THE MESSENGER OF THE GODS

While Smile had been earning respect for their earnest, committed, and promising endeavour, Freddie Bulsara was still very much the dilettante. In the summer of 1969 he left Baling College of Art with a diploma his work only just merited. During the last year of the course the idea of joining a group had become fixed in his mind. He bought a cheap electric guitar and Tim Staffell taught him the rudiments of playing. Freddie strummed out chords as a rough backing to the vocal melodies passing through his head. Unlike the other members of Queen, Freddie’s musical development was brief, telescoped into just a few short years. He lived life at full tilt, too brisk for the insufferable torpor of the next church hall gig and a two-line advertisement in the local paper.

Freddie’s first proper group was Ibex which he joined immediately his course had finished in the summer of 1969. Ibex had moved to London from their native Liverpool in the belief that a change of location to the home of the music business would bring them some luck. The farthest they had travelled thus far had been to appear at the Twisted Wheel club in Manchester and their press ‘kit’ comprised of one cutting, a snippet from the Widnes Weekly News about them sending a tape to Apple Records and hoping The Beatles would single out a fellow Liverpool band for stardom. This was at the time when The Beatles had promoted Apple as some kind of anti-establishment rock Utopia, and even suggested that all who sent in tapes would achieve certain fame, perhaps even commensurate with their own. Somewhat predictably, cassettes, manuscripts, paintings. Rims, all manner of artistic outpouring from the nation’s youth, arrived by the van load three times a day, piling up in sacks in their overcrowded offices in Savile Row. Ibex didn’t get a response.

They were a trio comprised of guitarist Mike Bersin, bassist/vocalist John ‘Tupp’ Taylor, and drummer Mike ‘Miffer’ Smith. They had arrived in town with a close friend elevated to managerial status, Ken Testi, a ‘mover and shaker’, on Liverpool’s music scene. «Ibex were a local response to the popularity of groups like Cream, Free and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.» said Testi. «At the time virtuoso ability was coming into fashion. We had moved on from The Beatles’ format. I was very keen to help these chaps who I admired greatly. I never really wanted to play myself, I wanted to be near the music, but I never actually used the term of manager.».

Unknown to Freddie (as if he cared!) Ibex had gone through the usual complex machinations of personnel before he joined them. Ken Testi had been in the same class as the group members at Wade Deacon Grammar School for Boys in Widnes. In their first incarnation they were known as Colour, a five-piece containing Mike Bersin and John Taylor along with Gordon Fraser (guitar). Ken Hart (drums) and Colin McDonnell (vocals). The advent of progressive music had a catastrophic effect on the musk &cene at the end of 1966 and many were cut off by the tide. Colin McDonnell, still wearing a neat shirt and cravat, was asked to leave Colour. The situation had grown so venomous that the rest of the band were hissing ‘Tommy Stecle’ at him behind his back. The remaining members amalgamated with two singers from another VVidnes band, Paul Snee and Johnny Cannon. These were a few years older and married, and within a few months had to leave to spend more time with their wives and children.

Colour later became Ibex, although Gordon Eraser’s tenure with the new group was short. Gordon, standing at six feet three inches tall by the age of thirteen, was prodigiously talented, both on guitar and as a painter. Unfortunately, his enigmatic disposition was increasingly difficult to properly channel into the group and he soon left. Mike Bersin, who had hitherto mainly played electric organ, moved to guitar and a local milkman-cum-drummer. Mike Smith, replaced Ken Hart on drums. It was Mike Smith who suggested the name Ibex. At the time he was unaware that it was the name of a wild goat, but thought it sounded cool and appropriately Dadaist. Like many young people at the time, he had adopted the anarchic Dada art movement of 1915-20 as the natural brethren of progressive rock.

Ibex were ahead of their time in Liverpool which was still gripped by the amiable, simplistic meter of Merseybeat and Tamla Motown. «They wanted us to play Irish music or country and western.» said John Taylor. «They didn’t want us lot. bedraggled and wearing fur coats, playing ‘Hey joe». We used to end up playing songs like ‘Green Green Grass Of Home’ just to keep them happy.» The band made friends with Robbie Savva, a local guru of electronics. He invented a device which would allow sound to be passed from speaker to speaker in rotation. Pink Floyd were later to call the gadget an ‘Azimuth Co-ordinator’ but Ibex, along with Robbie Savva and his various fuzz boxes, were making outlandish noises in pubs and clubs on Merseyside without any notice. In fact, they discovered that other local bands, like The Microbes, formed by some fellow ex-pupils of Wade Deacon, were faring much better in suits, ties and presenting opportune soul revues.

