Deacon Article

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/personalfinance/not-so-bohemian-now-ex-queen-bassist-john-deacon-is-worth-£105m-but-hes-been-a-recluse-for-30-years-living-a-life-of-blissful-suburban-retirement-where-it’s-golf-and-anonymity-that-now-rock-his-world/ar-BBOXaH5?ocid=spartandhp

Sorry Moog - the link didn't work :(

Not so Bohemian now, ex Queen Bassist is worth £105m, but he's been a recluse for 30 years living a life of blissful suburban retirement where it’s golf and anonymity that now rock his world

Alison Boshoff for the Daily Mail 15 hrs ago

Wearing a sensible navy jumper, the balding man grinding out a cigarette butt on a South London street last week could hardly cut a more humdrum figure.
His hair is grey and his demeanour middle-aged. This week, just a few miles away, his former friends Brian May and Roger Taylor strolled up the purple carpet at the premiere of the film Bohemian Rhapsody, but there wasn't a hint of razzamataz here.

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This is John Deacon, the 'lost' member of Queen. Worth a reported £105 million, he has nothing to do with the band any more.

Queen were, of course, shattered by Freddie Mercury's death in 1991, but since then, May and Taylor have continued to record, tour and perform, both as solo artists and as Queen.
They have put together the successful stage musical We Will Rock You, and continue to tour with vocalist Adam Lambert standing in.
However Deacon — who wrote some of the band's biggest hits including Another One Bites The Dust, Under Pressure and You're My Best Friend — has disappeared from view.
The fact, I have discovered, is that this quiet, intelligent man, now 67, always ducks out of anything to do with public appearances.

The band's PR man, Phil Symes, told me this week: 'He's just living a private life.'
Guitarist May adds: 'It's his choice. He doesn't contact us. John was quite delicate all along.'
Indeed his lifestyle in South London is so reclusive and quiet — and his attitude to fame so hostile — that the band apparently don't expect him to respond when they contact him.
His wife sometimes tells callers to their home that he 'doesn't live here', or that she 'doesn't know where he is'.
Neighbours say that they are aware that he lives next door, but they barely see him from one year to the next. The only exception was the local pub, where he used to call in three times a week for a glass of white wine with his wife — but it has now become a supermarket.

So why is he so reclusive?
Drummer Taylor describes him as a 'sociopath', while May suggests that Deacon has never recovered since a booze and drug-soaked period which he implies led to a breakdown more than 35 years ago.
Extraordinarily, Taylor says they haven't spoken in more than a decade. 'I haven't heard a squeak from John, not a single guttural grunt,' he adds.
'We're not in touch but John's a sociopath, really, and he's given his blessing to whatever Brian and I might do with the brand — and we've done rather a lot.'
May says he contacts Deacon often to ask permission for various commercial enterprises to do with Queen (Deacon remains a quarter shareholder in Queen Productions Limited) but it's not clear how much of a response he gets.

The company is blue-chip to say the least — turnover was recorded at £18.5 million in 2017, with that figure set to swell thanks to the new film.
Not that you would suspect such riches from his unassuming home in Putney, which he bought with his first royalty cheque.
He's never moved, because he didn't want to disrupt the schooling of his six children. This quiet living is the exact opposite of the showy excesses of Queen.
The band were famous for always demanding the best, for spending more than anyone else on private jets, stretch limos, fleets of assistants, hairdressers, designer stage costumes and the rest.
There were four-course backstage feasts with candelabras, orgiastic parties involving dwarves and bowls of cocaine and appearances by performance artists, like the man who lay naked under a pile of chopped liver and was ordered to make the meat twitch when people walked past.
The band was formed in 1970, originating from a band called Smile which included May, then a student at Imperial College.
A fan of the band was Farrokh Bulsara, a student at Ealing College, who joined as the vocalist and changed his name to Freddie Mercury.
They had a number of bass players before settling on Deacon. Legend has it that he was the seventh one they auditioned.

'We were so over-the-top, we thought that because he was quiet, he would fit in with us without too much upheaval,' recalled Taylor. May agreed: 'He's very solid and no-nonsense. He's always got his feet firmly on the ground.'
Deacon grew up in Leicestershire, the eldest child of an insurance broker, Arthur, who died when John was 11.
He had been encouraged by his father to take up music, and formed his own band at 14. Deacon was, like May, a technological pioneer.
He has a first-class degree in electronics from Chelsea College, and used to build equipment for the band, his most famous creation being the 'Deacy Amp' amplifier.
Worldwide fame came in the mid 70s, with Bohemian Rhapsody. Their touring was legendary and their studio albums were complex and expensive to make.
Deacon was known to hang back on stage, and those who remember him from this time say he seemed cripplingly shy — although with a dry sense of humour.

'John is one of those guys who will say nothing and then he will crack a joke, something really near the knuckle, and you will think: 'Did I really hear that right?' says Jacky Smith, who runs the Queen International fan club. He and Freddie were particularly friendly and would hang out together between gigs.
Manager Chris O'Donnell says: 'Brian May and Roger Taylor, who were the real rockers in the band, would slip away to hang out at some club in town leaving Freddie and John behind. John gradually started leaving too, and Freddie would go off to prowl the gay clubs.'
Phil Sutcliffe, author of Queen: The Ultimate Illustrated History of the Crown Kings of Rock, said: 'John Deacon was very much the silent bass player which is why these days he can go around practically incognito, which is just the way he likes it.
'He was always ambivalent about the attention.
'Queen was a very volatile partnership between three explosive personalities, and then you had John, who was the still point. He had his family early on, from 1975, and was very much a family man.'
Deacon married Veronica Tetzlaff, a pretty blonde Polish Catholic trainee teacher, in January 1975 when she was pregnant with their first son, Robert, and Queen were just tasting global fame.

