Queen: Will the Real Freddie Mercury Please Stand Up?

Queen is one of the biggest-selling bands in music history, and Bohemian Rhapsody is one of the highest-grossing biopics of all time. But did the movie give us a true portrait of Freddie Mercury – or is the real story so debauched, so insane, that it borders on unbelievable? To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership https://disgracelandpod.com/membership. Visit www.disgracelandpod.com/merch https://cms.megaphone.fm/organizations/c83125d2-8508-11ed-bd28-ff0aff7ee233/podcasts/efca2ef8-85f9-11ed-8fe3-bb208936046f/episodes/d117e93e-5e36-11ef-8745-5373bae4c0ff/www.disgracelandpod.com/merch to see the latest Disgraceland merch! Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER https://mailchi.mp/doubleelvis/disgraceland-email-newsletter Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/disgracelandpod/ YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@disgracelandpod X https://twitter.com/disgracelandpod (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/491024204626127/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:13Speaker 00

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• 0:44Speaker 01

  Join me, Cyndi Lauper, with chef Michelle Bernstein and Dr. Panico, to talk about psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis, the potential connection and risk of developing permanent joint damage.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Cosentyx secukinumab is prescribed for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis 300-milligram dose, and adults with active psoriatic arthritis 150-milligram dose. Don't use if you're allergic to Cosentyx. Before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. An increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur, like tuberculosis or other serious bacterial, fungal, or viral infections. Some are fatal. Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms like fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches, or cough, had a vaccine or plan to, or if inflammatory bowel disease symptoms develop or worsen. Serious allergic reactions and severe eczema-like skin reactions may occur. Learn more at 1-844-COSENTIX or cosentyx.com/cindy.

• 1:43Jake Brennan?

  Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

• 2:01Jake Brennan?

  This is a story about one of rock and roll's great libertines, and how that story has become diluted over the years. It's a story about sex clubs, and X-rated parties, and other places where fantasy becomes reality. And it's also about Queen, how that band challenged accepted norms in the music industry to become one of the best-selling bands of all time, led by their magnetic singer Freddie Mercury, a man who made great music. Unlike that music that I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called Magnifico Figaro MK2.

• 2:44Jake Brennan?

  I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to "Girls Like You" by Maroon 5, featuring Cardi B. And why would I play you that specific slice of excessively cheesy cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number-one song in America on November 2, 2018. And that was the day that the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody was released, a movie which may have given millions of people around the world a version of Freddie Mercury that never even existed.

• 3:20Jake Brennan?

  On this episode, sex clubs, debauchery, turning fantasy into reality, the real Freddie Mercury and Queen. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace Land.

• 3:46Jake Brennan?

  $911 million. That's how much Bohemian Rhapsody, the Queen biopic, has grossed worldwide since its release in 2018. $911 million. That is a lot of dough for a music biopic to pull down, enough to make it the highest grossing music biopic of all time. At least, it was the highest grossing music biopic of all time, until just a few months ago, when the new Michael Jackson movie surpassed $1 billion and snatched that title away. Still, Bohemian Rhapsody lives in rarefied air. The next highest grossing music biopic after Bohemian Rhapsody is Baz Luhrmann's 2022

• 4:30Jake Brennan?

  film about Elvis Presley. And that one doesn't even come close. Elvis, as that film is called, made $288 million, not even a third of what Bohemian Rhapsody cleared. And Bohemian Rhapsody was more than just a box office smash. It won four Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Rami Malek's portrayal of Freddie Mercury. But all that said, does Bohemian Rhapsody accurately represent the career of one of the best-selling rock bands of all time? And does it give an accurate portrayal of the personal life of its iconic frontman? Not exactly. First of all, Bohemian Rhapsody's narrative is framed by Queen's performance at Live

• 5:15Jake Brennan?

  Aid in 1985. The film does not tell you that only months before this show, Queen were seen as pariahs in the music industry, having been fined by the British Musicians Union for playing "Sun City" in apartheid South Africa. Instead, the film makes Live Aid out to be this emotionally redemptive moment in which Freddie Mercury returns to and reconciles with his bandmates after having left to make a solo album. But Freddie never quit the band. And his solo album was not a point of contention with the rest of Queen. In fact, Queen's drummer Roger Taylor had already released two solo albums of his own by this point. Was Queen's Live Aid performance absolutely riveting? Yes.

• 5:59Jake Brennan?

