He was the most extraordinary showman. Flamboyant and seemingly fearless, Freddie projected an extraordinary public persona. When he died, the press discovered they did not actually know that much about the real man behind the Great Pretender. So they speculated and made up increasingly scurrilous lies about his life and lifestyle. A week later, Brian May and Roger Taylor went on national TV to slam the coverage and put the record straight about what had really happened.
The Queen band members appeared on morning show TV-AM.
Roger Taylor called some of the tabloid reporters “sick devils… They made stuff up because they couldn’t get inside. (Freddie) was hounded for the last 18 months of his life. He was a prisoner inside his own house.”
Brian May said: “It’s all crap. The proper story has to be told somehow. The papers were full of various things, scarcely relevant about the funeral and everything.”
So, what was the truth of Freddie’s final months?
READ MORE: Freddie Mercury: WATCH Mary Austin describe his final moments
The press reported that Freddie had lived and died a promiscuous, empty and lonely life.
May said; “That makes us very angry. Certainly, he wasn’t wildly promiscuous. He wasn’t consumed by drugs.
“He had a very responsible attitude to everyone he was close to. He was a very generous and caring person… As he moved from one relationship to the next one he was always aware of the effect he was having on people’s lives.”
This is evident in the way Freddie stayed so close not just to Mary Austin, but to ex-boyfriend Joe Fanelli, who also lived at One Garden Lodge, with Freddie and new partner Jim Hutton.
May said: “He didn’t die alone. He died with a very stable and loving relationship which people don’t see fit to report. Its’s all crap. The proper story has to be told somehow…
“Nobody says there were actually three guys who were very caring, who were with him to the end. Nobody mentions that. And one in particular. He had a total stable relationship, contrary to what everyone knows.”
May, of course, is referring to Hutton, but also to Fanell and the third member of that group, Freddie’s PA Peter Freestone.
The trio were with Freddie every hour of every day at the end.
Taylor emphatically added: “He wasn’t alone and he wasn’t miserable.”
In fact, Freddie was surrounded by love. Mary Austin was there every day and the most trusted friends like Freddie’s Queen bandmates or Elton John were able to visit.
It is impossible to miss that John Deacon was not part of the interview. Most reports agree he took the loss of Freddie the hardest and gradually began to retire from the public eye, and Queen.
WATCH THE FULL 1991 INTERVIEW HERE