Queen Unseen Read online

  ‘Great – and kin I git coffee fir yuh all?’

  ‘No, I’d like some tea.’

  ‘No problem, iced or hot?’

  ‘Well, hot of course!’

  ‘Cream or lemon with that?’

  ‘No, milk – cold milk!’

  ‘You mean half and half?’

  ‘NO – MILK – the white liquid that comes from cows!’

  ‘OK, sir, I’ll see what I can do… and will that be separate checks?’

  ‘No – we’ll pay cash!’

  ‘You got it! Hey, you guys are a riot – you’re all a band – right?’

  ‘Yeah – right!’

  ‘And be sure you have a nice day now.’

  Why would I want to have a nice day? In the Land of the Free do I not have the right to be melancholy? And a cup of American tea was a poor substitute for our national drink.

  Despite the differences, food in America was very appealing for a young visitor with a not-yet-discerning palate, but industrial-strength digestive system. This was the 1970s, when a sophisticated night out back home was steak and chips at the Berni Inn. Not Texas steaks, that fell off the side of your plate, and if you ate all of the first one the second came free.

  I had never seen or tasted hamburgers so good. Or big. They needed both hands to hold and came with fries, salad and familiar garnishes, plus some suspiciously long, pungent, green warty things on the side. Better leave them there!

  When the US promoters offered Fred a hamburger as the band meal, he replied with his usual aplomb: ‘A hamburger? You will bring me a steak!’

  They did.

  On to dessert…

  Jello is the substance in the US that we Brits call ‘jelly’, normally seen at children’s parties – and on one occasion in the tub of a Holiday Inn hotel guest bathroom. One balmy summer’s evening in 1980 in Charleston, West Virginia, a local lass, upon being invited to a crew member’s room for a nightcap or such, confided that her fantasy was to be put naked in a bathtub of liquid cherry-flavour jello and to allow it to set around her. She also wanted sprayed whipped cream to be included in the ‘dessert’.

  Not wishing to disappoint the young lady, a local cab company was rapidly called, and the driver dispatched to the local 7-Eleven store with a fistful of dollars and instructions to get a receipt…

  While our cabbie was grocery shopping, the game young girl asked to be tied to a chair with some velcro straps normally used for securing cables that we just happened to have lying around.

  We then called the local FM rock radio station and got directly to the DJ on air, where a conversation about our activities in the hotel was conducted – live. Being a decent bloke, he broadcast that, if any like-minded young ladies were up for some fun with the Queen crew, they should get over to the Holiday Inn.

  After dispatching our perplexed cabbie with a tip and a pass for the next day’s show, we ran a hot bath to dissolve the jello. When this act of physics was accomplished, the young lady jumped in, lay down and relaxed, and we all waited for it to solidify.

  Not a story my mum would be very proud of, and I’m sure she would not have been at all impressed with me on my 21st birthday, which was celebrated on US soil. On 23 January 1976, at the Holiday Inn in Waterbury Connecticut, I received ‘the key of the door’ and a whole lot more. We were in the midst of a hard east coast winter and deep, drifting snow surrounded the hotel and Palace Theatre where rehearsals for the forthcoming US tour were taking place. Everybody, including Queen, were staying at the Holiday Inn – the best hotel Waterbury had to offer. I’m not sure what Fred thought of it as he skipped in and out of the venue and hotel in his short fur jacket and skin-tight satin trousers. The crew wore thermals. Brian, as always in those days, wore his clogs and I saw him slipping and sliding around in them as he walked around a sporty two-seater Volvo P1800S – just like Simon Templar drove in the TV series The Saint. Brian had a car just like it back in London – albeit in a different colour. This car belonged to Chuck, one of the American lighting crew, and he and Brian chatted in the cold about their mutual love of this model of car.

  As the baby of the crew, I was used to being the brunt of practical jokes and for my 21st I feared the worst. In the end, I played all the jokes on myself.

  In the hotel bar, I was treated to many large brandy and ginger ales. I rarely drank in those days and was soon well away, heckling the solo guitarist playing country cover songs in the corner: ‘OI, MATE! How about playing “Close To The Edge” by Yes! Come on! D’ya know it?’

