LISTEN ON APPLE

LISTEN ON SPOTIFY

I first learned of Peter Freestone when I was studying Freddie Mercury. What does it mean when I studied Freddie Mercury? It meant for two months, all I did was read books about Freddie Mercury, watched documentaries about Freddie Mercury, listened to Freddie Mercury interviews, and listened to Queen music. Once I’d finished that I wrote two essays about what I’d learned.

Studying great artists was born out of my frustration of consuming all kinds of information with nothing to show for it and nothing to retain. The idea was if I consume as much about someone for a couple of months and then create something based on what I learned it would help me to retain things better.

I wasn’t necessarily planning on starting with Freddie Mercury but I started reading “Freddie Mercury in His Own Words” and was hooked. What he was talking about back in the 1970s and 1980s was still just as relevant to artists of today. He was way ahead of his time so I decided to go all in and consume as much as a I could.

As I scoured the internet for Freddie Mercury content, I stumbled upon an interview with Peter. Knowing I’d planned on launching this show, I decided to ask him to be one of my early guests.

I got in touch with his manager Milan, and we set up a time. Milan also offered to record Peter with his camera and microphone which really elevated the end product of the interview. Also, fun fact for you — I had microphone troubles on my end so I had to re-record every single one of my questions. I aimed to get them as close to the original recording as possible, every single stutter and stumble was done intentionally. For the most part, I don’t think you can tell but there a couple places where I feel like the emotion doesn’t always translate.

We had to postpone our first scheduled time as Peter had an unplanned trip to the hospital. Less then a week after he was back home he made time to do this interview. I remember on the day him telling me how tired he was but he still pushed through for over 40 minutes.

Get a copy of Peter’s book: https://rightplace-righttime.eu/

Subscribe to my newsletter: https://jacobkelly.substack.com/

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheJacobKelly

TRANSCRIPT
*Edited for clarity

I've heard you say you worked for both Freddie Mercury, the man, and Freddie Mercury, the superstar. And I was curious what the differences were between those two people and what the similarities were.

Freddie Mercury, the superstar, Freddie Mercury, the musical genius… That was Freddie that created the music. The person that performed the music, that giant on the stage. That was Freddie Mercury, the star. But the Freddie that I also knew so well was this 175 centimeter man who I would look down on because I was 187 [centimeters], you know? You think of Freddie Mercury and you look at the videos, you see the shows, everything and he is a giant. But offstage, the real person was, I think, the word is compact. But also the difference, the person on the stage – you look at Live Aid, he could hold the whole world in the palm of his hand. And yet also the Freddie I knew offstage could not walk into a room with maybe four people that he didn't know in it. He could not walk in on his own. He just didn't have enough self confidence. If he went in with someone and that person then introduced Freddie to everybody, he'd be fine. He'd be the life and soul of the party. But he could not introduce himself to people on his own.

And why do you think that was? What allowed him to be this superstar when he was on stage, is it that he knew that everyone was there to see him and what made him shy in those more private moments?

It was his job. As far as Freddie was concerned, when he went on to the stage he had to make every person in that audience feel as though he was performing just for them. He had to have every pair of eyes on him. And that's what he used to do. That's what he could do. That's what he was brilliant at. But again, offstage, if we went into a restaurant, he would prefer to sit in a dark corner rather than sit in the table in the center of the room. He didn't like being the center of attention. He didn't mind the court jester, whoever [that] happened to be – whenever Freddie went out, there was always someone there to make him laugh. He just laughed. Whether it was Paul Prenter or whether it was Peter Straker. There was always someone around who he knew he was going to be laughing with, and he didn't care if they were the center of attention, that was fine by him. He just didn't need it – I suppose, because he had enough when he was on the stage, you know. Also, he was able to do it on the stage because there was always the security barrier. He knew that people would not be able to get from that audience onto the stage to him.

I'm obsessed with this idea of the ‘it factor’. What do you think it was about him that allowed him to take everyone, the world, like you said, in the palm of his hand, literally? At Live Aid there was, I don't like 75,000 people in the audience and like a billion people watching around the world and they were waiting on his every single word. How did he make it feel like he was performing just for you?

