While many Queen fans had been hoping for a biopic about Freddie Mercury for years, a lot of them found Bohemian Rhapsody quite underwhelming. The 2018 biopic oversimplified the life of the rock singer, telling his story mainly through traditional biopic clichés. While it did cover some of the major beats of Mercury's life, there were all kinds of interesting things that were left out. From his relationships that didn't make it into the film to the way he was defiant until the very end, let's take a look at how Bohemian Rhapsody ignored the true story of Freddie Mercury and Queen.
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00:00Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody did plenty of playing with the truth,
00:04but the movie's fabrications are only half as bad as the things it totally left out.
00:08Here's how Bohemian Rhapsody ignored the true story of Queen.
00:12That scene where Freddie Mercury meets his future bandmates and wows them with his singing voice is
00:16good for a meet-cute, but that's not really how it all went down. The movie leaves out the fact
00:21that Freddie Mercury, Brian May, and Roger Taylor actually knew each other before they were all a
00:26band together. In real life, Mercury was also friends with Tim Staffel, the dude who quits
00:31the band in a huff in Bohemian Rhapsody. The truth is, there was no ugly incident preceding
00:36Staffel's departure. Staffel himself wrote in Esquire,
00:39My departure from Smile was completely amicable. Freddie and I were good friends at college.
00:44Freddie joining the band was very natural, as he was really good friends with the band members
00:48before I left and simply dovetailed in. In fact, these guys were all part of a close-knit group
00:53of musicians who were constantly joining and quitting each other's bands. Staffel wrote,
00:58You couldn't separate the social aspect from the musical aspect.
01:01So we had a big pool of musical friends that would combine and recombine,
01:05trying different band ideas out. Freddie socialized with us, we socialized with Freddie.
01:10Eventually, they hit on just the right combo and the rest is history,
01:14just not quite as Bohemian Rhapsody tells it.
01:17Bohemian Rhapsody totally skims over the fact that Queen went through three other
01:20bassists before John Deacon finally joined the band. In the film, Deacon joins Queen
01:25almost immediately after Mercury does, but in reality, it took a lot longer than that.
01:30According to a 1996 profile of Deacon in Bassist & Bass Techniques magazine,
01:35Deacon hit it off with the band partly thanks to his quiet demeanor and less-than-flamboyant
01:39playing style. Queen's previous bass players were reportedly too showy in their performance styles,
01:45drawing attention away from the other band members, the opposite of what they wanted in a bassist.
01:50But the eventual union between Queen and Deacon still wasn't love at first sight.
01:54Deacon saw Queen perform in October 1970,
01:57and reportedly did not find them to be that interesting of a band.
02:01But then, in early 1971, a mutual friend formally introduced Deacon to May and Taylor,
02:06and for some reason, Deacon had a change of heart. Once he joined up with the group,
02:10Deacon became known as the yin to the others' yang.
02:13Roger Taylor would later tell the Daily Mail,
02:16We were so used to each other and so over-the-top, we thought that because he was quiet,
02:20he would fit in with us without too much upheaval. He was a great bass player, too.
02:24Cheers!
02:25In the film, Queen sells their touring band so they can afford to make their first album.
02:29Shortly after that, they meet their new manager, John Reed, and everything suddenly falls into
02:34place. But the film skipped over a ton of drama that happened before they got to that point.
02:39In real life, the band didn't sell a van. They sold their souls.
02:46Well, kind of.
02:52Queen's first manager wasn't John Reed, but a man called Norman Sheffield,
02:56co-owner of Trident Studios. According to The Guardian, after Queen's album Sheer Heart
03:01Attack made it to No. 2, the band was left wondering why they weren't rolling in cash.
03:06As it turns out, it was because they'd signed a somewhat predatory contract with Trident,
03:10which basically said Queen would make the albums and Trident would sell them to EMI,
03:15meaning there wouldn't be enough money left over for the band to buy a new set of drumsticks,
03:19much less anything else. The band was so angry about the arrangement that they wrote a super
03:24unflattering ode to Sheffield called, Death on Two Legs, Dedicated To. That song was so harsh
03:30that Brian May even later admitted he felt bad singing it. It called Sheffield, among other
03:35things, a sewer rat decaying in a cesspool of pride, and angered the band's former manager
03:40so much that he decided to sue Queen and EMI for defamation of character.
03:45Paul Printer is the undisputed villain of Bohemian Rhapsody. He keeps Mercury locked
03:49away in his own mansion, answers all of his calls for him, shuns all of his friends,
03:54and is implied to be the reason why Mercury contracted HIV. But the extent of the real
03:58Paul Printer's villainy is debatable. It is true that he sold Mercury out to the media in 1987,
04:04but the idea that Mercury was isolated and shut away by Printer is almost totally fictional.
04:09In reality, Mercury definitely didn't spend all his time in his home waiting for Printer to bring
04:14the party to him. He had a whole entourage of people and spent plenty of time with them at
04:18nightclubs and parties. In those days, his entourage included not just Paul Printer,
04:23but the likes of actor Peter Straker, Elton John, and Princess Diana. The movie doesn't show any of
04:29that, though, because it would have jumbled the narrative and turned Printer into a more
04:32watered-down villain. And at some point in every film, you gotta have somebody to hate.
