♪ Flash, aaah
♪ Saviour of the universe... ♪
This programme contains some strong language.
LAUGHTER
I wanted us to be massively successful, I mean...
I think almost everybody in this business does.
♪ Flash, aaah
♪ He'll save every one of us... ♪
Certainly by the beginning of the '80s,
the world domination they'd craved for was definitely there.
♪ Aaah
♪ He's a miracle... ♪
The hardest thing is to actually maintain the level of success you've achieved
because I think when you go all the way up, the only place is to come down.
♪ Flash, aaah
♪ King of the impossible... ♪
You've no idea where you can get to. It's like the sky's the limit.
♪ He'll save with a mighty hand
♪ Every man, every woman, every child with a mighty Flash... ♪
We didn't want just America, we wanted the whole world, you know.
South America reared its head
and we heard rumours that we were... the biggest thing ever in Argentina
and Brazil and they started to ask us to go down there.
They were saying, "You can play football stadiums down there."
We went, "You're joking."
In those days under the dictatorship in Argentina,
we were negotiating with the army general and he said to me,
"How can I possibly allow 50,000 young people into a stadium
"when I can't control them?
"What happens if somebody suddenly shouts out 'Viva Peron'
"in the middle of a Queen concert and I have a riot on my hands?"
And I tried to explain to him that, rather like
gladiatorial matches in Rome, this was panacea to the people,
they'd never, ever had this before,
this would be an extraordinary experience.
So we got the whole thing together
and it was God knows how many jumbo jets full of equipment.
And when we arrived in Buenos Aires, as we're unloading it,
you could see spent bullet cases, and thinking,
"Yeah, we really are in a very different place here."
We were looking for a bodyguard for Freddie, this particular man came in
and his opening recommendation was that he'd killed 212 people.
The travel arrangements were very scary.
Driving the wrong way along a raised motorway
with outriders, with guys in big jeeps waving their big guns
and getting the cars, coming straight towards them, to pull over.
We got caught in a traffic jam and one of the policemen just stood up,
put his head through the roof
and started firing his gun in the air in order to clear the traffic.
Very hair-raising.
Hello, amigos.
HE SPEAKS PORTUGUESE
Fred, how do you feel playing and singing before 200,000 people?
I haven't done it yet!
I can remember being nervous the first night.
The top tier alone took 80,000 and we were in this sort of dug-out
which I guess the football teams would normally be in.
All the windows were broken and I remember thinking
this is... You know, it's going to take some balls to walk out there.
Hello, Sao Paulo!
♪ Get your party gown
♪ Get your pigtail down
♪ Get your heart beating, baby
♪ Get your timing right
♪ I got my act all tight
♪ It's gotta be tonight My little school babe
♪ Your momma says you don't
♪ Your daddy says you won't And I'm boiling up inside... ♪
They knew all the songs. These people don't speak English
but they could sing along all the Queen songs
so they're obviously very genuine fans and they went nuts.
♪ Tie your mother down Tie your mother down
♪ Lock your daddy out of doors I don't need him nosing around
♪ Tie your mother down Tie your mother down
♪ Give me all your love tonight
♪ Tonight... ♪
It also takes a certain ego
and a certain drive to want to be
in that spotlight and go on display.
And Freddie thrived and got better in bigger arenas.
♪ Yeah
AUDIENCE: # Yeah
♪ Yeah
♪ Yeah ye-yeah yeah
♪ Yeah yeah ye-ye-yeah
♪ All right All right
♪ Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah
♪ Yeah Yeah
♪ Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah
♪ Yeah Yeah
♪ Yeah
♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah
♪ Aaaaaaaall right
Let's do it to tempo.
Once we'd finished Argentina and Brazil,
the band decided to go back into the studio
and they had of course bought the studios in Montreux, here.
Mountain Studios was in the casino by the lake in Montreux.
When they first arrived it was, like, the top studio in Europe.
We were in the studio in Montreux and David Bowie lives nearby.
I think we went out for a meal or drinks or something
and then landed up back in the studio with the sort of
rough intention of doing something.
We were fooling around and just...
jamming with tracks and suddenly we said,
"Why don't we just see what we can do on the spur of the moment?"
Then it's the pressure of His Majesty David being there
and everybody wanted to look suave and quick with ideas and stuff.
Deacy of course came up with this riff - dun dun dun de de dun dun.
"UNDER PRESSURE" BASS RIFF PLAYS
♪ Bom bom bom buddle der der
♪ Ding ding ding digger ding ding
He kept playing that over and over and over again.
And then we went for a pizza and he forgot it.
Completely escaped his mind! We got back and I remembered it.
And of course, we're used to playing together and now we have this
other guy there who's also inputting, inputting, inputting.
David's idea of putting these clicks and claps
and then the track just grew.