Because his eyes were never still. If you have a look at shows, you have a look at videos of shows, he was looking all over. He was everywhere so that everybody could have the feeling he was searching for them. Of any rock musician that I've known, Freddie was the greatest performer. He didn't go onto stage just to sing the songs, get through the hour, hour and a half, two hour show, go off and go to bed. He went out there to entertain the crowd. You know, look at one of his songs, “Let Me Entertain You”. That was what he was all about. He really loved theater. He loved live theater because it was a performance. He felt he was able to put that through the music, using the music to actually perform on stage to be part of this amazing show. You know, for Freddie, it wasn't just another gig. I mean, Queen never were these four people in their denims and t-shirts going on, singing the songs and going off again. Right from the very start when Freddie was with them, he was performing. He gave a performance, he gave a show. That's why the lighting was always so much bigger and better. Once he got through, I think it was basically as soon as they started using a keyboard player, you notice that Freddie hardly ever touched the piano, but he was on every square inch of the stage. He would use it. So many performers will stay within their two square meters of stage space. I mean, they give a great performance that'll give a great show. But within their two square meters. But it didn't matter how big the stage was for Freddie. Wherever you looked, Freddie was there. You couldn't do anything but have your eyes on him all the time. So the eyes were following him as much as he was following the people.

What fascinates me most about those live performances is that they're done for hundreds of thousands of people, but where they start is in a room by yourself. By yourself trying to find the right words to capture emotion that is both deeply personal and universally understood. From everything I have read and listened to, Freddie's writing process was unique. He would write very quickly from my understanding. There's – I don't believe it's a legend, I believe it's a true story where he wrote ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ in the Bathtub in like 10 minutes or something like that.

Yes, something like that. The thing is, the music side was easy for him. The actual music was easy. I mean, he would go into the studio – the thing is, you have to also remember Queen studio time always started at 2:00 in the afternoon. What's the point of saying, “Oh, see you tomorrow morning at 10:00” when nobody would be there? And can you really ask any singer to give their best at 10:00 in the morning? I don't think you'll find anyone who can. So 2:00 was the normal start time. Freddie would go in, he'd have a little idea in his head, and he'd go sit at the piano and just play around with some chords. Just do some chord progressions, see where they led him. He could do this for maybe half an hour, 40 minutes, and if he stayed there longer you knew there was an idea that was actually going to happen. And then he would just create a tune around those chords. The music itself, as I say, would take a day, maybe two days, and that would be done. But then would come the hard part for Freddie, [which] would be when he has to do the lyrics. The lyrics were the part of the song he dreaded because whatever the lyrics were, they had to make sense. The whole song didn't have to be a story, it didn't have to make sense in that way. But he would try never to use bad grammar within a sentence and that would be so hard for him because he really wanted it to be right. Very, very rarely – I can think of maybe one, maybe two occasions – where he actually had some lyrics done before he had some music. But if you look at how many songs that he created, almost every single one of them was music first words later.

While that may seem like a burden in the moment, I know most writers prefer the idea of having written as opposed to the act of writing itself. With Freddie, it was almost like he was trying to encapsulate how a specific story made him feel and not the story itself. It's more universal, because not everyone can relate to a specific story, but everyone can relate to feeling a certain emotion.

Yeah, the thing is, if you actually look at the majority of his songs, they were mainly about one emotion… love. If you look through all of his songs, I think a good 80%-85% are about love. I mean, Love of My Life, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Somebody To Love... It's all love because that's what he was about. That was what Freddie was about. This sounds crazy, I've actually written some lyrics for a couple of songs that the band here (Prague) have done. Basically they're sort of about Freddie's emotions, about Freddie's feelings in different places, different situations. I remember in the love song I actually say that love is a quality, it is not a quantity. So when someone says, “oh, this is the love of my life”, does that mean you've given them 100% of your love? And if that's the case, what happens if you meet some other people, great friends that you love? Do you have to take some of that percentage of love away from the love of your life to give to other people? No, it's a never ending supply. It's the quality that is important, not the quantity. You can give all of your love to many people.

Which I heard [Freddie] did. From my understanding, he had a very deep love for his friends, but on the romantic side, things didn't quite go as well.

I actually write about that in my autobiography. The thing is, obviously my autobiography covers all of my life and Freddie was 12 important years of that life. But because of the first book, I don't want to repeat myself, so I've actually gone into a little bit more detail about that, exactly as you have said. Freddie had the most amazing sense of a person if they were going to be a friend. But he had absolutely no idea where lovers were concerned. That's really where that saying “love is blind” comes in because Freddie would fall for someone without actually knowing enough about them.

