#freddie mercury (mentioned)

[not-the-coffee-machine4]

article: while Freddie Mercury never discussed his sexuality publicly…

me:

[astrophysicist-guitar-god]

Behind the scenes pictures of Queen on iconic I Want to Break Free music video gives extraordinary glimpse into closeness of the band

The fascinating pictures show the band fooling around on the video shoot 

By DAN SALES

Published: 03:42 EST, 24 September 2023 | Updated: 04:20 EST, 24 September 2023 (x)

Never-before-seen pictures of Queen making the trailblazing I Want To Break free music video shows the incredible bond between the band members. Candid images - all shot by veteran photographer Simon Fowler - show the sheer joy and fun of the group during the now-legendary filming of the promo. The video stunned music fans when it came out and had the rockers dressed up as housewives in a suburban home. In one of the newly-revealed pictures the band are shown in hysterics, with one crewmember wiping away tears of laughter as Freddie Mercury fools around behind a bewigged John Deacon. Freddie appears to be pretending to be a hairdresser as John chuckles in his seat, as Brian May beams by a back wall as they stare into the mirror at their new look. Later Brian can be seen clutching his curlers as he gazes into the distance as he is captured on film. Roger Taylor also looks to be having a ball in one of the archive pictures, pouting in his schoolgirl-style costume. Photographer Simon, who took pictures of the group throughout their career, opened up his archives to allow MailOnline to publish some of the incredible shots.

The band are seen having a great laugh backstage as they get ready to shoot the video promo

Roger Taylor in costume pouts as his picture is taken on the set of I Want To Break Free in 1984

He said he had no idea the theme of the video before he had turned up at Limehouse Studios in London to take the pictures. Simon recalled: 'On Break Free I didn't get any idea of what it was going to be. I turned up and saw them and thought "Whoa, what is going on?". 'It was obviously a pastiche of Coronation Street. I remember on the day everybody was just fooling around laughing. 'It was so much fun that I was amazed that they actually got a video done. 'They had no concerns about doing anything that was unusual - they would just do it. 'They were just messing around in between the filming. I remember one funny moment when they were trying the stuff on and asking each other "what do you reckon of this wig?". 'That was the great thing about it, you have got Freddie with his big old 'tache, giving it all. 'It was without doubt the most fun shoot I have done. 'Every time I think about it I smile, the day just went so fast because everyone was having such a good time - it just whizzed by.

Simon revealed that the band preferred to be photographed all together for their promo shots

Brian May looks like he has awoken from a deep sleep with the curlers in this of Simon's shots

'When you get there I didn't know the story and the PR told me and I thought "that sounds great". 'I went backstage and the first thing I saw was them getting all their clobber done.' Simon had photographed the band before after getting a phone call during the recording of their Hot Space album. That record spawned the Under Pressure anthem and at first the photographer admits he had no idea who he would be going to shoot. He recalled: 'I got a call out of the blue to do a job and originally thought they had said Cream at the time, which I thought couldn't have been right. 'Back in those days you would get millions of calls. I only realised later it was Queen and I was told I would only get ten minutes with them and it turned into three hours. It was for the album Hot Space. 'I think we just got on pretty well - I wasn't expecting much time at all and it was brilliant. 'Roger actually got me to do a bit of tapping when they were recording. I like to think I'm on Hot Space somewhere. It just went from there really.' The band loved his work so he was invited back and ended up doing numerous shoots with them.

John Deacon - whose character in the video was miserable - laughs in a moment of down time

Freddie Mercury poses up on the set, leaning on a cabinet as he looks to the side of the room

But he counts his work on I Want to Break Free as one of the most exciting jobs of his career. He admitted: 'I knew when I got called in for it, that it was going to be interesting. 'They wouldn't scrimp on stuff with the videos, they were big productions. If CGI was around then I am sure that would be what they were doing. 'When you were on set you would have to have eyes in the back of your head in some of the bigger productions, where there were cranes and stuff going round.  'When we went for lunch Brian was on the catering bus talking to me. He was still in the outfit with the curlers. 'I remember thinking "that's Brian May opposite me". It was so surreal. 'At the end of the day we saw the cut and it just looked great. 'I remember John taking a nap during the day, which he would have needed because the reality is they would have got there very early. 'They were trailblazers with videos, they really were. Queen were so unique in whatever they did. Brian with the sound and the guitar. I loved every minute of it 

