself and achieve your potential.” It says much about Mercury’s light-sapping charisma that May spent much of his time in the shadow of the singer while he was alive. And it says much about May’s strategic brilliance that he hasn’t subsequently faded into obscurity, but become the figurehead of a band that is now even more successful than it was during Mercury’s lifetime. According to this year’s Rich List, May is worth £125m, while a recent survey named Queen the favourite band among fiftysomethings. Next year will finally see the release of a long-awaited Freddie Mercury biopic, with Rami Malek playing the singer, and May and Queen’s drummer, Roger Taylor, on board as music producers. We Will Rock You, a musical based on Queen’s hits, ran at the Dominion Theatre for 12 years from 2002. Since 2012, Queen have toured live with the American Idol finalist Adam Lambert singing Mercury’s lines (heresy in my opinion, but apparently Freddie would have loved him). Nothing, though, can eclipse May’s 2002 moment astride the top of Buckingham Palace, playing a guitar solo of God Save the Queen for the jubilee. The roof was his idea; the organisers had initially envisaged him wandering through the state rooms for the performance, but he thought it lacked impact. Perhaps he is more like Freddie than we will ever know. Absent from any of the post-Mercury Queen activity is the bassist, John Deacon, now said to be a recluse. “I don’t see him at all, no,” says May. “It’s his choice. He doesn’t contact us. John was quite delicate all along. He could be very outgoing and very funny, but I think some of the stuff that happened in Munich gave him a lot of damage, and I think losing Freddie was very hard for him as well. He found that incredibly hard to process, to the point where actually playing with us made it more difficult.” Munich was where Queen holed up at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s to write and record. Things got out of hand. May coyly refers to it in the book as a period of heavy drinking in a local bar, “living in a fantasy world of vodka and barmaids”. Today he is more forthright: “We all lost our minds … we were all in a perilous place where our emotions were out of control. It manifested itself in way too much drinking, a certain amount of drugs, which I didn’t share — but certainly an awful lot of vodka went through my body. We all fell to bits. That’s the moment Freddie wrote It’s a Hard Life. If you look at the video, it’s a metaphor. There’s all this wonderful, fanciful clothing and excess of food, wine and debauchery, but Freddie’s saying ‘It’s a hard life’ as the grapes are thrust into his mouth. The Freddie writing that song was actually in a very painful, emotional place.” It inevitably also had an impact on the band dynamic. “We overreacted with each other at times. We all left the band at some point. The studio’s a hard place for a band anyway, but in our case all four of us as writers had had worldwide hits — and I think that’s unique, I don’t think there’s another band in history where that’s true. You have four writers trying to create the next statement of what we are, so what could that statement be except a fight between the different visions? The lifestyle we led magnified that conflict.” In Deacon’s case, it culminated in “John disappearing to Bali and seeing God or whatever”. When it comes to legendary Queen decadence, May’s book does its best to brush over the carnage. So let me be the one to remind you: there was the Madison Square Garden aftershow party at which male guests were served by topless waitresses in stockings and heels and female guests by men in nothing but gym shorts (to avoid accusations of sexism). And the champagne bill for Freddie’s 35th birthday in New York in 1981, which is said to have been £30,000. Most outrageous, though, was a 1978 album-release party in New Orleans, involving “a flock of transvestites, fire-eaters, dancing girls, snake charmers and strippers dressed as nuns”, according to Mark Blake’s well-respected Queen biography. The tales of what happened next range from the lurid (naked mud-wrestling, public fornication) to the unprintable, but perhaps the most famous involves a fleet of dwarves carrying platters of cocaine strapped to their heads. Does May remember seeing them? “We knew a lot of dwarves,” he concedes. “I’m still very friendly with the dwarf community because my wife, Anita, used to do pantomimes. I don’t want to sound big-headed, but I’m pretty big in the dwarf world. I’ve spent many long nights propping up bars with dwarves.” Of New Orleans, he says: “We chose to launch the album there because it was completely broad-minded. We knew a lot of people on the ‘edge of society’, as you would have called it then. You wouldn’t call it that now, you’d call it LGBTBF or whatever it is now. To that party came all