  Was it a kick in the ass to their career? Yes. But any notion of an emotional comeback is simply a dramatic plot device. The film also wants us to think that Freddie Mercury used the Live Aid moment to reveal to the rest of the band that he was HIV-positive. Again, Live Aid was in 1985. According to Jim Hutton, Freddie's partner near the end of his life, Freddie did not discover he was sick until later, in 1987. And even then, it's unclear how much he actually revealed to his bandmates. And then, there's that great scene with Mike Myers as the pompous EMI Records executive who doesn't want to release the song Bohemian Rhapsody as a single on account of it being nearly six minutes long.

• 6:42Jake Brennan?

  That EMI executive did not exist. You know who did tell the band that the song Bohemian Rhapsody would never get played on the radio because it was too long? Elton John.

• 6:54Jake Brennan?

  All these factual quibbles aside, the biggest dramatic license that the movie takes is with Freddie Mercury himself. Sacha Baron Cohen was originally cast to play Freddie in the film, but he left before production started because he wanted to tell some of the stories that I'm about to tell you, stories that the film ultimately could not and would not tell.

• 7:18Jake Brennan?

  Freddie Mercury was one of rock and roll's greatest libertines. A man our guy Elton has said out-partied even him. And if you know something about Elton John's hard-partying ways back in the day, then you know that that's saying something. Bohemian Rhapsody, however, does not paint a portrayal of Freddie Mercury as a great libertine. Instead, it turns him into a tragic martyr who briefly lost his way.

• 7:45Jake Brennan?

  So the question then becomes this: If Bohemian Rhapsody is guilty of creating a false Freddie Mercury, then who was the real Freddie Mercury? To answer that, you'd have to ask the people who knew him best, like Mary Austin, his one-time girlfriend, a woman Freddie once called his "common-law wife"; Peter Freestone, aka Phoebe, Freddie's longtime assistant; Jim Dutton, his partner during his last years; Leslie Ann Jones, one of his many biographers; and also, his fellow bandmates, guitarist Brian May, bassist John Deacon, and drummer Roger Taylor. The problem is, all these people will swear that they are telling you the truth, yet none of them will tell you the exact same story.

• 8:30Jake Brennan?

  Consider also the way in which all of these narrators, just like you and me, perceive things in their own way. One's personal experiences and unique points of view can cloud true objectivity. It's also worth noting that in the 1970s and 1980s, one's own truth was often kept much closer to the vest, especially if that truth ran counter to the "norm." I'm talking about gay musicians like Freddie Mercury, who rarely came out back then for fear of what such a revelation would do to their career. But it was a strangely contradictory time as well, because it was a time in which Freddie Mercury could perform in a music video on MTV while wearing a t-shirt featuring the

• 9:10Jake Brennan?

  logo of one of the most notorious gay clubs in the world, and no one was the wiser. Because it was a time when people were, well, naive. A time in which U2's Bono could be genuinely shocked when Freddie pushed him up against the wall backstage at Live Aid and talked to him like he was "chatting up a chick." Those were Bono's words, by the way. So when we take a closer look at Freddie Mercury, you can't help but ask yourself, is this real life, or is this just fantasy?

• 9:42Jake Brennan?

  By the early 1970s, rock and roll was a fantasy. Glam rock gave its participants permission to create new characters and dress them up in glitter, feather boas, and platform shoes. And just as David Bowie briefly assumed the identity of Ziggy Stardust, so too did Farouk Balsara assume the identity of Freddie Mercury. Unlike the short-lived Ziggy, however, Freddie was forever. Joining Queen allowed Freddie to leave behind the person he didn't want to be: the shy, buck-toothed, closeted kid from a very religious and strict Parsi family. But not everyone embraced the newly liberated Freddie and his band.

• 10:23Jake Brennan?

  The critics savaged Queen's brand of hard rock, which was anchored by the sound of Freddie's robust and theatrical voice and Brian May's homemade electric guitar unusually picked with British sixpence coins. The New Musical Express called their 1973 debut album "A Bucket of Urine." Another music mag, Record Mirror, said they were "the dregs of glam rock." And even when they landed their biggest hit to date, Killer Queen, the tastemakers of the world kept their knives sharpened. And as a result, Freddie Mercury became more distrustful of the press. But there's another reason why he carefully curated his public persona. He is on the record, early on, admitting, as he did to Melody Maker Magazine, that,

• 11:09Jake Brennan?

  quote, "I think mystique, not having the truth about someone, is very appealing," unquote. The truth about Queen, however, in 1975, was that they were broke, they were in debt, and they needed a big hit in a bad way. And they managed to do so with a song that was, by design, anything but a hit. Bohemian Rhapsody was a massive undertaking. Freddie Mercury's nearly six-minute song consists of five distinct parts, including an operatic middle section. It required hundreds of vocal and instrumental overdubs. It was funny, sad, moving, and exhilarating.

