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Mary Austin and Freddie Mercury

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A longish read in The Guardian – might be of interest to some. Link is in the first comment.

Queen have a mixed review on here: some loudly state how much they dislike them, while others quietly profess their enjoyment of what they did.

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  4. It’s a realy nice piece. Mary has always been quite an enigmatic figure who went from being his girlfriend to his gofer to the guardian of his legacy and secrets. I sense that the latter has been quite a burden over the years.

  5. This is really interesting. I worked with her when I was at Sotheby’s and she did the Freddie sale. She was lovely but it was clearly a difficult experience for her at times.

    The comments in the article about being disappointed at the items going to wealthy collectors is a bit – well, surprising

    • Indeed. I don’t recall Queen being above making a quick buck without asking questions when they played Sun City.
      Brian May stated, “We play to anybody who wants to come and listen”

        • It was more a general comment about the culture surrounding Queen, who seemed to be an unashamedly apolitical band, happy to make money wherever it came from.

          Austin appeared to be associated with that culture, albeit somewhat removed from everyone but Freddie. Maybe she had a naivety they didn’t share?

          “In the end, Austin got her sons and Sotheby’s to empty the silver trunks, assess the value of Mercury’s belongings and prepare for auction. Austin thought, this way, his true fans would end up with his treasures. But that’s not how it worked out. Much of it went to the super-rich, who simply regard it as an investment”.

          • I think that’s unfair to Mary Austin. She’s hardly a hanger-on: she knew them when they had nothing. She has inherited something that is worth a lot of money, and now that she clearly feels that she is close to the end of her life, she is deciding to sell it so that she can pass on the money to her children. I don’t see what is wrong with this.

              • Trouble is, if you don’t take out the posers, then you include all the “right on, power to the people” bands who would sell their granny for a record deal.

                Mind you, that reinforces your point about Queen not toeing the expected line.

                • That was kind of my original point about them being unashamed. I’m ambivalent about Queen, some good things, some not good things. They were a bit like Dolly Parton in avoiding political questions and being there to entertain.

                    • I don’t see that her good deeds were political, as in pushing for particular policies to be introduced, which is how I assess if someone is political. Otherwise, anything anyone does in public is political. Whenever asked her opinion on which party to vote for, she dodged the question.

          • I think I know when I am beaten. However, to try to explain my somewhat slipshod comments – mainly that Queen artifacts going to wealthy speculators rather than ‘true’ fans fitted with an approach that saw the band putting profit over general support for an apartheid boycott.

            That’s not to criticise Austin apart from suggesting a touch of naivety. I wasn’t saying she was a hanger-on, more I wanted to say that she knew them and was connected through Freddie, so might have been aware of the commercial value of what she was selling, at Sothebys, to the highest bidder.

            If she wanted the true fans to have his treasures, that’s possibly not the best way to go about it…

  6. There’s also an article in today’s Times by her on the creation of Bohemian Rhapsody….

    https://www.thetimes.com/culture/music/article/how-freddie-mercury-wrote-bohemian-rhapsody-7jv08ks8x

    I know The Times is paywalled, so the text….

    Galileo! Galileo! How Freddie Mercury made Bohemian Rhapsody
    The Queen frontman’s former fiancée, Mary Austin, reveals what happened when he created his great rock opera and rewrote the rules of the pop single

    Mary Austin
    Monday August 31 2026, 8.00pm BST, The Times

    A six-minute song with no chorus, divided into distinct movements and drawing freely on ballad, rock and operatic forms, Bohemian Rhapsody bore little resemblance to the conventional hits governing early 1970s charts. It would take the kind of ambitious, symphonic thinking of bands such as King Crimson and Genesis and propel it, improbably, to the top of the singles charts. It became, for a time, the most expensive song ever recorded, was instrumental in popularising the music video — and would go on to permanently alter expectations of what a rock single could achieve. It is Queen’s — and Freddie’s — achievement. 
    The song is thought to have begun life in 1968. Having written the line “Mama, just killed a man” while still a student at Ealing Art College, Freddie held onto it for years, uncertain where it belonged. The lyric suggested a cinematic, Old West atmosphere, and he informally referred to the unfinished piece as “the Cowboy Song”. The manuscripts I later found in his archive demonstrate how that one line evolved from a loose idea into something that demanded an entirely new framework. From the outset, the ambition was unusual. 
    Much of the song existed on Freddie’s piano before it existed anywhere else. House visitors remember hearing sections played long before the band entered the studio, and the producer Roy Thomas Baker was introduced to an early version during a visit to our flat in Kensington, where Freddie demonstrated the ballad opening, hinted at the structural shifts to come and announced, with evident relish, the arrival of an operatic section.

