Freddie's last few years

Same thing happened to me, there were speculations about his health, but I was very young and had no idea what AIDS really meant. The day they announced on the radio he passed away, I was getting ready to school, and it really shocked me. I cried all the way to school.

The very first inkling I had that all was not well was seeing a Barcelona era promo photo of Freddie on his own wearing a blue suit with his arms folded. It was in the fan club magazine. And whilst he looked great I did wonder why he was wearing so much make up on his face. It was absolutely caked on in a way I hadn't seen before. I wondered if it was to hide a skin problem. I'd read the Paul Prenter articles which said Freddie was worried about Aids but it didn't say he had it so I felt reassured. Then the David Wigg article came out where Freddie talked about living like a nun and felt hugely relived that this awful epidemic wasn't going to get him. 1989 and watched a teaser trailer for I Want It All in May 89 and got very excited. Queen were back and this sounded like a great song. I had just become a fan in 1986 and I can't tell you how long the wait was between the Magic album and The Miracle. Throughout 1988 I saw lots of photos of the band in the fan magazine where Freddie was wearing chinos and shirts and looking like an uncool dad rather than a rock star. Then when I bought the IWIA single I thought he looked terrible, so old and with bad skin and unhealthy eyes. But as a kid I just assumed this is what getting old looked like. I was a bit down about it but no big deal. I was sad to see the classic clone look of the eighties was gone though I liked the beard. I could not for the life of me figure out why he just didn't look like himself though in videos. I can see now that it was the weight loss which was noticeable from the Breakthru video onwards. I worried when they cast kids in the video for The Miracle because I felt maybe the band were going to split up and couldn't be bothered making a proper video but I didn't think it was Freddie's health. And then I felt he really didn't look too healthy in the small part he did turn up for. But as soon as he turned up to collect his BPI award for his final public appearance you knew. You just knew and that's when the hounds came out. So when the announcement finally cam I don't think anyone was very surprised. You just thought "oh well, at least we'll get a few more year's of music and maybe he and his doctors will be able to keep him going". I went to my student digs the next night and went to bed just before 12am. I turned the radio on and Bohemian Rhapsody was on and something made me climb into bed to await what I felt was maybe coming afterwards. The DJ confirmed my worst fears and I fell asleep. Woke up and went to the cornershop and bought ever newspaper I could find and just sobbed.

It's interesting, because after the release of 'These are the days' and 'I'm going slightly mad' I would have thought it would have been obvious.

He looked so ill in those videos and really I always thought 'These are the days' was his way of saying goodbye to the fans. I just always assumed fans watching that video would have known he was dying.

Curio: we know of the recorded dates. But when was TATDOOL originally officially first broadcast as a music video? I was under the impression it was released much later in the USA. Prob censored until after his death even, as there were like 3 versions even then. Was its only broadcast with the Axl Rose Queen retrospective doc?

I did not have mtv and was super young even then.

Just talking BROADCAST DATES

I remember that TATDOOL was released in Holland a few weeks AFTER Freddies death. (The release date turned out to be 9 december 1991).
FOR ME, the only video released before his death that made me think that he wasn’t in good health, was Headlong.
In the Headlong video it was obvious, he had lost a lot of weight and his moves were very stiff, not natural in a way we were used to with Freddie.
But that was the only signal in the pre-internet era. I’ll never forget (I just woke up on monday morning, ready to go to school), the moment my dad told me that he had just heard on the radio that Freddie had died.
It felt like an enormous blow in my stomach.

I too remember seeing a fragment of TATDOOL for the first time on Dutch television shortly after his death, probably in the context of an obituary. Before that, the TSMGO video, which notably featured only old material even if it had been skillfully synchronized in parts, already suggested that something might be wrong with the singer.

Regarding the broadcast date of These are the Days of Our Lives, it wasn't a single in the UK until the week after Freddie died, so it probably wasn't broadcast in full until after his death. There are short clips of it on the intro to Greatest Flix II released 4 weeks before Freddie died.

Regarding how his last few years must have been? Well, have you known anyone who has been terminally ill? Basically it's terrible, but there are good days and bad days within a period of decline. There are days when it looks like they'll recover actually, and that can even go on for a couple of weeks at the time. The decline in the end is always pretty rapid. Peter Freestone said he was in constant pain for a long time.

It was broadcast on the Monday night - with the intro by a (very close to tears) Elton John.

I can remember getting in an argument the day it was announced Freddie had died with someone at work ,who called him a queer.It was just an awful day I cried a lot,it was like a member of my family had died.Most of the papers turned on him and I think about him every day.

[QUOTE] [b]Martin Packer wrote:[/b]

It was broadcast on the Monday night - with the intro by a (very close to tears) Elton John.[/QUOTE]

U mean the night following his death?

Just for context this would seem to indicate that those outside of the UK may not have seen or known about a decline in those days. The headlong video being one of the few indicators outside of UK tabloid vulgarity

@matt z Yes, I think it was the night after his death. Really rather quick for a tribute. But then we know most newspapers keep their obituary files up to date.

As for Headlong, I thought (and still think) he looked pretty good, considering. But we all know a lot was done in filming to conceal the truth. (And thank goodness.)

Freddie between 1987 - 1991 at Garden Lodge... very adult. Almost like an old social conservative.

Yes I remember the video for TATDOOL coming out in the UK just days after Freddie died. It was quite a surprise. Make that a shock. I thought at the time that they had deliberately hld it back becuase Freddie was so undeniably sick looking in the B&W footage. :(

Yes I remember the video for TATDOOL coming out in the UK just days after Freddie died. It was quite a surprise. Make that a shock. I thought at the time that they had deliberately hld it back becuase Freddie was so undeniably sick looking in the B&W footage. :(

I first heard their stuff around 1986 and when the Miracle was released I became a fan with my friends. The "Miracle look" was more or less the way we first knew him and to us it was pretty normal. But we bought some VHS tapes of their video collections and found it so intresting how different he looked thru the years.

When Innuendo came out it was clear he was sick. We didn't really think it was aids, but we thought it was a possibility. We were still young and I believed when Roger and Brian said somewhere that everything is fine and there might be a tour again sometime in the future.

But I also remember when we saw on TV the Innuendo EPK, where they talked about the album. Freddie wasn't interviewed, but you could see him in some clips. In the beginning "Hitman" is playing and the band fool around in the studio. Freddie was trying to do his classic fistpumps but you could just see how tired and sick he was. That image is stuck in my head. I just checked and it's also on YouTube, Innuendo EPK 1991, around the 1.48 mark.

Sunday 24.11, I was with my friends the whole day and when I came home my parents said that Queen's singer was dead. I went to my room and cried, I just didn't want my parents to see it. I even got angry with my mom when she said that they had turned the French TV news on and they called him there l'homosexuel and it was the only word she understood.