Magic Tour

In the Paris concert of the Magic Tour, for the first time Freddie came out on stage at the end of the gig wearing the crown and the mantle that the costume designer Diana Moseley did for him.

“Diana Moseley arrived at our hotel suite. She was the costume designer for the Magic Tour and was delivering for the first time Freddie’s campest costume, a deep red cloak trimmed in fake ermine and a jewelled crown fit for royalty. It was extraordinary to watch him as he threw the cloak over his white towelling robe, put on his crown and strutted around the room.

Freddie sashayed around regally but said something was missing. Then he grabbed a banana and used it as a microphone. He flounced about, trying to work out the way the cloak fell as he moved. He loved it. And so did all the fans that night.

As the crowds cheered, I thought: ‘That’s my man!’”.

[Jim Hutton, ‘Mercury and Me’]

“Freddie was not as passionate about fashion as people thought. He dressed well for special occasions but was not addicted to fashion. He was sexy and very gentleman with women as with men for that matter. His fault? His obstinacy in wearing his Adidas with everything and anything!

Once, Freddie called me and he said ‘I'm not going to need something else, I have to do something else. I have an idea, it doesn't please others but me if it is. I want a crown and an ermine coat’. I said ‘Do you want a metal crown? As realistic as possible?’ He said yes and that's all he wants…

We had a little tussle with the colours. He wanted yellow and I wanted red, but the compromise was the white, because white always looks so good in the big stadium.

I was asked to help out on the European Tour which mean doing all the jackets with the little buckles on and the cloaks for Freddie.

He called me and said that he thought the show needed a lift, he had decided that at the end of the show he wanted to come out and take his final bows in an ermine gown and a crown. He wanted me to get this costume ready for Paris.

Once I finished them, I went to Heathrow airport with this giant metal crown in a cardboard box, the top sticking out of the box's flaps. The crown set off every possible alarm system on the security network.

Backstage, we were having tea and little sandwiches and cakes. Freddie emerged from his suite in his yellow tracksuit.

'Where is the crown, dear?', he called with his mouth full of cucumber sandwich.

He spent the rest of the afternoon wearing the crown and the cloak, practising the wearing of the ensemble for later.

He sashayed around the hotel suite rehearsing his walk and then asked Crystal for his mike... No mike being available, he substituted a banana and in this full regalia, swept out into the corridor hotel and alond the landing, reating a royal show for the entire hotel.

Later, on the way to the concert, I was standing close to him in the foyer as he waited to leave the hotel in the motorcade with the police outriders.

He was already flexing himself for the performance and as he was about to go through the doors and face the battery of television cameras and press reporters, I heard him murmur just to himself: ‘Right! As soon as I'm out of that door, I'm theirs.’

It was a magical moment, that sudden transformation of the private man into public proverty. That was his job.” (Diana Moseley)

“So what about the last concert picture of them all? Which one was it? I think it has to be one of the shots with Freddie dressed in mantle and crown.

That picture could only be shot by someone with clearance to stand in front of the security fence all the way to the encore ‘God Save The Queen’. And that privilege was the exclusive right of ‘Mr Svensson from Sweden’.

One week into The Magic Tour 86, costume designer Diana Moseley had presented Freddie with a complete outfit for a king, which made the singer so excited, he started strutting around with it on in his suite.

Once upon a time, he had chosen the name Queen for the band. It was both short, snappy and had connotations of the grandiose (and for those who understood the hidden code also hinted at his homosexuality). Now he had come full circle.” (Torleif Svensson, photographer)