• 11:50Jake Brennan?

  But executives from EMI Records in the UK and Elektra Records in the US demanded that it be edited for radio. So Freddie Mercury slipped a copy of the song to London DJ Kenny Everett, who played it something like 14 times over the course of a couple days. The demand from listeners to get their hands on a copy forced the record label's hand. And on Halloween of 1975, Bohemian Rhapsody was released as a single at its intended length: five minutes and 55 seconds. One month later, it hit number one on the UK chart. Bohemian Rhapsody elevated Queen both critically and commercially, from the so-called "dregs

• 12:31Jake Brennan?

  of glam rock" to worldwide superstars who were headlining their own tour of America. Much has been written about the meaning of the song and of the murder that the narrator confesses to: "Mama just killed a man, put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he's dead." That's what Freddie sings in the song's beautiful ballad section, and it's been suggested by some that Freddie is singing about himself, that this is the coming-out song, that the man who has been killed, metaphorically speaking anyways, is Farouk Balsara, Freddie's earlier identity. And whether you buy into that reading of the song or not, Bohemian Rhapsody did give Freddie Mercury access to the kinds of things that Farouk Balsara could never have.

• 13:15Jake Brennan?

  The success of Bohemian Rhapsody in Queen's fourth album, A Night at the Opera, turned the band into theater headliners. And that was the song that put Freddie on a plane to New York City, far away from the prying eyes of the UK press, where his fantasies were waiting for him. The black limousine cut down 11th Avenue like a cloaked stranger moving through an alleyway at night. From the Beacon Theater, it went south, past Lincoln Square, past Hell's Kitchen, into Chelsea, and then to the Meatpacking District, until it finally came to a stop outside a rundown building on Washington Street. The driver put it in park and the engine idled in the cold.

• 13:58Jake Brennan?

  Sitting in the backseat, Freddie Mercury looked out through tinted windows at the red door that sat conspicuously on the building's black facade. The only indication of what was behind the red door was written in white to the right: "Private Club," it said, with a white arrow that extended from the words to the door, and with the building's number, 835, stamped directly below the arrow. Despite the lack of signage, Freddie Mercury knew exactly what was behind that red door, just like the hundreds of other men who were regulars here. First, there were the stairs that led to the second floor. Then, the posted dress code that prohibited suits, ties, dress pants, and cologne, but allowed for leather, levis, and sweat.

• 14:42Jake Brennan?

  And then the club itself, the mineshaft, as it was known, a nightclub where you didn't dance, you fucked. Freddie stepped out of that limo and went in through the red door, and the smell of it hit him as it always did. It was the smell of skin on skin, of hot, anonymous breath laced with cheap beer and cigarettes, the smell of fantasy. No one knew he was here, not Brian May, or John Deacon, or Roger Taylor, and not Mary Austin, Freddie's former girlfriend. Because here in New York, under the cover of night and in the gay club underground, Freddie Mercury had no need to pretend that she was still his girlfriend and that he

• 15:26Jake Brennan?

  was just one of the boys. Here in New York, he was one of the men. One of the men who stumbled out of the mineshaft the next morning as the sun struggled to rise, one of the men who weaved their way between bloody animal carcasses hanging on hooks out in the street, men whose deepest, darkest fantasies were quickly becoming a reality one night at a time.

• 16:12Speaker 00

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• 16:41Speaker 01

  Join me, Cindy Lauber, with chef Michelle Bernstein and Dr. Panico, to talk about psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis, the potential connection and risk of developing permanent joint damage.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  Cosentyx secukinumab is prescribed for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis 300-milligram dose, and adults with active psoriatic arthritis 150-milligram dose. Don't use if you're allergic to Cosentyx. Before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. An increased risk of infections and lower ability to fight them may occur, like tuberculosis or other serious bacterial, fungal, or viral infections. Some are fatal. Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms like fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches, or cough, had a vaccine or plan to, or if inflammatory bowel disease symptoms develop or worsen. Serious allergic reactions and severe eczema-like skin reactions may occur. Learn more at 1-844-COSENTIX or cosentyx.com/cindy.

• 17:44Jake Brennan?