They went on to have four more sons and a daughter. May said in an interview last year that the band span out of control while recording in Munich in the early 1980s. In a book he said that the band were: 'Living in a fantasy world of vodka and barmaids.'
He added: 'We all lost our minds . . . we were all in a perilous place where our emotions were out of control.
'It manifested itself in way too much drinking, a certain amount of drugs, which I didn't share — but certainly an awful lot of vodka went through my body. We all fell to bits.
'We overreacted with each other at times. We all left the band at some point. The studio's a hard place for a band anyway, but in our case all four of us as writers had had worldwide hits. The lifestyle we led magnified that conflict.'
May said it ended with 'John disappearing to Bali and seeing God or whatever'.
He added: 'He could be very outgoing and very funny, but I think some of the stuff that happened in Munich gave him a lot of damage, and I think losing Freddie was very hard for him as well. He found that incredibly hard to process, to the point where actually playing with us made it more difficult.'
In a rare interview, Deacon said he found the band's hiatus in 1985 hard to cope with.
'I went spare, really, because we were doing so little. I got really bored and quite depressed.'

Queen reformed the following year and continued to dominate the charts, playing sell-

[QUOTE]Drummer Taylor describes him as a 'sociopath', while May suggests that Deacon has never recovered since a booze and drug-soaked period which he implies led to a breakdown more than 35 years ago.[/QUOTE]

Wow - strong words from Roger.

Maybe 20 years of frustration from barely hearing from the guy have reached a boiling point, and it was time to open up.

I really respect Deacon, and that article makes me respect him even more.

[QUOTE]Jacky Smith agrees. 'John just gave up after Freddie died. He and Freddie were opposites really, because John is so shy and he was the youngest in the band. Freddie took him under his wing and they were very close for all those years.

'Freddie drew the attention away, and without Freddie there, I don't think John could face any of it.'[/QUOTE]
That really is everything in a nutshell.

Although this is pretty troubling:

[QUOTE]His wife sometimes tells callers to their home that he 'doesn't live here', or that she 'doesn't know where he is'.

The barman who used to serve him at his local pub revealed that he'd been warned by Deacon's wife Veronica who the musician was — and was told not to mention Queen.[/QUOTE]
If even mentioning his old band is going to trigger some anxiety, then clearly he is a mess. Poor guy.

This article pretty well clarifies that he doesn't have any opinion on what his old bandmates are up to. He just wants to play golf and raise his grandchildren.

All the more stunning and remarkable that a guy this fragile wrote timeless classic songs. Respect indeed.

[QUOTE]May said in an interview last year that the band span out of control while recording in Munich in the early 1980s. In a book he said that the band were: 'Living in a fantasy world of vodka and barmaids.' He added: 'We all lost our minds . . . we were all in a perilous place where our emotions were out of control. It manifested itself in way too much drinking, a certain amount of drugs, which I didn't share — but certainly an awful lot of vodka went through my body. We all fell to bits.'[/QUOTE] That was doing the Hot Space album. The next song Deacon wrote was I Want To Break Free. That sheds a whole other light now. Clearly Deacon's cracks were starting to show even by then. But again, the Space Invaders sweater for their biggest moment in America in 1981 probably should've been a dead giveaway too.

He’s been doing a lot of boozing still.

Always shocked me how he aged so much despite being the youngest member of the band.

Smoking and boozing. Good lad. Enjoy it John, you've earned it.

Also, that jumper is amazing.

John has said many times, including in the famous Bob Harris footage that he never thought Queen will get big, that he simply wanted to do "something" to cope with his father's death. When in Queen he wrote songs like Missfire, Spread Your Wings (and fly away), Another One Bites The Dust, Ned Your Loving Tonight, Back Chat, I Want To Break Free - I always thought when I was listening to his songs that the message behind them is clear - "Oh shit, I've done a big mistake, how do I get out? I just want to fly away and spend my time with my wife, who is my best friend, and I need her loving tonight". I always felt like he didn't want to be in Queen, Even in all of his interviews he seemed to be very uncomfortable when he was forced to speak to people he didn't know (I can relate to that :-) ).

So I don't think he is/was a sociopath, that sounds much too harsh without a good reason. Socially awkward and introverted would probably be much better descriptors of him. But if he gets anxiety if somebody mentions Queen, and the fact he looks 95, could mean that there is something wrong with him.

But anyway, he has decided that he wants to live a private life, and if you call yourself his fan, you should respect it

I did hear from a friend of mine back in 1998 (I mentioned it here previously) that one of his friend's patients was a certain bassist. Since then I've been very mindful that there is more to John's story than we know. I've always thought he was great and have a genuine desire for him to be happy.

John's social skills were odd at times. The way he spoke/acted at times made it look he found certain situations awkward and did not know how to deal with it (gestures/words) perhaps he even diskliked his fame as he didnt have the social skills to deal with it. For instance on the boat in Budapest 86 , the Wembley after party ... During other times he was pretty normal in the way he spoke (Breakthru behind the scenes interview, interview on Dutch TV discussing their upcoming Magic Tour) but generally speaking I always though he had some sort of a mental disorder.

I do think that he has suffered from depression over the dating back to at least the beginning of the '80's ... or even earlier. Also some of his kids seem to have had their own mental problems (not saying it's due to John, but still)

Anyhow, he is retired, let him be ... and enjoy his millions.

How much of this article is fiction? We're all treating it like Roger really said that, or Brian did. Well, maybe they did but I wouldn't trust the article much.