# Ay-oh (CROWD) # Ay-oh
# Ayyyyyy-oh (CROWD) # Ayyyyyy-oh
# Ay-oh # Ay-oh # Ay-oh # Ay-oh
# Ayyy-oh # Ayyy-oh
'I'm Alfie Boe, and as a singer and performer,
I've always been fascinating by the genius of Freddie Mercury.
Montreux, on the shores of Lake Geneva,
was Freddie's home for the last years of his life
and where he made his final recordings.
Like so many fans, I've come here to pay homage to a man
who had a greater influence on me than any other artist.
# Ayyyyyyy-oh
(CROWD) # Ayyyyyyy-oh
# Ay-oh # Ay-oh # Ay-oh # Ay-oh
# De-doe-de-doe-de-doe-de-doe-de-doe
All right!
'I remember as a kid being captivated by Freddie the first time I saw him on TV.'
# He's just a poor boy from a poor family
# Spare him his life from this monstrosity
'I watched and admired as he wrote one of the biggest-selling singles ever.'
# Bismillah, no
'With Queen, he practically invented the pop video.
He even embraced ballet, and finally he took my world, the opera world, by storm.'
# Ahhhh
# Barcelona
'Now, two decades after his death,
I'm rehearsing for a performance to celebrate Freddie's life.
In many ways, my musical journey is the reverse of Freddie's.
He went from rock to opera.
I'm a classically-trained opera singer
escaping the constraints of my formal education and embracing all kinds of music.'
# This dream was me and you
# Tal vez esta aqui
'After years of training, performing Freddie's signature pop-opera classic shouldn't be a problem.
But the more I practise, the more I realise how complex the song is.
I find it extraordinary that Freddie,
who as far as I know was an untutored, untrained rock singer,
could write and sing this incredible piece.'
I wanna ask how much of Freddie's lack of formal training
made him the creative genius that basically inspired me to get up on the stage.'
(CHEERING)
Yeah, get your phone. How you doing, girls?
'Today, I'm lucky enough to play venues like the Albert Hall and the O2 Arena.'
We love you, Alfie. Aw, bless you.
'But it wasn't always like that.
And I owe it to Freddie Mercury.
Like Freddie, I suspect, I was a bit of an outsider.
I was discovered when I was 19, working as a car mechanic in Blackpool.
I came to London to study at the Royal College of Music.
It was a privilege and an honour. It gave me the voice I have today.
But I found my first year at college difficult.
The demand for perfection was hard and I struggled to cope with life in London
and it got so bad that I ended up sleeping rough here in Hyde Park.'
I was at a point where I didn't know where to continue.
I had no money, I wasn't eating and it was a difficult time for me.
'And then something happened that changed my life.
I got the opportunity to demo a tape of Queen songs
in the famous Abbey Road studios, where the Beatles recorded.
College was all about technical perfection,
and being a massive Queen fan, I was determined to get it right.
The track was The Show Must Go On.
Now I'm going back to listen to that recording for the first time in 15 years.'
# Empty spaces
# What are we living for?
# Abandoned places, I guess we...
Oh, my goodness. This is awful!
# On and on
'Freddie had an amazing voice, four octaves,
but I've got quite a range myself, so that's not the issue.'
I'm pronouncing every word.
Yeah, every syllable's... Yeah, clean.
# Behind the curtain... Cur-tain.
'My performance was technically perfect
but it was miles off Freddie. It just had no emotion behind it.'
# Does anybody want to take it any more?
# The show must go on
It's so boring! (LAUGHS)
'15 years ago, that day in this studio
literally changed my life.'
When I left here, I was filled with this... energy and drive
to go and pursue what I really wanted to pursue,
to go and do what I wanted to do, to sing the music I wanted to sing, and discover emotion.
# The show must go on
'And the spur for me was listening to the real thing.
I heard a raw feeling and freedom in Freddie's voice.
From the very last tracks, like The Show Must Go On,
all the way back to the very first Queen records.
This is Seven Seas of Rhye, Queen's first hit
and one of the first Queen tracks I ever heard.'