  The smirking crew fed more fuel to my fire and it was not long before my face met the carpet and I was escorted to bed by Crystal, my room mate.

  Having passed out in an alcoholic haze, I woke a few hours later to be horribly sick over the side of the bed. I then spent an awful torrid night, tossing, turning and nursing a splitting headache, sprawled all over the regulation Holiday Inn king-size bed, the bed clothes pulled out and strewn everywhere.

  The high nylon content of carpets in American hotels was notorious for creating static electricity and, when you were connected to metal, by either putting your key in the door lock or pressing the button for the elevator – whack! You got a nasty snap of raw electricity that you could distinctly see as a blue or white spark.

  I had been rolling around in anguish, with one foot out of the bed, dragging on the shag pile. As I turned over yet again, my foot came up and hit the metal bed frame – BANG! A huge bolt of static launched me out of bed right into the area where I had been sick. All rather unpleasant.

  I crawled into the shower to clean myself up. There is no doubt this was the worst I had ever felt in my life. Despite clearing some of the mess up, the guilt of having to face the maids who cleaned the room compounded how dreadful I felt. I tentatively made my way down to the coffee shop to be met by a broadside from my grinning peers.

  ‘So what’s it like to be 21, eh, Ratty?’

  ‘Fucking awful,’ was all I could muster.

  ‘Come on, have a glass of milk. It’ll settle your stomach.’

  The waitress came over and asked at maximum decibels: ‘What can I get yoooh, huuhnneeee?’

  ‘Just a glass of milk – NOT half and half – and my youth back please,’ I groaned.

  Seeing my urgent need, she brought the milk straight over.

  I sipped it gingerly as the others continued to give me sanctimonious glances. I could feel the milk sliding down and a biological reaction of indeterminate result building. Then, without warning, someone’s breakfast thudded down next to me: bacon and eggs, sausage, fried potatoes, pancakes, waffles, syrup, toast and jam – all on the same plate.

  The sight and smells hit a sensitive nerve and I vacated the table immediately. Picking up my check for the milk, I managed to reach the cashier’s desk but was sick over both the check and the cash register. As I handed over the soggy bill and some soggier cash, I feebly suggested to the astonished cashier that she kept the change. I hobbled back to bed, where I swore I would never drink again.

  I did.

  LOOSE CHANGE

  During my first trip in America I was initiated into the habit of tipping. I had occasionally given tips in England but just to round off a bill or a bit of loose change, besides I rarely had the money to pay the bill – let alone tip. Now I was being asked for 15 per cent – and more!

  Sky Caps, the official airport porters, always expected a tip. If you didn’t give a dollar per piece of luggage for the leg-sapping 20 yards or so to the airline check-in, strange things might happen to your luggage as a result. I once lost all my luggage on returning from a break in Bermuda during the lengthy 1980 Game tour. I was feeling very relaxed as I had discovered the joys of scuba diving and deemed the experience ‘better than drugs’. I checked in my two bags and expected to be reunited with them at Chicago’s O’Hare airport.

  After changes of aircraft and long delays, the plane finally touched down in Chicago several hours late. Jim Barnett, Queen’s lightin
g designer with whom I had travelled, collected his luggage and together we waited for mine – and waited and waited until that sickening moment when the carousel stops and the sole unclaimed case is taken off and put to one side. An eerie silence falls, and the realisation hits the pit of your stomach – your bags are lost. It was now late in the evening and this had already been a very long day, with the two-hour drive to Milwaukee yet to come. After filling in a form at the airline’s office, I was presented with a complimentary airline emergency kit comprising of a mini toothbrush and paste, a plastic razor, a minute tube of something that promised to metamorphose into enough cream for a couple of shaves, a comb (less than useful in my case, as I groomed my hair with my pillow) and a single tissue. The tissue was presumably provided because by now I might be crying.

  The ‘misdirected’ baggage office – ‘not lost sir, just temporarily misdirected’ – assured me that my bags would be delivered to my hotel in Milwaukee the next morning. After picking up the rental car from a vast grid of cloned, bland automobiles, we drove north towards Wisconsin. On the Interstate, the car developed problems, causing us to lose speed (with a maximum speed limit of 55 mph, we had little left to lose) and, as we pulled into a gas station as a precaution, the car died.