By that time, David was very impassioned.
He had a vision in his head, I think.
It's quite a difficult process and somebody has to back off
and actually I did back off, unusual for me.
♪ Pressure pushing down on me
♪ Pressing down on you
♪ No man ask for
♪ Under pressure
♪ That burns a building down
♪ Splits a family in two
♪ Puts people on streets... ♪
For the vocals, one of them was to be locked out
and not allowed to hear what the other one sang
and they sang anything off the top of their heads.
♪ It never rains but it pours
♪ Um ba-ba bey... ♪
Fred starts doing his bum-didder-dup and his bits-and-pieces
and I see out of the corner of my eye,
I see David sticking his head in, listening.
Then Fred came down, David went up and Freddie was quite impressed
that he was counterpointing to what he did before.
♪ ..This world is about
♪ Watching some good friends screaming let me out
♪ Pray tomorrow gets me higher, high, high
♪ Pressure on people People on streets... ♪
And Fred said, "What do you make of this?"
I said, "It's kind of easy if you stand in the doorway listening to what you're doing."
And Freddie turned, "What the BLEEP"?
♪ Cos love's such an old fashioned word
♪ And love dares you
♪ To care for the people on the edge of the night
♪ And love dares you
♪ To change our way of
♪ Caring about ourselves
♪ This is our last dance... ♪
The result is very good but it was a difficult experience, I think,
because people pulling in different directions, in a sense.
♪ Under pressure... ♪
Under Pressure, David Bowie, the band, me,
I don't think it mixed too well.
♪ Pressure. ♪
Shame actually, it's...
I thought it was fabulous, we could've done some incredible further things, actually.
Queen are evil, degenerate, repulsive, unpleasant.
I like them.
Well, here we have a total change of life for all of us, really.
We went back to Munich to do the next album
and really, I suppose, things started to go downhill.
It's actually a rather grim place.
It's a studio in the basement of a huge tower block which is a hotel.
And it's kind of depressing.
A lot of people used to jump off that building and kill themselves,
off that particular building, it was well known for it.
We didn't know that until we got there, so we went a bit nuts.
By that time, we were getting very finicky about recording
and we spent months there.
After the massive success of Another One Bites The Dust,
the thinking was we'll make an album that's slightly more dance orientated.
Not my idea.
Especially in Freddie's entourage,
I won't mention any names like Paul Prenter, for instance,
loathed guitars and found that Brian was old fashioned.
Paul Prenter had become Freddie's personal assistant.
He was a very, very bad influence upon Freddie,
hence on the band, really.
He very much wanted our music to sound
like you'd just walked in a gay club.
And I didn't.
♪ Back chat, back chat
♪ Criticising all you see
♪ Back chat, back chat
♪ Analysing what I say... ♪
There were a lot of strains in the band that'd happen
with four people of that strength of character.
Everybody had their say and the arguments were creative and then it would become personal.
Of course!
It was a sort of emotional roller coaster.
I think less and less time was spent in the studio.
Get up about three o'clock and go and have breakfast
and then a bit of work would be done and then you'd have dinner
and then one of the roadies would start mixing cocktails and then...
other things would...ahem, happen.
♪ Give me... ♪
I'm not saying cocaine and other drugs
and loose women had anything to do with that at all.
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge!
♪ Body, body
♪ Give me your body... ♪
It turned into a rather exhausting cycle, I think, in the end.
♪ Don't talk, don't talk, don't talk
♪ Baby, don't talk... ♪
I don't know if I can say this... Yes, I could probably say this.
We all got ourselves into deep trouble emotionally in Munich
and Freddie was no exception, he got himself deep into emotional waters which he couldn't really handle
and was very unhappy for some of the time.
♪ Give me your body... ♪
He was being sucked into places which really probably weren't good for him.
And I think we all felt that
and realised that he was in some kind of danger.
♪ Give me, yeah
♪ Your body... ♪
I certainly saw the change in Freddie...
♪ Don't talk... ♪
..in the club Heaven in 1983.
I said to him, "Have you modified your behaviour
"in light of 'the new disease'", which as of yet did not have a name.
And with the sweep of his arms in a theatrical fashion, he said,
"Darling, my attitude is fuck it, I'm doing everything with everybody."
If someone kept a chart of rock and roll royalty,
Queen would have to be at the top.
Now Queen is back on tour
and perhaps up against their biggest challenge yet.
Now, most of you know that we've got some new sounds out last week and...
..for what it's worth, we're going to do a few songs in
the funk-black category, whatever you call it.
Record sales are not as strong as in the past
and that's left everyone wondering.
I don't like everything that we do.
I like a lot of what we do but not everything.
It depends on whatever the four individuals in the group,
what music they're into at the time and what songs they're writing.