The start of Seven Seas of Rhye,
that piano intro... (IMITATES PIANO INTRO) ..it's incredible.
# Fear me, you lords and lady preachers
# I descended on your Earth from the skies
# I command your very souls, you unbelievers
# Bring before me what is mine, the seven seas of rhye
'Now I want to explore what gave rise to that unique voice and that extraordinary music.
I'm hoping it'll help me as I move from opera into new musical worlds.
Freddie had a crossover life himself.
Born Farrokh Bulsara in 1946 on the island of Zanzibar...
..from the age of eight, he was sent back to his parents' homeland of India
to a boarding school modelled on the English public school system.'
# "Another One Bites The Dust" - Queen
Hey, Bruce. How you doing?
'I've come to the Music Centre in Bedford to meet Bruce Murray
an old school friend of Freddie's.
Together, Bruce and Freddie formed a band known as The Hectics.
But surprisingly, Freddie wasn't the vocalist.'
Did he do a lot of the singing? No. I was the singer. You were?
Wow. That's my claim to fame.
He was just my piano player. (BOTH LAUGH)
So how was he on the piano? Fantastic.
I mean, he couldn't read.
We used to have a thing called the hit parade
and we'd sit down there and he'd just listen to the song, Elvis,
Cliff, something, and just, "We'll do that song, Freddie," and away he'd go and play it.
'It wasn't just innate musical talent Freddie displayed.
In the boxing ring, he revealed another quality that would be useful
to an unlikely future rock star.'
We were the seconds in the ring for him
and he was having this fight and he was losing.
He had the problem with his teeth. You smack him in the mouth, he's gonna bleed.
And he was bleeding all over the place and I said to him,
"Freddie, just let's throw the towel in."
The eyes glazed. "No! There's no way I'm gonna do that," kind of thing.
He got hammered but he wouldn't give up. He had this determination.
"They don't know anything. I'm gonna be the star."
# Here I stand
# Look around, around, around, around, around
'But first, the aspiring star had to manage a huge cultural upheaval.' I know you from somewhere!
'To find out what impact this had on his musical development,
I'm meeting Freddie's sister, Kashmira.
In Kashmira's kitchen, I'm also meeting Freddie's 91-year-old mum, Jer.
His exotic, privileged life ended in 1964
when his family moved to a small terraced house in West London
as refugees from revolution in Zanzibar.'
When he was growing up, did he have any training, any lessons from anybody? No, not really.
His voice was just a natural gift. Yes. Yeah. My goodness, he could sing.
Was he able to play piano or play an instrument to encourage his musical...
Yeah, but the problem was, we didn't have a musical instrument at home.
And he went to college
and some of the boys wanted to move and they had a piano
and they wanted to get rid of it, and he came all excited, telling me.
I said, "No, no, no way. We can't afford it."
Then he said, "No, you don't have to pay. They just giving it free."
I said, "I've got to make up something."
I said, "No, there's no space here. No piano coming here because you've got to study first." (BOTH LAUGH)
What was that programme? Top Of The Pops. Top Of The Pops. Yeah.
Oh, he would never miss that. Never miss that.
Freddie would have Jimi Hendrix records playing over and over and over again and again.
That's the one where it's the Jimi Hendrix pose. Yeah.
Oh, he loved everything to do with Jimi Hendrix.
A Jimi Hendrix hat, as well. Yeah.
'Freddie soaked up the cultural life that seeped into his house.
He sketched a portrait of Hendrix and used him as inspiration
for his first attempts at writing songs.'
He's always humming or his hands are going like this all the time, you know.
And then an idea will come to his head and he'll just scribble it down.
Yes, sometimes in the middle of the night, he would wake up... Really?
And he would just write it down. Wow.
I'm usually changing a nappy in the middle of the night. (ALL LAUGH)
Oh, very inspirational. (ALL LAUGH)
He was a perfectionist, though. That's the thing.
He always was the longest in the bathroom. Always.
There was only one bathroom there and I was always saying,
"Freddie, it should be the other way around. It should be the girl spending more time."
