Paul Gambaccini

stevelondon20 wrote:

mooghead wrote:

Can't stand the bloke, pops up on every ones tribute programme when someone dies pretending they were great friends. The guy is a wanker.

For once dude, I agree with you.

That makes two of us.

It's likely that Paul Gambaccini did know Freddie, and did hang out with him in gay bars in the late 70s and early 80s. Given that they were both in to music it's likely that they did see each other in the Royal Opera House in '87, and it's likely that in a bar, in 1982, Freddie did say 'fuck it' to Paul.

Let's put the AIDS thing in context - at the time, the disease didn't have a name, meaning it (the conversation) must have taken place before 1983 - and given that the first outbreak was in, well, about 1980 (I don't know the exact dates OK, I'm just brainstorming), it was probably seen more as a rumour than a fact that the infection was spread sexually. It was probably a little defiance on Freddie's part - that nothing would stop him from having a good time. The remark was probably so flippant, and I'll bet that Paul Gambaccini had a good giggle at the time too, and I'll bet that neither of them realised exactly what kind of outbreak it would be in 1980/81, and I'll also put a wager on Gambo saying that he got that 'sinking feeling', was probably something he felt in retrospect.

It's easy to look back over the last 35 years and look at the destruction that HIV has done to our world. It wouldn't have been so easy to stand in 1980 and extrapolate unless you were a medical professional. It wasn't until the mid 80s was it, that the disease and how it was spread was identified properly.

/ Yeah, interesting perspective.

miraclesteinway wrote:

The remark was probably so flippant, and I'll bet that Paul Gambaccini had a good giggle at the time too, and I'll bet that neither of them realised exactly what kind of outbreak it would be in 1980/81, and I'll also put a wager on Gambo saying that he got that 'sinking feeling', was probably something he felt in retrospect.

.

Your post was very good! I just have to add something to this part.

I´m pretty sure that Paul Gambaccini felt the "sinking feeling". Even if it was in the early days, people were very aware of the consequences. It was not good to watch the news and see people in the latest phase of the disease.

I´m pretty sure that everybody surrounding Freddie - including Brian, Roger and John - knew that Freddie was an accident waiting to happen. How could they not sense that?

That´s why i believe - just my perception - that even though Brian, Roger and John loved Freddie, deep down there must have been (at least around 1988-1991) some resentful feelings towards Freddie and the careless way with which he handled himself. Not only did he died and suffered because of it, but he also made everybody around him suffer when they saw him that way. And in the end, that lifestyle put an end to Queen!

Sometimes i get angry with Freddie because of this also. I love him unconditionally, but when i think of all the music that he would have written in the last 20 years with that beautiful voice ... oh man! But my angriness with Freddie lasts only a few seconds until i look at one of his pictures with that big smile on his face :-)

One thing is you getting a disease that you cannot do anything to avoid. Another thing is you behaving like you want the fucking desease in your body. If you look at Freddie in Rock in Rio, he has that look in his eyes "I´m fucking untouchable". The power he had over 300.000 people must have been intoxicating. I wouldn´t rule out that Freddie got so full of himself - because of the drugs - that he might have turned into one of the first persons with the bugchaser mentality.

So, i believe everybody expected this to happen to Freddie. It was only a matter of when.

Mr.QueenFan wrote:

miraclesteinway wrote:

The remark was probably so flippant, and I'll bet that Paul Gambaccini had a good giggle at the time too, and I'll bet that neither of them realised exactly what kind of outbreak it would be in 1980/81, and I'll also put a wager on Gambo saying that he got that 'sinking feeling', was probably something he felt in retrospect.

.

Your post was very good! I just have to add something to this part.

I´m pretty sure that Paul Gambaccini felt the "sinking feeling". Even if it was in the early days, people were very aware of the consequences. It was not good to watch the news and see people in the latest phase of the disease.

I´m pretty sure that everybody surrounding Freddie - including Brian, Roger and John - new that Freddie was an accident waiting to happen. How could they not sense that?