London beckoned and in Ken Testi Ibex had someone with the forte to make it happen. He had already set himself up as a teenage promoter, organising several dances while still at school. He knew his way around the dark corridors and fluorescent lit offices of clubs like The Cavern where Billy Butler played records wearing his Sgt Pepper suit and the galvanising force of The Beatles was still fuel to dreams. «Ken was great.» said John Taylor. «He was always a nice guy, quite sharp and always well organised. He had an eye for most things and was a good promoter.».

Ken Testi had passed his driving test before the others and it fell upon him to drive their battered van - MOT tests had not yet been introduced, but Robbie Savva had primed the engine - to London. Ken’s girlfriend, Helen McConnell, had moved to London to study and she put up Ken and Mike Smith at her rented house in Sinclair Road, Shepherd’s Bush. Her sister, Pat, was a student at the Maria Assumpta College and she offered room space to Mike Bersin and John Taylor at her flat in Batoum Gardens, just off Shepherd’s Bush Road. Ken, then aged seventeen, had only been to London twice before, firstly to see Fleetwood Mac play at a hotel in Croydon and he also hitched down for Cream’s farewell concert at the Royal Albert Hall. «We were very na’i’ve I suppose,» he reflects. «We were just four lads buying a ticket for the summer. We thought we might end up as pop stars, or we’d go back home at the end and go to college. We were explorers, and there were a lot of them about in the late Sixties. It was all very Dick Whittington.».

The group often expanded when Geoff Higgins travelled down from Liverpool to appear with them. He would play the bass guitar when John Taylor picked up the flute. John had ‘borrowed’ the flute some time before from the music room at school. Mike Bersin was the leader of the group, but John Taylor, despite being the least skilled player, provided much of the group’s character. Geoff Higgins had made his debut with them a few months before at the Cavern and Taylor’s introduction to the debutante was hardly understated. «It was my first ever gig, at the Cavern of all places, and my legs were shaking,» said Geoff. «He announced me as Geoff Higgins, who needed no introduction, as if I was famous. He was a complete head-the-ball, he just didn’t care.».

Ibex opened their live set with Sonny Boy Williams’ ‘Help Me’ and the rest of the material was either blues covers or their own renditions of Jethro Tull songs like ‘Waltz For A Cuckoo’ or ‘Bach’s Bouree’. Mike Bersin had a strong distaste for Beatles’ songs and was adamant that they would not include any in their set. Ironically, when Mike later became a friend of Freddie, one of the first songs they played together was a cover of The Beatles’ ‘Rain’. Ibex were a cheerful, easy-going bunch, happy to fall into situations. One night, while still back home in Liverpool, they travelled in their van to see Howlin’ Wolf appear at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, They did not have tickets but when the security staff saw a van full of young people draw up, they thought they were either the support group or part of the sound crew, and they were waved to the back of the venue and escorted to the stage. The members of Ibex spent the rest of the night in the wings watching a blues legend from extremely close quarters.

On the first day in London they parked their van by a phone box. Address book in hand. Ken Testi began to ring around people in the music business. The band pressed their faces to the glass, anxious to listen.

«Hello, is Chris Ellis there please?».

«This is Chrysalis. Can I help?».

Concerts were difficult to secure and apart from an audition at the 100 Club in Oxford Street and a couple of shows in Richmond, their diary was almost empty. In fact, two dates Ken had arranged before he left for London, both in the Lancashire town of Bolton, were the only immediate shows of note.

Ibex’s timing had been wretched; the student venues had closed down for the summer and much of London’s youthful population had returned home for the holiday. «It was a summer of getting knocked back.» says Testi. «It fast became quite difficult. The sisters’ neighbours were starting to get uneasy when underpants appeared on the washing line and their landlords were becoming suspicious.».