There might be a couple of songs come out you don't like very much.
I could name a couple!
Well, Hot Space in Queen terms was pretty disastrous, really.
It didn't appeal to some of the hardcore Queen fans
who would turn up at concerts with banners saying "disco sucks".
It's only a bloody record, people get so excited about these things. I mean...
The band...
It was pretty much on the verge of falling apart.
I think we had a couple of meetings and staff to discuss
were we still together etc, etc.
What to do if you're a member of an internationally successful
rock band but want to blow off creative steam
that doesn't fit the band's image.
Our next guest has faced that, he is Roger Taylor.
He's just blown off some of his own steam with his second solo album,
Strange Frontier. Let's look at it.
♪ Sometimes I feel like a man on fire
♪ Sometimes I feel like a man possessed
♪ Sometimes I wanna burn down this crazy town... ♪
I think we decided we needed a break.
Queen propelled us into the world but also in a sense it confined us
into a very small space. We just worked with each other, not the other fabulous musicians.
I ended up in LA and one morning just got up
and rang up some mates there and said, "Why don't we do something?"
And it led to the Star Fleet Project.
♪ Star fleet, star fleet
♪ Star fleet, star fleet... ♪
At a certain point we were all ready, there's no doubt.
We'd been off doing our different things,
refreshing ourselves but we were ready to get back in the studio.
This is the hardest time for us, this is a big test, we've been
in the business 12 years and to keep it going that much further is hard.
The Works was the next album.
We thought we wanted somewhere nice and warm
and not freezing bloody cold Munich.
So that really made sense, to go to LA to make that record.
And I think we got back on track in The Works, actually.
They were a complicated musical marriage.
They didn't have one room in a studio, they had three or four.
Studio B, Studio C, Studio D, Studio E.
But that was a good thing
cos it allowed everybody to work on their individual songs.
In the early days it was Brian and Freddie
who really used to write most of the material
but over the last five years,
Roger and I have started to contribute more.
I thought John Deacon was kind of a secret weapon because
he would come up with these major hits out of nowhere.
He had this track, I Want To Break Free,
and it was pretty much there except this big hole in the middle.
I mean, John did not want a guitar solo so he asked Fred Mandel,
a very brilliant keyboard player, to improvise something
around the main tune and Fred did this brilliant take.
SYNTHESIZER ON "I WANT TO BREAK FREE"
You know, all their records used to say prominently "no synthesizers"
then I come along like another schmuck
and put synthesizers on everything.
I wasn't too happy at the time but I gave it my blessing,
that's the deal.
The polarity of writing within the band changed.
I think the time has come where we actually...
in songwriting, we're completely even.
Roger will come up with something like Radio Ga Ga and it's perfect.
It was Sunday afternoon, my son Felix came in, he was very young
and he just sort of went, "Ah, radio, caca"
cos he's half French.
And, um, I just thought that's quite nice, you know.
I put the backing track together
and presented it to Freddie who really loved it.
We took it into the next room and then Fred and I worked
on the vocoder parts.
♪ All we hear is
♪ Radio ga ga
♪ Radio goo goo
♪ Radio ga ga... ♪
If you listen, several times it says "radio caca".
♪ Radio ga ga
♪ Radio ga ga... ♪
Radio Ga Ga brought Queen back.
♪ Radio... ♪
It came from a rock thing.
Radio Ga Ga combined the best elements of
the '70s with the '80s.
That's where Queen had a strength with The Works.
It was more of a substantial hit even though it didn't actually make
the top 10 in America.
But it got played a lot and the video made a big impact.
♪ Let's hope you never
♪ Leave, old friend
♪ Like all good things
♪ On you we depend
♪ So stick around
♪ Cos we might miss you... ♪
We had a killer video which we put a lot of work into.
♪ You had your time
♪ You had the power
♪ You've yet to have... ♪
The whole thing just felt good, of its time.
It felt a bit different. It felt modern and it was very fresh.
♪ All we hear is radio ga ga
♪ Radio goo goo
♪ Radio ga ga... ♪
All of a sudden people, would participate jointly
in Radio Ga Ga situations.
A collective statement that was good on the radio,
or on a turntable.
In live, it really was a unification.
♪ All we hear is radio ga ga
♪ Radio goo goo
♪ Radio ga ga... ♪
Freddie said, "What we do is like the Olympics.
"It's people believing in you and everyone behind you.
"Everyone doing the same thing.
"That's the Olympics." He said, "That's what we do."
♪ Radio ga ga, radio ga ga... ♪
Suddenly the MTV generation grew up and video became all-important.
The most enjoyable video was I Want To Break Free
because we just laughed.
I was dying to dress up in drag. Doesn't everybody?
And everybody ran into their frocks quicker than anything.