That´s why i believe - just my perception - that even though Brian, Roger and John loved Freddie, deep down there must have been (at least around 1988-1991) some resentful feelings towards Freddie and the careless way with which he handled himself. Not only did he died and suffered because of it, but he also made everybody around him suffer when they saw him that way. And in the end, that lifestyle put an end to Queen!

Sometimes i get angry with Freddie because of this also. I love him unconditionally, but when i think of all the music that he would have written in the last 20 years with that beautiful voice ... oh man! But my angriness with Freddie lasts only a few seconds until i look at one of his pictures with that big smile on his face :-)

One thing is you getting a disease that you cannot do anything to avoid. Another thing is you behaving like you want the fucking desease in your body. If you look at Freddie in Rock in Rio, he has that look in his eyes "I´m fucking untouchable". The power he had over 300.000 people must have been intoxicating. I wouldn´t rule out that Freddie got so full of himself - because of the drugs - that he might have turned into one of the first persons with the bugchaser mentality.

So, i believe everybody expected this to happen to Freddie. It was only a matter of when.

Interesting post! Maybe so!


Just don't let the folks on Queenzone read it.

Mr.QueenFan wrote:
I´m pretty sure that everybody surrounding Freddie - including Brian, Roger and John - new that Freddie was an accident waiting to happen. How could they not sense that?

That´s why i believe - just my perception - that even though Brian, Roger and John loved Freddie, deep down there must have been (at least around 1988-1991) some resentful feelings towards Freddie and the careless way with which he handled himself. Not only did he died and suffered because of it, but he also made everybody around him suffer when they saw him that way. And in the end, that lifestyle put an end to Queen!

Sometimes i get angry with Freddie because of this also. I love him unconditionally, but when i think of all the music that he would have written in the last 20 years with that beautiful voice ... oh man! But my angriness with Freddie lasts only a few seconds until i look at one of his pictures with that big smile on his face :-)

One thing is you getting a disease that you cannot do anything to avoid. Another thing is you behaving like you want the fucking desease in your body. If you look at Freddie in Rock in Rio, he has that look in his eyes "I´m fucking untouchable". The power he had over 300.000 people must have been intoxicating. I wouldn´t rule out that Freddie got so full of himself - because of the drugs - that he might have turned into one of the first persons with the bugchaser mentality.

So, i believe everybody expected this to happen to Freddie. It was only a matter of when.

Quite an ignorant point of view/opinion.
You have to keep in mind that back when it all started, people didn't know better. It took some time before people knew what the hell it was and how the thing spread. You also have to keep in mind that even WITH the knowledge of HIV/AIDS, mistakes and accidents happen.
This "he brought it upon himself" attitude is really ignorant.

I `am not willing to jump on the HIV/AIDS debate in THIS topic...but face it, that dude is just another voice in the choir of people who shared details about Freddie`s private life with the public.

Nitroboy wrote:

Mr.QueenFan wrote:
I´m pretty sure that everybody surrounding Freddie - including Brian, Roger and John - new that Freddie was an accident waiting to happen. How could they not sense that?
(...)

Quite an ignorant point of view/opinion.
You have to keep in mind that back when it all started, people didn't know better. It took some time before people knew what the hell it was and how the thing spread. You also have to keep in mind that even WITH the knowledge of HIV/AIDS, mistakes and accidents happen.
This "he brought it upon himself" attitude is really ignorant.

No it´s not, Nitroboy!

Freddie wasn´t ignorant! He was careless! He was the biggest rockstar of his time and he had the best doctors and people advising him. He knew about consequenses.

You are right about mistakes. But Freddie didn´t make mistakes! You cannot compare Freddie to the normal guy on the street. As an homosexual he was very aware of the "cancer of the gays" as it was called at the time.

If you read his bios, like i did, his behaviour around 84-85 in Munich and Brazil is something that makes you wonder "how was that possible?" "What did he expected?"

In Rock in Rio he was consuming drugs, staying at a different hotels from the rest of the band, and fucking around five male prostitutes a night in Brazil! Random guys his staff would pick up at gay bars or whathever.

In Germany Barbara Valentin told the same thing about Freddie getting home with several guys at a time.

I respect your opinion and you are generaly right about everything that you say about accidents and other things. But with somebody with this kind of behaviour it was expected what the end result would be.

