Freddie Mercury’s confidante talks

Billed as the best Queen tribute show on the planet, Queen: It’s A Kinda Magic is also the only theatrical experience to get the personal endorsement of frontman Freddie Mercury’s personal assistant, confidante and posthumous biographer, Peter Freestone.

Freestone spoke to the Star Observer ahead of the show’s national tour, which kicks off next month. The Czech Republic-based Brit admitted that seeing the cast (drawn from Brazilian tribute band God Save the Queen) in action was somewhat bittersweet.

“I was there for the original [Queen] concerts – someone worked out that I must have been present for something like 300 shows – and seeing something like this makes me sad that I didn’t actually pay more attention. You’re there, you’re working – you cannot really be a fan and work for a band like Queen, otherwise you’ll just stand there gaping at them instead of doing your job,” he said.

“Now seeing these guys brings some amazing memories back – I miss Freddie, of course, and this brings it all back with a bump.”

It must be a particularly eerie feeling for Freestone, who’s previously described Magic frontman Pablo Padin (pictured) as the most physically accurate portrayal of Mercury he has ever witnessed.

“There are times when you look at him from different angles and it could actually be Freddie. He’s got the body, the stage presence, everything. The whole effect is wonderful – when you sit there and let it wash over you, you could believe you’re at a Queen show.”

Freestone’s own relationship with Mercury was a complex, boundariless friendship that lasted 12 years. The pair met in 1979 and struck up such a rapport that, by the following year, Freestone was Mercury’s live-in assistant, organising the performer’s daily life while he focused on the business of being a rock star. Their friendship and working relationship continued until Mercury’s death in 1991.

To an outsider, it may seem like something of an uneven friendship, given Freestone was on Mercury’s payroll for much of their time together.

“You have to remember that this job wasn’t like the personal assistant to a CEO or something – this was 24 hours a day living in each other’s pockets. The reason I knew it was a job was because money went into the bank account every month, but actually doing it, you don’t realise that it is a job – you’re living with a friend and doing things to help that friend every day.”

Plus, the amiable Freestone explained that “the job suited me and my personality, although you actually lose your life. For 12 years, I was living within Freddie Mercury’s life, and that did not allow for my own life. I didn’t mind that, it’s just the way it works.”

That lack of a life of his own meant that Mercury’s death hit Freestone particularly hard. Unlike the man of today, eager to keep his friend’s legacy alive, for several years in the early ‘90s Freestone tried to forget his supporting role in rock history.

“After he died, I went looking for a new job, but I found the old job kept following me. I thought I was dealing very well with it all, but then some good friends told me that life does look a lot better when you’re not viewing it through the bottom of a vodka bottle.”

Eschewing therapy (describing it as “paying lots of money to talk to someone who doesn’t know a thing about the situation you’re in”), he instead decided to talk through his feelings with mutual friend David Evans, who’d also had some experience of the Queen roller coaster.

“He could understand everything I was talking about, so whenever we had time, we’d talk and talk. As everything came out of me, he’d write it up on his computer and hand it back to me. It was like everything came out of me, went through a washer, and then I could put it back in again minus the hurt, minus the pain.”

Those transcripts formed the basis for the pair’s 2001 memoir, Freddie Mercury.

Cynical types could view all this – the tribute show, the book, the industry that Freddie Mercury still is, two decades after his death – with suspicion, but Freestone scoffed at any suggestion of exploitation.

“Freddie doesn’t need me to talk about him – his music does that for him. But if people want to ask me about Freddie and use me as a way to find out more about him, I will talk until the cows come home.”

info: Queen: It’s A Kinda Magic plays Her Majesty’s Theatre, Melbourne, September 23 and 24 and State Theatre, Sydney, October 29. Tour dates: www.itsakindamagic.com