Veteran music photographer Simon Fowler is selling prints in aid of the Mercury Phoenix Trust

'Freddie was a trooper right up until the end. One of the things people don't notice about pictures of Queen is that you could never often get them out of the line-up 'They would not often move out of all four of them together for pictures. 'I think that's because they were a band but they were also incredible close friends too. 'They all had each others backs, none of them thought of themselves as the star - they were all equals.' The behind-the-scenes pictures were brought back into the spotlight as Simon as he compiled Fine Art Prints of Freddie, Brian, Roger and John from The Miracle shoot. They are being sold to help the fight against HIV and AIDS, with 50 per cent of proceeds going to the Mercury Phoenix Trust. Simon added: 'I was thrilled to do this and just give something back and help a really great cause. 'I was delighted by the response and hope it can keep helping people.' (x)

Prints of Freddie, Brian, Roger and John from The Miracle shoot can be found here 

[bahrlee]

Queen is trying to do the beatles thing where they do re-releases and remasters of albums I guess but they kinda already failed by pitch-correcting Freddie Mercury when remastering Queen I. Pitch correcting Freddie Mercury. Freddie Fucking Mercury. Okay

[antiquesintheattic]

big almond milk is to blame

[melanodis]

sorry I keep drawing him with longer and longer hair it's just so fun to doodle :(

text transcripts in alt because my handwriting is hit or miss

lore dump down below, but fair warning I do briefly touch on Henry's suicidal ideation a bit graphically.

At some point after William disappeared in 1993 (died in Springbonnie and Henry himself boarded up the safe room to make sure he wouldn't be found), Henry consumed remnant found in the mess of William's belongings (yes, drink the mysterious metal fluid, awesome idea always), which granted him technical immortality. However, his suicide attempt used most of what he had consumed in order to regenerate from something fatal like that (in this case, blowing his brains out). This left him with not enough to fully recover his injuries from Springtrap's attempt on his life at the end of night 5.

He would much rather let himself slowly die in this state than procure more because it'd involve either going into the Afton house again, or taking more innocent lives than he deemed absolutely necessary.

Michael, in comparison, was chocked so full of remnant from the scooper's reservoir that it could likely sustain him for multiple deaths over.

[cursed-elo-images]

18:56-19:01 HUGH SCREAMS

[obsessivelollipoplalala]

I agree with everything you said about Freddie and relationships. I just wanna add on the David and Bill part - I think people also see these two differently is because for the former we mostly just have David's account of the relationship, and you know I do believe him about the fact that Freddie had a lot of baggage concerning sexuality and his family, friends, religion, band, media and that it did fuck with him, that is something that put strain on a relationship. But I just don't believe that - the whole toxicity was one sided like a lot of people do, like if you're putting hands on your partner to the point they have to write a not to you pleading for you not to - you have some issues that have not stemmed from this particular relationship but were with you prior. Like he blamed everything bad he did in the relationship on the circumstances but I just don't believe that. Maybe I'm wrong but ..

You’re right. David wasn’t a completely unreliable source in that a lot of what he said about Freddie and his struggles at the time made a lot of sense, and you can see how that would put strain on their relationship. But it wasn’t a justification for him putting his hands on Freddie, and abusers pretty much always feel justified and will never own up to their choice to get violent. Really, David’s intense bitterness towards him even after Freddie reconnected with him to be friends again comes across as a typical abuser who was mad his partner finally left him and moved on. David definitely had issues, and Freddie wasn’t always a good partner, but I’ll tear someone apart with my teeth if they pull the whole “welp Freddie was no angel so can you blame David for putting his hands on him?” shit

[ackreik]

robert, encountering a bug zapper: daddy, what’s that machine doing?

john, hesitantly: its.. getting rid of the bugs.

robert: where’s it taking them?

freddie, walking past: hell.

john: don’t say that, freddie.

freddie: oh sorry, not hell, mexico.