Do you think that if he'd had a better understanding of those people he had romantic interest in that would have impacted the music that he made, the art that he made? Do you think that a certain level of heartbreak was required for him to make some of those songs?

I think, yeah. I mean, the hardest thing in the world is the what ifs, because I was there for the real thing. If anything different happened, then yes, the songs would have been different. If he was totally happy from 1975 onwards, a lot of the songs would not have been written. He wouldn't have needed to write Somebody to Love, he wouldn't have needed to write Crazy Little Thing Called Love, because he would have had [love]. He would then have had to have tried and found another emotion to write about. I'm a firm believer in whatever happens in our lives is meant to happen. Sadly for Freddie, I think he just was meant to go through these bad situations, sad situations. It made him much stronger and [allowed] him to be able to write about the things. The thing is, Freddie had this amazing ability to actually encapsulate all of his feelings in a song. Most people with their emotions need three, four, five, six songs to get through, but he was able to make them really intense and mean something. If he had that perfect love from the beginning, I don't think the songs would have happened.

With having such a deep emotional attachment to a song and a song being a representation of your emotion, did that make it hard to pitch the songs to the rest of the band? Because from my understanding, the process was everyone go their separate ways, write their own songs, come back, and then kind of fight it out to determine which were the songs that would end up on the album.

Well, it's not as simple as that. The original idea for basically any song came from one person. The end result was the work of five people, the members of the band, plus the producer. This is again where Queen are different to the majority of bands in that each band member has had number one hits that they've written. Most of the time, the person who writes the music, writes the lyrics. There were a few times where they all got together to create a few bits and pieces, but the main idea came from one person and that person knew exactly what the other ones were going to be able to contribute. I don't think there was any time where one band member would turn around and say, “well, I'm not having anything to do with that track, I don't like the words for that”. I don't think that ever happened, not to my knowledge. I think it was the Miracle album, they actually worked on 36 different tracks and had to bring it down to ten. That wasn't the case with all of the albums, but usually there was always a little bit more than they needed. But it wasn't a case of, you know, “well, this one's rubbish, this one's rubbish”, it didn't work out like that. Each of them was given due care and attention and they listened to them because it was a band. It wasn't just one person creating the music for the whole band. This was a band who created their own music, so they tried to have at least one track from John, one track from Roger, but on most albums, if you look at it, there's usually [at least] two from each of them, and then three from Brian, three from Freddie. It's just that they wanted to balance the album out. Each of them had a different style. So again, it was part of the balance of the album. I think at the very, very beginning – if you go back to the very beginning, you'll find that Brian actually wrote more of the songs than anybody else. Then it became sort of equal with Freddie, with one track from [Roger and John], and then it just sort of rounded out a little bit more. Of course, in the old days the money was different because the performance money was different to the actual writing money and all of that sort of thing. That's why in the end everything was written by Queen, so that it just was easy to split it four ways. If you think of something back in the seventies, you think that Freddie must have made millions from Bohemian Rhapsody, but so did Roger Taylor because he was on the B-side of the single, even though people might not have played it as much. But that's just the way things used to go. That's why I mean, there was never really any big complaints about money or anything within the band. There was nothing like that, even though if you believe the film, that's what everything was all about. It wasn't strictly like that, you know, I often compare the band – it's either a marriage with four people in it or it's a company with four CEOs. Freddie always insisted he was 25% of Queen, no more, no less. He hated it when it was “Freddie Mercury and his band Queen”, because it wasn't. He was the lead singer of Queen and that's all he was as far as he was concerned. I mean, he did do an interview and he did make a tongue in cheek comment. A journalist asked Freddie, “who writes most of the music for this band?” and Freddie just turned around and said, well, look, you can go back through the albums and count the tracks and I think you'll find that Brian has written more tracks than anybody else… but I've written the hits.

You mentioned how each member of the band had their own unique style, and I think that that's a contributing factor to Queen's success. They never put out an album where all ten, 11, 12 songs sounded the same, they all sounded slightly different. Even if you zoom out further than that and you look album to album, none of their albums sound the same. All the albums have a slightly different sound – obviously, the core tenants are there: Freddie's vocals, Brian's guitar, Roger's high harmonies. The bricks they used to build the house are the same, but they build the house differently every time. I'm curious if that was an intentional decision by the band, to make sure none of their albums sounded the same and evolve their sound with every record.