We may not want to accept it, but it was self destructive behaviour. Freddie was losing his voice big time. I doubt that he could have go on making tours even if he didn´t got aids. His body was being pushed to the limit.

But i will not turn this topic into another discussion about AIDS. I just don´t appreciate you calling me an ignorant when all his bios state the same thing. I was talking about Freddie in particlar, not people in general!

He probably thought "Me sick? A disease? You must be kidding, dear. Everyone but me!". And that's all.
I agree with MrQueenFan, it was a self-destructive behaviour. But at least it pulled him back into music. He shared some amazing things with the world by the end of his life which otherwise might not have happened. But even with that in mind, obviously I wish he hadn't caught that terrible disease :P

BUMP.

One thing that did stick in my mind concerning the Montserrat story was that Gambacinni gives the date as May 1983. Freestone, in his book, gives the date as January 1981. One would imagine that since it was Phoebe who purchased the tickets and probably bought a programme that he would have in his mind a fair idea when it occurred. I'm not suggesting that Gambacinni is fibbing but perhaps his memory is indeed muddled.

Mr.QueenFan wrote:

Nitroboy wrote:

Mr.QueenFan wrote:
I´m pretty sure that everybody surrounding Freddie - including Brian, Roger and John - new that Freddie was an accident waiting to happen. How could they not sense that?
(...)

Quite an ignorant point of view/opinion.
You have to keep in mind that back when it all started, people didn't know better. It took some time before people knew what the hell it was and how the thing spread. You also have to keep in mind that even WITH the knowledge of HIV/AIDS, mistakes and accidents happen.
This "he brought it upon himself" attitude is really ignorant.

No it´s not, Nitroboy!

Freddie wasn´t ignorant! He was careless! He was the biggest rockstar of his time and he had the best doctors and people advising him. He knew about consequenses.

You are right about mistakes. But Freddie didn´t make mistakes! You cannot compare Freddie to the normal guy on the street. As an homosexual he was very aware of the "cancer of the gays" as it was called at the time.

If you read his bios, like i did, his behaviour around 84-85 in Munich and Brazil is something that makes you wonder "how was that possible?" "What did he expected?"

In Rock in Rio he was consuming drugs, staying at a different hotels from the rest of the band, and fucking around five male prostitutes a night in Brazil! Random guys his staff would pick up at gay bars or whathever.

In Germany Barbara Valentin told the same thing about Freddie getting home with several guys at a time.

I respect your opinion and you are generaly right about everything that you say about accidents and other things. But with somebody with this kind of behaviour it was expected what the end result would be.

We may not want to accept it, but it was self destructive behaviour. Freddie was losing his voice big time. I doubt that he could have go on making tours even if he didn´t got aids. His body was being pushed to the limit.

But i will not turn this topic into another discussion about AIDS. I just don´t appreciate you calling me an ignorant when all his bios state the same thing. I was talking about Freddie in particlar, not people in general!

All this is a moot point - for one simple reason - when Freddie was in all likelihood infected, the existence of a mysterious illness hadn't yet been publicly noticed by scientists. So even if he had stopped sleeping around when the stories of a mysterious illness first emerged, in 1981, he'd most likely still have been doomed, because he probably was infected around 1979/80, when the disease was unknown, and you couldn't blame folks for sleeping around, because they didn't know they could catch something so deadly.

We can deduce this through the knowledge we have of the progression of HIV. Now, this said, there are cases when the virus takes a shorter or longer period to start showing symptoms in a person and to develop into AIDS. So for all we know, he might have got it in 1981, '82 or '83, in which case stopping the partying in '81 might have saved him.

Also, there were strains of the disease, early mutations actually, which themselves had a shorter latency period, irregardless of the person they were inside (this was especially true of some strains of HIV which were going around in the 1970s in Africa, and could lead to AIDS in only a couple of years - scientists found this out in the 90s when they were tracking down the origins of HIV). But it is unlikely that any such strains were going around in North America and Europe in the early 80s - by then the average latency period of eight to ten years had already establised itself in the virus, and remains the same to this day.