A rare propitious night came at the celebrations for Pat McConnell’s birthday. She had earlier seen a band called Smile perform at Imperial College and was smitten by their good looks, especially those of their drummer, Roger Taylor. She persuaded the set of friends that her birthday drink should he in The Kensington, a pub just off Holland Park Road. She knew that Smile and their friends often drank there and was keen to engineer a meeting. The two groups could not have been more dissimilar. Ibex were in scruffy jeans and T-shirts, while Roger, Brian, Tim and Freddie were in their fineries, silk scarves and fur coats. «To a degree we were the archetypal hicks from the sticks, but music, like love, conquers all.» said Ken. «We had a dialogue straight away through our love of music, We were all a bit rough and ready but they weren’t cocky with us at all «.

At closing time they all headed for Pat McConnell’s flat where Brian May picked up Mike Bersin’s guitar and amazed him with his playing. Smile had been recording demos at Trident Studios and played Ibex the work in progress. «They just played a few tracks,» recalls Testi. «They were very, very impressive. The vocals were absolutely brilliant and there was no doubt in my mind that I was in the presence of something very, very special. It really was blisteringly good.» Freddie, incidentally, already knew the songs intimately and was harmonising with Tim Staffell’s recorded voice as they lounged around the flat.

Without a distinct role in Smile beyond that of advisor, Freddie began tagging along with Ibex, proffering advice as to how the sound could be enhanced, how the stage show could have more impact. The band were all reasonable players but had few ideas about visual presentation and none of them enjoyed singing particularly; it was clear that Freddie would be invited to audition. They ‘auditioned’ him in the music room at Imperial College and it was with a certain inevitability that he became their new singer.

Freddie was now living with Tim Staf fell, Brian May and Roger Taylor at a rented house in Ferry Road, Barnes. The members of Ibex were regular visitors and the ground floor they occupied became an impromptu drop-in centre. Geoff Higgins met Freddie for the first time when he woke up, still considerably stoned, on the chaise longe. «I was totally out of it.» he recalls- «There had been a howling gate outside and Freddie walked past me and over to the mirror above the mantelpiece.

He just announced to the mirror. ‘Oh God, I haven’t been out looking like this. have I?’ I couldn’t believe it.».

Ibex rehearsed frequently at Imperial College and Freddie dedicated himself to the group. Their set was now composed of incompatible cover versions by artists like The Beatles, Yes and Rod Stewart. Their opening song was a cover of Elvis Presley’s ‘Jailhouse Rock’ which Queen later adopted for their own live shows. It allowed Freddie to indulge in gleeful histrionics, but for some time the rest of the group ivere unsure about Freddie’s stage antics. «He used to ponce around and he was really embarrassing.» Higgins stresses. «We were begging him. saying. Treddie. would you please stand still?’ but, boy, were we wrong and was he right.».

The general trend was unard; a rather more staid, po-faced delivery, but their appeals for Freddie to turn down the energy went unheeded. «There was a massive cultural difference between Freddie and the others,» said Testi. «He was very fashionable and particular about his appearance. The most amusing relationship was between Freddie and Mick Smith. Mick was a milkman from Widnes, as rough as a bear’s arse and well-built with it. Freddie was this very nice scholar type chap with a much slighter build They became very good friends but they took the piss out of each other mercilessly- Freddie could be quite raucous at times but generally he opened our eyes both musically and artistically. He made a massive impression on all of us, even to this day.».

The shows in Bolton were to prove the high point of the summer for Ibex. Richard Thompson, Brian May’s old friend from 1984, was working for an air freight company at Heathrow Airport and managed to ‘loan’ a new Transit van in which Ibex could travel north. John Taylor had found work at a record shop near Piccadilly Circus which stayed open until the last hippie had fallen asleep on the pavement outside and they had run out of tracks to set the turntable spinning. John Taylor’s shift did not finish until midnight so they left the capital soon afterwards.

The journey to Bolton did not take as long as expected and on arrival Ken Testi was to see a juxtaposition of style and image which he would remember for the rest of his life. Freddie clambered out of the van wearing a cut-olf granddad shirt, fur cape, Victorian scarf and satin trousers. As this peacock arranged his clothes on the pavement, a crew of workers finishing a night shift streamed by in their dirty, grey overalls.