  Freddie Mercury wasn't the only one indulging in fantasies out on the road as Queen grew more and more famous. Roger Taylor, the band's drummer, who wrote the B-side to Bohemian Rhapsody, the self-explanatory "I'm in Love With My Car," was dabbling in his own heterosexual version of Freddie's carnal odyssey. One day, partying with the guys in Thin Lizzy, and the next, finding himself at the center of an alleged sex tape that may or may not have been stolen and held for a king's ransom, but that's another story entirely. Bohemian Rhapsody, the song, the very thing that allowed for Queen's pursuit of fantasy, the thing that preceded Freddie's hiring of personal assistants and bodyguards to help guide him through New York's leather underground, it eventually earned the distinction

• 18:27Jake Brennan?

  in the UK as the third best-selling song of all time. But back in 1977, the song's staying power and Queen's ability to endure were constantly being called into question. They continued to get shit on by the British press. Writing in the NME about Queen's fifth album, 1976's A Day at the Races, journalist Nick Kent simply said, "I hate this album." But there was a threat to Queen greater than the pen of Nick Kent. It was a new sound that hacked away at Bohemian Rhapsody's overindulgence and bloat, the same sound now lobbing a gob of spit in the face of Freddie Mercury's fantasy.

• 19:11Jake Brennan?

  Punk rock was poised to render Queen irrelevant. You could not avoid it. Lord knows Freddie tried. Johnny Rotten's nasal whine was echoing down the halls, just as Johnny's band, The Sex Pistols, were echoing throughout London and beyond. More a rumbling than an echo, a gathering storm was coming for them, coming for Freddie's intricate compositions, his songs with five distinct sections and hundreds of overdubs. Johnny Rotten looked at Freddie Mercury and saw something that was broken and decayed, something that needed to be tossed in the fire.

• 19:50Jake Brennan?

  Here at Wessex Studios in North London, Freddie and Queen were working on their sixth studio album, News of the World, while Johnny and the Pistols were simultaneously recording their debut in another room. Punk was the giant killer, or so went the thinking. And Queen, going on their seventh year as a band, was the Goliath in need of toppling. The press glommed onto the whole ordeal. The headline of an interview with Freddie Mercury read, "Is This Man a Pratt?" And those reading had to stop and wonder. The bodysuits, the one-pieces, the riot of chest hair that exploded just above the cucumber-sized bulge in his trousers. Queen was slick. Queen was contrived. Queen was utter fantasy.

• 20:34Jake Brennan?

  And as Johnny Rotten liked to point out, there was nothing real about that. But that's where they were wrong. The punk ethos may have sought to vanquish their kind, but Queen used it to their own advantage. Not only to survive, but to thrive. "We Will Rock You," recorded at Wessex while the Pistols were busy making Nevermind the Bollocks, stripped Queen's typically ornate sheen down to the bone. Its naked production, just stomping and clapping, and Brian May's guitar solo accompanying a cappella voices was as shocking as it was rousing. Equally so was another song, "We Are the Champions," which threw the Sex Pistols' challenge back right into their faces. "We Are the Champions" is a song that says,

• 21:19Jake Brennan?

  "You come for Queen, and you better not miss." Both songs forged an even stronger connection with Queen's growing audience, in part because they were inspired by the communal chants of football fans, a similar strategy that Noel Gallagher would later employ to great effect when writing some of Oasis's biggest hits. When "We Will Rock You" became the band's biggest hit in the US to date, it further validated the power of Queen in the eye of the punk storm. But the music wasn't the only thing the punks stripped down. Freddie was streamlining his own physical appearance. Those flamboyant bodysuits were soon a thing of the past. In their place, Freddie began dressing more like the man in New York's gay club scene,

• 22:02Jake Brennan?

  the gay clone, or castro clone look, as it was called. Tight sleeveless shirts, tight denim, studded leather belt, mustache. Freddie may have adopted the look of a working-class everyman, but he was still the consummate rocker. He remained rock and roll's reigning libertine. He was dropping 4,000 pounds a week on cocaine. He was whisking his band away to faraway places, to Switzerland and France, where they recorded their next album, Jazz. Like the Rolling Stones before them, Queen were exiles, dodging the taxman in the name of art. There, they took in the Tour de France. There, Freddie took a cyclist to bed. The one-night-stand inspired him to write "Bicycle Race,"

• 22:48Jake Brennan?

  which, along with "Fat Bottomed Girls," are the two songs referenced in the three-panel fold-out image of naked women riding bikes that came packaged with Jazz's first pressings that I have framed and hanging on my wall, by the way, but that's another story as well. That image alone may have added to the smokescreen of Freddie's sexuality, but it merely hinted at the outright hedonism that was now part and parcel of Queen's modus operandi. When it came to the truth, hinting was all the bohemian rhapsody biopic could do. Because the truth went far beyond fantasy. The truth became unfilmable. No studio on earth would have greenlit that movie if they had to tell the story

• 23:32Jake Brennan?

  of what really went down with Queen in the 1970s. On Halloween, 1978, Freddie Mercury, Brian May, John Deacon, Roger Taylor, their crew and entourage, along with many celebrities and journalists, descended upon the Imperial Ballroom at the Fairmont Hotel in New Orleans. The occasion was a celebration of the impending release of Queen's new album, Jazz. According to a number of articles written about this night in the pages of Rolling Stone, Interview Magazine, Playboy, and Uncut, as you approached the door to the Imperial Ballroom, you were met by a greeter who offered to procure you oral sex from a man or woman of your choice.

