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PEOPLE ABOUT FREDDIE

“In real life nobody knew Freddie. He was shy, gentle and kind. He was never the one, he was on the stage.”
Roger Taylor

“He was like no one I had ever met before … Freddie had widened the tapestry of my life so much by introducing me to the world of ballet, opera and art; I learned so much from him and he’s given me personally so much.

Mary Austin

”Freddie was actually a very romantic person. He would often demonstrate how strong and rough he was, but that was not the real him. He was nice, gentle and very human. And he knew what was right and what was wrong. He helped so many people, there wasn’t a bit of wrong in him.”
Barbara Valentin

”Freddie was very dear, thoughtful and noble. In his private life he was the real opposite of that provoking star. He was very considerate. His nobleness wasn’t directed only towards his friends and co-workers, unknown people have also often profited from it. He loved common, normal people. On the stage he was dazzling, arrogant, provoking, but he was very, very human in private life.”
Dave Clark

”It may sound strange, but one of the things people never noticed was that he was unbelievably modest and shy.
Freddie loved to be in love. In his best time he would write a song in a few minutes, but when he was in love, it was even faster. When he was depressed, he couldn’t write a thing, and really, there aren’t any truly sad Queen songs. Even the most moving ballads aren’t sad. Although many people say that lyrics of “The Show Must Go On” are quite scary, I think it is also a very optimistic and positive song.”
Reinhold Mack, ex-producer of Queen

”What I liked most was his modesty. A lot of people in pop act as stars almost all the time, but Freddie was never like that. Even now when I speak to you there is his kind face in front of my eyes asking me if he was not perhaps bothering me, if I liked his record and so on. He never thought it was understandable that everyone has a duty to serve him and he was never making parade of his fame.
Freddie was very human. He was always trying to comply with a person’s wishes and he wanted to have someone, who would love him. He impressed everyone, even the people, who hated people.

He was a strong personality who really knew how to fascinate people, in a good sense of that word. An amazing personality.”
Tony Pike, owner of a hotel on Ibiza, where Freddie had been spending holidays for the last 7 years of his life

“...I was always sure that Freddie was a very honourable person. I’ve never known him throughout any business transaction, for example, to be dishonest. He was always very accepting of other’s input, always showing his appreciation. I think changes that occurred in Freddie just went with the image and the person that he became. You see it a lot within the music business: you see others putting on an image and it’s like they are writing about a character. I should think you actually get to the point where you don’t like that character any more. Then you can close the book and start again. But at that point, there were at least three sides to Freddie’s character. There was his past, there was the core Freddie, and there was Mercury. And it was Freddie that I enjoyed and loved. I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who was as much fun. There was a special charm to him, an unusually intuitive intelligence...”

Mick Rock

“He was a free thinker; I think those changes of image show a wonderful free-spirit”

Zandra Rhodes, designer

”He wasn’t Freddie Mercury just like that, he was truly like a mercury. As an actor he was using all means. He was very self-confident, very hot-tempered and a perfectionist as well.
When he was not on the stage, he was very modest and almost shy. He was surprisingly little and vulnerable.”
Mike Hodgers, director of the “Flash Gordon” film

“... during the time I was around with the band, I didn’t ever see Freddie’s hard side. I honestly never saw him being mean to anyone. He was very strong but I would never call him hard. He was just outrageously camp, and not everybody could deal with that... one time a fan I had met through Bowie wanted to meet Freddie. After a gig I took him backstage and introduced them. I don’t know if the kid loved the music or just was in love with Freddie, but he got blind drunk, and basically threw up all over Freddie’s shoes. Freddie was very understanding about the whole thing. He took the shoes off and told the kid not to worry, and was actually being very caring about him, getting some water, looking for some bicarbonate or soda. I mean, the kid had thrown up all over his shoes! Freddie was walking around in his bare feet, but was definitely much more concerned about the young men’s well being than he was about the shoes...”

Mick Rock

“He understood everything in this (journalist’) game and didn’t want to allow them to make him ordinary. He also didn’t want the whole attention to focus only on him and the rest of the band to be in his shadow. He emphasized their band is not Freddie Mercury and his three-membered escort, but four equal partners. And he succeeded in it. Queen could have easily become “Freddie Mercury and Others”, but we never think of them in any other way than as a band.”
”There was one thing I couldn’t understand. They had an incredible number of people with them and they weren’t just their contemporaries. You could see mothers and grannies among spectators. And when you’re just a beginner in a more refined version of a heavy metal band, it is truly amazing to have this kind of spectators. It is really incredible they had so many fans right from the beginning.”
Tony Brainsby, a journalist who followed the work of Queen from their beginning