The ‘tour’ of Bolton began on Saturday. August 23, at the recently built Octagon Theatre in the centre of the town. The concert was held at lunch time, arranged on the lines of an arts workshop. It was apparent that Freddie had improved the band dramatically. Their performance was slick and Freddie covered every inch of the stage. «There were only a handful of people there, but Freddie was immediately ‘there’ the minute he walked on stage.» said John Taylor. «His presentation was great, vi.sually amazing. He’d been striking these poses at rehearsal but this was great. I was genuinely stunned by him. His voice was a bit rough, but that didn’t matter loo much it the time.».

The next show was at an open air festival in Bolton’s Queen’s Park. While Freddie, his body still poured into skeletal white satin trousers, was the focus of attention, his mode of apparel had influenced the rest, including even the stoical Mike Bersin who had taken the stage in a gold lame cloak made specially for him by his mother. Relations in the band were generally fine, but there were some disagreements and they saw evidence of Freddie’s forceful nature. «We rowed a few times but it never got too bad.» said John Taylor. «He was always strong and could hold his own. He was certainly very determined. I remember, when Queen properly got going, they used to have flaming rows. I thought that all of them had that bit of steel that it takes. There would always come a point where they would lay it on the line,».

Freddie was already revealing tendencies towards pretension in Ibex. At a concert at St Helen’s Technical College he ordered a lackey to find him a full-length mirror so he could properly adjust his trousers. The ‘dressing room’ was actually the college kitchen but Freddie held no truck with such downbeat reality. He spent half an hour tampering with his velvet trousers before taking the stage. Freddie wore his trousers so tight that it was almost impossible for him to sit down while wearing them. Several friends often caught him taking furtive glances around the room before he would quickly zip down the fly to allow him to bend down without bursting the seams.

The curious dichotomy between Freddie Bulsara on stage and off stage was already apparent to the other members of Ibex. On the boards, even the secondary ones they were treading. Freddie’s persona was grand, his gestures lavish and drawn strongly like a cartoon in marker pen. He held the stage as his own, territorially, with a majestic sense of confidence. Backstage, in the broom cupboard and kitchen dressing rooms, he was small again, often smaller than the rest of Ibex. His fringe was used to hide his eyes, he covered his protruding leeth with his hand when he smiled. He would speak to the well-wishers drawn magnetically to the band, but he didn’t have much to say and his voice was sometimes barely above a whisper. Occasionally, though, he was a scaled down version of his stage self, itchy, impatient, loaded with ideas. «He was a very ‘up’ person and a very funny character.» said John Taylor. «He was always very interested in people and often turned up with quite exotic types in his company.».

Josephine Ranken, a friend of Freddie’s whom he had met at art college, was invited to travel to Widnes with the band. An eccentric girl, out-size in every aspect, she had her own idiosyncratic sense of style which ran to wearing bright purple lipstick. She knew dope dealers with monikers like The Strangled and sometimes dressed like the principal boy in a pantomime. She was typical of the characters Freddie seemed to ‘collect’ during his lifetime; she was different, and gave as good as she got. «I thought I was in for a time of mad glamour but I spent the night sleeping on this floor in Widnes,» she recalled. «I remember waking up. opening the curtains and staring across to a chemical works.».

Josephine soon detected that Freddie was uncertain of his sexuality. His relationships with girls tended to be brief, and Josephine was privy to some gossip about his liaison with a beautiful girt on the same course, Rosemary Pearson. «As far as I know they slept together just once, but I heard, not to put it too crudely, that he couldn’t get it up.» she said. «He thought he liked women but it took him quite a while to realise he was gay.».

She noticed that Freddie would often speak about homosexuals; they clearly fascinated him, though he never revealed that he might be attracted to men. On one occasion she invited him along to visit a homosexual friend with the pet name of ‘Pixie’. They travelled together to Acton in west London with some cream cakes to share with Pixie, a handsome lecturer in his early thirties. Josephine was neither match-making nor ‘testing’ Freddie, it was simply a trip to visit someone whose company she enjoyed. She was shocked by Freddie’s response when they arrived at the house. «Pixie was a very nice queer - we didn’t use the word ‘gay’ in those days ~ really fun to be with,» she said. «He certainly didn’t make any advances to Freddie but he was only there a short time before he fled. He had wanted to meet Pixie but I don’t think he could face up to the feelings it caused Inside him. He was obviously terribly interested in homosexuality but was afraid of it as we!!. E suppose he was squeamish and frightened ol accepting himself as gay.».