• 24:16Jake Brennan?

  Inside the ballroom, your senses were overwhelmed. Naked women were spread out on banquet tables, somehow smoking cigarettes, from their vaginas. More naked women writhed around in a bathtub of raw liver. Fire eaters swallowed balls of flame, while circus geeks bit the heads off of chickens, minstrels, and fucking blackface. Strippers dressed as nuns dancing in bamboo cages. Little people walking around with trays of cocaine strapped to their heads. Lobster, oysters, caviar, Cristal. All in, the party cost upwards of 200,000 pounds,

• 24:57Jake Brennan?

  equivalent to well over a million American dollars today. But as wild as this would all seem to you or me were we to stroll into the Fairmont Hotel's Imperial Ballroom in 1978, to Freddie Mercury and Queen, it was just another party. The bar was set here, high above and beyond anything anyone could imagine. Above and beyond what you've been led to believe about Freddie Mercury and Queen throughout the annals of music history and in some music biopic. Roughly one year later, Freddie Mercury paid to fly more than 100 of his friends from the UK to New York in order to celebrate his 33rd birthday.

• 25:42Jake Brennan?

  Freddie's appetite for drugs and sex at this time had become difficult to satiate. Men he'd met at the mineshaft and other New York clubs joined in on the action, and again, according to some who were there, a five-long-day orgy ensued. Now, I'm not going to go into any more salacious details here. I'm not going to talk about how the sideshow carnival nature of the New Orleans party continued unabated, or about how certain men and women performed certain sexual acts that you might say were impossible or downright deadly, because I'm not looking to sensationalize what went on, but I'm also not looking to sanitize what went on like the biopic does. And I'm certainly not looking to shame anyone either, least of all Freddie Mercury. But what was happening, seemingly every night on the regular

• 26:25Jake Brennan?

  in Queen's orbit, was truly insane. And to understand what happened next to Freddie, to Queen, to the gay community in New York and in the world at large, you have to understand where Freddie Mercury was coming from at this very moment. Here's a quote from Freddie, and it's one that wasn't in the movie either. "New York is Sin City," he said. "And here I am, free to slut myself to the hilt."

• 26:58Speaker 04

  We'll be right back after this word, word, word.

• 27:03Speaker 05

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• 27:34Speaker 01

  Join me, Cyndi Lauper, with chef Michelle Bernstein and Dr. Panico to talk about psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis, the potential connection and risk of developing permanent joint damage.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  Cosentyx secukinumab is prescribed for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, 300-milligram dose, and adults with active psoriatic arthritis, 150-milligram dose. Don't use if you're allergic to Cosentyx. Before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. An increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur, like tuberculosis or other serious bacterial, fungal, or viral infections. Some are fatal. Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms like fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches, or cough, had a vaccine or plan to, or if inflammatory bowel disease symptoms develop or worsen. Serious allergic reactions and severe eczema-like skin reactions may occur. Learn more at 1-844-COSENTIX or cosentyx.com/cindy.

• 28:35Jake Brennan?

  As the 1970s gave way to the 1980s, New York's gay clubs continued to thrive. I said "clubs," plural, because the Mine Shaft wasn't the only spot where men like Freddie Mercury went to turn their fantasies into reality. There was Uncle Charlie's on Greenwich Avenue, The Eagle, or Eagle's Nest, on the West Side Highway, The Spike on 11th Avenue, The Anvil on West 14th, and The Saint in the East Village, to name just a few. But the stigma surrounding homosexuality at this time was attracting unwanted attention, and unwanted guests as well. In 1977, a man named Paul Bateson was arrested and later sentenced for the murder of Addison Verrell,

• 29:19Jake Brennan?