  Jimmy Barnett was furious, but I was by now so numb from the rigours of the day, I just chuckled in disbelief and lit another cigarette. As we waited for a replacement car to be delivered, Jimmy got more enraged, and in true Basil Fawlty style got out and proceeded to kick the car all over – punishing it for failing us.

  He then got back into the driver’s seat and punished it from the inside, just to make sure it had learned its lesson.

  Next day, after a couple of hours’ sleep, I kept calling from the gig to the hotel to check if my bags had been delivered. They had not. My bags then proceeded to follow me around for a week playing catch-up. As I left each town, they would arrive, so I survived on tour T-shirts, hotel gift-shop items, personal hygiene tolerance and acts of clemency from others my size. I turned down Fred’s kind offer of his old leotards and codpieces. And Brian’s clogs.

  I did take the offer of a drink in the bar of our hotel from Frank Sinatra (junior). Chatting to Frank at a table in an unremarkable setting, the singer and musician, who was on tour himself, said he really liked Queen but would have already left town when Queen were due to perform. Nice man – and the large, dark-suited gentlemen who hovered close by to Frank at all times gave me a reassuring nod of approval when I smiled nervously at them.

  THE BEAUTIFUL SOUTH

  Tour after tour, America continued to excite me, as I saw for real the things that I had previously only witnessed on TV cop shows. The electric excitement of New York and the noise of all those sirens – they really sounded like they did on TV and so did the phone ringing. It was just like in Kojak!

  Touring was one great adventure and I looked forward to everything on the itinerary ahead. All the big cities: LA, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Boston, Detroit, and even the ones I had never heard of with intriguing names like Fort Wayne, Indiana, or Des Moines, Iowa. Everything excited me: checking into a hotel, eating at an interstate truck stop, days off, show days, travel days – every day, as I enjoyed chalking up all the many states we travelled to. In the Deep South, I met a thick-set, crimson-necked man at a truck stop, who told me his job was to scrape the ‘dead critters’ from the freeway – ‘including armadillos’, he proudly stated.

  Texas: the biggest state in the union, home to armadillos and a wild untamed place, where, in 1977, I met the most beautiful girl in the world. Elizabeth Macy was from Dallas, tall and dark, with an exotic hint of Indian (Native American) blood, a stunning figure and the most gorgeous dark eyes you could drown in.

  You could say I fancied her. She was escorted by the Ugly Buddy, who often accompanied attractive girls to make them look even better. The Buddy was blond, round and not unattractive – in a chunky sort of way. She was the type I often ended up with, but not that night.

  We had just endured one of the coldest US winters on record, where walking across the street from the hotel to the bus was enough to make your hair freeze. So the warmth of Texas, followed by the guaranteed heat of Phoenix, Arizona, and a few days off was something to really look forward to. So was Elizabeth. I walked on air for days, life was perfect. When you are maybe not quite the best-looking guy in the crew, with poor chat-up lines, and you still manage to get the greatest-looking girl, and she only wants to be with you, despite attempts by the rustlers to sneak her away – it’s just great! It didn’t last. I don’t think I saw her again.

  During rehearsals in Dallas for the ’78 Jazz tour, I was enjoying an evening with the band in one of their suites in the Hilton, when I got abducted by a gal with an accent that sounded like treacle being poured over gravel. She was so wasted I could barely understand anything she said. Not that it mattered. Her intoxication made little difference to her capabilities, so we left the hotel in her pick-up truck, complete with mandatory Texas gun racks. She drove with one hand over her eye in order to ‘focus better on the road’. Back in her apartment on the edge of town, we spent a meaningful night together.

  Upon waking, I found I was alone in bed with only a thin white cotton sheet covering me. The morning sun streamed through the window and all was well with my world. I looked around and noticed on a wooden trunk at the bottom of the bed, a tall entity with a domed top, draped by a cloth. I shouted to the kitchen if I could use the phone and she croaked back: ‘Yip and can I git ya sum cawfee?’ Perfect.

