Freddie Mercury - The Definite Biography: Lesley Ann Jones

Freddie Mercury - The Definitive Biography

by Lesley-Ann Jones

Doing a Queen or Freddie biography is a tricky thing. They were notoriously private - and Freddie was especially protective of his privacy and was conscious of protecting his friends and family from the media glare. There's also the fact that, y'know - Freddie has been dead for 20 years. How much new information can you come up with? In fact, since his death, there's been quite a number of Queen/Freddie biographies ( I know, because Jones references about 10 of them herself) and this book isn't the first to suggest it is the 'definitive' one. 

Having said that, I've never actually read any of the previous books - and I have been a Queen fan for most of my life. There's actually not much I know about Queen on a personal level, so I was very keen to give it a go. 

Lesley Ann Jones was the 'Rock Correspondent' for the Daily Mail back when newspapers actually paid people to be Rock Correspondents and back when working for the Daily Mail wasn't quite as embarrassing and reprehensible as it might be today. 

I think if you want to claim that your version is the definitive, you need to get hold of people who haven't spoken to biographers before, or to people who were very close to Queen and to Freddie. Jones only half succeeds here. She speaks at length to long time Queen manager: Jim Beach, 5th member of Queen: Spike Edney and various other producers, managers and lovers - including Barbara Valentin (one of the 2 women that Freddie was apparently sexually active with) and Jim Hutton who was his partner for the last 10 years of his life. Crucially though, she gets nothing new from May, Taylor or Deacon, nothing from Mary Austin - his long time companion/girlfriend and quotes from people like Elton John, George Michael and Bob Geldof are taken from books and magazines (can it really be that hard to get Bob Geldof to talk for 10 minutes?). Instead we get Rick Wakeman and Dave Clarke. 

In general, its a curious though mostly interesting book. It feels very uneven in terms of areas that she chooses to go into detail about, and those she doesn't. I guess you have to use the information you have. 

For example, there's very little at all about the creative process or studio work behind any of Queen's or Freddies albums. There's about 3 pages out of 350 covering the writing, making and releasing of "A Kind of Magic", "The Miracle" and "Innuendo", whereas Freddie's nightclubbing and partying antics in New York get acres of space. Obviously being a wild party animal was part of the attraction and interest in Freddie, but he was actually primarily a musician - something that seems to come a distant second in this book. 

One of the main themes in the book is Freddie's struggle with his sexuality. His families faith and culture were disapproving of homosexuality - and from a young age, he was dispatched off to boarding school - making him desperate for his parents love and therefore not wanting to shame them. For all of his adult life he seems to want to be heterosexual, but quite plainly isn't - finally becoming more comfortable with it in later life. There is a suggestion that because he had low self esteem and was ashamed of his sexuality, he was never really careful about who he slept with and never really had self-preservation in mind. 

For me, the most interesting part of the book is around Live Aid - undoubtedly Queen's finest moment. They were an extremely hard working and organised band - they were one of the few acts to rehearse their Live Aid performance, and once of the few to bring their own sound engineer to manage their 20 minute slot - this is the sort of info I could have done with more of.