It was their idea, basically, and I said, "Yeah, let's have a go."
♪ I want to break free
from your lies... ♪
That great video was a loving reference to Coronation Street.
♪ I've got to break free... ♪
Americans didn't understand it. It just looked like we wanted to dress up in drag.
It was unthinkable to most of middle America.
♪ I've got to break free... ♪
It's a very British thing. Sometimes the humour doesn't translate. I'm Canadian so I get it.
It was just a different style of humour
and I don't think it went over with the "MTV generation".
I remember this video being banned.
MTV were very quick on the trigger to ban things then.
I mean, if you thought Mary Whitehouse was bad,
you should have seen some of the geezers running MTV
in the very early '80s.
Well, MTV were very narrow-minded.
It was Whitesnake, and fucking Whitesnake,
and then another Whitesnake track.
And they decided that they didn't think men in drag
was rock enough for them, I guess, so they didn't play the video.
Most Americans were deprived of my, and Freddie's,
favourite moment of that video.
I said to Freddie, "I love the way you double-step...
♪ But life still goes on... ♪
..to get from one room to the other.
And he said, "I'm so glad you noticed. That's my favourite part."
♪ ..without you by my side
♪ I don't want to live alone
♪ Hey, God knows
♪ I've got to make it... ♪
The funny thing is, we became global but we lost America.
And we kind of never got it back.
♪ I've got to break free. ♪
Freddie wouldn't go back to tour America
unless they were touring a hit,
and of course that's the chicken and egg
because the less you tour America, the more you lose America.
It was sad, it's a shame, because there's a whole catalogue of hits,
worldwide hits, but not in the States, and that'll never come back.
Sun City is the showplace of Bophutswana.
It's a lavish resort where you can relax
and enjoy some of the world's headline entertainers.
Appearing at Sun City never helped anybody's image,
and sometimes it hurt.
Sun City was this resort of international standard in South Africa
and the position taken by most of the rock community
was that if you went to South Africa you supported apartheid.
It's very nice to be here in South Africa
and I just want to have a good time.
Anything you'd like to say to your fans?
Yeah, we hope you get real excited, because we're pretty excited to be here.
The controversy behind Sun City...
Sun Fucking City - wish I'd never heard of the place.
The principal reason that Queen went there
was because they were offered a large amount of money.
There was all sorts of hoo-ha going on,
you know - "You mustn't play Sun City because it's a sign
"that you're supporting apartheid."
Well, it's simply not true.
If you adopted a policy of never playing in a country
where you don't approve of the politicians,
there'd be very few places you can play.
Did you know you had so many fans in South Africa?
Well, I think we had some idea of our popularity here,
but we didn't realise it was quite that.
Jim went down there time after time and I asked if we'd play to mixed audiences.
He said we wouldn't play to segregated audiences.
And it was not an apartheid audience,
but it was mainly white.
Are you going to the concert? Definitely.
What have you heard? I heard it's a great show.
What are you expecting at the concert? Something fantastic.
I've heard it's the most fantastic show ever.
The band then supported a school for the deaf in Bophutswana
that we became very involved with.
The general audience doesn't read the small print. It just sees the headlines.
If it goes, "You're making a lot of money playing a gig in an apartheid state",
it makes it look like you're following apartheid. It did not help them.
I will say to my dying day that we acted properly
according to our conscience as regards South Africa.
Um... We went there to play music,
the same as we did in all kinds of other places.
We got so much shit for it. But we went for good reasons.
But, on balance, I think it was a mistake to go.
Whenever the band came under pressure,
there would be maybe a walkout, a separation, a row.
♪ Sometimes I feel I'm going to break down and cry
♪ Nowhere to go Nothing to do with my time
♪ I get lonely
♪ So lonely
♪ Living on my own... ♪
I like Queen very much, but I don't want to end up living a quartet.
I'm 37 years old I want to do something different,
otherwise I'll get too damn old and I'll be in a wheelchair.
There was a lot of strain when Freddie did his solo album,
mainly because the advance
was considerably more than the advances for Queen albums.
♪ Got to be some good times ahead
♪ Sometimes I feel nobody gives me no warning... ♪
There is an inward jealousy -
they're all waiting to see if my album does better
than the last Queen album, or something like that.
♪ It's not easy
♪ Living on my own... ♪
Sometimes it's nice to break away from a group
that's actually been going for so long, meaning staying away.
He was definitely contemplating the idea of what Living On My Own
actually means because he lived in Munich for well over a year.
♪ Got to be some good times ahead... ♪
When Freddie was alone in Munich,
he had to basically fall back either on the gay community,
or, when he needed some sense or decent advice, he would call us.
He was hanging out a lot at our place.
He'd spend a lot of time with the kids.
It was like a family affair.
He said a lot of times that this was the best time in his life.