Freddie’s interest led him to make regular visits to a gay household near to where he lived in Barnes. He was not open with friends about his interest in homosexuality, indeed it would have been difficult for him to articulate feelings he could not properly interpret himself. He wrote a letter to a friend at this time and protested that someone had referred to him as a ‘fully-fledged queer’ At this stage he was learning the parlance of being gay, its nuances, codes, ethics, its carnality and spirituality. He could excuse this interest as the dalliance of a liberal mind, drawing in the multiplicity of existence; a hazy, meaningless description for a state of being which, like music, later became a lifeblood.

Friends from this period found Freddie ‘fun to be with’ and recognised his unusual charm, but he was also self-centred and egotistical. «He could be quite petulant, he certainly sulked quite a lot.» said Josephine Ranken. «He was not a particularly intelligent person, he was frivolous and rather silly, not someone of great profundity. You had the feelmg that he wanted to be famous but wasn’t really sure how to go about it. He was certainly in the wrong place at art school, his work was pretty poor.».

Freddie was clearly extremely ambitious and unlike many of his peers he refused to fall into a drink or dope stupor, in fact he rarely smoked pot and was content to sip the odd glass of port and lemon. His aspiration was evident and several acquaintances suspected that beneath his dandy persona was a shrewd, unusually cool business mind. He did not have the kind of aptitude that could be applied indiscriminately, it had to be on his own terms, but there was definite focus; given the backers and the breaks he would not flounder. «He was not unpleasant, he wouldn’t have climbed on anybody to get to where he wanted to be,» said another college friend. )ohn Matheson. «He certainly wasn’t ruthless. ! was glad when he went on to make it because there were other people from college who have done extremely well and they were much, much worse than Freddie.».

Mike Bersin was astonished by Freddie’s vanity; not a minute passed without him adjusting some item of clothing or rearranging his hair: «He really seemed to understand that to get somewhere, to be a star I suppose, that you had to look right. He was so conscious of his image, it was unbelievable. I suppose he was just very determined.» He found Freddie’s personality to be a mixture of piercing, sometimes crude melodrama, and. alternatively, thoughtful gentility: «He could be incredibly helpful at times, a real gentle guy. It depended on what mode of behaviour he happened to be in at the time.».

Freddie’s dalliance in music allowed him to conceal further his ethnic background. He had already reinvented himself during his passage through art college, but he was anxious to lose his surname which was too much of a clue. He suddenly announced that he wished to be known as Freddie Mercury. It seemed as if Farookh Bulsara had never really existed. Calling himself after the messenger of the gods was a move of incredible pretension, but it was done with just enough knowing irony for the others to accept it as typically Freddie.

After Freddie left his flat in Kensington to move in with the others in Barnes he got on particularly well with Roger Taylor, and in the summer of 1969 they took over a stall at Kensington Market where they sold odd pieces of art and antiques they had acquired chiefly from friends. Like most aspiring musicians they needed to earn money to cover their rent and food and the market provided relatively easy cash. They paid £10 per week to rent the stall and relished the banter and barter with the stall holders, many of whom were themselves aspiring artists, singers, writers or actors,.

The pair did not really have any experience in trading in antiques, or even junk, which was how most of their friends described their wares, so they decided instead to sell second hand clothes. The market was quite chic - Julie Christie was occasionally spotted perusing the stalls and Steve Howe of Yes was a regular customer. More usually, greenhorns from out of town and tourists desperate for a slice of hip London walked the aisles and they were often willing to pay inflated prices for clothes they could have bought for a fraction of the price at a local jumble sale. Freddie and Roger, both frivolous clothes horses («Roger and 1 go poncing and ultrablagging just about everywhere and lately we’ve being termed as a couple of queens,» wrote Freddie to a friend at about this time) and instinctively knew which items to stock: they had previously been convincing fashion victims themselves. On one occasion they bought a hundred fur coats from a rag merchant in Battersea for £50 and later sold them for up to €8 each.