She looks a bit annoyed that he was in the bathroom too long.
(ALL LAUGH) Yeah!
It was a huge insight to learn a lot about Freddie and his musical tastes.
You know, not being able to have a piano in the house
and not being able to develop his talent,
erm, must've been quite frustrating for him.
# "You're My Best Friend" - Queen
# Ooooh, you make me live
# Whatever this world...
'To find out if Freddie had an outlet for his musical talent, I'm meeting Brian Fanning and Adrian Murish.
They were amongst the first friends Freddie made when he arrived in England.
Brian is the owner of an unseen treasure
that reveals the teenage Freddie.'
Ah. Wow. My goodness.
That's Freddie Mercury. (LAUGHS)
He shot the film. OK. This is all shot at Isleworth Polytechnic on one day.
This is interesting, cos he puts his arms up,
as I've seen him do on stage. Like that.
That was one of his typical poses. It was already there.
So how old were you all there? 17.
So nobody's ever seen this? No. No.
He started the term in September.
He didn't have any friends. He'd just come to the UK. Yeah.
He's wearing a maroon jacket. That was his school jacket
from... What, from Mumbai? Yeah.
Yeah. He was a very shy, peripheral type of character.
There was no inkling of that kind of stardom at all.
In a lot of these shots, he seems to either be at the side of the scene or at the back.
He had trouble with self-confidence because of his teeth. Wouldn't smile much.
In fact, that's how I recognised him after all those years.
A photographer had caught him doing that
and I looked at him and I thought, "That's Fred Bulsara."
'Isleworth College proved the unlikely setting for the rebirth
of Freddie's stifled musical talent.'
In the mornings, he'd go to the assembly hall, there was a stage there and a grand piano
and he had access to that before everything started and he practised on that.
But I'd never heard him sing. No. Never. Wow.
I think back then, a guy of that age,
if I go off my experiences, I knew I could sing.
I knew I had a quality and an ability to produce music,
but I didn't really... I wasn't forthcoming with it. I was quite shy about it and nervous.
And I think that might be what Freddie's feeling. I think that might be the stage he was going through.
He could express himself incredibly on the piano, but when you start
focusing on an instrument that's so personal and internal,
trying to get that across, it is quite a big step to take.
'So how did this shy boy on the edge of the crowd
finally find his voice?'
'When Freddie Mercury arrived in Britain in 1964
as the refugee Freddie Bulsara,
he was a shy boy in his old school blazer on the edge of the crowd.
Within a decade, he was one of the most famous rock frontmen on the planet.
How did that happen?
In 1970, Freddie met Brian May,
who, with Roger Taylor, already had a group of his own.'
(STRUMS GUITAR)
'I'm meeting my favourite guitar hero to find out how Freddie Bulsara
transformed himself into Freddie Mercury.'
Is that the riff? Yeah.
I saw some old footage of Freddie when he was at Isleworth. Yeah, yeah.
And it was a totally different guy.
He was in the background, always at the side of the shot, always behind the crowd.
Maybe the truth of the matter is that there was a catalytic thing that happened when we met Freddie.
Cos I know Freddie was very inspired by us. He used to come and watch us and he got very excited
and maybe he saw in us what he wanted to be and where he wanted to be.
Freddie said, "Oh, I'll sing with you." And we went, "Really? You can sing?"
Cos we had no idea. We'd only seen him walking around and having lots of ideas.
We knew he was a very dynamic kind of guy, but we didn't know if he could sing.
But Freddie also was very kind of screamy.
He was very into the posing and running around
and he would kind of screech his lungs out. How was it taken?
Er, it went down well. But the biggest influence on Freddie was Freddie.
And it happened when he started to record,
cos once you hear yourself coming back out of the speakers,
it's very different. It's so different to doing things live.
And as soon as Freddie was hearing himself coming back,
he was visibly dissatisfied
and always searching, always trying to improve.
'The band provided Freddie with creative, talented collaborators
to help develop his untutored song-writing skills.'
Freddie had this great idea called Stone Cold Crazy
and it was all about, erm... I don't know what the hell it's about!