  a reporter for Variety magazine. Bateson had met Verrell at Badlands, a gay bar on Christopher Street, where they partied for a while before heading over to the Mine Shaft. Around sunup, Verrell took Bateson back to his 17th-floor apartment in Manhattan, where, after the two had sex, Bateson beat Verrell's head in with a metal skillet and then stabbed him to death with a kitchen knife. This happened around the same time that the so-called "bag murders" were stumping the NYPD. Black plastic bags containing mutilated and dismembered body parts had been washing up on the shores of the Hudson River for years. It remains unclear to this day who these body parts belonged to, but clothing found in the bags was a match

• 30:04Jake Brennan?

  for clothing that had been sold at a local shop popular with gay men. The "bag murders," and the murder of Addison Verrell, directly inspired director William Friedkin to make the 1980 crime thriller Cruising. In the film, Al Pacino plays a New York cop who goes undercover in the city's leather and S&M clubs in order to catch a serial killer who is targeting gay men. But when it was released in theaters, Cruising was not lovingly received by the gay community. In fact, it was thoroughly denounced as trashy and exploitative. There was real concern that the film painted a picture of gay men in gay clubs as ultra-violent and immoral, thus adding to the destructive stigma.

• 30:48Jake Brennan?

  And while Paul Bateson was only one man while there weren't serial killers stalking gay clubs, it was nonetheless impossible at the time to see the real killer that would soon infiltrate places like Freddie Mercury's beloved Mine Shaft.

• 31:05Jake Brennan?

  The month that Cruising was released, February 1980, Freddie Mercury was not in New York. He was in Munich, Germany, with Queen, finishing recording what would become their next studio album, The Game. Freddie wasn't in Munich just because of the recording studio. Giorgio Moroder's music land was state-of-the-art, and it was located in Munich, and he wasn't there simply for the old-world charm. Let's be honest. He was there for the debauchery, to party every night at places like Old Mrs. Henderson's, Frisco, and the Deutsche Eich. These clubs were every bit as hedonistic as the ones back in New York, and they were under less scrutiny at the time, too. No one was making a polarizing movie about a serial killer targeting German bathhouses.

• 31:50Jake Brennan?

  It's not hard to imagine that being inside these spaces, absorbing a soundtrack of cutting-edge Eurodisco and electronic music, had an effect on the music the Queen was making at the time. Sure, John Deacon's bassline for "Another One Bites the Dust," one of the singles released when The Game was inspired by Sheik, an American band, but the sleek, aerodynamic sound of the song is more Autobahn than Route 66. And just like Bohemian Rhapsody before it, there was some heartburn around releasing the song as a single. This time, the problem wasn't the song's length, the problem was how it sounded. Roger Taylor, for one, didn't get it. He didn't even like it. You know who did like it, though?

• 32:33Jake Brennan?

  Queen's superfan, Michael Jackson. And Michael Jackson convinced Freddie Mercury to release "Another One Bites the Dust" as a single. And because Freddie chose to listen to the king of pop over his own bandmate, "Another One Bites the Dust" became the band's best-selling song of all time.

• 32:52Jake Brennan?

  But hold up. This isn't the Bohemian Rhapsody biopic, and I don't want to give the impression that Freddie Mercury was simply basking in the moment, writing and recording mega-hits by day and unwinding at the club by night. Just like you and just like me, Freddie was complicated. There were highs, there were lows, there was a darkness. There was that time where Freddie became frustrated with one of Queen's roadies. And he grabbed a nearby mirror and smashed it over the roadie's head, and then ordered the roadie to find a broom and clean up the mess. And speaking of mess, there were the relationships. Freddie was in a romantic relationship with a number of men, though he continued to have sexual encounters with other men while in those relationships. And he could be hypocritical, too,

• 33:37Jake Brennan?

  like when he flew one lover from the UK to the US under false pretenses, only to dump him immediately upon his arrival because he had cheated on Freddie. I say all these things not to give Freddie Mercury a hard time or to shield my own hypocrisies, because, come on, I'm only human, and so are you. We're all hypocrites. I'm just saying all this to underscore that the Freddie Mercury presented to us in the Bohemian Rhapsody biopic is a sanitized version of the real thing. It is an uncomplicated version of the real thing. It is a fantasy.

• 34:10Jake Brennan?

  What was very real, though, was the looming AIDS crisis, which became front-page news in The New York Times in May of 1983. Along with the headlines came the public misconception that AIDS was exclusively a gay disease, which, of course, it was not. It was hard enough just to be gay at the time. Having that sexual preference now be associated with a deadly disease suddenly made an ugly stigma even uglier. Freddie refused to get tested, at least until years later, in 1987, according to his longtime partner, Jim Hutton. Why? Was it because he feared he would test positive? Did he willingly choose to ignore reality for as long as he could?

• 34:54Jake Brennan?