04:37In the movie, Mary Austin insists to Mercury that he's gay, and from that point onwards,
04:42the movie continues by portraying Mercury as a man who is only interested in men.
04:47While this may have simplified the narrative a bit, it was far from the whole story.
04:51In reality, Mercury was a lot more complicated than that. The truth is that he didn't just go
04:56on to have relationships with men alone, but also with women, and the film excluded all of the latter.
05:02According to Biography, Mercury had a number of relationships with men,
05:06including Jim Hutton, who does actually have a part in Bohemian Rhapsody.
05:10During the 1980s, however, he also had a relationship with German actress Barbara
05:14Valentin. The two met in Munich and even shared an apartment, although, to be fair,
05:19she would later describe him as, quote, "...mostly gay."
05:22Of course, her presence in the film would have complicated the more simplistic narrative the
05:26filmmakers had in mind, so instead of telling Mercury's story in all of its romantically
05:30complex glory, they opted to let viewers believe that Mercury was strictly gay.
05:35In Bohemian Rhapsody, Freddie Mercury is depicted as focusing on a single musical pursuit,
05:40Queen, with a short side track for some solo stuff. In reality, however, Mercury collaborated
05:46with many other artists and musicians, including a famous opera singer named Montserrat Caboulet.
05:52Mercury met Caboulet in 1987, and their creative union produced one of the world's
05:56most influential marriages of classical and contemporary music, the anthem Barcelona.
06:01That's probably not especially shocking, though, since even Queen newcomers will know
06:05about Mercury's fondness for opera. It's a huge part of the Bohemian Rhapsody song, after all.
06:10What might surprise even Queen fans, however, is that Mercury also performed with the Royal Ballet,
06:16though he did require a little convincing before he agreed to take part.
06:20After initially thinking they must have been mad to consider him,
06:23Mercury was eventually convinced to perform after speaking with the head of EMI,
06:28who was also chairman of the Royal Ballet's Board of Governors.
06:31You don't become a ballet dancer overnight, though, and Mercury later recalled his punishing
06:36practice sessions in the London Evening News. He said of his training,
06:39"'It was murder. After two days I was in agony. It was hurting me in places I didn't know I had,
06:44dear.'"
06:45Mercury made his ballet debut in October 1979 in front of an audience of 2,500 theater patrons.
06:51He told the London Evening News,
06:53I wasn't quite Baryshnikov, but it wasn't bad for an aging beginner.
06:57I'd like to see Mick Jagger or Rod Stewart try that."
07:00It's not just his side projects outside of the arena rock realm that Bohemian Rhapsody leaves
07:05out. The movie also doesn't really touch on any of Mercury's many musical collaborations with
07:10artists in the rock genre, or the friendships he forged with some of the greatest musicians
07:15of his time. You probably already know that he was acquainted with David Bowie,
07:19if only because of Under Pressure, Queen's iconic collaborative song with the Thin White Duke.
07:24But they didn't just meet as fellow rock stars. Mercury's relationship with Bowie went all the
07:28way back to his college years, when Bowie played a gig at Mercury's university,
07:32and Mercury helped him push a bunch of desks together to make a stage.
07:36Mercury recorded with other big names, too, including Michael Jackson. In 1983,
07:41the pair worked together on the songs There Must Be More to Life Than This,
07:44State of Shock, and Victory, but the songs were never released. Why?
07:49Because of a llama. Yes, the recording sessions were interrupted by Jackson's pet llama,
07:54and Mercury couldn't take it, finally calling manager Jim Beach and begging to be rescued.
07:59He told Beach,
08:00You gotta get me out of here. I'm recording with a llama. I've had enough and I wanna get out."
08:05Freddie Mercury's decline was slow and quiet. Practically none of it is depicted in Bohemian
08:10Rhapsody, because producers decided to give the film a triumphant ending rather than a tragic one.
08:15In real life, Mercury's AIDS diagnosis didn't actually come until two years after the iconic
08:20Live Aid performance, and he lived for another four years after that. So while the movie's ending may
08:26feel inspiring, it's also one of the movie's most misleading distortions potentially affecting how
08:31audiences view the legendary real-life concert. Like many of the movie's distortions, it's based
08:36on a kernel of truth. Years after the Live Aid performance, when Queen made an appearance at
08:41the 1990 Brit Awards, Mercury was gaunt and pale and said little to the audience.
08:46Outside of the public eye, however, Mercury kept on working. Brian May later explained to The
08:51Telegraph,
08:52Freddie wanted his life to be as normal as possible. For him, the studio was an oasis,
08:56a place where life was just the same as it always had been. He loved making music. He lived for it.
09:02According to The Telegraph, Mercury kept recording until he could no longer do it.
09:07His last session was in May 1991, and the last song he recorded was Made in Heaven's
09:12Mother Love, recorded between the 13th and the 16th of that month. But at that point in his life,
09:17he was very sick. May explained,
09:19We got as far as the penultimate verse, and he said,
09:21I'm not feeling that great. I'll finish it when I come back next time."
09:24But of course, he didn't ever come back to the studio after that.
09:28Mercury died in November of that same year, and Brian May sang the last verse of Mother Love.