Out of the songs you've put on this album, Freddie,
which one do you find the most rewarding, personally?
Oh, I don't know, the one that sells the most.
Freddie had a very fulfilling experience of creativity,
but he didn't have a very fulfilling experience,
um...how shall I say, economically.
The Mr Bad Guy album really was a disaster, in terms of sales.
The strength of Queen came from the arguments.
It was the fact that you had to fight your space.
Songs got fine-tuned by that,
and Freddie working on his own in Munich with an orchestra and Mack,
there was nobody really to stand up with him.
Well, tomorrow, the pop world's greatest extravaganza,
as we've been talking about, Live Aid,
will bring together rock's brightest and best from both sides of the Atlantic,
all performing free in the hope of raising millions for the starving people of Africa.
You know, looking back, there was a moment when Queen were thought of
as a good group that was predominantly historic.
Radio Ga Ga was their one big hit in four years.
They weren't on a hot streak,
and they weren't a particularly productive group at that time.
There was a feeling that maybe that was it.
But Geldof ordered them to regroup and perform.
The thing was, did Freddie want to do it? He wasn't that keen.
Freddie was a bit reticent about doing anything,
but Bob came in one day
when we talked about Live Aid, and said,
"I told Freddie he's doing it." And I kind of believe him.
It really is a gathering of the rock world's elite,
and already rehearsing in here are some of rock and roll's royalty.
It was rehearsed quite intensely at the Shaw Theatre on Euston Road.
♪ Here we stand and here we fall
♪ History won't care at all
♪ Make the bed, light the light... ♪
Queen took the responsibility more professionally than anyone else on the bill.
♪ You don't waste no time at all
♪ Don't hear the bell but you answer the call... ♪
I went out and bought these big plastic white clocks
and put them in the orchestra pit so we could see the time.
There was an 18-minute slot that each artist had,
and there were traffic lights at the side of the stage.
And you were warned that the traffic lights after 16 minutes would turn amber from green,
and they said, "You won't see them turn red because the power goes off."
So you make it quick and you make it something they know.
Just after 16 hours of live Aid,
would you welcome Status Quo!
♪ Here we are and here we are and here we go... ♪
The energy that day was sensational.
♪ Rockin' all over the world... ♪
We were all quite nervous, actually.
Not necessarily our audience because they'd put together
the bill of Live Aid before we'd been announced as being on it.
They set the level for the PA with limiters
and then when Queen came on, Trip, who was Queen's sound engineer,
switched the limiters so that Queen would be louder.
From the word go, he came out of the traps like a champion.
Freddie performed against the advice of his doctor because of a throat condition.
But he went out there and gave one of the greatest live television performances ever.
♪ You don't waste no time at all
♪ Don't hear the bell but you answer the call
♪ Comes to you as to us all, yeah!
♪ And it's time for the hammer to fall... ♪
The ballet with a BBC cameraman was shockingly charismatic.
♪ Every night, every day
♪ A little piece of you is falling away
♪ Lift your face the western way... ♪
And it was as if all the artists backstage had heard a dog whistle.
And their heads turned and the frisson you felt was,
"They're stealing the show."
♪ I've paid my dues
♪ Time after time
♪ I did my sentence
♪ But committed no crime
♪ And bad mistakes
♪ I've made a few
♪ I've had my share of sand kicked in my face
♪ But I've come through
♪ We are the champions, my friend... ♪
I defy anybody who saw it not to have goose pimples on the back of their neck
when you saw that sea of people.
♪ We are the champions
♪ We are the champions... ♪
I remember looking up and seeing the whole place going completely bonkers in unison and thinking,
"Oh, this is going well."
♪ ..the champions
♪ We are the champions, my friend
♪ And we'll keep on fighting till the end... ♪
We did have an unfair advantage. We had done football stadiums.
Freddie particularly learned this magical way
of involving everybody. In a huge football stadium,
he could make everybody feel they were in contact.
♪ We are the champions...
♪ ..of the world. ♪
People say, "Was it a career move?"
Well, no, it wasn't a career move
but of course that's in the back of everybody's mind.
We got a great reception from the crowd, even at Wembley,
and also from the TV audience as well.
So in fact, it was a great boost of confidence, in a way, for the group.
To have conquered Live Aid in that way
undoubtedly breathed fresh energy into the band.
It was a shot in the arm and we went back in the studio.
We were back in Munich with all its attendant dangers,
so we tried to keep ourselves in the studio as much as possible.
Ta-dah!
♪ Hey! One man, one goal
♪ One mission, one heart... ♪
I had a page, a sort of poem that was sort of half nicked off Martin Luther King's famous speech.
It doesn't fit. It does.
One goddamn decision. Real decision.
No, it won't fit.
It was all one this and one that.
