Freddie Mercury: His Life in His Own Words

I hate this process of doing a show and making excuses afterwards. That’s bullshit. Once you do a show you’ve got to stick by it

I don’t know what the answer is. You just have to try to do your best.

Money may be vulgar, but it’s wonderful. I cope with wealth very well, actually – I spend, spend, spend. Well, what’s money for if not to spend?

I think on stage you either have the magic, or you don’t, and there’s no way you can work up to it.

I can’t dance for shit, my dears! I cheat a lot and I’m very limited, so on stage I just use my limitations to the full.

Can you imagine writing a song called ‘My Love Is Safe’? It would never sell.

I was trying to say that classy people can be whores as well.

A lot of people are creative, in their own way. It doesn’t have to be just in music. That is part of talent as well – do you see dears? I’ve always maintained that, that you can’t just sit at home and say, “Look, I’m so wonderful, I’m so creative, I’ll just wait.” No. You’ve got to go out there and actually grab it, and utilise it, and make it work. That is part of talent. Having talent is one thing, but to actually use it and feed it to the masses, is another part of talent. It goes hand in hand. It’s called Hard Sell I think. You’ve really got to sell your arse. You’ve got to go in there and ram it down their throats and say, “Here I am! I’m creative! I’m wonderful! Here … EAT IT!” You have to do that. If there are other ways of doing it, then my God, you tell me.

I seem to write songs that I don’t think about much at the time, but which seem to sort of catch up on me, if you know what I mean, afterwards. So I guess without knowing it, it’s a sort of subconscious thing. I think most people write songs that are inside them. I’m not one of those writers that practices trends and says, “Ok, this is trendy today, let’s write a song about that.” I just like to do different things, and not repeat myself. I don’t like to stay in one position for too long, so that comes out in my songs and lyrics. I like to try everything once and I’m not scared of pitfalls. I love the challenge and I like doing things that are not part of the mainstream. I’m not afraid to speak out and say certain things in my songs because I think in the end being natural is what wins.

I hate actually trying to analyse my songs to the full. You should never ask me about my lyrics. People ask, “Why did you write such and such a lyric and what does it mean?” I don’t like to explain what I was thinking when I wrote a song. I think that’s awful. That’s not what it’s all about.