So it would have probably been useless if Freddie stopped the partying anyway. Probably, not certainly. Because, to compound matters even more, there is also something called HIV superinfection, when someone gets infected multiple times with different strains, and this might (depending on which study you subscribe to!) aggrevate the disease. I'd bet my packed lunch that Freddie was infected multiple times.

Just a final comment: I don't think anyone should be angry at Freddie. Don't you think the poor man regretted his mistakes enough? I'm sure, when he found himself in that horrible state in 1990/91, he wished he had been more careful. I don't believe his 'no regrets' macho bullshit. He said that when he was healthy. He paid enough for his mistakes, and we shouldn't be commenting on how reckless he was.

^^^ Just wanted to add - almost every rock star lived the 'sex, drugs, and rock and roll' lifestyle to the max in those days (I am sure they do that today as well, but have better PR teams). Read an honest biography of just about any rock star - Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Ozzy Osbourne, and just about everyone else, and this will be quite apparent. So Freddie was pretty much doing what everybody else was doing, except that he was doing it with men, not women - which put him at greater risk. And made him a bigger target for the press.

Whether Freddie really knew the risks or not is debatable. He obviously knew that there was that disease around, because the conversation would not have taken place otherwise. I'd like to offer another perspective:

The gay community have long been the subject of abuse from the wider population. When they found a kind of safe place and scene where they could be themselves and party how they wanted to (were they so different to straight people? there have always been many promiscuous straight people), I think the attitude would have been one of nobody is going to spoil our lifestyle and our fun.

In parts of the UK in the 1970s homosexuality was still illegal. If you moved from repressed Britain to liberated New York's gay scene at that time, and all of a sudden there was all this sex you could have, without consequence, well, perhaps in that time you'd think, I'm not going to let some illness that I may or may not catch prevent me from doing what I want. People would think about it more as a scare story, or scare tactic perhaps. It wasn't until events unfolded as time went on through the 1980s that people really started to get with the game. It wasn't until the mid to late 1980s that the health education plans went out in full force, by which time you're expecting a group of obstinate close to middle aged men used to getting what they want from curbing their behaviour? I say obstinate because when Freddie was 35 to 40 years old, he was really being a bit unkind due to the bad influences in his life that he allowed to take over.

In fact in the UK, nobody really spoke about AIDS as a social issue until Freddie Mercury died. Before then it was something that happened, and it was a bad thing and a bit of a shame, and we were all a bit scared of it, and it was really just for "poofs". Now, although Freddie Mercury was gay, and we all knew it, his popularity transcended is sexuality meaning that many, many very straight and actually homophobic men were fans of Queen, so his death really did have a profound effect on the whole population. Of course there were many people who used it as an opportunity to condemn those terrible homosexuals and their wayward lifestyle, and isn't good that we're not like that..... (I have heard that before), and there were people in the UK saying that AIDS is of course God's punishment (which is outrageous on so many levels, not least because it presumes the accuser must be leading a life so perfect as to be above all reproach), but in the population at large, many people in that first year after Freddie died, felt it a great loss.

Of course, in the subsequent years, between Freddie's death and 'Made In Heaven' being released, Freddie went back to being a figure of ridicule again, and homosexuality was once again, even in the mid 1990s, seen as something terrible.

I strongly believe that had gay people actually been treated like real people from the start, rather than as the untermensch, then the whole AIDS thing would have been far less of a problem in that particular group at that particular time.

Of course, what we mustn't forget is that, by 1976 or so, Africa was already so deep in the shit with AIDS with a pandemic being pretty much unavoidable for that continent. I suppose the positive outcome of the Western and Northern AIDS epidemic is that it pushed people to research a cure, or at least treatment which is sometimes being distributed to the poor in Africa. This is a whole different issue and it just shows how the Western White world really views people from other racial backgrounds, economic status and culture, and who used to be far enough away not to give a crap about. Terrible really.

Oh I went all political there.....

Anyway, yes, Gambo was probably a hanger on who spoke too much about Freddie, but what he said about Freddie in the documentaries was nothing compared to what some of the people closest to Freddie have said (Phoebe, Jim.... really guys I had expected better behaviour)

^^^ Excellent post!