Brian May has offered a poignant new perspective on Freddie Mercury’s final performance with Queen, recalling what the singer uttered backstage after the band’s last show with him at Knebworth Park in August 1986.
Speaking to The Times, May said Mercury came offstage after the concert and told his bandmates, “I can’t do this anymore.”
At the time, May and the rest of Queen assumed Mercury was simply exhausted after another demanding tour. “He did have a tendency to be dramatic, so we thought Freddie was just being Freddie,” May recalled.
With the knowledge that Mercury was already living with HIV, however, May now hears those words differently. Mercury had received his HIV diagnosis in 1987 and kept his condition largely private, telling his Queen bandmates about it in 1989. He publicly acknowledged that he had AIDS on November 23, 1991, one day before his death at his home in Kensington. He was 45.
“But I now realize he already knew the prognosis, which was grim,” May said.
It really broke us up, and I don’t think John Deacon did cope. He went to pieces.”
— Roger Taylor
The guitarist recalled becoming increasingly aware that something was wrong as Mercury developed unexplained symptoms. “I remember reading about young men dying in America, and then we saw Freddie with these strange symptoms, so we put two and two together,” he said. “It’s incredible that he carried on with such confidence and energy to the very end.”
Queen’s August 9, 1986, concert at Knebworth was ultimately Mercury’s final appearance with the band. More than 120,000 people attended the show, which brought the Magic Tour to a close.
Although Mercury continued to record with Queen — including material that the surviving members used to create 1995’s Made in Heaven, their final studio album — he remained too ill to perform. Mercury died at age 45 on November 24, 1991. Mary Austin, Mercury’s fiancée, revealed the chaos of the singer’s final weeks, and the lengths the press went to in pursuit of a story.
“They’d wait for him when he had doctors’ appointments and had to leave the house,” she told The Guardian. “Freddie needed decoys. It got chaotic.”
Mercury’s death fundamentally changed Queen. Drummer Roger Taylor told The Times that he was on his way to visit Mercury when he learned that the singer had died.
“It really broke us up, and I don’t think [bass guitarist] John Deacon did cope,” Taylor said. “He went to pieces. He didn’t want to go on in the music industry after that.”
May had similarly believed Queen’s story was finished. “We always said that if any of us went, that was the end,” he said.
Queen did eventually return to the stage, first with guest vocalists and later with Adam Lambert, but May has now confirmed that the band’s touring career has come to an end.
He said he made the decision about 18 months ago after a close family friend died while Queen was touring in the United States. May had wanted to leave the tour temporarily to attend the funeral, but his tour manager told him, “You know you can’t do that.”
The experience forced him to reconsider what he was willing to sacrifice for life on the road.
“I have a wife [actor Anita Dobson], grandchildren and a lot of astrophysics I want to do, so I’m thinking maybe 50 years is enough,” May said.