It was one of Freddie's frenetic ideas.
But it wasn't a frenetic song. It went something like...
(PLAYS GUITAR)
Or something like that. So I said, "It would be funny if we did it more frenetic, the way you normally are."
So I did this...
(PLAYS GUITAR)
But he liked that. And so the song instantly became... (IMITATES BEAT)
# Sleeping very soundly on a Saturday morning
And that gelled with us very quickly.
# "Stone Cold Crazy" - Queen
'Once Freddie had an outlet for his voice and his music,
the final exuberant part of his character, the performer, emerged,
backed up with a determination to carry everyone with him.'
Freddie was all about giving a show, connecting with an audience,
and those are concepts which we really had kind of ignored.
In those days, that wasn't the way things were done.
Most people were doing what we did,
just stood on stage and got into their music between themselves and ignored the audience.
Freddie comes in and goes, "No, it's about entertaining people.
Costumes, lights, erm, everything."
# Just a new man
'The costumes became a powerful tool in transforming the shy boy
into the extrovert performer.
In the early 70s, Freddie asked designer Zandra Rhodes to dress
what Freddie called "the most preposterous band that ever lived."
I get a call from this group call Queen that they'd like to come in. So they came in and I'd say,
"Why don't you try things on?" So this is the one that he tried on.
So you had this already made up? I had this already made up.
It's part of an outfit that I did as a wedding dress, in actual fact. Right, OK.
I also did Princess Anne's engagement dress,
that was also part of this whole collection. Right. (LAUGHS)
So it was royalty and Freddie and all of that all mixed up together.
And I'd get them trying on things and saying, "See how you feel as you move around the room.
You've got to feel great." He had this fabulous way of changing into things.
Freddie was like this wonderful chameleon
and the fact that he absorbed all these different things.
It's a huge part of him being able to deliver a song, I believe, anyway, as an artist.
Cos sometimes I've been in operas that I've hated the costume
that I'm wearing and I've not been able to put across the character of the song.
Whereas Freddie needed that to be the guy on stage.
'The costumes may have played their part in encouraging the private Freddie to come out, too.'
He was going through, also, the push-me-pull-you of what he was.
Mm. Hidden and coming out. Yeah.
And then he was only able to come out through the work that he did.
But if that inner fight hadn't been going on,
he might not have achieved what you saw him achieve. Yeah.
# Oooh, lover boy
# What you doing tonight?
# Hey, boy
# Set my alarm, turn on my charm
# That's because I'm a good old-fashioned lover boy
# Ooh, let me feel...
'The 1970s were a difficult time to come out as a gay man in Britain.
Homosexuality had only been decriminalised in 1967.
I wonder how much Freddie's conflicted sexuality
contributed to his creativity.
David Evans first encountered Freddie in 1973,
just as Freddie began to wrestle with his sexuality.
They were to remain close friends until Freddie's untimely death in 1991.'
My flatmate and very, very good friend David Minz
had, erm... Well, he pulled really well that night. (LAUGHS)
And, er, yes, there he was at the breakfast table
with a cup of coffee, "Hello."
Hairbrush in hand. "Ow!" (LAUGHS)
'At the time, Freddie was still living with his long-term girlfriend, Mary Austin.'
That must've been a difficult time. It was difficult for everybody, actually.
I said, "You have to tell her. She must know."
But then Freddie, you see, didn't like to hurt people.
It was a tense time, the becoming the new me,
the shucking off of the old Freddie must've been, you know, "Am I doing the right thing to come out?"
And, you know, there was a lot of conflict in his life.
Was it anger or frustration? Anger not in a sort of, erm, personally directed way.
I think anger is a great spur
for... erm, creative people
who have to somehow be impelled
to do something.
'Freddie began to inject this into his unique performance style.'
I sometimes got the feeling, when he approached the audience, it was like he was cruising in a gay bar.
He was like challenging people. There was a huge libido there in the performance
that he could draw on to almost say, "Come and get me. Come on.
You want it? You want a bit of this? Come and get it."