  Or was he worried that going through the process would out him? And what consequence, if any, did not getting tested for AIDS have for all those sexual partners Freddie Mercury had throughout those years? We don't know. But here's what we do know. Queen played in America for the last time in September 1982, when they taped a performance for Saturday Night Live. This was when they were riding high on the success of Under Pressure, their collaboration with David Bowie. This is absolutely crazy to me because they continued to tour the rest of the world for the next four years, until 1986. But once AIDS became headline news, American insurers lobbied hard to require tests

• 35:38Jake Brennan?

  for all touring musicians. And this resulted in a fight between corporations and activists over patients' rights. And as that fight raged on, Freddie Mercury allegedly became concerned about what would happen shouldn't insurers succeed in making him take the test were they to attempt a tour of the United States. Besides, at this point, people were already talking. A disgruntled former manager had gone to a UK tabloid and sold them details about Freddie's sexuality and his relationship with Jim Hutton. Another tabloid printed a false story claiming that Freddie had tested negative for the AIDS virus. "Queen's star Freddie in AIDS Shock," was how the headline read. When he was later cornered by a reporter at Heathrow, Freddie shot back,

• 36:22Jake Brennan?

  "Do I look like I'm dying from AIDS?" And then that became a headline, too. The reality of being Freddie Mercury at this time was nothing short of oppressive. So it's no wonder that he turned once again to fantasy as a means of much-needed escape.

• 36:40Jake Brennan?

  They warned her that it was nothing more than a room full of sweaty, hairy men. They said the place wasn't for her, or for any woman, for that matter. But she didn't care. Her mind was made up. Princess Diana wanted to go to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, a notorious gay bar in London.

• 37:00Jake Brennan?

  But how to sneak actual royalty, currently the Princess of Wales, one of the biggest celebrities in the world, into a packed bar? How could they avoid causing a scene of outright pandemonium? Freddie Mercury and Kenny Everett, the former DJ who propelled Queen into the stratosphere when he played Bohemian Rhapsody on the radio all those years ago, had an idea. They'd dress their friend Diana in drag. They'd dress her like a man, just as Freddie had dressed as a woman in the music video for Queen's "I Wanna Break Free." And Diana wanted to break free. But freedom for Diana meant hiding her true self. There were the aviator sunglasses, a cap made of leather, an old army jacket,

• 37:45Jake Brennan?

  very butch, very cloned. The Royal Vauxhall Tavern was packed to the hilt. Freddie, Kenny, and Diana bellied up to the bar and ordered a round. All eyes were on Freddie, as usual, royalty onstage and on the air in places like this. Few paid any mind to his feminine-looking companion with the leather cap and high cheekbones.

• 38:08Jake Brennan?

  And 20 minutes later, they were gone. Diana back to Kensington Palace and Freddie back to Garden Lodge, the two-story, eight-bedroom house he'd purchased years earlier. He would live there until 1991, until his death at the age of 45, upon which his friend Diana would think back to the night they had smuggled her into the Royal Vauxhall. It was like they had gotten away with something unbelievable, like they pulled the wool over everyone's eyes as easily as she had pulled the leather cap over her short blonde hair. It was a secret they both shared, a secret that Diana would then keep for another six years, until the Mercedes she was riding in raced into one end of a dark tunnel in Paris and never came out the other side.

• 39:12Jake Brennan?

  The Princess Diana story that I just told you comes from a book called The Power of Positive Drinking, which was written by British actress Cleo Rocos in 2013. Rocos says she was there that night with Diana, Freddie Mercury and Kenny Everett, drinking champagne while watching The Golden Girls on TV, when they came up with the crazy idea to sneak Diana into the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. There are many people who will tell you that this never happened, just as there are many people who will tell you that other things written about Freddie Mercury in other books never happened. Take the author Leslie Ann Jones, for example. Leslie Ann Jones has written numerous biographies on Freddie Mercury, some that are even noted as editor's picks on Amazon. But Google Leslie Ann Jones and Freddie Mercury and click on the first Reddit thread

• 39:57Jake Brennan?

  that comes up. Queen fans are merciless when it comes to discrediting Leslie Ann Jones. Most recently, fans online went after Jones for her 2025 book, Love Freddie, in which she made the claim that Freddie had secretly fathered a child with the wife of a close friend way back in 1976. You can also find an equal number of Queen fans online who dismiss the book written by Freddie's partner, Jim Hutton, as complete fiction. And when it comes to the Bohemian Rhapsody biopic, some corners of the internet complained that the film paints Freddie as bisexual in order to conveniently make his gayness more palatable for, I don't know, jocks, I guess, who like to crank up We Will Rock You in the locker room.