Not specifically. But the thing is, Freddie said in an interview that his music should be treated like a tissue. You pick it up, use it, throw it away. People would ask him about music from the past, his music from five, six, seven, eight years before, and he’d say, “I'm not interested in that anymore. That's done, that's finished. I want to do the nex track, the next music”. Queen never really followed fashion. The nearest they did to that was, I think, the album Hot Space, which was not one of their bestsellers when they tried following with more beats, with more [of a] almost disco type thing, because that was huge in those days and it didn't quite work. But they never followed what other people did. They always did their own music and they never wanted to repeat themselves. They were actually painting themselves into a corner musically because they had done so many different styles. If you look at things like ‘Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon’ Millionaire Waltz, Bohemian Rhapsody, Great King Rat through to Innuendo, I mean, the mix of styles that are involved there is amazing. When you think of Queen music, you hear huge guitars and massive harmonies. That's Queen. [Those were things] that they did carry through basically on each album. But the actual beat, the actual feel, the emotions were all different on each album.

So it wasn't necessarily an attempt to innovate the sound, but more so an attempt to make sure they didn't do what they'd done previously.

Basically, yeah. The thing is, if you look at some things, The Works, sort of looked back to The Game, but again, it wasn't the same. There were differences. They didn't want to be in the position where anybody could say, “yeah, but look, they've just done something like that. They did that a couple of years ago. Haven't they got any ideas left?” They didn't want to be in that position. The critics might not have liked what they were doing, but the critics never liked what Queen did. So, you know, it didn't actually bother the band and the thing is, it didn't bother the fans either, because the fans still loved it.

You spent time with some of the greatest artists in history. Obviously, there's Freddie, but you spent time in the studio with David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Montserrat Caballé, I believe, was performing your first day working at the Opera House, if I'm not mistaken.

Yes she was. I was into opera before I started there, but not to any extreme. But you're right. The very first night I was working at the Royal Opera House, she sang and she convinced me that opera was my music.

Are there any similarities, consistent traits you've noticed amongst these high level performers? Is there anything that they all have in common?

I think this goes for anybody who goes onto stage, they want the audience to leave happy. If it's a sad opera or whatever, they want the audience to leave content. They want the audience to leave having had an amazing time. That goes for opera, for ballet, for rock… you don't want the audience to leave thinking, “oh, well, that was a nice waste of time. Let's see what happens tomorrow.” No, they’ve got to leave any sort of performance thinking, “wow, what an amazing night I have just had!”

There has to be a level of satisfaction. There can't be an empty feeling leaving the venue.

No, not for the audience and certainly not for the artist. After a show and this was from the Royal Ballet Days, from opera days, through Freddie days, each person was their own harshest critic. I mean, the dressing room sometimes after a Queen show – there were only two people allowed in the dressing room for about half an hour after a Queen show and that was Paul Prenter and myself. And we were just there getting the wet clothes off of the band. Then the band themselves could then get everything out, shouting at each other about how Freddie forgot words, Brian forgot how to play, and “what happened to you, Roger on the drums, where did they go?” Mirrors get smashed, all of that sort of thing. But then after half an hour, that's all finished, done with, and life goes on. It did not happen that often, but after every show, they sort of went through it. Most of the time they were content, they were happy with the end result. But again, as I say, through with the Royal Ballet, at the Royal Opera, people came off the stage and the first thing they’d say, “I did that wrong. That wasn't good”. Rather than saying “oh, that was amazing”. They always pick out the bad things first and then can go back and think, “yeah, but overall I think that was actually amazing. That was wonderful”.

When they have those rows after a show, are there any tangible takeaways they know they need to take to improve on the next show? Or is it more so just to have a level of catharsis? They just need to yell at each other to get it out.

I think it was catharsis more than anything else. It's like any time someone is full of adrenaline, you just have to get it out. This is why nobody would ever – with the Royal Ballet on tour, Queen on tour, nobody went to bed straight after a show. You just had to go out to get rid of the adrenaline. You could not have gone to bed, you could not have gone to sleep. Even if you had gone straight back to the hotel, it would have been impossible. This is the thing artists have to deal with. This is their life. You know, so many will always complain about being on stage, but if they're not on a stage for a month or something, then they’re crawling up the walls. They need to get back onto the stage. It's their second home.