He was always an outsider all his life.
That's a huge key to Freddie.
You know, he was very much conscious of always being, you know,
slightly infer... not inferior, well, maybe inferior, even.
But he always was very awkward in social situations to start with.
Right. Outsider coming to England in '64,
and being gay, an outsider in his own family, as well.
You know, always a little bit on the outside.
# Is this the real life?
# Is this just fantasy?
'All the elements of Freddie's self-taught passionate and wide-ranging creativity
came together in 1975
when Freddie broke all the rules with Bohemian Rhapsody.'
# Look up to the skies and see
'For me, with this mixture of ballad, mock-opera and rock,
it's one of the greatest songs ever.'
# I need no sympathy
Rhapsody was really a product of Freddie's fevered brain, you know, more than anything else.
And yes, we did contribute loads,
but he had this amazing kind of blueprint in his head of how it should sound
and he came in with most of those harmonies written out.
And we would work them out on the piano, particularly Freddie,
because if the chord sounded right on the piano, it would sound OK for us singing.
'It caused a musical sensation that has lasted 40 years.'
# For me, for me
'This clip from Wayne's World in 1992
illustrates how the song became part of our cultural DNA.
Rick Wakeman sees its brilliance in its unrestrained construction.'
Freddie wasn't technically trained on the piano. No.
Well, that shows... The chords are actually quite straightforward.
(PLAYS MELODY)
They're just very, very straightforward.
But it's what the lads do all around it,
and then he'll do that in as many keys as possible. Yeah.
(PLAYS MELODY) He'll go... Well, I can't... So I'll do it in this key now. (PLAYS IN DIFFERENT KEY)
It builds and builds and builds. And it works.
It's... It's sort of a formula within a lot of Queen pieces.
I think if he'd had any formal training, I don't think he would've done Bohemian Rhapsody
or some of the harmonies and the way he worked with stuff, because I think with Fred,
it was an element of he discovered it for himself
and then, no pun intended, but then did it my way.
He did it as he wanted to. He's not been taught how to do that.
'Bohemian Rhapsody stayed at the top of the UK charts for nine weeks.'
# To me
'For me, one of the best things about embracing musical worlds outside opera
has been the completely different relationship with the audience.'
# It's only love
# Yeah, yeah
'With rock'n'roll, that relationship is less formal, more fluid and interactive.'
# It's only love
'But rock wasn't always like that.
I know how much I've been influenced by the path Freddie forged on the rock stage.
As Queen toured stadia around the world,
Peter Hince, Freddie's roadie for 12 years,
saw the untrained free spirit perfect his own intuitive performing style.'
This is one of the microphones that Freddie used
and we used to change them round, because they did get damaged.
He sang so hard and there was so much spray,
after a day or so, things would be literally growing out of them.
Er, there's bits of the foam disintegrated.
And he always wanted a different clip
and it was because, er, when it was on the sort of stick or his wand or whatever he used to call it,
that had the right tension so he could make it a sword,
he could make it a machine gun, he could, you know, make it whatever.
And it became an extension of him, that prop.
I'm gonna hold Freddie Mercury's microphone. Wow. And it feels good. Yeah, it does.
# We are the champions
# My friend
He started doing more, I suppose, interaction with the audience
and songs like We Are The Champions,
and if the audience picked up on it, then he would go with it.
And then the rest of the band might go with it.
Certainly in South America,
a lot of that stuff in those big football stadiums started.
I mean, he could be very demanding, there's no question about that.
He could play the diva when he wanted to be.
He used to throw roses into the audience at the end of the show
and someone had to de-thorn hundreds of roses
so that he could throw them without being injured.
He pushed everybody, and I think that by doing that, he raised everybody else.
'In stadia around the world in the 80s, Freddie perfected his style.
The power of his voice, the electrifying control of the audience.
But in Britain, Queen had almost disappeared.
Then one performance reinvented Queen for a new generation.
Freddie called on his full armoury of performance skills to cement his reputation
as one of the greatest frontmen of all time.