    Sleepless nights, tapes and Joni Mitchell
    Freddie’s writing environment was normally relaxed. I’d come in, he’d stop, we’d drink tea and talk, then get on with our evening. With Bohemian Rhapsody that didn’t happen. In came a new seriousness — even greater focus. Now he didn’t even stir when I came in; he was lost in silent thought. 
    There was a moment around this time when he became frustrated because he’d dreamt something — lyrics, or part of them — and woken up unable to remember what they were. He was so concerned about losing ideas that we kept a notebook and pen by the bed, and Freddie got into the habit of deliberately waking himself in the middle of the night to write things down. 
    He’d also begun using a tape recorder. Before that, ideas were just sung or hummed and risked being forgotten. With Bohemian Rhapsody, there was simply too much material moving at once, so the tape recorder allowed him to catch fragments as they came — chord sequences, vocal lines, harmony ideas. After that, the tape machine never left him. He used it constantly, right up until his death. He could operate it without looking, press the buttons blindfolded. He’d take the tapes into the studio and say, “These are my thoughts,” and everything would begin from there. 
    Around this time, Freddie was playing Joni Mitchell constantly — her album Court and Spark, or possibly For the Roses. I remember feeling almost jealous, which sounds ridiculous now but true nonetheless. Joni Mitchell was the only woman I was ever jealous of. 
    One day he mentioned to me that I might like Chopin’s Preludes. Sure enough, I bought a record and loved it. We listened to Mozart as well. Whether that came directly into Bohemian Rhapsody, I don’t know — but it was in the air. 

    A proper piano
    By the mid-1970s it was obvious that Freddie’s old upright piano at our flat in Holland Road was no longer enough. It had served him well — songs like Killer Queen had been written on it — but what he was writing now was more demanding. In studios and on tour he was surrounded by beautiful instruments, and I could see that he wanted something at home that came closer to the sound and feel of the Steinways and Bösendorfers he was used to.
    The search took weeks. In the end he found a Yamaha G2 grand piano that cost about £1,000. It was delivered to our cramped flat in 1975 while I was at work. When I walked in that evening it felt as though the space had been swallowed whole. The piano took up a good third of the sitting room. It was black, high-gloss and unapologetic. But something unlocked when he took delivery of that piano. He could sit there all day. 
    His surviving manuscripts chart the song’s evolution in fine detail. Written on British Midland Airways stationery dated 1974 (Freddie’s father worked for the airline), they show him working through titles, structures and lyrics with meticulous care. Lines are tested and abandoned, including an unused opening — “Time for goodbyes now, is this reality” — and an entire discarded ballad verse beginning “Mama, there’s a war began, / I’ve got to leave tonight”. Other phrases appear early only to find their place much later; “Nothing really matters to me” is written down long before it settles into its final position. Entire pages are given over to harmony lines, particularly for the operatic middle section and the outro. Words such as “Galileo”, “Bismillah”, “Fandango” and “thunderbolt and lightning” appear almost as visual markers, anchoring musical ideas rather than narrative ones. Freddie’s ambition was not to replicate opera, rather to appropriate its drama and scale for a rock context. 

    Bring the family
    Recording began on August 24, 1975, at Rockfield Studio 1, near Monmouth in South Wales, following rehearsals first at Ridge Farm in Surrey, and then Penrhos Court in Herefordshire. Usually, I stayed out of the studio when they were recording, so going up to Rockfield felt out of the ordinary straight away. I had taken time away from my job at Biba, the Kensington fashion boutique, to be there. Rockfield was a farm, really — a yard surrounded by converted stables — and overall I really liked it: there was a good atmosphere, good food, the other partners were there as well, and it all felt warm and quite convivial, even familial. 
    During the days I strolled into the village, which was a long walk through the countryside. I’d buy food, do a bit of shopping, just meander, sometimes alone, sometimes with Chrissie Mullen, Brian May’s partner, and Veronica Tetzlaff, who married John Deacon, Queen’s bassist. At nights we’d all eat together at a large table, after which the band would usually go back into the studio. As far as I know, they hadn’t intended to only record one song; they went to make an album. But although they might have had the odd half-day on other material, mostly they were either rehearsing or recording Bohemian Rhapsody.