sorts of pretty outrageous performers of every sex — and there are a lot! It was fun, nothing sinister went on at all. Nobody was abused, nobody was taken advantage of.” Fat Bottomed Girls — I was proud of that song. The nude photoshoot was fun at the time, but I wouldn’t find it amusing now. Attitudes change He would rather distance himself from some of Queen’s less politically correct japes. “For instance, Fat Bottomed Girls. I am very proud of that song, but as part of the album packaging we had this nude [female] bicycle race for a photo session and it all seemed quite innocent and fun at the time. Now I wouldn’t think that was amusing. Attitudes have changed to lots of things.” He was far from the hardest-partying member of Queen. He’s never even tried drugs, having decided while still a student that “I want to get to the end of this and know that everything I felt was real”. His weakness was always “company”. He bemoans his sensitive and emotionally immature nature, which meant he was endlessly trawling the world for “the perfect bond with the perfect partner … the place where you could dissolve with someone to the point where you don’t know where they start and you end.” Did he ever find it? “No, it’s impossible. I’ve glimpsed it. Various times, various moments. But it’s a wonderful fiction, really.” Don’t feel too bad for him. While he was searching, his then-wife, Chrissie Mullen, was stuck at home with their three children. “It was very different in those days. There were no mobile phones and phone calls were incredibly expensive if you were on the other side of the world. There was this feeling that life on the road was this separate bubble from your life back home. Nowadays you can’t even begin to think that because communication is so good. We lived in a time that was very exciting, but lonely because you were cut off. You were exploring the frontiers of what was around you, but also the frontiers of what was inside you. In the same way as people who went to look for the Northwest Passage in the 1950s. It felt a bit like you were an explorer in another universe.” |
| NickGreen 21.05.2017 16:47 |
He met his second wife, Anita Dobson — aka Angie, the original Queen Vic landlady from EastEnders — in 1986 at a film premiere, while he was still married to Mullen. He and Dobson wed in 2000. There was much amusement in the early days about them both having the same huge poodle perms — though May’s is the real deal and Dobson has been platinum and straight for some time now. In his book’s acknowledgments, he thanks her for managing to live with “possibly the most infuriating man in Britain for 30 years”. “I know I’m not easy,” he says. “I’m constantly obsessed with one thing or another — astronomy, stereoscopy, music, saving animals … Living with someone like that is appallingly difficult, so I think she deserves a medal. I’m not going to tell you she’s easy, either. She’s an artist and a fearsomely creative person, so our life has always been turbulent, but I suppose that’s what’s kept us young.” He has previously spoken about the depression he suffered from in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as he dealt with the fallout from his first marriage breaking down and the deaths of both his father and Mercury. Last year he cancelled a tour due to a mystery “persistent illness”. And on Christmas Day he published an alarming blog on Brian’s Soapbox. “I’ve been going through some radical and painful changes in my life … if you had seen me a few weeks ago, you would’ve wondered if I was going to make it to Christmas,” he wrote, before publishing a “tool kit” of apps, a book and a prayer to help others struggling to cope “physically or mentally or spiritually”. “I went through a very bad period before Christmas and cancelled everything, not just the tour, everything,” he explains. “I just knew I couldn’t handle it.” “Strangely enough I prefer not to call it depression now. I’ve recently got very much into the body and mind. All my life I’ve been pathetic at doing exercises. I now have a regime — every morning I do 40 minutes’ exercise, then I finish with meditation. It’s really enabled me to recentre. I feel like I’m in a much better place.” He is an advocate of mindful meditation — a way of living in the present that he believes Mercury used in the final days of his illness. May is happy to speak openly about his own mental health. “I noticed Prince Harry opened up in a similar way. I’ve always thought it’s nice to be open and I get reinforced in that because I get tons of mail saying the fact that you talked about it has helped me feel like I wasn’t alone and wasn’t a freak. I don’t think all this taboo business is helpful at all.” I wonder if it might be a better use of his platform than his zealous activism on behalf of badgers, which seems a rather niche concern. In