At 6pm on July 13th 1985,
Bob Geldof was screaming into our living rooms,
asking us to donate money for Ethiopian famine relief.
But then he was distracted.'
Well, suddenly I heard this fantastic sound,
like a huge record, you know?
Like... Like earphones this size.
And... And I heard the crowd
just going... mad, you know?
And again, maybe it was muffled backstage. But this is the part.
# You had the power
# You're yet to have your finest hour
# Radio
Everybody!
# All we hear is
# Radio ga ga
# Radio goo goo
# Radio ga ga
# All we hear is
# Radio ga ga
They're just fantastic songs. I mean, they can only work with that voice.
The construction is so odd,
and in that way, they mirror the band.
It's such an odd band. I mean, you know, you've got this odd-looking bunch of people,
and fronting it all, you cannot say Freddie Mercury is a good-looking man.
You just can't say it. And you don't actually mind.
The sort of pantomime gay moustache. Like, he is the Village People in one.
What's the frontman style he's got?
I mean, it's all marching to a position.
But then his gob opens
and, really, all of this weirdness comes together.
# We are the champions, my friend
# And we'll keep on fighting till the end
He turned out to be one of the great rock archetypes. Well, the greatest.
Is there a better voice, I mean, proper range-wise?
# No time for losers
# Cos we are the champions
'Ironically, Freddie and Queen hadn't initially wanted to do Live Aid.
Bob was forced to turn on the charm.'
I said, "If ever, ever, ever there was a stage
built for Freddie Mercury, it's the Live Aid stage."
And he said, "Darling, what do you mean by that?" And I said, "Darling, the world."
And he said, "Yes, well, I can quite see that."
Yeah, do it!
(ALL) # We will, we will rock you
Sing it again!
# We will, we will rock you
One more time!
(all) # We will # We will rock you
Of course, look at the way he just took over the thing.
The minute he walked out on stage, it was his.
A band, four geezers, on stage,
wall-to-wall hits,
17 minutes, thanks very much, goodbye.
And it's remained in people's heads for 30 years now.
You know, that performance. Extraordinary.
'Freddie Mercury and Queen conquered the rock world at Live Aid.
But Freddie was soon to discover that time was running out.
The rock star who thought pop music disposable
now wanted a legacy.
And he saw a way to it in my world of opera.
It was driven, as always, by his contempt for the rule book.
I want to understand his desire to conquer the elitist world that I found so restricting.
Tonight, at the annual tribute for Freddie,
I'm going to begin my exploration of Freddie and opera
by performing Barcelona, his crossover classic.
I'll be duetting with Laura Wright.
Because of its complexity, Barcelona is rarely performed live.
Freddie only attempted it twice in his life.
And that fact is making me somewhat anxious.'
You're going out in front of a few hundred people, you know,
and you've got a lot of things to think about, you've got the words, the tune,
the... stamina to get through it, as well, because Barcelona, for one, is quite a big sing.
And it's a nerve-racking thing.
If I wasn't nervous then it'd probably be the day to stop.
(BOTH) # Por it sere graviota de tu bella mar
# Barcelona # Seunan las campanas
# Barcelona # Abre tus puertas al mundo
# If God is willing # If God is willing
(BOTH) # Friends until the end
# Viva
# Ahhhh
# Barcelona #
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
Oh, my goodness, that's something else.
It was really... really wonderful to do, really nice to do.
And I felt Freddie up there, even though I messed up a couple of lines, but I think I got away with it.
(BOTH SING)
'Exploring this challenging number has made me interested in what captivated Freddie about opera.
And it's bringing me and Freddie together in a surprising place.
The Royal Opera House.
I'm going back to the place I know so well from my opera career with Peter Freestone.
Peter was Freddie's PA for the last 12 years of his life.'
So what was his first reaction when he walked into the building here?
Was he... This is the sort of style that he loved. That he liked.
'Freddie fell in love with this world, but this place restricted me.'
How long have you worked here? Six years. Oh, I'm sorry. (LAUGHS) You'll get used to it soon.
(LAUGHS)
I just went through a lot of anger here. It was really annoying.