    So many vocals, the tape wore thin
    The song would be divided into three distinct parts: the opening ballad, the operatic middle section and the closing rock passage. The first section was recorded with piano, bass and drums in a relatively familiar way. At that stage the operatic section was left deliberately incomplete, with blank tape set aside on the reel for material that would be added later. The final rock section was treated almost as a separate recording, captured as a loud, heavy track in the style of the period. Even here, the arrangement was unusual. The basic backing track was recorded without a lead vocal, allowing space on the tape for the extensive backing vocals that would be layered on later. This approach went against standard practice but was necessary given the limitations of the available equipment.
    The recording of the operatic section proved especially time-consuming as what had originally been conceived as a short passage grew exponentially. In all, more than 180 vocal overdubs were recorded, with Roger Taylor providing the highest parts, Brian the lower ones, and Freddie singing across the middle and lower registers. John chose not to participate, feeling that his vocals were not up to scratch. With only 24 tracks available in the studio, the production team were forced to bounce vocals down into successive sub-mixes, reusing tracks again and again. By the end of the process, some sections existed on tape that had been recorded on eight times. Tape was spliced repeatedly as new ideas were added, with sections cut and reassembled into the correct order. The tape became so worn from repeated use that light could pass through. 

    We’re gonna need a bigger studio
    Following the Rockfield sessions, Queen moved between different London studios, including Roundhouse, Scorpio Sound, Wessex Sound Studios and Sarm Studios. At Sarm in Notting Hill, the band had access to a state-of-the-art 24-track facility. The engineers Mike Stone and Gary Langan worked alongside Roy Thomas Baker, with Freddie putting the finishing touches to the track. Brian added guitar elements, including a carefully composed solo. The final mixes introduced another layer of complexity. The cumulative effect of repeated overdubbing contributes to the way the sound thickens and strains as the song progresses. The ballad opening remains clean and clear, but as the operatic section builds, the vocals become increasingly saturated — not as an added effect, but as a natural result of pushing the recording process to its limits. With the song finished — the entire recording having taken three weeks, a length of time that many groups would have spent on an entire album — the band wanted it released as a single. However, its length — at nearly six minutes — ran against the conventions of radio and record marketing of the time.

    Kenny Everett to the rescue
    To discuss the release, the band held a meeting at EMI from which Freddie returned looking worried. The record company wanted the song cut down, but he’d told them that was how it had to be — and then walked out. If he’d sounded firm to them, he certainly wasn’t so sure in the privacy of his own home. Back at the flat, he was worried he had torpedoed his own career and that of the band. I’d never seen him that concerned before. 
    When the record company dug its heels in, Freddie found an ally in Kenny Everett, who was then a top DJ at Capital Radio. Kenny understood the song instinctively and didn’t want to see it edited. Given a copy of the record, I think there was an understanding that he might play it once, maybe twice. But telling Kenny to do something within limits was always a lost cause. He took that as a challenge. His show was at the weekend and once he started he played it over and over. He began by teasing it and then aired the whole thing, time and time again, and by the end of that weekend it felt as though it was everywhere. 

    That was also when I heard it properly for the first time. I remember thinking how strange it must sound to people hearing it cold. It was so unlike anything else — you didn’t quite know what you were listening to at first. But it carried you with it. There was such joy in it, such confidence, that it didn’t matter if you couldn’t immediately make sense of every part. And clearly Kenny felt that too, because listeners responded straight away. 
    Capital Radio was flooded with requests for a single that didn’t even exist yet. Freddie was jubilant. I think he felt that someone had finally stood alongside him rather than trying to cut his work down to size. That whole struggle — from the song’s beginnings at the piano through Wales, through months of work, doubt and turmoil — suddenly tipped the other way. 