♪ One God, one soul, make one decision... ♪
Make one decision. One true religion.
♪ One God, one vision
♪ One man, one goal, one true religion
♪ One dump, one turd Two tits, John Deacon
♪ Woh-oh-oh-oh-oh
♪ Give me one vision... ♪
The Magic Tour was the biggest tour we'd ever undertaken.
♪ No wrong, no right
♪ I'm gonna tell you there's no black and no white... ♪
We planned an entire tour of stadium gigs.
♪ All we need is one world, one vision... ♪
Massive shows all over Europe, and really fantastic reception. We hit another level.
We were finally in the place we'd always dreamed of being, perhaps.
♪ I had a dream when I was young
♪ A dream, sweet illusion... ♪
That tour had gigs like Budapest in it, which in itself is a great thing.
Budapest was the first stadium concert behind the Iron Curtain.
People hitch-hiked from all over Eastern Europe.
♪ Look what they've done to my dream... ♪
It was a great tour because it ended up two nights at Wembley.
Hello there, my beauties. This is happening.
♪ Give me your hands Give me your hearts... ♪
In addition to Wembley Stadium, we put on an extra one
because it sold out so quick, the two nights, so we put Knebworth on.
♪ One voice, one hope One real decision
♪ Gimme one light One light Gimme one hope One hope
♪ Just gimme, ah One man, one man
♪ One bar one night One day hey hey
Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme fried chicken. #
They were the final shows with Freddie,
and I remember it being pretty much perfect.
MUSIC: "God Save The Queen"
I just got the vibe from Freddie,
he felt that he wasn't maybe able to do any more.
I know there'll be a time when I can't run around on stage
because it'll be ridiculous. There comes a time when you have to stop.
I think he had an idea that he might not be terribly well.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Freddie told me that he was HIV positive before he told the band.
This put me in a very difficult position
because he told me he didn't want me to tell the band.
So there was I, managing a band, knowing something
of crucial importance to the band which I couldn't pass on to them.
♪ Every drop of rain that falls in Sahara desert says it all
♪ It's a miracle
♪ All God's creations Great and small
♪ The Golden Gate and the Taj Mahal
♪ That's a miracle
♪ Test-tube babies being born
♪ Mothers, fathers, dead and gone
♪ It's a miracle... ♪
There were rumours and he was obviously suffering,
and we didn't know what it was, and rumour, rumour, rumour...
And so he did sit us down at one point and said,
"Look, you probably know what I'm going to say.
"You know what I'm suffering from. You know what the problem is
but I don't want to talk about it anymore. I just want to make music
until the day I fucking die. And...let's get on with it.
♪ It's a miracle
♪ It's a miracle... ♪
These are some of our best studio times.
We've made the decision that all the songs we write will be credited
to all of us, so it kind of releases a bit of...
positive energy in us.
They became closer and closer, without any doubt.
The sharing of writing credits was a major breakthrough.
Some magical things happened, I think.
There's this track called The Miracle, itself,
which I think is one of Freddie's most beautiful creations.
♪ The one thing The one thing
♪ We're all waiting for
♪ Is peace on earth Peace on earth
♪ And an end to war An end to war... ♪
'I love the track. It's all so optimistic about the world'
and the miracles that are being found in the world.
Which is incredible when you think what he's looking at
because he knows what he's got and he knows what the prognosis is.
♪ That time will come One day you'll see
♪ When we can all be friends
♪ That time will come One day you'll see
♪ When we can all... ♪
APPLAUSE Special Award for an outstanding contribution to British music
goes to John Deacon, Brian May, Freddie Mercury,
Roger Taylor - Queen.
APPLAUSE
The first indications something wasn't right
was Freddie looked a little thinner to me.
And I called John up to see what was going on.
I said, "Is something wrong with Freddie?" And he wouldn't tell me.
The thing that annoyed me more than anything was a shot
of Freddie in The Sun and he'd just come out of the doctor's, I think.
It's a really grainy, full-page shot. "Is this man dying?"
And I thought, "You fucking wankers."
♪ Scandal
♪ Scandal... ♪
We hid everything and we avoided questions.
♪ Scandal... ♪
I guess we lied.
Because we wanted to protect him.
♪ Scandal... ♪
I would then say anything to anybody. "Is Fred sick?"
"Absolutely not, no. He was in the gym yesterday.
"Fuck you," you know. "None of your business."
Everybody had to draw the wagons around him.
Because at that time, to become ill was to have a death sentence.
♪ Today the headlines Tomorrow hard times
♪ And no-one ever really knows The truth from the lies... ♪
His house was surrounded by...
I don't know, a couple of hundred, I reckon.
Just like vultures, really.
♪ Deeper and deeper inside... ♪
It was utterly shocking, you know.
