Mercury Roadrunner's Interview with Peter Straker

Mercury Roadrunner's Interview with Peter Straker

MR: Hello, Peter

PS: Pavel, hi, how are you doing?

MR: I’m doing good, how are you doing?

PS: I’m very-very-very well, yes, I’m all right, yes, thank you

MR: You are feeling good?

PS: Yes, I have a glass of champagne, cheers

MR: And I have a cup of tea, cheers to you.

PS: Cheers to you.

PS: I must say it’s a great honour and a privilege for me to talk to you, because since I was ten years old I was and still I am a huge ‘Queen’ and Freddie Mercury fan, and since I was about twelve years old I have for all of my life known about you, I have seen pictures of you in books about Freddie and I have always considered you to be one of the brightest of Freddie’s friends, you are one of the brightest characters.

MR: Thank you

MR: I always enjoyed your singing with Freddie and you works – ‘I’ve been to hell and back’ from ‘This One’s On Me’ – I consider it to be one of the best songs ever in rock’n’roll, especially the chorus when you sing ‘Tell all the boys I’m back in the city, tell all the boys I’m back in town’ – could you, please, say something about this song?

PS: When I first asked Freddie to produce me, subsequently we did the album ‘This One’s On Me’ and he helped with the other two albums, -

At that time he’d seen me performing a few of other people’s songs but nothing that I had written and he suggested, he said to me ‘You must write your own songs, that’s a good thing to do’ so I started and I wrote that song and he helped me with it, he helped me with writing it, but the whole chorus and all of that, that was all mine, so it was a good start so we decided to put it at the beginning of the album, ‘I’ve been to hell and back’, partly because of my life and it’s a romantic idea ‘I’ve been to hell and back’, isn’t it?

MR: Yes, and it’s a very theatrical song, it has all the qualities of theatre.

PS: Yes, and I love the theatre, I love the theatre.

MR: Yes. First of all, congratulations on unveiling Westminster Green Plaque on Windrush Day and congratulations with the success of your This One’s On Me 3 album box set.

I’m especially happy for success of your new version of ‘Late Night Taxi Dancer’ because I record music exactly in that electro synth-pop style so it’s really great for me to hear you singing in that style.

PS: Oh, I see, Ok. Well, that came about as well – we had COVID here, you know, and we were all locked down, so just to promote the album further, I said to Michael Alison, my guitarist, who wrote it, and I said ‘well, let’s do a new version’ and he said ‘we’ll do an electronic version’ and so I recorded it at home with the guy who does my sound, Dylan, Dylan Winn-Davies. So, I recorded my vocal and Michael did the small track and then he recorded the track around my vocal when I finally did it. I’m very pleased with it and it came out at Christmas. It probably should have come out in the summer, but I just said ‘Listen, let’s do it now because I could be dead by the summer’. Fortunately, I’m still alive.

MR: Yes, fortunately you are still alive and I wish you long years and I’m very happy that you are here.

And what are your plans for the future considering recording new stuff, new music?

PS: Well, we’ve done the couple of tracks already, one we are hoping to have ready in September and I have redone something else. And we might be doing a concert in about ten weeks time, which I’m going to stream. I’m going to do it with just about thirty or forty people in the room, because I’ve been working with wonderful Italian maestro on the piano called Gabriele Baldocci, and we did some work last year so we are slowly working together and we’ll see, but hopefully it will be finished before September

MR: So, we have some new music to wait from you

PS: Yes, please

MR: Oh, we are all waiting, because everything you sing is very beautiful.

PS: Thank you

MR: So, some questions for Unofficial Russian Queen Fan Club

vk.com/queenrocks

about some of your connection with Queen and Freddie –

as you said, Freddie recorded some backing vocals on ‘Heart Be Still’, but did he do anything else as a musician on the album too? Did he record any other vocals on other songs or played piano?

MR: He didn’t play piano, he might have done a couple of other things as I try to remember, but he was great – I learned from Freddie, he loved harmonies, as you know, so we learned a lot from him with harmonies and Michael, actually, he did a lot of harmonies as well. We all worked together because on the album it was my band and me and my band we did all the vocals and Freddie just poped up on a few others, he helped, yes, but his voice was kept - we tried to keep it in harmonies, so nobody's voice came soaring above anybody else's.

MR: Yes, like equality for everyone

PS: Equality, yes

MR: Next question is – what are your favourite memories about David Bowie?

