I first met Freddie at the beginning of 1975. I think it was March or April although I can’t be sure. I had been working for Paul and Linda McCartney for some time…Coming out of the restaurant September was Freddie and his old friend Malcolm Grey whom I knew. Freddie’s car, driven by Roy Thomas Baker, was parked at the kerb outside.
As Freddie and Malcolm crossed the street, there was no mistaking the lead singer of Queen who after only three albums had made such a name for himself with songs like ‘Seven Seas of Rye’ and ‘Killer Queen.’
Freddie was also making a name for himself in the glam rock stakes and my memory of him that night is indelible. He was wearing the famous fox fur jacket and skintight black satin jeans with white Dr. Scholl clogs. It was the same jacket he wore in the video of ‘Killer Queen’.
In fact, the jacket rarely left his back for the first twelve months I knew him. Black-painted finger nails and the Mexican silver snake bangle tastefully accompanied the ensemble and the whole was topped with a haze of carefully teased hair.
Freddie was never without his hairbrush which lived in the fox fur jacket. The three of them were inseparable.
David Minns
