Freddie Mercury made his mark with a legendary singing voice, a memorable strut, and a larger-than-life stage presence. But as out there as his public persona was, he kept a lot of big things to himself. From his nights on the town with Princess Diana to the real reason he could sing so well, here are the most remarkable things we learned about Freddie Mercury after he died.
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00:00Freddie Mercury made his mark with a legendary singing voice, a memorable strut, and a larger-than-life
00:05stage presence.
00:07But as out there as his public persona was, he kept a lot of big things to himself.
00:11From his nights on the town with Princess Diana to the real reason he could sing so
00:15well, here are the most remarkable things we learned about Freddie Mercury after he
00:18died.
00:19Much has been made of Freddie Mercury's incredible singing voice, which allowed him to reach
00:24the depths of Somebody to Love and the heights of Under Pressure.
00:27His vocal range has been rumored to span four octaves, and remained so impressive that
00:32in 2016, it inspired a team of scientists to look into its biological source.
00:38Mercury professed a belief that his voice's special quality came from his unusual teeth.
00:42That's why he never tried to have his overbite corrected, despite being self-conscious about
00:46it.
00:47But the 2016 study concluded that it wasn't his teeth behind his vocal range, but rather
00:51his vestibular folds.
00:53These are a pair of membranes located just above the vocal cords, which are sometimes
00:57called false vocal cords, as they're not typically used for making sound.
01:01Mercury could use his to create subharmonic vibration, which is how he produced that growl
01:06he's famous for.
01:07Whether or not his voice was really capable of hitting four octaves is something the scientists
01:12weren't able to determine, so that aspect of Mercury's talent remains a subject of debate
01:16for music fans.
01:18Freddie Mercury was able to navigate the line between celebrity and privacy with grace,
01:22but for some famous people, being anonymous is almost impossible.
01:26Lady Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales, was one of the most notoriously harassed celebrities
01:30of her time, and the constant media attention was especially hard on her.
01:35According to Rolling Stone, Mercury befriended Diana in the mid-1980s, and sympathized with
01:40her situation.
01:41Along with some friends, he conspired to take her out for a paparazzi-free night on the
01:46town.
01:47They disguised dye and drag by dressing her in an army jacket, aviator sunglasses, and
01:51a leather cap, after which they snuck her into the most raucous gay bar in London.
01:56The plot worked flawlessly.
01:58The bar patrons were so dazzled by Mercury and his friends that they paid no attention
02:02to the princess, who was able to spend the entire evening incognito.
02:06Diana was so thrilled with the experience that she told Mercury and his friends that
02:09she hoped to do it again.
02:11Mercury's bombastic stage reputation didn't follow him into his personal life, or even
02:16into his relationship with his bandmates.
02:18It's said that Mercury was really the most level-headed of the bunch, especially when
02:21it came to disagreements between his fellow band members, which were evidently quite common.
02:26Mercury once said the band, quote, "...argued about everything, even the air that we breathed."
02:31Yet somehow, the band persisted through it all.
02:33According to writer Leslie Ann Jones' biography of Mercury's life, the frontman was usually
02:37the guy who ended up keeping the peace, an assessment the bandmates agreed with.
02:42As Brian May recalled in 2007,
02:44"...it was normally Roger and I who were at opposite ends.
02:47Everyone thinks that Freddie was difficult.
02:49Actually Freddie was great.
02:50He was a great diplomat."
02:51"...we argue a lot, we fight a lot, but in the end, you know, what's really, what really
02:56is the key feature is that we must come up with some product."
02:59Freddie Mercury was friends with Michael Jackson for a time, and the two intended to record
03:03music together at some point.
03:05But as it turns out, Mercury was just too wild and crazy for Jackson's tastes.
03:10That's right, the guy who owned a chimpanzee, once tried to buy Marvel Comics, and had dreams
03:15of building himself a giant robot replica thought Freddie Mercury was too wild and crazy
03:20to hang out with.