PS: Oh, my goodness… I’ve met David at the beginning of the seventies, because I’ve signed with RCA records and he was with RCA records as well, but RCA records, Geoff Hunnington, who was I suppose CEO of RCA records in London, said ‘We’ve signed you, but all our money we put into promoting David Bowie. We met each other then when he was starting, but then we didn’t see each other for a long time. And then I met him again properly, re-met him in 1979 when I was performing in ‘Tommy’, Pete Townshend and ‘The Who’, their show in the West End of London at the Queen’s Theatre and he’d come to see it and he knew Pete and we just started to hang out again together and of course Freddie as well, so we all just hung out together and just had a great time and it was great, we had a good time over that six or eight months. Being an actor or a rock’n’roll person or musician – you coming to contact with people and you work intensely with them - or it’s all there and then you drift away, but it doesn’t go, you are still friends, because I’ve seen him a few times after that because I went to see some of his concerts which he invited me to. So, we just had a great time, we just had a really good laugh. And we talked a lot of music, talked a lot about Jacques Brel, talked a lot about Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht and just had a good time, had a lot of drinks and eating food, yep, yep – Life, life.

MR: And you said you took part in recording ‘Under Pressure’ – could you, please, remember something special about it and what was your part in that recording? Did you sing backing vocals?

PS: I just did a few little bits, not heavily. We were in New York and I was in the studio, Freddie was there and obviously David was there and whoever was there we just do little bits on it so, yes, so I just did little bits and it was great fun, because they were still writing, still finishing off writing the lyrics and music between them, so I learned a lot, I learned a lot.

MR: What are your own favourite films and television movies you took part in as an actor?

PS: Oh, my goodness… When I was very young, when I was in a musical ‘Hair’ in London, and just after I left ‘Hair’ I had done a concerts at the Mayfair Theatre and one of the producers for the film I subsequently did was Ned Sherrin and he wrote the script for the film with Caryl Brahms and the film was called ‘Girl Stroke Boy’ and it was my first film, where I played a girl/boy person really -so the word is ‘androgynous’. Androgyny. So, you weren’t quite sure what I was and it was a sort of comedian part but it did very well and in fact - you asked me that – that film is being re-released this year on bluray and – to my horror - it’s fifty years old, they told me. Fifty years, uh… Anyway, we are still alive, we are still alive and drinking

MR: Yes, cheers, Peter

PS: And then I did a wonderful television series with Stephanie Beacham and Pam Ferris, Richard Moran, a lot of English actors and it was a series for a central television in the eighties and it was called ‘Connie’. I loved that. And then another series, a small series called ‘Orchid House’. There’s been a few things and I worked with Colin Nutley, who was a great director and I did a film called ‘Da Silva Da Silva’. I’ve done a few things and of course a big thing is which everybody likes and I have to say I did ‘Doctor Who’ with Tom Baker and I really-really enjoyed that, that was great time in the seventies. So, I just keep going.

MR: That’s great. And what are your favourite memories of recording ‘Flash’ with ‘Queen’?

PS: That was the first film score they did and I was just to be invited in the studio and I remember singing on some of the stuff in ‘Flash’ and then Brian saying to me in the end, he said ‘We had to pull you back, because the voices are not quite complimentary to each other. So, I’ve done some little bits and it was a good time and I was just learning, learning, learning, like we all were at that time

MR: Great. And what are your favourite memories about Freddie’s Garden Lodge Family members Jim Hutton and Joe Fanelli?

PS: Oh, I don’t know if I have favourite memories. I remember them very fondly because they were around for such a long time and I think we all got on. I mean, there are times when if you are with people you don’t get on with them all the time, but on a general level we got on, we always had a laugh and all I remember – Garden Lodge was joyous place to be in and to be at. Freddie had his grand piano there and we used to sing together, we used to get drunk, Mike Moran would come and we would play the piano and sing. And Freddie would sing and try to sing as high as possible with each other. I tell you what it is – it’s a marvelous memory to have and to look back on with great affection. So, Garden Lodge was very special place and it still is, it’s there and would never go out of the memories. And it was a beautiful house.

MR: And what do you remember about recording backing vocals for Freddie’s and Dave Clarck’s ‘Time’?

PS: Uh-huh-huh, that was crazy as well. Dave Clarck’s ‘Time’ was an extraordinary piece of theatre and using holograms – I think it was the first time it was used properly in the commercial theatre. It was almost spontaneous. They knew what they wanted and Mike Moran, again, he did that, we just came in and people just sort of put in their ideas and some of them were rejected and some weren’t, so it was good and I enjoyed ‘Time’ very much, it was a great-great show and I was involved in it, because Dave asked me to stand in understudy for six weeks while the other guy, Clinton Derricks, I think, was away and just in case somebody got ill or something, so I just did it and I really had a lovely time. There’s very few things I’ve done which I don’t have a good memory of it. It’s lovely and I enjoyed ‘Time’ very much.

MR: And what are your memories about the last ‘Queen’ concert at Knebworth? Were you together with Freddie and the band when they were flying in a helicopter above the crowd of fans?

PS: Yes, I was, I think Freddie had his own helicopter with his pals, and Brian, Roger they all had they own helicopters. And it was the most wonderful-wonderful experience, because I was on stage at the end of the piano, so nobody could see me, but I was at the end of the piano on stage with Freddie playing and we were having jokes while he was playing and were saying to each other:

- Look at the crowd!