How is that for you being around such high energy all the time? Because for those that don't know, not only did you work with Freddie for 12 years, but you also lived with him for 12 years. You saw him pretty much 24 hours a day. So how was it for you to be around such high energy all the time? How is it for you now? Because from my understanding, things aren't quite as fast paced as they once were. Was that an adjustment you had to go through? How do you look back on those times?

I don't miss them. I think about them often. I think about the good times. I think about the bad times. Would I do it again? I suppose I would. For me it was part of what has been the most amazing life. From when I was young, I've always loved traveling. I traveled to India when I was six years old, three weeks on a ship because this was before airplanes were doing regular trips. Five years in India, worked for the Royal Ballet, went on an American tour, Mexico tour, tour of Greece. I worked for Freddie, traveled around the world – I certainly got my fill of world travel. Of course, the difference with the Royal Ballet was [traveling in] normal economy and with Freddie I stayed in the best hotels, traveling first class, Concorde nine times. It was a very different life. The thing that makes me sad is people ask me questions about this and then they say, “yeah, but it wasn't a real life. That wasn't real life”. Yes, it was. It was as real for Freddie and myself as someone who goes to work in a factory each day. That's their real life. This was [my] real life. I lived it. As I say, I don't really miss it. As you get older, you can't do what you could do before. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. The body gets tired, the bones get tired, but I can always, always say that I have been there. I have done that. And I do have the T-shirt at home.

And many photos as well to prove it.

And many photos. I didn't know how many photos [I had]. Again, it was doing [my book] – I knew I had some photos in a box somewhere, but I haven't looked at them in, I don't know, 30 years. And then I found this box and I really honestly thought that all the Freddie photos were out a long time ago, and I found so many. It was a big box jam packed full of photos from all of my life and just spending time looking at them brought so many memories back. It was absolutely amazing. I say often and I will always say till the end of my life that I am the luckiest man alive because of the people I've met throughout my life, the things I've done, and the life I'm living even now for me is wonderful. It gives me everything I need. Everything to make me happy, I have. But, you know, thinking back, I know it sounds stupid, but how many people have actually spoken to a saint? I have. I mean, she wasn't at the time, but she is a saint now – Mother Teresa of Calcutta. I used to help out when I was a child. I met Maria Shriver when I was in India, both of us were about seven years old. But, you know, I met up with her. The stars in those days were the stars of the Royal Ballet. You know, Anthony Dowell, Antoinette Sibley, David Wall, Wayne England, I even saw Margot Fonteyn dancing, Nureyev, Baryshnikov. All of these people were in my day-to-day life. The singers, Pavarotti, Domingo, Caballé, Sutherland, Neilson, you name it. I've met them all. Freddie so often at dinner, would make sure that people knew he was so proud that he had stolen me from the real stars, because that's what he considered the people at the opera house, the performers there. Anybody who actually trained for their profession, he considered real stars. He did not consider himself a real star. He was a legend, but he wasn't just a star. He trained himself. Where I am now in the Czech Republic, I've met the biggest and best performers. It's just part of my life and I can do nothing but be incredibly proud and incredibly happy with how it's gone.

Where can people get a copy of the book?

There's a website called rightplace-righttime.eu. Just go on there and you'll find out how you can get it, where you can get it, what can be done. It's full of photographs from my time [with] Queen and also we've picked three artists who've done some work specifically for this book. For example, I met Freddie while I was working with the Royal Ballet [and] he was performing with the Royal Ballet. There were no photographs done, but one of the artists actually created the scene in the London Coliseum where Freddie was upside down singing Bohemian Rhapsody. Where there aren't photographs, we've created photographs, and there's just so many bits and pieces. It's all of my life up until August the 25th, 2020, when I became a Czech citizen. I mentioned to you about doing lyrics, the last chapter is the lyrics for the songs, which you can get in the book with a QR code. So you can then download the album and everything. I've tried to give as much as possible. I don't intend on dying any day soon, but I thought the finish was perfect when I became Czech.

I appreciate your time, Peter. I really do. This has been an absolute pleasure.