brief, then: he is a fierce campaigner against the policy of culling badgers to try to eradicate bovine TB. It is his scientific belief that the cull isn’t working. But it is muddled by his more deep-seated conviction: “Martin Luther King said we hold it self-evident that every man is born equal. I hold it self-evident that every creature is born equal.” He can point to numerous childhood traumas that led him to this conclusion: watching his mother pour boiling water over an invasion of ants on the path outside his house; squirting a bumblebee with the pesticide DDT, then recoiling in shame as it dropped to the ground, buzzing to its slow and agonising death. If he hasn’t yet had therapy for the latter, he really should. The animal fanaticism is odd, because on everything else he seems so calmly rational. Perhaps he learnt some of that composure from Freddie. Despite his pain, Freddie was determined to keep working during the band’s final days together in a recording studio in Montreux. “What we did was get on with business as usual, which is what Freddie wanted,” May remembers. “He said, ‘I don’t want anything to change. We just do what we always do and we love what we do, so it’s going to be fine.’ Certainly those days towards the end were fabulous, full of laughter and joy, Freddie as wicked as ever. He was incredibly matter-of-fact about everything. ‘Oh darling, I’ll just get on with it.’ There wasn’t any self-pity at all. He wanted a ballad, so I very quickly sketched something in the studio and Freddie liked it. He said, ‘Gimme some words’. It was a question of scribbling a few lines and he’d chuck a couple of vodkas down — because he could hardly stand at that point — ‘Oh darling, I’ll do it now.’ Then he’d prop himself up on the desk and sing the lines. We didn’t quite get to the end. I gave him the last verse and he said, ‘Oh darling, I’m not feeling too good now, so I’ll come back to it. In a couple of days I’ll be fine, we’ll do it then.’ And he never did.” May finished the song after Mercury’s death. It’s called Mother Love, “an attempt from the two of us to look at life and sum it up, to reconcile the end with the beginning, although we wouldn’t have put it that way.” What does he think Freddie would be doing now if he were still alive? “I don’t think he’d have the patience for social media, because I hardly do and he was much more impatient than me. I don’t think he would be tweeting, he would probably be still writing his little memos on pieces of paper. He was becoming more and more reclusive towards the end of his life. That was partly because he was becoming more and more visible, but partly not wanting his illness to be public. But he was very private anyway and I think that would have continued.” He is adamant Mercury would still be creating music. “His creativity would have carried on. He was unstoppable and very lateral-thinking. Always coming up with things that were surprising. Often Roger and I, if we’re creating something for Queen, both of us have said that we feel like he’s in the room and you know what he’d say. You can tell if he would have been scornful or enthusiastic — although of course the whole thing about Freddie was that he wasn’t expected.” We have touched upon May’s depression, infidelity, the painful death of one of his closest friends and the painful death of a bee. Yet there is one subject so sensitive, I have avoided raising it until the very end. His hair. He hates talking about it, but he must on some level like the attention it brings, otherwise why doesn’t he just cut it off? “I’m comfortable with it,” he says. “It’s completely real. For a time when it was going grey I got very worried that I had to keep it a certain way or I wouldn’t be me any more. Anita encouraged me not to worry about it.” Would he ever cut it off? “If it would achieve world peace, I’d do it tomorrow. If it would stop the badger cull, I’d probably do it tomorrow. Because the badger cull is a worthless, senseless operation, it’s not working and sooner or later our government has to realise …” The images in May’s new book are not just any photos, but 3D pictures, taken on one of the Queen guitarist’s prized “stereoscopic” cameras. Alongside music, astronomy and badgers, May is deliriously passionate about 3D photography. He first became hooked, aged 12, when Weetabix gave away free stereoscopic picture cards. He petitioned his parents to send off 1s 6d for the photo viewer so he could see them properly in 3D. “It’s probably about £2.50 by today’s money. But we were poor in those days — £2.50 was a lot of heating and lighting.” “Stereoscopic” photography was originally a Victorian phenomenon and May’s book is published through the London Stereoscopic Company, a 19th-century business he brought back to life in 2008. He has also designed and prototyped his own stereoscopic photo viewer, the Owl, to see the images in their full, 3D majesty; it comes with the book. “It’s just magic to me,” he says, “when you see a picture of Freddie in the viewer and he springs to life.” |
