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W–041 · Documentary photograph and sources

Freddie Mercury’s Final Year

Freddie Mercury never recorded the final verse of Mother Love. During the last year of his life, he would come to the studio for an hour or two at a time, recording songs Queen would have to finish without him. That same year, his partner Jim Hutton took informal portraits in the garden at Garden Lodge. In Mercury and Me, Hutton recalled beginning with photographs of the flowers before Freddie came over. He agreed to pose, but wanted to stand well back from the lens: no close-up. Hutton said he made four exposures.

1. Freddie and Oscar

Freddie Mercury stands in the Garden Lodge garden beside the ginger cat Oscar, named in Sotheby’s catalogue. Photograph attributed to Jim Hutton.
Freddie Mercury stands in the Garden Lodge garden beside the ginger cat Oscar, named in Sotheby’s catalogue. Photograph attributed to Jim Hutton.
Provenance and sources for frame 1

Sotheby’s catalogue attributes this Garden Lodge portrait to Jim Hutton. The exact day in 1991 is disputed. The copy comes from Vintage Everyday, not an archival master; the current rights holder is not established. Displayed file: 1600 × 1087 pixels. Full image record in Russian.

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Mercury had worked with Queen on Innuendo in 1990. Released in 1991, the album topped the British chart, as did its title single. The band continued recording in Montreux that year. Listeners would hear some of those songs only after his death, on Made in Heaven.

Years later, engineer Justin Shirley-Smith found the dates 13–16 May 1991 on the tape boxes for Mother Love. The musicians stayed in Montreux, ready to gather when Mercury felt able to come in. Brian May remembered Freddie singing one verse after another, making three attempts at each. Standing for long was difficult, so he chose to record in the studio control room. They never reached the final verse.

On 30 May 1991, Mercury was filmed for his final Queen music video, These Are the Days of Our Lives. He barely moves in the finished film. His friend and personal assistant Peter Freestone later said that even walking caused him severe pain by then. Richard Gray, the band’s photographer and art director, was on set: one of the few people still permitted to photograph Mercury in those final months. His pictures also show what lay outside the finished video.

On 23 November 1991, Mercury publicly announced that he had AIDS. He died the following day, 24 November, at his London home, with family and friends nearby. He was forty-five. The cause of death was bronchopneumonia associated with AIDS. Only a day separated the two announcements.

2. A garden portrait

Mercury crouches in the same garden. The publication presents this as a second Hutton photograph; the order of the two exposures has not been established.
Mercury crouches in the same garden. The publication presents this as a second Hutton photograph; the order of the two exposures has not been established.
Provenance and sources for frame 2

The attribution to Jim Hutton and the connection with the first garden portrait come from a publication of the pair. No individual archive record for this second exposure has been found, and their order is unknown. The copy is from Vintage Everyday, not an archival master. Displayed file: 1000 × 674 pixels. Full image record in Russian.

vintag.esView image file

After his death, Queen released Bohemian Rhapsody and These Are the Days of Our Lives as a double A-side single. The song from the final video stood alongside a recording from 1975. The single spent five weeks at the top of the British chart and raised more than £1 million for the Terence Higgins Trust, a charity supporting people with HIV.

On 20 April 1992, May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon joined guest musicians onstage at Wembley for the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert. The members of Queen and their manager Jim Beach established the Mercury Phoenix Trust, which continued raising funds to fight HIV and AIDS and to support people affected by the epidemic.

Hutton’s garden portraits have often been called Mercury’s “last photographs” and dated 28 August 1991. Yet Sotheby’s places the image with Oscar the cat in the spring, mentioning it in the catalogue entry for Freddie’s floral silk shirt. The year is known; the season remains disputed. Neither an exact day nor the claim that these were definitively his final photographs can be established.

The band still had tapes bearing his voice. May, Taylor and Deacon returned to them and finished the songs. Made in Heaven appeared in November 1995, including vocals recorded in Montreux in 1991. Near the end of Mother Love, the voice changes. Brian May sings the verse Freddie did not live to record.

3. The final video shoot

Freddie Mercury on the set of Queen’s final video with him, wearing a waistcoat patterned with cats. Photograph by Richard Gray.
Freddie Mercury on the set of Queen’s final video with him, wearing a waistcoat patterned with cats. Photograph by Richard Gray.
Provenance and sources for frame 3

Richard Gray / Queen Productions Ltd made this image on 30 May 1991 during the filming of These Are the Days of Our Lives, according to QueenOnline. It is a separate photographic work, not part of Hutton’s Garden Lodge sitting. Displayed file: 943 × 949 pixels. No free licence has been established for this file. Full image record in Russian.

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