Their stall, though much mythologised. was extremely small Some of their friends referred to it as ‘the telephone box’, though, with more than a tinge of irony. Freddie and Roger described themselves as gentlemen’s outfitters. The quiet periods of the day were enlivened by the use of a devious periscope device they had set up near the till area which offered a revealing view of girls changing into mini-skirts, halter-neck tops and knee-length boots at the side of a stall opposite theirs.

The semi-detached house where they lived in Ferry Road was called ‘Carmel’ and it quickly became notorious among their friends. It was little more than a squat where friends could meet, lounge on any one of the mattresses scattered around, and smoke reefers. It had previously been home to people of quite different tastes -the garden was floodlit by green fluorescent lights and everything, from the ornate name sign on the wall to the cheap nylon curtains, was a model of kitsch. There was never any food in the cupboards, only tea bags and milk in the fridge, and a large dustbin was left tn the middle of the kitchen floor. When the smell became too hideous to bear, the least stoned resident would drag it into the yard. At any given lime it was almost impossible to discern who was paying the rent or passing through.

The occupants drank jasmine tea, smoked a great deal of marijuana, ate hash cakes and sometimes strummed an acoustic guitar propped against the wall. The dope was hidden in the jasmine tea and each week someone was allotted the job of separating the different leaves. Freddie, who usually refused to take any kind of drug, became accidentally stoned one night when he drank the ‘tea’ before it had been sifted. He was not sanctimonious about his antipathy to drugs and let the others do as they wished without comment. They had adopted the posture of bohemianism, but it was idealistic and indulgent rather than polemic or heartfelt. They were mostly from sheltered bourgeois backgrounds, dropping out, slumming it, treading water before turning into their parents, or superior versions if possible. Acid and wine were cheap and sex still a source of recreation. Much of the politicised conviction of the Sixties had become dissipated and only the hedonism, a rather weary version at that, remained.

Fran Leslie, another student at Eating, felt this aura of hedonism in decline was best captured in Malcolm Bradbury’s book Thr History Man. «It all got terribly romanticised afterwards but at the time it was about stealing money from friends to buy dope, regular trips to the clap clime. Yoko Ono doing daft things at Covent Garden,» she said. «The lecturers all thought the female students were perks of the job, to pick up at will. There were a few intellectuals, I remember meeting Derek Jarman at about this time and sensing his dynamism, but otherwise everyone was young and confused I suppose. They were good times though, I’d go back there any day if I could.».

Fran Leslie was on the same course at Ealing but started two years after Freddie. She remembers him calling in to see old friends and he once entered a lecture partway through. The lecturer, Jack Drew, who was infamous for his appalling memory. ticked Freddie off.

«Do you know how late you are-» he asked.

«Yes, two years,» replied Freddie.

Freddie had a unique quality ivhich the other students weren’t slow to recognise; he was rarely mocked or ridiculed for his effeminate mannerisms. «He had a slight lisp and a slightly sibilant tone to his voice.» recalls Fran Leslie. «He was liked because he was friendly and gregarious. He looked very Asian with his jet black hair and dark skin. I don’t recall him as being all that thin, he was quite big. Maybe it appeared that way because he was always with Roger who was very slight. They complemented each other well. Freddie dark and Roger fair. I always liked Roger. He was engaging, a sweet character with a slightly shy manner which was quite attractive.».

Around this time Freddie began a relationship with Mary Austin the woman who was to become his lifelong companion They met during one of Freddie s frequent visits to Biba. London’s ultimate fashion house based in Kensington High Street The store was scented by incense and decorated by ferns the sales assistants wore lilac lipstick and brightly coloured tights Mary Austin worked there as a manageress and knew many of Freddie s circle of friends. Although it was ostensibly a boutique for women many men also shopped there since the accepted boundaries of dress had become so indistinct Freddie termed himself a Biba freak and bought a good deal of his extravagant clothes from there; it was not surprising that his first proper relationship should be forged in such a cosmopolitan environment.

The pair had met at a time when Freddie s sexuahtv was at its most ambiguous. He was certainly exploring his homosexual tendencies but somehow he and Mary established a framework for a successful liaison. They were accepted as a ‘couple’ by their friends and were exactly that in terms of their compatibility and fondness for one another. I know a lot of people find it hard to understand our relationship and yes, it is an odd bond, but other people who come into our lives just have to accept it ‘ Freddie once said «We love each other very much and look after each other».

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 822