| The Fonz 21.05.2017 17:30 |
Quite the good read! |
| musicland munich 21.05.2017 19:26 |
Thank you very much ! Munich is a good life school for british wimps :) |
| tomchristie22 21.05.2017 19:51 |
To be well-rounded, here's Brian's very unhappy response with the way this article was written. I haven't actually read the article, but he seems to think he was well misrepresented. From his Instagram: "Look at this garbage !! We gave the Sunday Times world-wide exclusive to serialise my Queen in 3-D book. This is what they came up with. "Freddie and Me" is NOT what the book is about. They had exclusive use of the photographs in the book. They used just two of them - the rest of it being recycled ordinary snaps from elsewhere. The opening of the piece inside says " Tragedy, debauchery ... and dwarves ... " NONE of this tired old rubbish features in the book, or was discussed in the interview. This woman came into my house, pretended she was a fan - and she was going to write a piece about the book, as agreed, then went away and wrote this pathetic sensationalistic rubbish. I'm angry and disgusted. It's been a long time since I've seen such crass journalism and experienced such a betrayal of trust. Folks - please ignore this trash - the book is NOTHING Like this. Bri" |
| ANAGRAMER 22.05.2017 01:28 |
Seems Dr B is only interested in one thing; sales |
| oligneisti 22.05.2017 03:06 |
Thanks. |
| cmsdrums 22.05.2017 03:06 |
ANAGRAMER wrote: Seems Dr B is only interested in one thing; salesIf I'd spent two years putting together a book that was genuinely innovative and contained loads of never before seen, groundbreaking personal 3D pictures, I'd be wanting to sell it too. The issue here is that the article clearly just wants to rehash to 'cocaine on trays/dwarves/Freddie was debauched' angle, which is rightly covered elsewhere but NOT in this book or the extensive interview and material that Brian gave them access to for this piece. |
| YourValentine 22.05.2017 03:14 |
Maybe Brian should arrange that he authorises the text next time. I enjoyed reading it and found it very funny. For example when she writes that his shirt was unbuttoned 'dangerously low" for someone who turns 70 in July or that he was "tottering" around in the garden and photographed the flowers. Brian is a wonderful guy, a British eccentric by the book and I hope he can take it with a sense of humour when we laugh about his claim that he has no patience for the social media when he has it all - soap box, twitter, Instagram :-) One sentence got lost in the copy/paste procedure between the first and second post by the topic starter, it says: "As justifications for adultery go, I suppose it’s a pretty classy one." |
| Costa86 22.05.2017 03:58 |
musicland munich wrote: Thank you very much ! Munich is a good life school for british wimps :)I don't know many British wimps. The Brits are a war-like people from a war-like nation. They fought with almost everyone and almost always won. And they can beat the shit out of practically anyone in a bar fight. |
| thomasquinn 32989 22.05.2017 04:31 |
Costa86 wrote:I recommend you don't go there. I don't have the statistics on bar fights, but I can run off a disturbingly long list of humiliating military defeats. That goes for nearly all countries, but still. Jingoism doesn't really stand up to historical scrutiny.musicland munich wrote: Thank you very much ! Munich is a good life school for british wimps :)I don't know many British wimps. The Brits are a war-like people from a war-like nation. They fought with almost everyone and almost always won. And they can beat the shit out of practically anyone in a bar fight. |
| Togg 22.05.2017 06:00 |
It's a shame the journs really can't write anything new, they always just have to re-hash the same old stuff, do you suppose she felt she was telling us something new? I really truely hate the British press, they are bottom feed scum, for every angle they show themselves as puril and pathetic, thanks to them we now have it creeping onto our TV screens with endless 'reality' shows that some sub humans trying to make it look like they are not just a waste of a skin... I hate the lot of them. havent bought a newspaper since 97 and never will again, sadly I seem to be in the minority as the popularity of this type of 'entertainment and journalist' are seeming growning in popularity shy.... |
| dudeofqueen 22.05.2017 08:22 |
Just read this, then decided to Google the opening sentence to see if it was a genuine piece; it ACTUALLY IS. If Brian, genuinely didn't discuss this, then it'd be interesting to hear the transcript of the tape she took the article from. Pretty bold of Brian to deny it if she didn't record it all...... |