    The single that conquered the world
    Airplay in both the UK and the US forced the record company’s hands. When the unedited single was finally released, backed by the Roger Taylor composition I’m in Love with My Car, it rapidly climbed the charts. To promote the single, Queen had chosen to make a video rather than appear on television in person. The decision avoided the difficulties of miming such a complex track and allowed the band to control how the song was presented visually. Shot at Elstree Studios on November 10, 1975, and directed by Bruce Gowers, the video — very unlike the song — was completed in just four hours at a cost of £4,500. All visual effects were created during filming. The opening image — the four band members in darkness, heads tilted back — echoed the photographer Mick Rock’s cover of Queen II. The video was edited and delivered to the BBC within hours and broadcast on Top of the Pops the same month. Its success helped establish promotional films as a central part of single releases, allowing artists to present their music visually without appearing live.
    By Christmas 1975 Bohemian Rhapsody was at No 1, where it would remain for nine weeks. It reached the top of the charts across much of Europe, Australia and Canada. Although it was initially less dominant in the United States, the song’s long chart run and later rereleases cemented its status there over time. Its various returns to the charts in subsequent years only reinforced what had become clear: this was not just a hit in one territory or one moment but a global success, and one that would endure. In time it came to stand as one of the most successful and recognisable recordings of the 20th century.

    © Freddie Mercury and Mary Austin 2026. Extracted from A Life in Lyrics by Freddie Mercury with Mary Austin (HarperCollins £30), published on Tuesday.

  8. I’d like to like Queen’s music, because it’s saturated with skill and enthusiasm. But several authentic efforts to connect down the decades leave it all at a distance, and I can’t explain why. Same with Reg Dwight, Abba, Prince. Radishes and peas, come to that.

    • For me their greatest hits is enough. Every one a winner, and quite brilliant. I have no desire to go further. Elton – love Yellow Brick Road, nothing else required. Couldn’t care less about ABBA or Price. Rod had been through a bit of a reappraisal in the last few years. I thought he’d become a bit of a joke, which I think he had, but his early solo albums, the Faces, Jeff Beck Group albums are superb. After Atlantic Crossing I’m not interested but before that he’s pretty solid.

      • Queen are a radio or random shuffle band for me. If a song comes on, I quite like it (and a few, really like). But I never, ever, put a Queen song on deliberately.

        • I don’t think I have since a memorable 9 hour drive across France 10 years ago when Twang jr and his mate demanded Queen’s Greatest Hits on repeat for the entire journey. Well, it kept them quiet.

            • I know it’s not always easy to express why you like/dislike a particular band – other times it’s very easy!

              But I’m interested: not just why you dislike them – but why the need to reinforce the point. With other bands, enjoying the greatest hits would be sufficient to get them off the hook – but not Queen.

              Nb: despite the reply, this is not directed specifically at Leedsboy – it’s a question for anyone!

              • As I’ve said on these august pages (even if it is September) I like the run-in and the run-out grooves on the BR single it’s the bit in between I can’t stand.

                My dislike is probably irrational but it’s mine. I can tolerate them now and don’t run screaming from the room if a song comes on the TV (I don’t listen music radio)

              • Funny you should say “With other bands, enjoying the greatest hits would be sufficient to get them off the hook – but not Queen.” because they are, to me, the very definition of a GH band.

                I had to opportunity to go to Knebworth but turned it down – just not my idea of a fun day out.

                I can enjoy Queen’s Greatest Hits, and half of QGH 2 (the singles from The Works and A Kind of Magic) but don’t know the last time I played them.

                The Miracle and Innuendo came out during my uni years and my housemates rinsed them to the point when I’d leave the house rather than have to hear them again (ditto: Brothers In Arms, Mike & the Mechanics, etc). They just weren’t very good, even by comparison to Works/Magic.

                To paraphrase AP, The Darkness*: the band Queen could have been.

                (*) I don’t like The Darkness, either, despite having seen them live.

                P.S. Under Pressure is one of my DIDs.

              • I remember John Peel saying bands like Genesis and ELP perform a useful function because he feels better about himself after publicly stating, at some length, how much he hates them. It’s not enough to dislike them – making sure everyone knows you do improves your profile. Or something.

  9. For me, with Queen, it was partly the music I couldn’t stand, (just not for me I’m afraid) partly all the Sun City crap and the permanantly incredulous “what do you mean you don’t like Queen??” attitude of huge swathes of the public. That bit really didn’t help and probably cemented my viewpoint.
    I don’t blame her for wanting to get the most out of it for her kids at all.

  10. Darlings, what you don’t seem to appreciate is that three quarters of an hour indulging in a headphones encounter with A Night At The Opera leaves one marveling at the quite astonishing variety and exuberance of the experience. For shame, if you cannot agree. Poor philistines. One sympathises.

