Freddie Mercury: By the Man Who Knew Him Best is not a biography though it does afford intimate access into the life of the Queen frontman. It's a memoir of a limited period in Mercury's life, as Peter Freestone joins Queen's touring crew as wardrobe master in 1980 and sticks around as his personal assistant until the singer's death eleven years later. Freddie Mercury largely reads as a diary of that time. Freestone writes of his day-by-day duties in a consistently amiable tone. He discusses Mercury's volatile relationships with no more dramatic emphasis than he discusses music video shoots, Freddie's favorite foods, or procuring dry underwear for his boss after a show. Only when discussing his friend's death does Freestone's amiably neutral tone drop. The author goes into much more intimate detail than he does anywhere else in the book.
So, who was Freddie Mercury? He was a guy who liked to fool around. He was a guy who tended to throw tantrums. He loved his cats and would call them from the road. He was extremely generous. He fought with his boyfriends, and there were some ugly scenes. He was an apolitical royalist. He had a school-boyish sense of humor. He liked to make people watch his videotape of a Prince concert. He took his work very seriously. He tended to distinguish love from sex. He died horribly and way too young. He, according to Freestone, needed a certain amount of chaos in his life to fuel his creativity. Why? That isn't clear because his armchair analysis doesn't go any deeper than positing a theory, which is fair since Freestone's background is in wardrobing, not psychology. Occasionally he does point out a myth only to refute it. So, with a decided lack of fanfare, I do think that Freestone gave us as clear a portrait of Freddie Mercury as we're likely to get.
Freddie Mercury: By the Man Who Knew Him Best was originally published in 1998. It is now being reprinted as part of the Omnibus Remastered series. Its sole new content is a foreword written by Freddie Mercury: The Final Act documentarian James Rogan, which further emphasizes Mercury's desire for privacy.