03:21According to Mercury himself, quoted in Leslie Ann Jones' biography, the two musicians made
03:26efforts to record several songs together, but could never really find the time to finish
03:30the tracks.
03:31The three songs they worked on together, Victory, State of Shock, and There's More to Life Than
03:35This, ended up being completed without each other's involvement on their own albums.
03:39Ultimately, the two stars had a falling out, supposedly after Jackson took offense to Mercury
03:44doing too much cocaine in his living room.
03:46I think one of the tracks would have been on the Thriller album if I'd finished it.
03:50But I missed out."
03:53In the 1980s, it wasn't uncommon for people who suspected they might have been exposed
03:57to HIV to just not want to know for sure if they had the virus.
04:02At the time, HIV was a death sentence.
04:04Now, people are encouraged to get tested for the disease and do what they can to avoid
04:08passing it to others.
04:10But in Mercury's time, much about the virus' nature was unknown.
04:14Test results for its presence weren't considered to be accurate, and the outlook for infected
04:17people was bleak.
04:19It's understandable why someone wouldn't want to face the possibility that they'd contracted
04:23it.
04:24According to journalist Tim Teeman, Mercury didn't know he was HIV-positive until he began
04:29showing advanced symptoms of AIDS.
04:31While he might have suspected he carried the disease at some point, he wasn't diagnosed
04:36until 1987, after a type of cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma appeared on his shoulder.
04:42Longtime partner Jim Hutton said that up until that point, there'd been no real indication
04:47that Mercury was ill.
04:48Even after his diagnosis, Mercury was never open about his illness, not even to his family.
04:54He kept his condition secret from the public until confirming the rumors in a press release
04:58the day before he died.
05:00Sexuality is a lot more complex than just straight or gay.
05:03But in Mercury's day, people would sometimes assume that you had to be either one or the
05:07other.
05:08When the public learned of Mercury's AIDS diagnosis, the disease was widely, and wrongly,
05:13associated only with gay people.
05:15It was then widely assumed that Mercury himself must have been gay, too.
05:19But Mercury wasn't gay in the strictest sense of the word.
05:22He continued to profess his love for ex-fiancee Mary Austin even years after their physical
05:27relationship ended.
05:28It has also been asserted, in biographies published after Mercury's death, that the
05:32greatest love affairs of his life were with women.
05:35So it seems the singer was emotionally drawn to women, but physically drawn to men.
05:40It's a state of affairs that seems to have caused some upset toward the end of his life.
05:43Even though he spent his last seven years in a relationship with Jim Hutton, he still
05:47thought of Mary Austin as his soulmate, and therefore the natural heir to his fortune.
05:51She's been a girlfriend of mine for a long time, and even though we're not together right
05:56now, I sort of refer to her a lot."
05:59Freddie Mercury knew he was dying, but he refused to feel sorry for himself.
06:03He wanted to remain productive, preferably while free from unwanted media attention,
06:07so he chose to keep his diagnosis a secret.
06:10As bandmate Roger Taylor told Entertainment Weekly in 1999, he didn't want to be looked
06:14at as an object of pity and curiosity, and he didn't want circling vultures over his
06:19head.
06:20Mercury kept recording throughout most of his final years, even when it became very
06:23difficult for him.
06:24According to GQ, Queen released the single, The Show Must Go On, just six weeks before
06:29Mercury's death, and the singer was so ill during recording that bandmate Brian May expressed
06:34concern about whether he'd be able to perform the vocals at all.
06:37Mercury put those doubts to rest, though, as May later described the event.
06:41I said,
06:42"'Fred, I don't know if this is going to be possible to sing.'
06:45And he went,
06:46"'I'll f-----g do it, darling.'
06:47Vodka down, and went in and killed it, completely lacerated that vocal."
06:51He couldn't keep it up forever, though.