- Massive!

- I’ve never seen it!

- Look at the crowd!

And there’s my friend going ‘Mama, just killed the man…’, that was fantastic, that was mind-blowing.

MR: And what is your personal the most favourite memory about filming ‘The Great Pretender’?

PS: In the morning of filming ‘The Great Pretender’ I was rehearsing a Shakespearean play at Bristol which my friend Roger Rees was directing and when Freddie first asked me to do it, because Roger Taylor and I did the backing singing, the backing vocals with Freddie, and he said he was going to do it and he wanted to do it in drag and he asked me would I do it and Roger agreed to do it and I said ‘Yes, I would do it’. Well, I stay in my hotel in Bristol, but he did ask us to shave all our hair under our arms and everything and I had a moustache which I still have and that morning I woke up in my hotel before I went to film and I put this stuff on which gets your hair off and I washed my hair away – I’m not very hairy anyway, but I shaved my chest and under my arms and moustache coming off and I had to go to rehearse in the day in Bristol, and then my driver drove me up to London and I got, I think, to Battersea, where we filmed it at about nine o’clock and they dressed us all up and – to my horror – he and Roger hadn’t shaved anything. And I said… well, names were called, but it was all right, it was in a nice way. And that’s phenomenal, because it was all done in one night, literally, all the filming, because I got back to Freddie’s house, I think, at about five in the morning and slept for a couple of hours and my driver came and picked me up and had to drive me back to Bristol to rehearse by ten in the morning, so that I would always remember. Great fun, great-great time.

PS: And what are memories about taking part in recording on ‘Barcelona’? Did you record backing vocals only on ‘Golden Boy’ or are there any more parts recorded by in other songs on that album?

MR: I can’t remember. I think I did a little bit on ‘Barcelona’, but just in the background, with other people. And ‘Golden Boy’ – the whole group of us recorded backing vocals on it, because I was doing another show in the West End, called ‘Blues In The Night’ and there was a wonderful American singer called Carol Woods and, oh, she was something else, because we went to see her performing the show before I joined the show and our friends were in there as well, Debbie Bishop and of course Maria Friedman. And it was a sensational show. So Freddie got a group of us with Madeline Bell and with Lance Ellington and a few others and just wanted this group of people so Mike Moran and Freddie, they put this thing together and we just did it sometimes after we finished performing at night and then we went in the studio later and do it, so lots of thing we just done on the impromptu, because it’s working and you just got to do it. And you just do it, yeah.

MR: And how do you remember your performing of the songs together with Freddie and Montserrat Caballe on stage?

PS: Oh yes, we did the whole album, we did it in, I think, we did it in Madrid, I believe, in part of the Palace of The King and Queen of Spain. It was a sensational evening, because there was the orchestra there and it was sublime, it was wonderful, and there were so many great artists from around the world who came in for that concert and they performed as well and then ‘Barcelona’ and ‘Golden Boy’, we performed that later. So that was A One, out of this world, yes. Good, it was good, very good

MR: That’s wonderful. And do you remember ever talking with Freddie about something connected with Russia.

PS: Not really, um-ha-ha-ha. I’m sure we did, because we talked about so many things. But I think we listened at the time earlier in Russia, I think, wasn’t Elton John one of the first people to perform in Russia?

MR: Yes, he was

PS: I think we listened to that and we got quite excited because they came over on the radio and that was fantastic. I think probably ‘Queen’ would have liked to go to Russia, I don’t know if the have been to Russia, have they?

MR: No, they haven’t.

PS: No, they didn’t go, okay. I think they would have liked to go to Russia or they might still go to Russia.

MR: In their new stage, like when they were with Paul Rodgers and Adam Lambert they came to Russia, but without Freddie.

PS: Yes, oh, that’s different, that’s what I mean. I think he would have liked to come to Russia, but didn’t get the chance and didn’t go.

MR: Peter, and if you have any time, we all really welcome you to Russia with concerts or with interviews, it would be great to see you here.

PS: I would love to go to Russia, I don’t know if Russia would like me, ha-ha.

MR: We have a lot of fans of you here, so we all would be very happy to see you here.

PS: I would love to go, so let’s see if we can make it happen. Speak to your people and see what happens, if you can find somebody, and I’ll come, yes. I’ll go, yes, I’d love to come to Russia, it would be great to perform there. It would be an honour. Russia, here I come. You said it first, Pablo, so let’s make it happen.

MR: Yes, Okay. So, it was a great honour for me to talk to you and a great pleasure and I’m wishing you a wonderful day and all of the very best, it’s really amazing to talk to you, so thank you very much.

PS: Thank you very-very much, it is a great pleasure to talk to you as well, thank you. Perfect, thank you. Cheers.

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p.s. And here is the audio version, posted on Peter Straker's official YouTube channel:


youtu.be/_5nKej73-wg

Enjoy