They... We were told when I worked here as a singer
that we're having a press conference in the morning.
So I turned up, unshaven, hair a mess, had a few beers the night before,
a big sweatshirt on that said Duffer, you know, and I had this...
So from that day on, I think I was, you know, they called me the bad boy of opera.
A marked man. Yeah, I was a marked man.
I basically find going to the opera boring.
It's all this... purist and hemmed-in emotion that you have to control.
'But for Freddie, this place held no fears.
Here Peter introduced Freddie to the voice that would change his artistic life.
They'd come to listen to Pavarotti, but it wasn't Pavarotti who captured Freddie's heart.'
This lady comes in from the back and starts singing.
And Freddie, I could just see out of the corner of my eye, just went...
And his jaw just dropped.
He was... (CHEERS)
"Who is it?" And so I opened the programme.
Montserrat Caballe. Wow.
And he said at that point that this is the best voice in the world.
Wow. Wow. He didn't wanna bother with Pavarotti any more.
He'd grown up. He'd grown into sopranos. (LAUGHS)
Erm, and he just really fell in love with her voice.
And what a voice. She had this thing that he never had, which was the control... Yeah. ..of the voice.
'It's poignant for me to learn that Freddie,
whose unique voice was forged purely by passion,
was in awe of the opera diva's technical prowess.
Producer Mike Moran remembers how Freddie embraced this new discovery.
And the drunken night when Freddie and Montserrat started to create Barcelona.'
I heard that she sang some Aretha Franklin?
Yeah, she... Well, she tried it out.
Cos she was saying to Fred, "I don't know anything about this but I love it."
And he said, "Tell me how you do all these things."
So, you know, all that went on. And he said, "Well, I can't sing opera."
So, you know, it was just fun.
'All Freddie's creative maturity,
iconoclasm and vocal ingenuity
came together as they forged an entirely new song form.'
Don't forget, there was no template for this. The crossover rock and classical just didn't exist.
'And as so often, the emotion of the moment drove Freddie's lyrics.'
I said, "Well, we need a title to start with."
He said, "I don't know. Let's call it Barcelona, it's where we met."
OK. The line in it where he said, "The minute you walked into the room, you took my breath away."
They were fascinated with each other.
"You took my breath away," all that stuff, "I had this perfect dream,"
the dream that one day that he would meet her.
I remember saying to him, "Two things are paramount here.
You always are a rock singer, she is always an opera singer.
So you both do what you do best."
So I sat down and I said, "What we need to do is to start out with some kind of operatic intro, if you like.
Something a bit like a fanfare."
(PLAYS PIANO FANFARE)
So that led to an orchestral kind of introduction.
And he said, "Well, that's all very well, but it's in the wrong key."
(PLAYS PIANO) OK.
This is the modulation to the key that suited him.
(PLAYS PIANO)
Little intro. (PLAYS PIANO)
# I had this perfect dream
# This dream was me and you
So... That's wicked. Yeah. That's great.
That was nice. Cheers! (LAUGHS) I enjoyed that.
'It says so much about Freddie's charisma that he could entice Montserrat, like me,
to leave the security of the opera world for the spontaneity of rock.'
It takes a leap of faith to go from something that's written down, and it's absolutely that way,
but in this instance, you can. You can do what you want. But it's a great step to just go,
"I'm just gonna do that." Yeah. Because it's contrary to everything that you've been trained for.
'Mike plays me an early demo of Barcelona that he sent to Montserrat
with Freddie singing both parts.'
# I always had a dream Different lyrics.
# You always had a dream
# Our dream is coming true
(HUMS VERY HIGH)
# I want everyone to see
(HUMS VERY HIGH)
(LAUGHS) It's good, isn't it? It's very good.
(HUMS MELODY)
So the lyrics weren't created.
'Naturally, I've come to Barcelona to meet the legendary diva.'
I am a little nervous, erm, to meet her.
I think it's maybe knowing Freddie was nervous when he met her.
But I suppose when you're taking on board something that is quite classical
and he hasn't really had that much experience of singing or performing classical music,
to meet somebody who's trained in classical music is very intimidating.