06:53While recording Mother Love, he stopped before the last verse, and then said, quote,
06:57"'I'm not feeling that great.
06:59I think I should call it a day now.
07:00I'll finish it when I come back.
07:02Next time.'
07:03But there was no next time.
07:04Mercury never went back to the studio, and May sang the last verse of Mother Love himself.
07:10The HIV virus doesn't kill directly.
07:13It attacks the immune system, which makes it possible for secondary infections to move
07:17in.
07:18That's what makes AIDS such an insidious illness.
07:21It's not a single disease, but rather a lot of diseases, and the symptoms patients end
07:26up showing are all specific to the viruses, bacteria, fungal organisms, and other microbes
07:31that the individual patient is exposed to.
07:34Kaposi's sarcoma, which was Freddie Mercury's first symptom, is a cancer caused by the human
07:39herpesvirus AIDS, which wouldn't cause symptoms in a person who has a healthy immune system.
07:45As the symptoms of AIDS progressed throughout his body, Mercury developed other horrifying
07:49complications.
07:50In 2017, guitarist Brian May told the Sunday Times Magazine that one of Mercury's ugliest
07:56symptoms was in his foot.
07:57As May told the publication,
07:59"...tragically, there was very little left of it.
08:02Once he showed it to us at dinner, and he said,
08:04''Oh, Brian, I'm sorry I've upset you by showing you that.'"
08:07Ultimately, the singer was killed by pneumonia brought on by complications from AIDS, a relatively
08:12common end for an exceptionally uncommon person.
08:16Freddie Mercury's body was cremated, but there was no public ceremony for the spreading of
08:20his ashes, or even an announcement of where the singer wanted his remains to go.
08:24Only one person knew what he wanted done with him, and it's unlikely she'll ever reveal
08:28the secret.
08:29According to Rolling Stone, former fiancé and longtime friend Mary Austin is the only
08:34person who knows where Mercury's ashes went.
08:36As she told the magazine,
08:37"...he suddenly announced one day after Sunday lunch,
08:40''I know exactly where I want you to put me.
08:43But no one's to know, because I don't want anyone to dig me up.
08:46I just want to rest in peace.'"
08:47So Austin kept Mercury's ashes for two years, until long after her comings and goings stopped
08:52attracting press attention.
08:54Then she told everyone she was going out for a facial, and buried his remains in secret.
08:58Because fans will be fans, there remains plenty of speculation about where, exactly, Mercury's
09:03remains might be.
09:05Some think Austin took him all the way to Zanzibar, though,
09:08"...I'm going for a facial would be a weird way to try to cover that up."
09:11Others think he's under a tree in his own backyard.
09:14All that guessing is unlikely to amount to much, though, because the only person who
09:17knows for sure where Mercury's remains went will probably take the secret to her grave.
09:22Because Mercury was one of the first celebrity AIDS victims, people are often surprised to
09:26hear that he was once engaged to a woman, and that she remained very close to him even
09:31after he started having relationships exclusively with men.
09:34While the Bohemian Rhapsody movie glossed over a lot of things, this aspect was pretty
09:38accurate.
09:39Even though they never married, Mercury often referred to Mary Austin as his wife.
09:43And in a 1985 interview, he once said,
09:46"...all my lovers ask me why they couldn't replace Mary, but it's simply impossible.
09:50I couldn't fall in love with a man the same way I did with Mary."
09:54Mercury was involved with Jim Hutton for the seven years prior to his death, but he left
09:58the former hairdresser with a pittance compared to what he reportedly left to Mary Austin.
10:03She received the bulk of his estate, including his money, his mansion, and his recording
10:07royalties.
10:08And Austin wasn't exactly kind to Hutton after Mercury's death, either.
10:12In fact, she kicked him out of the house shortly after the singer's passing.
10:16Hutton ended up taking the £500,000 Mercury left him and used it to build a home in his
10:22native Ireland, where he remained until his death in 2010.