[astrophysicist-guitar-god]

Calling all Freddie-philes, and in particular anyone familiar with pre-Queen/verrry early Queen Freddie...

So! This comes from Part 5 of the fabulously information-packed Queen Before Queen series transcribed and posted by @melisa-may-taylor72. 

From Queen Before Queen, The 1960’s Recordings - Part Five: Ibex, Wreckage, and Sour Milk Sea, here. I’ve included the entire section for context, but the last paragraph is what has me...curious. Pertinent bits bolded by me.

Why did Freddie ask another guitarist to come play with Queen, specifically to “jam a bit” with Roger and John? 

This guy didn’t have his own guitar, so he tried to play the Red Special (and couldn’t). Were they (Freddie) thinking of adding another guitarist? And if so...why? 

The group was set by that point, so...why? 

I am unendingly curious about this, and I’ve never seen it mentioned outside of this article. I think I did a few half-hearted Google searches, but nothing came up. If you know, hit me up with that sweet, sweet, knowledge. Thanks!

SCHEMER

“When Sour Milk Sea broke up it was a terrible shock,” admits Chris. “It was fairly acrimonious. Rubber had basically bankrolled the band by buying all the equipment, so he took back his Gibson SG Standard that I’d been playing and my Marshall stack, and I was pretty fucked. I was just eighteen. Our drummer, Rob Tyrell, went off with Rubber in another band, and I went off to work in Huntley & Palmer’s bakery in Reading for months on end to get the money to buy my own guitar.” And, as Chris revealed to Mark Hodkinson, “I was planning to form another band with Freddie, but not having a guitar and not having much money put the kibosh on the idea”.

“We liked Freddie,” admits Rob Tyrell. “He was fun. But he was quite a schemer in a way. He had other things cooking. I could feel it in my bones he wasn’t really interested in us. He knew he was good. He kind of used us as a stepping stone.”

Freddie had been through three different groups in less than seven months. What next? “He finally persauded Brian and Roger to form that band,” recalls Mike Bersin. Having known and observed each other for a while, Freddie, Brian and Roger were more compatible than Freddie had been with relative strangers like Chris Chesney and Jeremy Gallop. All the new band needed now was a name.

The previous summer, members of Ibex, Mike Bersin in particular, had began to refer to Freddie, and indeed to Roger Taylor, as “queens” or “old queens” — as Freddie’s letter to Celine Daley shows. And Freddie was obvi­ously far from averse to the term. Brian and Roger put forward the Grand Dance (from C.S. Lewis’ ‘Out Of The Silent Planet’ trilogy) as a suggestion for their new outfit. “But they decided on Queen as being more direct,” adds Mike Bersin. It had, of course, been Freddie’s choice. By this time, Freddie had changed his own name, too. Bulsara was too exotic, too Zanzibar. The explanation of his replacement comes from Chris Chesney. “Freddie was a Virgo,” he reveals, “and Mercury was his ruling planet.”

“Later on,” concludes Chris, “when they auditioned John Deacon, Freddie made some overtures for me to come and play with Queen. I hadn’t played for a few months, but they wanted me to jam a bit with Roger and John. It was really awkward, because Brian’s gui­tar was unplayable if you’re used to playing a proper, commercial guitar. It wasn’t what I wanted to do. And anyway, by then, I felt they had the chemistry in Queen just right.”

[solradguy]

You know, we all make jokes about Sol/Frederick and Jack-O'/Aria being married (myself included), but they never actually refer to Aria as Frederick's wife in Begin (or anywhere else, afaik) and definitely not with Jack-O' anywhere.

I think the closest they got with Aria has been 恋人 (koibito; lover/boyfriend/girlfriend), which was kinda tricky to render in English when it was used gender neutrally. I ended up translating it as "partner" at least once for the Begin translation.