  I got on the phone to call a music store where I had tracked down a vintage 1955 Fender bass guitar that John Deacon wanted. I was just confirming the pick up of the guitar when the bed sheet was pulled back and my new ‘potential future ex-wife’ kissed me good morning – in two places. I finished on the phone and turned around to see my southern belle at the end of the bed, where she had uncovered the shrouded shape. It was a bird cage, which was now open – and its occupants, a toucan, a cockatoo and some parakeets, were hopping up the bed. My ecstasy quickly turned to agony and I froze, telling her urgently of my concerns as I lay there stark naked. My relaxed muscles had all tightened hard and my hard muscle had relaxed completely. Had these peckers been fed yet? And what were they used to pecking on? For a moment I thought I was in some B-movie horror, where young men’s members are fed to exotic birds by a crazed harpie.

  ‘Yow downe nade tuh wurry they shure wone bite y’all,’ she assured me.

  Back at rehearsals at the Convention Centre, we had finished shooting a quick video with the new ‘Pizza Oven’ lighting rig for ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’, when I told my story of this slim and firm-bottomed girl to Fred. He thought it was wonderful, and was in hysterics. I had never seen him laugh so hard – he was almost in pain. Sexual conquest teamed with misadventure is a compelling combination. He then told me of his own previous evening’s antics… I believe he had just encountered the entire Dallas Cowboys (or some other group of muscular men in ten gallon hats). There is nothing like the feeling after you have pulled, it’s gone well and you didn’t disgrace yourself. As another Queen member once remarked: ‘It puts a spring in your step and a smile on your face.’

  In the 1970s, America had establishments that would certainly put a smile on your face – table dancing clubs, or ‘titty bars’ as they were known. Long before lap or pole dancing, these were bars where young ladies danced at and on your table. And being America one was expected to tip the performers. I’m fine with that. The girls were generally topless – depending on state law. Some states allowed girls to be topless but their nipples had to be covered with flesh-coloured sticking plasters/Band-Aids. These bars were very popular with the band and crew and, being with an English rock band, we were immediately interesting and attracted a lot of attention from the girls at places such as The Harem Club, Patio Show Bar and The Kit-Kat in Boston’s Combat Zone.

  We all want to be desired, and to have girls keen to sleep wit
h you gives a great feeling of power that you revel in – a reassurance of your charm, style, looks and personality. Or maybe the allure of backstage passes? But it was a ‘cute’ English accent that magically opened up many doors in America – ‘You God-damn Limeys and yer fancy accents! Stealing all our women!’ some of the jealous and unsuccessful American crew would rant.

  I saw it as a bit of retaliation for the flash US GIs who steamrolled through our towns and villages during World War II with teasing offers of nylons and chocolate to the fair maidens of England. They just wanted to get their leg over as much as I did.

  Now where attracting women was concerned, I always considered that my nose was a bit too big, but in rock ’n’ roll it can be a positive bonus – probably nowhere else, save the circus. Many rock stars have prominent beaks: Pete Townshend, Ronnie Wood, Jeff Beck, even John Deacon’s or Brian May’s noses could hardly be described as ‘petite’. All of these were guitar players, which is what I longed to be in my early teens as I strummed in the bedroom on my red Vox Stroller.

  Sadly, a distinct lack of talent and coordination, coupled with the years of dedication and practice required, halted my progress as a guitar legend. I had perfected a few good poses though.

  The opportunity to listen to music for free and meet girls were why I entered the music business and not the world of insurance – and to think I could have stayed working in an engineering factory? I might even have made foreman.

  America gave me a sexual education and I met some of the most beautiful women I have ever seen there. (At least that’s what I told them at the time.) American girls were a big part of touring the USA and a breath of fresh air to a lusty lad in his twenties, as they did not have the hang-ups or put you through the pre-coital rituals and financial ruin of some English females. However, some American girls had to be harpooned rather than pulled. America does grow them big, and yet they make little attempt to cover up, resorting to ‘leisure suits’ and high-tensile, factory-issue, expansion textiles. An obese woman with a beer belly above and below her belt is not a pretty sight. These substantial ladies always wore the smallest fitting underwear, and it’s not too difficult to see where Brian May got the song title ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’.