As Freddie’s career took off, the distance grew between him and Mary. He started coming home late, if at all, and she became suspicious that he was having an affair but naturally, given their circumstances, assumed it was with another woman. ‘Even if I didn’t want to fully admit it, I had realised that something was going on,’ she says. ‘Although I didn’t know what it was I decided to discuss it with Freddie. I told him, “Something is going on and I just feel like a noose around your neck. I think it’s time for me to go.” But he insisted nothing was wrong.’7
Freddie apparently needed the stability that Mary was providing for him. Even in his later life, as Lesley-Ann Jones suggests, Mary had become the ‘matriarch of Freddie’s “family”, a largely gay entourage of employees who doubled as friends.’8 Freddie was desperately unsure what effect admitting his homosexuality to Mary might have on their relationship. He began avoiding Mary, ensuring he was out when she was home and vice versa, and he withdrew from any form of confrontation.
‘I felt something was going on and things cooled. The writing was on the wall. We just weren’t as close as we had been,’ she reflects.9 The manner of their relationship couldn’t go on much longer and then, one day, in the kitchen, Freddie said he had a confession to make. It was a revelation that would change their relationship forever. ‘He said, “I think I’m bisexual.” I told him, “I think you’re gay.” And nothing else was said. We just hugged. I thought he’s been very brave. It had taken me a while to realise, being a bit naive.’10
The news signalled the end of their relationship, but not the end of their friendship. If anything, it grew even stronger. Mary moved out of the flat and found herself a small property nearby, as Freddie wanted her to remain close to him: ‘I could see Freddie’s own flat from my bathroom,’ she recalls.11 Eventually, Freddie’s music publishing company purchased the property for her and they would continue to see each other frequently.
Reflecting on their relationship, Mary reveals the relief she felt when Freddie finally told her he was bisexual: ‘It was a relief really, to actually hear it from him, to have surmised that that was really the problem of the last two years of the six years that we were together, to know that I had more or less guessed right. So it was a great relief for me. I felt a huge burden had been lifted so I enjoyed the fact that he was able to be honest and frank. But certainly, once that had been discussed, he was a different person again. He was like the person I had known in the early years. He was more at one with himself, more relaxed, more happy and I don’t think he ever thought that I’d be supportive of him becoming a gay, but I was because it was a part of himself and it was nice to see Freddie at one with himself. It was more than nice; it was wonderful. He was such a happy person; you couldn’t deny Freddie the right to be at one with himself.’12
The journalist David Wigg interviewed Freddie a number of times and witnessed first-hand the nature of the friendship between Freddie and Mary: ‘It was an extraordinary relationship, which became like brother and sister but they had started off as lovers. The only person that he felt comfortable with, well and truly comfortable with, was Mary, who was, I think, the truest love of his life.’13
When Freddie would reflect on his relationship with Mary, he could only echo Wigg’s sentiments: ‘We were closer than anybody else, though we stopped living together after about seven years. Our love affair ended in tears, but a deep bond grew out of it, and that’s something nobody can take away from us. It’s unreachable. People always ask me about sexuality and all those things, right from the early days, but I couldn’t fall in love with a man the same way as I have with Mary.’14
15
Combined with his confidence, a certain degree of fate and good luck seemed to be following Freddie’s career. ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’ hit the Top 10 just as Queen were embarking on a major UK tour – a tour that had already been planned to promote the new album, Queen II.
The tour kicked off at Blackpool’s Winter Gardens on 1st March 1974 and would feature Queen wearing stage costumes designed by Zandra Rhodes. ‘Freddie had loved the tops I did for Marc Bolan,’ she remembers, ‘and what I was doing with a variety of fabrics right then, and he came to me knowing very much what he wanted.’1 Freddie would later reveal that he needed a look on-stage to make him feel more secure. Again, it was his attempt to create a personality that distanced himself from the boy from Zanzibar. Freddie Bulsara was no more, and hadn’t been for some time. He was now Freddie Mercury – and Freddie Mercury only – and the costumes, styling, look and performance helped him to cultivate this alter ego.
However, despite his change of name and the adoption of another character in the form of his stage persona, it seems deep down Freddie was still concerned about his sexual orientation and how the rise in the popularity of the band might be affected if his sexuality was revealed. During downtime at one of Queen’s concerts on their UK tour, and basking in the glory of their newfound success with ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’, Freddie confided his fears to his friend Pat Johnstone, who helped to run Queen’s fan club: ‘He said, “Patti, I really need to talk to you. I really need to talk to you. I’m in love with David.” I said, “What do you mean? You live with Mary.” He said, “I’m gay and I can’t tell anyone because it will destroy everything.” And I just said, “Well, as long as it doesn’t destroy you, that’s all that matters.” We sat there drinking cocktails and I didn’t know what to say. Come out? Don’t come out? What should I say? He loved Mary. He never stopped loving Mary. She was the loveliest, sweetest person. She loved Freddie and would have done anything for him – we all would have.’2
By the time the tour ended in Birmingham on 2nd April, 1974 Queen had cemented their reputation thanks, in part, to the prominence of ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’ in the charts, the notoriety Freddie was gaining from his live performances and the release of the second album, Queen II, which had climbed to number 5 in the UK album charts. But critical reaction to the album was mixed, with Disc saying Queen II was ‘going to be a hit album’, while Rolling Stone magazine declared it ‘a floundering and sadly unoriginal affair.’3 Meanwhile Record Mirror wrote, ‘This is it, the dregs of glam rock. The band with the worst name have capped that dubious achievement by bringing out the worst album for some time.’
Despite such reviews Queen had had a single in the Top 10 and an album in the Top Five: they had arrived. But Freddie was keen to highlight the amount of work the band had done in getting to where they were now: ‘To most people it must have seemed like an overnight success story, but really we’d been going for a while, doing the club circuits and all that, without having a recording contract. From the very start there were always business pressures of some sort or other. It was like a real obstacle race. I will always maintain the fact that for a major successful band, it’s never plain sailing, otherwise there’s something wrong about it. If it’s too easy you hit your peak and then that’s it.’4
But Queen hadn’t hit their peak yet: far from it. In fact, they were still a support band when they flew to the US in April 1974 to undertake a 40-date tour with Mott The Hoople. The new album, Queen II, had only reached number 83 in the US album charts and the single ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’ had failed to chart altogether, but the band saw the tour as a potentially great experience after their shared UK tour. Yet once again, while on foreign soil, disaster struck. Brian May collapsed and was diagnosed with hepatitis. Queen’s participation in the tour was over after just 20 of the 40 shows and the whole band flew back to England to be replaced by Kansas for the remainder of the tour.
Despite