[starlight-n-shit]

Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me, for me

IT'S CROWLEY BITCHES

[coldduckweaselkid]

love that part in bohemian rhapsody (2018) where at the end rami malek as freddie mercury says “And that truly was, my Bohemian Rhapsody”.  and then brian may does a 8 minute guitar solo for the credits

[fernsbyisntreal]

I wrote an essay a while back for college about queer identity and appearance and decided it would be good to share it with others! Hope you enjoy the dive into history, I had so much fun writing this I love clothes and being gay so this was great

[mydemonsdrivealimo]

something about jensen covering good old fashioned lover boy does indescribable things to my brain

[hippiecockatoo]

Bonnie's actual earring is blue in the cutout, but it's just interesting why here it appears red. Also fun fact, in the 80s (which is the era of the Glamrock style), one earring worn by men was a sign to others that they were gay :)

Another fun fact if you don't already know, Glamrock Freddy is heavily inspired by Freddie Mercury (lead singer of Queen) who is still known as one of the biggest gay icons!

These two found by @devilgirl7 ! ❤️

Found a screenshot of a bowling pin and ball (and a child's shoe for some reason) in Freddy's green room. Can't help but notice the ball is blue... 🤔

Glittering-Bat2106 over on Reddit mentioned that both Freddy and Chica have bowling balls in their green rooms (just them) which makes sense since they're part of the original 4 and we're probably the closest with Bonnie- but it's also important to note that the bowling balls they have are their own signature colors and are in the open more easily visible. The blue bowling ball is a completely different ball and is specifically hidden with a pin in a darker corner of the room.

[fatliberation]

Freddie Mercury was bisexual though

Nope, this is false! 🏳️‍🌈 Freddie was gay, there’s a lot of misinformation out there about his non-existent affairs with women, and much of it can be chalked up to a shit biographer named Lesley Ann Jones (aka my arch nemesis).

I've been deeply fascinated by Freddie Mercury and studying his personal life for years and years so excuse the following infodump (or jump in for a queer history lesson!)

Contrary to popular belief, Freddie was an out gay man. “Gay as a daffodil, my dear!” He’s clearly stated his sexuality in a handful of interviews; “I’ve done all that but I’m gay. Mary was my last woman.” (This interview was removed from youtube but you can find it mentioned in Freddie Mercury: A Life, in His Own Words which is a compilation of his actual quotes from interviews over the years.) Those statements got buried from the media in favor of promoting his more promiscuous quotes like "Darling, I'm doing everything with everybody." (Journalists LOVE to include this quote when talking about his AIDS...) He did purposely retain an aura of mystique around his sexuality, especially because it was much safer (trendy, even) for musicians to flirt with bisexuality than to be homosexual back then.

Here's a quote from Peter "Phoebe" Freestone, Freddie's personal assistant of twelve years, close friend, and "agony aunt" in his memoir, Freddie Mercury: An Intimate Memoir by the Man Who Knew Him Best:

"When the interview appeared, it was half the length that he imagined it would be. When confronted, Judy Wade said that it would have been impossible to have printed the whole text. She said she was holding back for his benefit, not for hers. Admissions such as, "I'm just going for a line and I'll be back in half-a-minute," would not have done anyone any good. However, she was fully prepared to underline in her second sentence that admission of being a fully 'out' gay man, although this does not lay the later myth which was popular which claimed that Freddie had never admitted his gayness."

Freddie's close friend Thor Arnold, a gay man and member of the "New York Daughters" (Freddie's gay friend group in NYC, of course Freddie was "mother!") corrected misinformation when fans on the Queenzone forum argued that Freddie was bi:

"Freddie NEVER tried to hide to his friends that he was TOTALLY gay. In his industry, he had to hide it to some extent although as I have said before, he certainly gave clues. This is the same man who came up with the name QUEEN for his band. This is the man who dressed very sexually, ambiguously 'glam' up until 1980. This is the man who threw an Easter bonnet party and had us all create Easter hats. This is the man who used the term darling (or Dahling) more than he used proper names, and renamed his friends with old actresses names. These things are doubtful for a straight or bi man. Many gays don't even act like this... I've never seen Freddie look twice at a woman but I have seen him look 3 or 4 times at an attractive man and say, 'Thor, Thor... Oh just look at him... Just gorgeous. I'd love some of THAT' We were genuine friends of Freddie and he would never hide that he was really bi. FREDDIE WAS A GAY MAN through and through...everyone...please get used to it."