| Holly2003 22.05.2017 10:55 |
"We knew a lot of dwarves. I’m still very friendly with the dwarf community because my wife, Anita, used to do pantomimes. I don’t want to sound big-headed, but I’m pretty big in the dwarf world. I’ve spent many long nights propping up bars with dwarves.” Surely this is one of Fatty's spoof stories and not Brian May's actual words? |
| MercurialFreddie 22.05.2017 11:14 |
Well, it's a moving read and an interesting one. Thanks for sharing! This is the first time that we hear about Freddie losing most of his foot. Did the journalist conducting the interview overstepped here a little and used her own words ? |
| Mr Mercury 22.05.2017 12:18 |
Thanks to Noidea for posting all those posts above. For those interested, I have uploaded several scans of that article. Here is the first. |
| Mr Mercury 22.05.2017 12:19 |
Here is the second scan |
| Mr Mercury 22.05.2017 12:20 |
Here is the third scan |
| Mr Mercury 22.05.2017 12:21 |
Here is the fourth scan |
| Mr Mercury 22.05.2017 12:21 |
Here is the fifth scan |
| Mr Mercury 22.05.2017 12:22 |
And here is the last scan |
| Graeme Arnott 22.05.2017 13:07 |
I think she is a fan - she does not agree with the choice of the new singer either lol. |
| Bohardy 22.05.2017 13:52 |
Quite an overreaction from Bri there I feel. That many words simply on the contents of the book would have been boring. The journalist obviously had to pad out the article with some backstory, and the content of the interview. Brian was happy to discuss the things he did with her, so I don't understand why he'd be unhappy if some of that ended up in the article. There was fresh content for even the most hardcore Queen fans (Munich having a serious negative impact on John for example), and I don't really see the overall tone of the article as sensationalist. As YV said, it's fairly humourous in tone, and Bri should be prepared to be called-out a little on some of his more eccentric habits and actions. I enjoyed it. And I think it was a decent attempt in producing an interesting and informative article that also promotes an upcoming passion-project. |
| Oscar J 22.05.2017 14:00 |
Brian is a control freak, for better or worse. |
| 12yrslouetta 22.05.2017 14:38 |
I wish I was able to like it, but the article reads like it was written by an NME journalist in the 80s - snide, arrogant and mean spirited. I have to say that I'm glad Brian came out and disavowed the article. I didn't find it lighthearted or enlightening in the slightest. Just an article of half-truths and lies. As I was reading it though I just wondered why Brian would agree to it. Especially the Times. |
| matt z 22.05.2017 14:48 |
I'm glad to finally fully understand "we went to bali, saw God and Dali" |
| MercurialFreddie 22.05.2017 16:55 |
It's as I expected and even predicted. Now all the so-called tabloid press are putting the centre of their interest on Freddie losing his foot. I asked earlier in this post, because we've heard about it in the Days of Our Lives documentary but there Brian said it in a way that would point to Freddie having *some* problem with it even though it didn't look well but here he said it in a way like whole or majority of his foot were amputated! Can any of you clarify whole situation here ? |
| Marcos Napier 22.05.2017 19:47 |
Well... Brian talking about Freddie's foot (what's the point? Do we have pictures of it in the book?) is as sensationalist as the cocaine trays. |
| matt z 22.05.2017 21:53 |
My guess is that it was emaciated and developed a hole that never healed. Doubt any amputation that would invite infection. ... but I'm no doctor. |
| Pim Derks 23.05.2017 00:29 |
Marcos Napier wrote: Well... Brian talking about Freddie's foot (what's the point? Do we have pictures of it in the book?) is as sensationalist as the cocaine trays.I've heard there are 3D pictures of the actual foot and related items such as the mango. |
| Barry Durex 23.05.2017 04:06 |
Frankie Boyle's in the house. |
| Togg 23.05.2017 05:04 |
matt z wrote: I'm glad to finally fully understand "we went to bali, saw God and Dali"That's the 'only' interesting part of the article, I wonder if John found God at that point and if it changed his life in some way? |
| dysan 23.05.2017 06:43 |
I think this was revealed before? They returned to the studio and John had left a note saying 'Gone to Bali'. |
| matt z 23.05.2017 08:40 |
dysan wrote: I think this was revealed before? They returned to the studio and John had left a note saying 'Gone to Bali'.Yes, but not the religious aspect of it (*whether in jest or not). Maybe John met a teacher/guru and found stability in his mind/life during the band's crisis 87-91 years Also, crude or not...Brian's interaction comes off as humorous for once. AND say what you will but the golden badger is Freddie 's foot. This is potentially new information, considering the vague description given. People are most certainly always going to wonder and think about Freddie |