Filming the groceries in the back of the car boot.
♪ Scandal... ♪
"Any medicine in there?" You know, it's absolutely shocking.
It became difficult to work in London,
there was such a terrible focus of attention on him.
People sticking cameras through his toilet windows,
as soon as the rumours were out there.
So Montreal was a much more peaceful place to work so we ended up doing a lot of stuff there.
SONG: "I'm Going Slightly Mad"
Freddie felt much safer there because people didn't bother.
You know. They weren't intrusively observing him.
At that point we can't play live
but in the things that we're doing, it's business as usual.
♪ I'm going slightly mad
♪ I'm going slightly mad... ♪
He was determined to work right up to the last minute.
I was surprised that he did Going Slightly Mad.
♪ It finally happened... ♪
Which I thought was a good video, actually,
and it had lots of humour in it.
♪ I'm slightly mad! ♪
There was a lot more humour in Freddie than I think
the general public realised.
You want to take it? No, I...
Oh! What's it doing?
HOOTS OF LAUGHTER
Roger, what did you do?
It was just really a very close time.
Go for me. Waaa!
Freddie found an amazing tranquillity and I never really heard him complain.
I remember we went out one night
and he had horrible problems with his leg.
And Freddie saw me looking at it and said, "Oh, Brian, do you want to see what it's like?"
And he showed me, and I think...
he reacted to my face, and he said,
"I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to do that to you."
I never heard him go, "This is really awful. My life is shit.
"I'm going to die." Never, never, never.
He was an amazingly strong person.
The sicker Freddie got, the more he seemed to need to record,
to give himself something to do, you know - some sort of reason to get up.
And he would make it in whenever he could.
So really, it was a period of fairly intense work, actually.
Freddie is becoming weakened by this horrible disease
and he finds it hard to stand up a lot of the time
but he'll throw a couple of vodkas down and prop himself up
on the mixing desk and have his mike there, and go for it.
Roll camera, roll playback.
♪ Sometimes I get to feeling
♪ I was back in the old days
♪ Long ago... ♪
'I can hear the voice is getting thinner.'
♪ Things seemed so perfect You know... ♪
'I think you can really tell that it's an ailing voice.'
Although he hits the notes.
♪ The sun was always shining
♪ We just lived for fun
♪ Sometimes... ♪
'Roger started writing These Are The Days Of Our Lives about his kids'
and the way he felt about life and how it comes back.
But of course, in that context, it had another meaning.
♪ Those were the days of our lives... ♪
'He looked so ill there. It was quite scary,'
and...I thought that was a very brave thing to do.
And why not, you know?
'He spent hours and hours and hours in make-up, sorting himself out,
'so it would be OK.'
♪ Those days are all gone now but
♪ One thing is true... ♪
I did too many movements.
But I just wanted to see... No, I know...
♪ I still love you... ♪
I just want to see... It doesn't look...
I think it should be waisted.
Do you know what I mean? I want a little bit of shape here. A tiny bit.
'Yeah. I like the shape now.'
♪ Those days are all gone now, but
♪ One thing's still true
♪ When I look... ♪
'Freddie actually kind of says a goodbye in that song.'
♪ I still love you... ♪
I still love you.
Innuendo was out on the streets, it was number one
and two weeks later they were here in Montreux.
And they started doing more music.
And Freddie, at that time, said, "Write me stuff. I know I don't have very long.
"Keep writing me words. Keep giving me things.
"I will sing and then you can do what you like with it afterwards,
"you know, finish it off."
And so I was writing on scraps of paper these lines of Mother Love.
He was dying and he did those things
and he knew he would be dead when they were finished.
Because he said to me, "I'm going to sing it now,
"because I can't wait for them to do the music on this.
"I'll give it to you on a drum machine.
"Give me a drum machine thing... They'll finish it off."
♪ I don't want to make no waves
♪ You can give me all the love... ♪
Every time I gave him another line, he would sing it,
sing it again, and sing it again.
So we had three takes for every line, and that was it.
♪ I long for peace before I die... ♪
Mother Love, I think, was the last one. There's an exceptional
spine-chilling note in the middle.
A fantastic bit of singing.
♪ Out in the city
♪ In the cold world outside
♪ I don't want pity
♪ Just a safe place to hide
♪ Mama, please, let me back inside... ♪
It's absolutely...spine-chilling.
And we got to the last verse and he said,
"Oh, I'm not up to this now, I need to go away and have a rest.
"I'll come back and finish it off", you know.
And he never came back.
That was the last moment that I had with him in the studio.
I went to see Freddie, and it was in fact the last time I saw him.
He said to me, "I haven't given you anything in my will.
"You're my executor, you can do anything with my legacy,
"you can do anything with my music
"but never make me boring."