LAJ, the biographer I previously mentioned, worked VERY hard to straight-wash Freddie in her book by erasing his gay relationships. She was obsessed with his relationship with Mary Austin and is the main reason modern journalists consider Freddie to have been in profound, romantic love with her his whole life. In reality, they dated for a few years in the 70s and remained close friends after they split up (because Freddie was having affairs with his boyfriend). However, he did rely on her as his "beard" to keep up with appearances for the press.

LAJ completely skipped over Freddie's first official boyfriend, saying it was "a covert fling with a young theatre." His name was David Minns. Freddie loved him so much he left Mary to be with him. They were in a serious relationship for three years.

If you're a Freddie fan, you're familiar with Mary's story of him coming out to her, saying "I think I'm bisexual," and her response, "I think you're gay." This story is probably not the truth. Mary has been very inconsistent with her story of how Freddie came out to her.

Another version she told for BBC Radio:

"I don’t know what sparked the conversation. But I remember standing in the kitchen and he was trying desperately to articulate how he was feeling, and his lifestyle and I just said, 'so you are telling me you're gay?' And he just smiled and 'we'll take it as a yes, you know, we'll leave it at that.' And that was it, it has been a long road getting to that point."

Honestly, I am a bit mistrustful of Mary Austin's intentions in general. If you're curious as to why, this post is a good primer on the ways she might have betrayed Freddie's wishes, namely being cruel to his chosen family after his passing.

Freddie only had one other girlfriend before Mary in college, Rosemary Pearson. When asked about Freddie on ITV's This Morning show, she said that he was more interested in her male friends than in her, and she suspected then that he was gay. This was in the 60s.

LAJ refers to his relationships with women throughout her book, but she doesn't list any names. That's because they don't exist. I could name at least seven of Freddie's boyfriends off of the top of my head. Minnsy. Joe Fanelli. Tony Bastin. Vince the Barman. Bill Reid. Winnie Kirchberger. And of course, his husband Jim Hutton, whom he spent the last six years of his life with.

There is one name that LAJ has chosen to platform and exaggerate her importance, and that's German pornstar Barbara Valentin. If you've heard of her, you might think she had a relationship with Freddie in the 80s, you might have heard the story where he had wild threesomes with her, that they lived together, that he even proposed to her. Not one word of it is true. Freddie hung around Barbara during his time in Munich because she was his 'in' to gay clubs and cocaine dealers. She also served as his English translator and conveniently, another beard for the press.

Not a single person in Freddie’s life has ever corroborated that Freddie and Barbara were anything but friends. As for the claim they lived together, according to Peter Freestone:

In the event, Freddie never actually lived there although Barbara fulfilled a huge role in Freddie’s life at that time… Freddie became very disillusioned when with more and more frequency articles were appearing in the German press’s gossip columns… about the relationship between him and Barbara… After one article claiming to have knowledge of him and Barbara getting married, Freddie concluded that it could only be Barbara who was providing the information.

(He was actually living with his Bavarian boyfriend of the time, Winnie Kirchberger.) Freddie stopped seeing Barbara after he found out she was gossiping about being his lover and these stories started appearing in the newspapers. Barbara continued these lies after Freddie's death, making up ludicrous lies like how Freddie tried to kill her by smothering her with a pillow?? She also claimed that he put her at risk of contracting AIDS by having sex with her after his diagnosis in 1987, which is the lie that burns the most. Freddie stopped having sex altogether before his diagnosis because he was terrified of contracting it. Before there was any information of how it was transferred, he showered compulsively. There is such a fucked up narrative that Freddie threw caution to the wind and wasn't careful during the epidemic, that it somehow fits this twisted narrative that his death was a result of his immoral lifestyle. That's the pervasive homophobia that stained the Bohemian Rhapsody biopic.

LAJ is one of those biographers who publishes their books after the celebrity has died, so they wouldn’t be able to deny the information being written in the book. So if there's anything to learn here, is that you can't always trust a biography!

Anyway, Freddie was gay as a daffodil my dears, and he deserved better.