An Interview with Peter Freestone

Forever in Mercury's Orbit - The Melbourne Age - Friday June 10, 2005

Peter Freestone isn't doing this for the money. "Freddie was very, very generous in his will," he explains with a gracious tilt of his head. A gentleman says no more. A gentleman's gentleman, as Freestone was to Queen singer Freddie Mercury for 12 years, has perhaps said too much already.

Freddie Mercury: An Intimate Memoir is the book Freestone harboured no intention of writing as he helped maneuvered his best friend and employer into a black body bag - with a little teddy bear for company - on the sad evening of November 24, 1991.

Even further from his mind, one suspects, was the prospect of touring Australia in 2005 drumming up business for The Show Must Go On, an Anglo-Australian tribute act that Freestone says is the most accurate reconstruction of Queen's early-'80s arena shows that he's seen.

"I've been running away," he says of the 14 years since Mercury died of AIDS in the house they shared in West London. "I've been hiding. I've been doing various things trying to cope with Freddie's death. And not doing it very well."

Despite his easy laugh and upright composure, there's a depth of sadness in Freestone's eyes that is quite affecting across a tiny corner table at - how apt - Her Majesty's Theatre in Exhibition Street. On his left lapel is a jewel-studded guitar brooch. On his wrist is an elegant engraved bracelet. Both are mementos of his former master's generosity, he explains fondly. They're also symbols, it seems, that he's finally accepted his perpetual place in Mercury's orbit.

"I ran away for the first few years because I didn't need reminding that Freddie was dead," he says. "I didn't want to talk to people about it. Now I can. That catharsis happened with the book. It was written as therapy really. And I found I was able to see the good times again. Then you can accept the bad times."

The good times come across in a lather of champagne corks, limousines, first-class air travel, palatial hotel suites, superstar pals and handlebar moustaches in Freestone's colourful but unusually respectful memoir.

Mercury emerges as an occasionally petulant, undeniably warm-hearted bon vivant who prized friendship highly, not least a close-knit gang of Manhattan buddies he called his "New York daughters".

A former dresser for the Royal Ballet, Freestone was taken into this personal inner sanctum (under the pet name of Phoebe) in 1979. He gradually became the globetrotting rock star's "chief cook and bottle washer, waiter, butler, secretary, cleaner . . . agony aunt . . . and in the end, of course . . . one of his nurses."

He attempted to pursue this latter career after Mercury died, caring for multiple sclerosis patients at Guy's Hospital in London, until erroneous tabloid reports that he had been Mercury's lover caused complications. Freestone didn't want the suggested AIDS stigma interfering with his patients' peace of mind, so he resigned.

It was then that he began dictating his demons to a journalist friend, David Evans. When they reached 100,000 words, the idea of publishing naturally arose, and an initial print run of 1000 disappeared in six weeks.

"There was a book written about Queen a couple of years before Freddie died, and he was given a draft of it and he said, 'This book will be published over my dead body'," Freestone says.

"He said, 'All you've put in there is how wonderful Queen is. If a book is going to be printed about me, I want them to know the down things as well as the good things'. Having heard that from Freddie's lips, it made it easier for me.

"What I wanted was for everyone to see a little bit of themselves in Freddie. If people find (flaws) in this person they admire, then everyone can feel there's something special within them."

That apparently goes double for Craig Pesco, the Australian singer who dons the leotard and 'tache in front of The Show Must Go On. "It was an eye-opener for me," Freestone says of his first encounter with the Queen cabaret act. "Craig is Freddie down to his fingertips. There was an amazing energy as I was watching the show. If you want real Freddie you can buy a DVD, but you still miss the live atmosphere, and that's what you get with The Show Must Go On."

That's what you get, too, at any one of the productions of Ben Elton's stage musical We Will Rock You slowly infiltrating the globe. And that's what packed European arenas got last month when original Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor hooked up with former Free singer Paul Rodgers for a 50 per cent authentic live Queen experience.

It all amounts to a curious industry of denial that is unique, so far, in rock lore. Of the original band, retired bassist John Deacon appears to be alone in the perfectly reasonable conviction that "Queen were four people, and without one member it's not what it was".

For Freestone, Mercury was simply too large an influence for mortality to destroy. "For 12 years, there was this huge image, and I was quite happy in its shadow," he says. "Now that image is still there, in a way, but the shadow isn't any more. I have to accept I'm more part of the image now."

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