Queen Unseen by Peter Hince Read Free Book Online

tour of duty in the city’s bars and clubs. Fred was understandably nervous that his knee mightnot stand all the punishment he gave it on stage. Freddie Mercury was many things, primarily a musician who sang and performed on stage with the stamina of a professional athlete. Did he train? Did he work hard to get in shape prior to gruelling tours? Did he have a disciplined exercise and diet regime? No. A few stretches occasionally and an enormous self-belief. And a few vodkas.
    Dieter Breit, the physiotherapist, was known as The Fizz and deemed a luxury in some quarters, but rescued Fred and several shows when the Mercurial knee went during a performance in Hanover later in ’84. He also sorted out Roger’s badly sprained ankle after a fall in Sun City weeks later. Touring is hard on the body and The Fizz regularly worked on my back when it ‘went’. Usually after being thrown across the lobby of a hotel by one of my large drunken American crew mates!
    So, load out took varying times depending on the state of my back, the liggers, access for the truck, the local crew and whether we were staying in town and had the incentive of a good party to go to. Load out could take several hours, but in Tempe, Arizona, where the truck backed directly up to the stage, and we had a very efficient local crew, it took around 45 minutes from Queen leaving the stage to the band gear truck doors being closed. A 45-foot trailer. A foot a minute, a personal record. Packing trucks is a grubby and unpleasant procedure, punctuated by banged shins, scuffs, splinters, bruises and trapped fingers. As I packed the truck, I always made sure I had cigarettes and drinks at the back of the truck to smooth the way with the locals. Truck packing was never fun, just a task that had to be done in high spirits in order to get it done, but when it was cold, damp and we encountered sub-zero temperatures, it was a truly miserable experience. Yugoslavia in 1979, midwinter: Fred presents me with a gift to keep warm while packing the truck – a brightly coloured matching set of woollen hat and gloves. I was touched. Woven by local craftsmen and bought from some Eastern European artisan co-operative shop? No: the local branch of C&A, Zagreb.
    It was while loading a truck as a teenager that I acquired the origins of my nickname. Called on to do all the dirty jobs, including crawling in the gap between the top of the stacked gear and the truck roof, to slot some small item into the puzzle, the truck driver on this particular Mott The Hoople tour in 1974 said that with my long, lank greasy hair and skinny body I looked like a rat scurrying about. ‘The Rat’ as I was called became ‘Ratty’, courtesy of Brian May at my first Queen rehearsals a year later – and it stuck. When on the first day of rehearsals Fred was told his new roadie was one of the guys who had worked for Mott, and was called the Rat; with a twirl and flick of the Mercury wrist, adorned with a silver snake bracelet, he replied pompously: ‘Oh no! – I shall call him Peter.’ Didn’t last long.
    Fred, being Fred, put his own embroidery on my nickname, and with a French slant, I became ‘ Ratoise ’. Or occasionally when he wanted to communicate with the common man (me) and get his attention, he would shout in a mockney accent: ‘’Ere – Rats!’
    Once the truck doors were shut and padlocked, it was time to try to come down off the adrenaline rush from the intensity of marshalling the equipment at the end of an energy-packed show. Now we were free – until the next show. What happened next was subject to where we were going and by what method. If driving, then I wanted to get away immediately, and would not touch a drop of alcohol. If staying in town, we either headed to the hotel to clean up and splash on a bit of Brut aftershave – or, if time did not permit, we’d go in our working clothes straight to the