It is a little bit like meeting royalty.
'We've arranged to meet in the very same hotel room where Freddie met Montserrat.
I've come armed with a recording made on the famous drunken night when Barcelona was born.'
"(LAUGHTER)"
We were trying. That's wonderful.
"(MONTSERRAT AND FREDDIE SING MELODY)"
(BOTH LAUGH) There he goes!
I think that night we were working on Barcelona until six o'clock in the morning.
Wow. It was like discovering a new world for me,
this... this interpretation.
It was a big crossover.
And, you know, it bring us many people to the opera
that came from pop and rock. Yeah.
And that has made me very happy.
So he was welcomed with open arms into the classical world?
Yeah. Yeah. Because he was a very good musician.
'Montserrat even sang one of Freddie's compositions at the Royal Opera House.'
And I tried to do my best, you know, to sing it well.
And I says at the end, I think it was at the end,
I says, "I have a surprise for you.
We have to make bravo to the composer
which is sitting there, and it's Freddie Mercury."
Oh, my goodness. And it was a big ovation at Covent Garden at the Royal Opera House for him.
'So we both share something - the applause of the Royal Opera House.
For Freddie, it was the validation he craved.'
The way he thought and the way he act in life
is something that you have it in your inside or you don't.
These kind of things, they are things that you never forget.
We...
And we have a great, great friendship.
# I had this perfect dream
# Un sueno me envolvio
# This dream was me and you
# Tal vez esta aqui
# I want all the world to see
# Un instinto me guiaba
(BOTH) # A miracle sensation
# My guide and inspiration
# Now my dream
# Is slowly coming true
'Barcelona certainly speaks to me.
I'm a lad from Fleetwood who took on the opera establishment.
Freddie was the outsider from Zanzibar who, without any training,
conquered the most elitist of the arts.
By the time Barcelona was released,
Freddie already knew he was HIV positive.
Time was now short. But that didn't slow Freddie down.
He spent his last few months living and recording here in Montreux at Queen's Mountain Studios.
The studio floor is now a casino,
but the control room is still there.
I've been invited to make my own version of the last track Freddie ever recorded.
It's my opportunity to express all I've learned from Freddie,
in this film, in my singing.'
# I don't wanna sleep with you
# I don't need the passion too
# I don't want a stormy affair
Those were the last moments I ever had with Freddie in the studio. Very precious.
We weren't exactly talking about Freddie dying,
but we were very conscious that life is finite.
So there was a concerted effort to make the lyrics explore that.
So I kept writing things down and he kept saying, "Give me more, give me more. Darling, I can do it.
Give me the fucking vodka!"
He'd put the vodka down and he went for that.
And it was spine-chilling because he could hit those notes, you know?
Probably more than ever. He seemed to have more power than ever. I don't know where it came from.
And then we got to the last verse.
He went, "Darling, I don't feel too good. We'll finish this off. I'll come back."
And off he went. And, of course, he never came back. That was the last word.
# I've got such a feeling as the sun goes down
# I'm coming home to my sweet
# Mother love
(DISTANT CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
# Ayyyyyy-oh
(CROWD) # Ayyyyyy-oh
'Freddie died on November 24th 1991.
For me, this has been a liberating experience.
It's given me even more confidence to be led by the emotion in the music.
I'm humbled that I've got the training that Freddie knew he lacked,
but I think his passion and creative energy made up for it
and made him the genius he was.
He saw no limits to where his talent could take him
and no boundaries to his extraordinary musical imagination.
From rock to opera, it didn't matter to Freddie.
It was either good or bad.
And for me, that's about as good as you can get.
The world's greatest front man,
the writer of dazzling songs
and that legendary voice.'
Thank you, Freddie. Thanks for letting me, er, do this
and to find out a little bit more about you and, er,
rest in peace, Buddy.
# Those were the days of our lives
# The bad things in life were so few
# Those days are all gone now
# But one thing's still true
# When I look and I find
# I still love you # Subtitles by Deluxe