Freddie Mercury & Me

‘Of Course You Can, Dear Boy’

When I left school at 15, I knew little about the band Queen. I mean, I knew who they were, but I hadn’t seen them or photographed them. Thankfully, that was about to change. Partially thanks to Shirley from Purley.

My first and last full-time job was at Fox Photos, in Farringdon Road, London, one of the world's biggest news and press corporations.

I was shooting lots of bands at night and at weekends, but at work, my first task at Fox was to work in their photo library, which was enormous. On day one, I was introduced to a nice girl who had been working there for a few years. Her name was Shirley, from Purley. Actually, I think she was from up the road in Islington, but I couldn’t stop calling her Shirley from Purley.

Anyway, Shirley showed me the ropes and what to do. This entailed collecting all photo request dockets placed into a tray by random people in the building. We had to read the docket then, see what photographs had been requested, and get up and down the ladders in and out of boxes in the library to find as many suitable photos as possible for the client. I would then jump on a little old white company pushbike and deliver it to the client. Often, these were the big national newspapers around Fleet Street, London, including TV.  There were no computers; it was all manual and constant searching. Now, when Shirley and I had a moment to chat during any given day, all she would talk about was Queen. It was Queen this, Queen that. Freddie this, Roger that. So, the band were creeping up on my radar.

A year or so after Shirley from Purley started banging on about her beloved Queen, I discovered they were performing in London's Hyde Park. The gig was part of Queen’s ‘A Day at The Races’ tour. Now, if you were of a certain age and were in the UK, you would remember how hot that summer was.   

I did my best to get a photo pass but had no luck. My friend Matthew Taylor, a great photographer and I arrived in the early afternoon at Hyde Park. We had no passes, so it was plan B. Basically, turn up and just blag it. Backstage passes in those days were invariably just sticky passes with no name or details other than ‘Back Stage” on them. So, if I managed to get past security and actually get backstage, the next thing I had to do was to subtly mingle with the drunkest person I could find who had a sticky backstage pass on their clothes and then subtly peel it off without them feeling or seeing it and stick it on my shirt. Then it was job done. Well, I said, job done, which was not actually true because I now had to get some meaningful photographs.

Little did I know that over the course of the next few hours, I would be talking about this moment for the rest of my life.