| Vocal harmony 23.05.2017 11:22 |
I would imagine the time spent with the journalist went something like (baring in mind Brian's attention to detail and sudject interest) a long conversation about stereo photography and cameras and the quality of Victorian stereoscopy and his childhood interest in the sudject. Then a chat about how he was in the perfect position to photograph the band etc. She probably, being a journo and wanting something juicy mentioned Freddie, Brian having talked about the book felt he could allow himself a bit of space to say how great Freddie was and towards the end suffered but never complained. Journo goes back to her keyboard says to herself fuck that book crap Brian May said Freddie was. . . . . And a two or three hour meeting which involved 10 mins talking about Freddie's illness or the bands partying becomes the subject of the exclusive! |
| Costa86 23.05.2017 15:25 |
thomasquinn 32989 wrote:I like your style :)Costa86 wrote:I recommend you don't go there. I don't have the statistics on bar fights, but I can run off a disturbingly long list of humiliating military defeats. That goes for nearly all countries, but still. Jingoism doesn't really stand up to historical scrutiny.musicland munich wrote: Thank you very much ! Munich is a good life school for british wimps :)I don't know many British wimps. The Brits are a war-like people from a war-like nation. They fought with almost everyone and almost always won. And they can beat the shit out of practically anyone in a bar fight. |
| MercurialFreddie 24.05.2017 06:24 |
Well, unfortunately still we didn't hear anything about Queen release plans regarding audio / audio-visual material.. :( They just posted Your Kind of Lover on the official channel but why the awful remix and not the original one :/ ? Can this be a sign that really a remaster of Mr Bad Guy is being worked on ? |
| The Real Wizard 25.05.2017 15:09 |
NOidea wrote: And it says much about May’s strategic brilliance that he hasn’t subsequently faded into obscurity, but become the figurehead of a band that is now even more successful than it was during Mercury’s lifetime.Brian probably doesn't like the article because it exposed his vulnerability a bit too much, which is contrary to this quote - the most pertinent line contained therein. Sure, they focus on sex and drugs to sell papers and do the clickbait thing for ad revenue. This has become standard practice in most media outlets, as the bottom line keeps it going. It has a few good tidbits in it (particularly the insight into It's A Hard Life and Mother Love), but ultimately the negative outweighs the positive. I think the worst bit is the adultery line - that was a low blow. Sure, it was clever, but the writer's need to assert her moral superiority exposes her insecurities far more than his. Everyone has skeletons in their closet. Brian still comes off as a pensive gentleman who is doing what we all do - searching for happiness. She just comes off as an opportunistic twat. A writer should assume the reader is smart enough to draw their own conclusions instead of providing an editorial along their own arbitrary moral lines. And her mockery of his animal activism is just pandering to the lowest common denominator. Shame on him for giving a shit. And journalists wonder why the world is growing to hate them. |
| The Real Wizard 25.05.2017 15:48 |
NOidea wrote: It is his scientific belief that the cull isn’t working.And she's also an idiot. "Scientific belief" is an oxymoron. Science makes its conclusions based on evidence via rigourous testing, not beliefs. Anyone who looks at the science and disagrees with its findings is encapsulated by belief, not the other way around. Belief is best left to charlatans like Deepak Chopra. It's a shame that people end up in influential positions as writers without having a basic understanding of reality. |
| The Real Wizard 25.05.2017 16:01 |
MercurialFreddie wrote: This is the first time that we hear about Freddie losing most of his foot. Did the journalist conducting the interview overstepped here a little and used her own words ?Let's hope not, because a ton of publications have since created articles out of this one statement. |
| Holly2003 26.05.2017 10:33 |
"a band that is now even more successful than it was during Mercury’s lifetime." Not sure how that is measured. Certainly the latest tours have been big but they're playing old songs so clearly still living off the success of the Fred era. And we all know how badly TCR bombed. So whatever sales are made now are based on releases of older material (Hammersmith, Rainbow), physical re-releases of Fred-era albums, or downloads of Fred-era songs. Now if they had released new material and it was successful you might argue they're "bigger than ever" maybe, but not when they are solely rehashing the stuff from their past that made them great. Artistically they aren't bigger than ever, they are stuck in the past. But certainly their brand is still prominent, which is a financial and marketing achievement. |