• 40:41Jake Brennan?

  And while others argue that the film actually does see him as gay, and by doing so, downplays bisexuality in general. And even some Queen fans are listening to this episode right now, and they're pissed off about whatever it is that I've said about Freddie Mercury. So which is it? If not the Rami Malek version, or the Leslie Ann Jones version, or the Cleo Rocos version, who was the real Freddie Mercury? I think asking this question is the whole point, actually. Let me explain. I think we are incapable of knowing the real Freddie Mercury. And that fact has been staring us in the face ever since the release of Queen's second album. 1974. Freddie Mercury is just four years old.

• 41:25Jake Brennan?

  He's just killed a man. Not literally. Freddie Mercury is actually 24, but the idea of Freddie Mercury is still much younger. And while there was a time when he was someone else, that person, Farouk Bissara, the idea of Farouk Bissara is dead. Freddie will not speak of Farouk again. Certainly not to the journalist for Melody Maker Magazine, sitting across the room from him now. His satin pants and satin shirt, his red velvet Dickensian jacket, his white boots, these are things befitting the character of Freddie Mercury, who, in theory, is only four years old and who, in practice, is being defined in real time.

• 42:07Jake Brennan?

  But Freddie the man is not the only one defining Freddie the character. Freddie Mercury is a product of every set of ears that listen to him and every pair of eyes that take in his grandeur. They see a man of affluence, so they assume he comes from affluence, even though he actually comes from a middle-class family. They see a man who indulges in everything, from fashion to sex, but cannot see that he doesn't indulge in the truth. Actually, that's not quite right either. There is truth, but it's Freddie's truth. He looks into the journalist's eyes. "The last thing I want to do," he tells her, "is give people an idea of who I really am. I want people to work out their own interpretation of me and my image.

• 42:49Jake Brennan?

  I don't want to build a frame around myself and say, this is what I am, or this is all I am." The journalist scribbles in her notepad, and Freddie fumbles with his hands. Years later, in the early 80s, he will take up smoking Marlboro Reds at first, and then on to Marlboro Lights, not because he necessarily enjoys the habit, but because it gives him something to do with his hands. He finds the journalist's eyes again and continues. "To be honest," he says, "I think mystique, not knowing the truth about someone, is very appealing. There's a lot of freedom today, and you can put yourself across any way you want to, but I haven't chosen this image.

• 43:29Jake Brennan?

  I'm myself, and in fact, half the time, I let the wind take me." It's all right there. In an interview Freddie Mercury gave way back in 1974, long before Queen were cemented as one of the biggest rock bands in history. Freddie didn't want the whole truth about him out in the open, not because he was hiding anything, but because he found it more interesting that way. And he didn't want to know the whole truth about you either, by the way. He wanted to figure it out and make up his own version. Freddie said it himself. He was taken by the wind. Whatever you saw, that's who he was. He was your creation. He was the person Leslie Ann Jones has written about. He was the person Jim Hutton has written about.

• 44:13Jake Brennan?

  He was the person portrayed by Rami Malek in the film Bohemian Rhapsody, but then he was also the person that Sacha Baron Cohen wanted to portray. And he's the person that all of you who are at this very moment shaking your heads and telling me I'm wrong about thinks that he was as well. This would have cracked Freddie up. It's exactly what he wanted, known and unknown at the same time. To be anything else would be a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan. This is DisgraceLand.

• 45:03Jake Brennan?

  All right, discos, thanks for checking out this episode of Queen. In light of everything we discussed, question of the week this week is a simple one. Which music biopic gives the most honest depiction of a musician's life? That's what we want to know. Not just your favorite music biopic, but your favorite because you think it's an honest depiction. Is it, I don't know, the Johnny Cash biopic, the Serge Gainsbourg one, the, is there an Amy Winehouse one? There isn't one. They're making one, they just made the Anthony Bourdain one. I know that's not music, but what did you think of that? 617-906-6638, voicemail and text. Let us know. Make sure you got Apple Downloads turned on, and as always, here comes some credits.

• 45:44Jake Brennan?

  DisgraceLand was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis, The Exactly Right Network, and iHeart Podcasts. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a DisgraceLand All Access member, thank you for supporting the show, we really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com/membership. Members can listen to every episode of DisgraceLand ad-free. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook, at DisgraceLandPod, and on YouTube at youtube.com/AtDisgraceLandPod. Rockerola.

• 46:28Speaker 06

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• 46:31Speaker 05

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• 47:11Speaker 05

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• 47:24Speaker 06

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