The last time I saw Freddie was, Anita and I went to see him
and he was in bed,
with the curtains open so he could see out into his garden,
and I was talking about things in his garden,
saying, "That's really interesting" and he said,
"Guys, you don't need to feel like you need to make conversation.
"I'm just so happy that you're here,
"so even if we say nothing, it's just having these moments."
The worst thing was I was actually on my way to see him,
and I was about 300 yards away when Peter Freestone rang me
to tell me, "Don't bother coming cos he's gone."
It was me who wrote the little epitaph
that's on his statue in Montreux
which just says, "Freddie Mercury, Lover of Life - Singer of Songs."
To me, that sums him up because he lived life to the full,
there's no question, with all that that entailed.
He was a generous man, a kind man, an impatient man sometimes,
but utterly dedicated to what he felt was important,
which was making music.
We made the announcement that we were going to do a tribute concert to him when we felt that we could,
to send him out in the style which he deserved.
We hope that a lot of you will be able to join us
on April 20th at Wembley Stadium
for a celebration of Freddie's life and career.
You're all welcome. Please join us.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
So we drew up a list of people that we'd like to be on the show.
Roger got the ball rolling.
Roger got up one morning and said, "Look, we're doing this." And made a few phone calls.
And Brian said, "Well, if you can get that lot, I'll come."
On stage, Mr Roger Daltrey!
Mr Robert Plant, thank you!
Mr David Bowie!
And...
♪ Any way the wind blo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ows! ♪
We got a date, Wembley Stadium... Had to be Wembley Stadium, didn't it? Had to be.
The scene of Freddie's greatest triumphs.
A lot of amazing things happened.
I'd like to offer something, in a very simple fashion.
David Bowie spontaneously went into the Lord's Prayer which was a surprise to us all.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power
and the glory
for ever and ever,
A-men.
APPLAUSE
God bless Queen.
God bless you.
Thank you, good night.
I want to hear every single person.
See every single pair of hands.
Three, four.
♪ Find me somebody to love
♪ Somebody! Somebody!
Somebody! Somebody!
♪ Somebody find me somebody to love
♪ Anybody find me-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e...
♪ Somebody to-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o... ♪
Come on!
AUDIENCE: ♪ Lo-o-o-o-ve. ♪
'It was completely cathartic.'
It was like working out a bit of grief in a way.
Yeah!
♪ Somebody find me somebody to-oo-oo love
♪ Find me somebody to-oo-oo love Oo-oo-oo-oo-ooh!
♪ Find me is somebody, somebody
♪ To-oo-oo love
♪ Anybody anywhere find me somebody to love
♪ Yeah, yeah
♪ O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oh
♪ O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oh. ♪
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And I remember just as we were coming off,
Joe Elliott from Def Leopard put his hand on my arm
and said, "Stop, Brian,
"just turn around and look at that audience and remember this moment.
"Nothing like this will ever happen again."
'The incredible thing is, it's 40 years since the band was formed.
'The band is probably as big as it's ever been.'
And yet 20 of those 40 years have been without Freddie.
We don't have John either because he's chosen to be in a very different place.
For Roger and I...
there is always that searching.
♪ The show must go on! ♪
What's lurking in the wings was the material we'd done with Freddie which was unfinished,
and what were we going to do with this, make an album?
Made In Heaven was obviously different.
It was very weird working with Freddie's voice coming out of the speakers
but Brian and I felt that we knew what Freddie would have been thinking
so we got there and I was very pleased with the result.
I feel like it was the right completion.
It was, um...it was the right album to finish up on.
Once you've passed your initiation into being a rock star, it never leaves you.
You cannot stop having that feeling inside you that makes you want to play.
♪ The show must go on! ♪
When we did the Paul Rodgers tour, it was great, actually.
Paul was a great singer, completely different.
♪ I've never given in On with the show
♪ The show must go on. ♪
It constantly amazes me to think we were lucky enough
to be in a great band, to have a great band together,
and that, actually, people still like the music, you know.
Queen is such a stimulating creative environment,
there's really nothing quite that could live up to that.
There was a perfect creative hothouse that was Queen at its best.
♪ One dream, one soul
♪ One prize, one goal
♪ One golden glance of what should be
♪ It's a kind of magic
♪ One flash of light that shows the way
♪ No mortal man
♪ Can win this day
♪ It's a kind of magic
♪ The bell that rings
♪ Inside your mind
♪ Is challenging
♪ The doors of time
♪ This rage that lasts a thousand years
# Will soon be, will soon be Will soon be...
♪ Will soon be done
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
♪ E-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-up
AUDIENCE: # E-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-up
♪ E-e-up E-e-up
♪ Ee-do-ree-ro-re-ro
♪ Ee-do-ree-ro-re-ro. ♪
Fuck you.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
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