FREDDIE AS A PERSON


The masks, which Freddie Mercury used to hide behind, were countless. But who was the person behind them? What was the essence of this person? Here I shall give word to people who were close to him, who knew him in everyday's life and are therefore competent to tell us something about Freddie as a person.


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

Roger Taylor


"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, the only friend who found himself by his side in the moment of his death.


"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, friend from Munich


"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 understandible 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. A lot of people confided to me they hated homosexual people, but after meeting Freddie they were totally over that feeling. 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


"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


"He wasn't F. 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




We could go on like this for a long time, there are a lot of people who had the luck to meet the real Freddie Mercury. And the evidence of this being the real him lies in the fact that so many different people used the same words in their attempts to describe him.
As for Freddie, he practically never talked about himself, especially not about his childhood and sexual orientation. He never declared himself publically to be homosexually orientated, because, due to his delicacy of feeling, he respected the rule one should not speak about one's most intimate things.
He would casually reject all too personal questions by answering them in laconic, half-jocose, half-ironical way. It was almost impossible to interview Freddie Mercury in the usual way.

Tony Brainsby is a journalist who followed the work of Queen from their beginning. He said the following about Freddie: "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 emphazised 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."

Brainsby testified about another curiosity:
"There was one thing I couldn't understand. They had an uncredible number of people with them and they weren't just their's 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."

Another journalist, Phil Symens, shared the opinion with Brainsby about Freddie hating to give interviews because, I quote: "he believed the music already said it all and, except that, he liked his privacy."



And Rick Sky has written these words in his book about Freddie:
"When Freddie would lose all of his accumulated energy on the parties, he would go back to his personal life, where he was very quiet and shy. Many people never noticed this shyness, because he used to hide it behind his dazzling public mask. He was especially shy when he was around strange people. I always had a feeling he first needs to get to know the others before he starts to communicate with them. But, when he would get to know you, he would become a great friend. Freddie had a few very close friends beside him and he used to call them to his home. He immensly apreciated loyalty. When once one of those few close people sold some stories about his life, it hurt him very much. He found he had the right to expect you will respect his privacy when he had let you in his life."

Freddie deserves the respect in every way, but he didn't leave us without answers. All the answers we can find in his songs.