  11. Queen were absolutely the thing from 1974 to 1976 in my comprehensive on the south coast. Glam and rock, with some proggy bits. “BR” was that, too, and “The Prophet’s Song”. What surprised me in her recollections was Queen not being as big or as well-off as I thought, but then as I was on £0.50p a week pocket money until i got my paper round and earned £2 a week in 1975, so maybe this is relative. They were certainly playing the theatres by 1974, and I believe they were an early success in Japan.

  12. I’ve always had a soft spot for Queen – they were the first “proper” band that I liked as a teenager and I believe that “Don’t Stop Me Know” (which is still a banger of a song) was the first single I bought with my own money.

    I went quiet on them for a bit when I went to Uni, which caused me to miss out on seeing them at Maine Road on their last tour. I came back into the fold towards the end of Uni – probably after seeing Roger Taylors solo band, The Cross, a university gig.

    Still play the albums occasionally – and still think that Sheer Heart Attack and Jazz are both superb albums. I do concur though that the later albums did have a bit of filler……

  14. Queen’s first two albums were pretty good, I think, but after Queen II they became too slick for me. I never connected with Sheer Heart Attack or subsequent albums.

    They were a pretty powerful band live. This is a great track, recorded in London in March 1974 and included on the double CD album Live at the Rainbow ’74.

    • I was sitting round a table for eight, tucking into a roast beef before Tom Jones at Chester Racecourse. A lovely Welsh lady started talking about all the bands she’d seen – Abba, Fleetwood Mac, The Rolling Stones and so on. The only big act she and her husband had missed out on was Queen. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d seen them live, supporting Mott The Hoople in 1974. I recall being impressed more by their stage presence than their music. They all seemed very tall. (They did wear platform heels.) Mott The Hoople were fantastic. Almost as good as The Sensational Alex Harvey Band.

      Those were good times.

    • I’m sometimes a bit sniffy about Queen, but there’s a reason that they have been carried over into the list of bands that cross generations. That is an awesome display of firepower, melody and confidence. The vocals!

      In fact the first proper gig I saw was this lot, and even though I was dragged along, I am still pretty sure I never saw any subsequent band “bring it” in this manner.

      10cc were a similar band where every album contained a triple album worth of ideas, but they lacked charisma, which Queen had an abundance of.

      • I saw 10cc when Lol Creme and Kevin Godley were still with them. They had a snarky wsit of the kind Steely Dan had when Walter Becker was still with us. While not being fronted by a Robbie Williams or Mick Jagger/ paul Rogers type, they had a lot more personality than when they reduced to Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart.

        • Me too – IIRC they played two years running at Exeter University with the full line-up. I particularly remember Lol Creme getting his ‘gizmo’ guitar out and having teething issues getting it to sound as he wanted it to. He rather touchingly grinned sheepishly at the audience and said something along the lines of “We’ve just got this new thing working and now it’s playing up!”. Both times they were a superb live band.

  15. I will be mainly positive, very good singles act, never saw them live, but they seemed to be an excellent live band. Haven’t heard every album, but the ones I have heard seem very patchy, maybe the 2nd (2) and 3rd (SHA) ones less so.

  17. I love Queen, though I can understand why others don’t like their music. It is over-produced, and the layered vocals and Brian May’s guitar sound can both be a turn-off.

    However, like Fitterstoke above, I have noticed that whenever there is a thread about Queen on The Afterword that people who join the conversation will often announce early doors that they don’t like them. I have only noticed this happening with one other act: ABBA.

    I sometimes think that the problem people have with Queen is that they are seen to be ambitious, perhaps ruthlessly so. There seems to be a tendency among Rock fans to think that there are some major acts who are absolutely obsessed with Fame and Fortune (and everything that goes with it). Like for example, Queen, Madonna and Kiss, say. Then, there are other major acts who have become successful because of their great music. Like for example, whoever your favourite band is.

    I don’t buy it. Nobody is going to convince me that Freddie Mercury or Madonna were/are any more ambitious than David Bowie or Bob Dylan. Anyone who has ever set foot on a stage in a stadium has done so because they wanted to very very very much.

    • Right on! No-one gets to that stadium level without a serious amount of ambition. But some try to hide under a layer of “authenticity”, as if their adoring public would go off them if they were honest about it.

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