| Oscar J 26.05.2017 11:00 |
Ha, nice post edit Wizard - I thought it was one of the most honest pieces written about Queen for quite some time? :) I agree that the article was mostly sensationalistic stuff, same old boring AIDS stories. To be fair to her, the interview is not a strictly factual piece - and her observations of Brian and his demeanour were IMO the most worthwhile bits of the interview. Though he is a brilliant man, Brians monologue rarely raises any eyebrows by itself. |
| vadenuez 26.05.2017 23:09 |
My guess is that Brian must be a very naive man if he thought that after telling those things about Freddie's foot, dwarves and Bali, the journalist would rather write an article about one boring 3-D picture book. |
| Sebastian 27.05.2017 07:39 |
Holly2003 wrote: "a band that is now even more successful than it was during Mercury’s lifetime." Not sure how that is measured.Most likely, it is not measured. People just say whatever without any sort of research or logic. Some see through that, others simply believe anything they're told. That's how marketing works. |
| The Real Wizard 27.05.2017 19:23 |
Oscar J wrote: Ha, nice post edit Wizard - I thought it was one of the most honest pieces written about Queen for quite some time? :)Yep, I rethought my position. Like I said, the negatives came to outweigh the positives. Her need for hyperbole and editorializing ruined what could have been an excellent piece of music journalism. But - look at who she's employed by. |
| The Real Wizard 27.05.2017 19:26 |
vadenuez wrote: My guess is that Brian must be a very naive man if he thought that after telling those things about Freddie's foot, dwarves and Bali, the journalist would rather write an article about one boring 3-D picture book.If celebrities are smart, they gauge each interviewer they speak with on a case by case basis, and in this case Brian clearly felt safe enough with her to express himself as much as he did, which is why he feels betrayed. Either way - the piece was meant to market his book. It's up to the publication to ensure that's what it is, and they more or less failed, turning it into a sensationalist tabloid style piece. Shifting the blame to Brian is to exonerate the paper for producing this. |
| Vocal harmony 29.05.2017 09:10 |
^^^ this |
| Oscar J 29.05.2017 17:17 |
The Real Wizard wrote:Either way - the piece was meant to market his book. It's up to the publication to ensure that's what it is, and they more or less failed, turning it into a sensationalist tabloid style piece. That's what it was meant for from Brian's perspective. I doubt the publication had much interest in that in the first place. I think they probably got more or less what they wanted from the journalist. |
| on my way up 30.05.2017 06:00 |
The sentence about Freddie's foot is in the book. Literally! As is much other information which is sadly overlooked in favour of the more sensational parts of the book... |
| Maxïmo Razzamatazz 01.06.2017 04:14 |
Sebastian wrote:You always keep on about JD hating Hot Space, refering to -if i remember correctly- that interview he gave promoting The Works. Couldn't that have been some clever marketing too?Holly2003 wrote: "a band that is now even more successful than it was during Mercury’s lifetime." Not sure how that is measured.Most likely, it is not measured. People just say whatever without any sort of research or logic. Some see through that, others simply believe anything they're told. That's how marketing works. |
| Sebastian 01.06.2017 11:24 |
Maxïmo Razzamatazz wrote: You always keep on about JD hating Hot Space, refering to -if i remember correctly- that interview he gave promoting The Works. Couldn't that have been some clever marketing too?First of all, it's not just that interview. He also panned the album elsewhere. Second of all, it's not the same case. It's silly how people try to use far-fetched arguments (and I know I've done it to, which doesn't make it any less silly) to gladly shout 'aha! I got you!' as if it were some sort of victory. Let's look at the statements in question: * 'John liked/disliked an album': For that one, John is the ultimate source, as he knows himself. John saying he disliked HS is far stronger an evidence than simply guessing he did because the album had R&B influence. * 'Queen are/aren't more popular now than with Fred': Maylor are not the ultimate surce there, as they probably don't know for sure. What would be the ultimate evidence there then? Record sales, ticket sales, impact, etc. If those do confirm they're more popular now, then it's them (the statistics) who are to be accepted, not simply Brian's and Roger's word for it. Claiming the second statement is true just because someone (with many good reasons to lie out of publicity) says so is closer to thinking John liked/disliked Hot Space just because I (or anyone else who's never met him) say so. So, no, it's not the same case. |
