In the years since Freddie Mercury’s passing, his former fiancée Mary Austin has kept a low profile. Their nontraditional relationship has fascinated Queen fans for decades.
Now, in a rare interview, Austin describes the singer’s final weeks and described his final days as the British press hounded him, waiting outside his home and doctors’ offices, desperate for any news about the Queen singer’s deteriorating health.
Austin knew better than most what was happening behind the scenes. They remained close friends after he came out as bisexual, at a time when it was still very much taboo. When Mercury died in 1991, he left much of his estate to her.
Speaking with The Guardian, Austin reveals 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 says. “Freddie needed decoys. It got chaotic.”
Austin remembers one particularly grim exchange that showed just how intensely the British media was watching Mercury.
“The British media had a huge impact and sculpted the way he lived his life,” she says. “I remember a bike was coming through to collect [a] film. The courier asked if there was any news and someone shouted, ‘No, he’s not dead yet.’”
Mercury died on November 24, 1991, aged 45, having publicly confirmed that he had AIDS just one day earlier. Austin was with him during his final hours, when he was on morphine and drifting in and out of consciousness.
“I was holding his hand,” she recalls. “He was on morphine and in and out of consciousness, and he fell back to sleep. I stood there for quite a while, and he finally came round again, and he just said, ‘My old faithful.’ So I felt a bit like a dog. I wasn’t flattered.”
It was a typically Mercury moment in a relationship that had begun more than 20 years earlier. Austin met him in 1970, before Queen had released a record. They became lovers and eventually got engaged, but in 1976 Mercury told Austin he was bisexual, bringing their romantic relationship to an end.
That didn’t end their relationship. Quite the opposite: Austin remained one of the most important people in Mercury’s life.
“All my lovers ask me why they couldn’t replace Mary, but it’s impossible,” Mercury said in 1985. “The only friend I’ve got is Mary, and I don’t want anybody else. We believe in each other; that’s enough for me.”
Austin was around even before Queen had settled on its name. She recalls sitting in on a band meeting when Brian May suggested Build Your Own Boat. Mercury countered with Queen.
“They asked what I thought,” Austin remembers. “I said I preferred Build Your Own Boat.”
Did she really?
“Oh, no. I thought it was a terrible name. But Brian was my friend. I’d just met Freddie.”
Austin would remain part of Mercury’s inner circle for the rest of his life. After his death, she became the keeper of much of his personal archive — and eventually discovered something extraordinary in the boxes he had left behind.
Among Mercury’s belongings were handwritten lyrics for songs including “Don’t Stop Me Now,” “Killer Queen” and “Bohemian Rhapsody.” But Austin initially couldn’t bring herself to read them.
“I couldn’t look at the lyrics,” she says. “I felt as I did when I originally packed them – that they were his personal belongings and I was being offered an opportunity to delve into them, and I couldn’t do that.”
Eventually, she changed her mind, and the discovery helped inspire Freddie Mercury: A Life in Lyrics, a new book exploring his songwriting and the life behind his words.
Austin also reveals that one Queen song was written about her. She doesn’t definitively say whether “Love of My Life” was inspired by their relationship, but she confirms that “Lily of the Valley,” from 1974’s Sheer Heart Attack, was.
And there are still things Austin won’t discuss. Mercury entrusted her with the location of his ashes and asked her to keep it secret. She has honored that request for more than three decades.
It’s perhaps the clearest indication of the extraordinary place Austin occupied in Mercury’s life: She was the woman he loved, the friend he trusted and, after his death, the person he relied on to protect some of his most private wishes.
Meanwhile, a breakthrough moment in Queen’s history, their famous concert behind the Iron Curtain, is being released in 4K.
