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those guests were people like Sarah Harrison from Browns, Peter Straker, Kenny Everett, Annie Challis and her travelling dog and Trevor Clarke.
    Paul Prenter remained in touch throughout the time I was answering telephones, be that contact only a call from Paul maybe once or twice a week. I started with the GPO on Monday, May 5, and continued with the telephone operating for six weeks before I received that call from Paul, the one I’d been waiting for: “Peter? Would you be able to go on the American tour?”
    Would I? No contest.
    I had been to America before, twice with the Royal Ballet, but I knew even from my comparatively short experience with the band that this tour would be something else. I jumped at the chance, said,
“Yes!”
    Only then did I think about handing in my notice to the GPO. I left on Saturday, June 14.
    I think for Freddie the United States was his Mount Everest. It was something that he had to climb to the peak of and conquer. By the time I started in late 1979, early 1980, he had just about completed that task. On the British Crazy Tour I had seen Freddie playing to two and three thousand people at a time. I don’t think I was really prepared to see 15,000 screaming and cheering fans in the arena venues Queenwere playing in America. Only a handful of British bands – the Stones, The Who and Led Zeppelin among them – could play that size of venue in those days with no support act.
    Freddie loved the warmth and outgoing personality traits that seemed to be the trademark of most Americans. He felt so much less on show when he was in public in America because in America there are so many stars on the streets of Los Angeles and New York that one more doesn’t make that much difference. In those days, London wasn’t the cosmopolitan city it has now become. Pubs closed at eleven and clubs at two whereas in America, with a little advance planning, a person could keep themselves entertained twenty-four hours a day and Freddie was always one for entertainment.
    America in those days lived up to the old adage, “Everything there is bigger and better” and Freddie genuinely believed that. You only had to look around at the cars, at the buildings, the cities and the vastness of the country itself when compared to Great Britain. He liked the music which was coming out of America at that time. It was the disco-diva variety which he loved and which was so influential in the recording of Queen’s
Hot Space
album. He did, after all, spend a great deal of time in discos and bars … merely researching the music, of course.
    On Sunday, June 22, 1980, we arrived in Los Angeles. The American tour itinerary had begun…
    June 22-26: Los Angeles
     
    Freddie, Paul Prenter and I were staying at L’Ermitage on Burton Way, just south of Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills. It was a luxury hotel apartment building with the ubiquitous swimming pool, this time situated on the roof. Freddie had his own duplex suite while I was in a smaller one on a lower floor.
    We’d flown first-class from London. The band party in those days always flew first-class while the crew went economy and usually on a different plane – on this occasion directly to Vancouver – not unlike the Royal Family! It had been arranged that the band would all meet up in Los Angeles before flying to Canada, as they were much more familiar with Los Angeles and the nightlife suited them better. It was the first time I’d seen anything of Los Angeles other than the area around the USC campus which is the location of the ShrineAuditorium where the Royal Ballet had performed. LA is such a huge sprawling metropolis that I had no idea even where Hollywood was, although I obviously knew it existed.
    The only place Freddie was ever a classic tourist was Japan. Things Japanese were an all-consuming passion for him, whereas wherever else he stayed in the world was merely a bed for the night. Hence I didn’t really get to see any more of LA during that