| Maxïmo Razzamatazz 07.06.2017 02:44 |
Sebastian wrote:I was not arguing that it's the same case. The only point I was trying to make is that you can't rule out that JD (clever businessman he is) was just saying he disliked Hot Space. If you market The Works or any album after HS as a return to rock it might be better to fool your disillusioned fans and acknowledge that HS was a clunker.Maxïmo Razzamatazz wrote: You always keep on about JD hating Hot Space, refering to -if i remember correctly- that interview he gave promoting The Works. Couldn't that have been some clever marketing too?First of all, it's not just that interview. He also panned the album elsewhere. Second of all, it's not the same case. It's silly how people try to use far-fetched arguments (and I know I've done it to, which doesn't make it any less silly) to gladly shout 'aha! I got you!' as if it were some sort of victory. Let's look at the statements in question: * 'John liked/disliked an album': For that one, John is the ultimate source, as he knows himself. John saying he disliked HS is far stronger an evidence than simply guessing he did because the album had R&B influence. * 'Queen are/aren't more popular now than with Fred': Maylor are not the ultimate surce there, as they probably don't know for sure. What would be the ultimate evidence there then? Record sales, ticket sales, impact, etc. If those do confirm they're more popular now, then it's them (the statistics) who are to be accepted, not simply Brian's and Roger's word for it. Claiming the second statement is true just because someone (with many good reasons to lie out of publicity) says so is closer to thinking John liked/disliked Hot Space just because I (or anyone else who's never met him) say so. So, no, it's not the same case. It's the same 'clever' marketing as RT saying that AKOM features some of the best songwriting they've done. I don't believe it for a second. |
| Maxïmo Razzamatazz 07.06.2017 02:44 |
Sebastian wrote:I was not arguing that it's the same case. The only point I was trying to make is that you can't rule out that JD (clever businessman he is) was just saying he disliked Hot Space. If you market The Works or any album after HS as a return to rock it might be better to fool your disillusioned fans and acknowledge that HS was a clunker.Maxïmo Razzamatazz wrote: You always keep on about JD hating Hot Space, refering to -if i remember correctly- that interview he gave promoting The Works. Couldn't that have been some clever marketing too?First of all, it's not just that interview. He also panned the album elsewhere. Second of all, it's not the same case. It's silly how people try to use far-fetched arguments (and I know I've done it to, which doesn't make it any less silly) to gladly shout 'aha! I got you!' as if it were some sort of victory. Let's look at the statements in question: * 'John liked/disliked an album': For that one, John is the ultimate source, as he knows himself. John saying he disliked HS is far stronger an evidence than simply guessing he did because the album had R&B influence. * 'Queen are/aren't more popular now than with Fred': Maylor are not the ultimate surce there, as they probably don't know for sure. What would be the ultimate evidence there then? Record sales, ticket sales, impact, etc. If those do confirm they're more popular now, then it's them (the statistics) who are to be accepted, not simply Brian's and Roger's word for it. Claiming the second statement is true just because someone (with many good reasons to lie out of publicity) says so is closer to thinking John liked/disliked Hot Space just because I (or anyone else who's never met him) say so. So, no, it's not the same case. It's the same 'clever' marketing as RT saying that AKOM features some of the best songwriting they've done. I don't believe it for a second. |
| Sebastian 07.06.2017 06:17 |
John also said he didn't like the album long before 'The Works', and also a couple of years since. Of course, there's no way I can prove he wasn't lying, same way I cannot prove he was lying, same way I cannot prove Mack didn't sing 'Save Me' and credit it to Fred, same way I cannot prove there's not an ultra-violet flying elephant next to me right now. We cannot rule out that the drums on 'Brighton Rock' were actually a trumpet - even if we could (via recording footage, for instance), we cannot rule out hallucinations or forged evidence. |