it occurs to me that some people on this site won’t understand due to being too young, so let me illustrate with Pink Floyd’s most famous album cover from their most famous album
it’s literally just a reference to this, Dark Side of the Moon, the 4th best-selling album of all time (according to Wikipedia)
Thanks to Mr. Nathan H. for letting me use his collection. I will kindly ask you not to repost. He accepted my request personally and I think, it’s the best if you don’t repost.
I have 2 simultaneous opinions of Jim’s book Mercury and Me where it goes into detail about Freddie’s last days.
Like, on the one hand, it’s very heartfelt and sad and shows he truly cared about him. And I can understand wanting to share those experiences since they were obviously very traumatic for everyone involved.
On the other hand… that is some really detailed, incredibly personal shit. Like, I’m not gonna get into the specifics because it is depressing, but… it’s about as graphic as you can get. It doesn’t leave anything to the imagination in terms of what happened even a few hours before he died. And I just feel like maybe Freddie wouldn’t want that to have been shared with the public. He was already very private about his life, so it seems like he may not have wanted everyone to know every painful/embarrassing thing that happened right before he died.
Of course, I always try to not say things like “Freddie would want/not want X” because, newsflash, I never even met him. Almost no one who posts online about Queen knew him in any kind of way. So I can’t tell you for certain that Freddie wouldn’t have wanted Jim to write the book at all or even the part about his death. And, clearly, Jim knew Freddie very well! He lived with him for 5 years and was about as close to married to him as was possible at the time. So they may have even discussed the idea of a book before he died. Or Jim simply knew Freddie wouldn’t mind it being written.
I don’t see any difference between what Paul Prenter did and what Jim Hutton did except that at least Prenter did it while, Freddie was still alive and could speak for himself. So I don’t think there’s any doubt Freddie would feel horribly hurt and betrayed by what Hutton did. Hutton knew Freddie wouldn’t have wanted that. HE HIMSELF claims that Freddie didn’t even want to release his AIDS announcement and was pressured into it at the end.
THANK GOD Freddie did, because Hutton would’ve spilled the beans after the fact and Freddie would’ve been lambasted more than he already was.
Knowing that Freddie was haunted by the idea that people would get to dig up his cremains, Hutton STILL told the world where he presumed Freddie was buried. I’m caused Mary to have to increase security measures at Garden Lodge for the safety of her babies. Hutton doing that was grossly irresponsible.
Freddie knew that tabloid writers and wannabes would write about him, but I don’t think he would’ve been happy with people who lived with him making money off of revealing intensely personal details.
There are genuine doubts that Hutton actually was as close to Freddie as he claims.
Neither Joe Fanelli or Phoene Freestone believed Hutton was ”THE boyfriend”. They lived with them for over half a decade and in all that time, didn’t believe Hutton was particularly special to Freddie.
So how close could they have REALLY been if the people living with them for over half a decade never noticed that Jim was particularly special to Freddie? Hutton was just the latest sex partner and turned out to be the last because of AIDS, not devotion.
I’m not necessarily refuting anything you’ve said, but I do find it odd that the evidence you present that Jim wasn’t that special to Freddie is from Jim’s book. I do very much doubt Jim meant Phoebe as being 1 of the certain people who dismissed him b/c Phoebe wrote the forward to Jim’s book.
I do think it’s not exactly fair to say “Freddie wouldn’t have wanted X” for most things. Like, the only thing I definitively ever say he wouldn’t want is people sharing the photos tabloids took of him when he was sick since we know he didn’t want those taken when he was alive. He also had that line in an interview of “when I’m dead, who cares? I don’t [or maybe ‘won’t’].” I don’t think that necessarily means everyone should just shit all over him since he’s dead, but it bears credence to the idea that he may not really care if his friends gave out info after he died.
And there is a major difference between revealing info about yourself when you’re alive and when you’re dead. Like Freddie obviously didn’t want people knowing he had AIDS until possibly his last day, but it’s clearly questionable. But years before he died, he wrote songs that clearly were about having AIDS and the associated struggles with that, knowing that eventually, people would find out he died of it and they’d understand those lyrics better. He didn’t write those lyrics b/c he thought people would piece it together while he was still alive, but b/c he knew once he died, they’d make sense.
Plus, Garden Lodge was already going to become a pilgrimage site for fans once he died, so Jim’s book likely didn’t cause Mary to need to hire any more security than she already needed. She doesn’t have security today just b/c Jim wrote a book.
I’m not trying to be a dick or anything. These are all opinions & so the truth could very well be somewhere in the middle. I’m just putting my thoughts out there.
Jim Hutton wrote Mercury and Me with good intentions. Did he share too much? Possibly. Was this malicious? No. People always say Freddie would not have approved of the book if he were here. That’s the thing, Freddie is not here. Peter Freestone told a story once where Freddie read a biography of Queen right before his passing, and he was discontent with it because it only talked about how wonderful he was. He told Peter that he didn’t need to be protected because he was dying and it wouldn’t matter. He said the truth had to be told “warts and all.”
People reprimand Jim for writing Mercury and Me, yet it’s okay for Peter Freestone, David Minns, and Rosemary Pearson to write novels about Freddie. The truth of the matter is all of these books contain private information about Freddie that he would not want to be published if he were here. Yet, it seems that Jim is the only one condemned for it.
Another grievance I see about Mercury and Me is that Jim talks about intimate subjects such as their sex life. I think it’s important to mention that Mercury and Me was a collaboration between Jim Hutton and Tim Wapshott. Tim Wapshott is a journalist who used to write for tabloid-esk newspapers. Many people very close to Freddie, such as Rudi Dolezal, have confirmed that Tim Wapshott did the writing portion of Mercury and Me, while Jim recalled memories. Wapshott also admitted this himself in an interview once:
It is fair to say that some of the stories may be dramatized for entertainment purposes. Jim was not in the entertainment business. Like Freddie said many times, you have to be “very hard” in this particular industry, or else people will tread all over you. I do not think Jim went into the project intending to reveal these specific details. I think he was coaxed into it because people like to read juicy things. He probably did not feel confident putting his foot down and got talked into things that he wasn’t comfortable revealing. I have actually heard that Jim admitted this once, although I cannot find the source to this information. People make mistakes.
Secondly, this is Freddie Mercury, who publicly said that sex was a hobby of his. Freddie was not shy when it came to sex. Is this information a little too private? Maybe, but again Jim is not the only one to talk about this. Rosemary Pearson also talks about her sex life with Freddie, and no one says anything about that.
Peter Freestone has said that Jim Hutton was the love of Freddie’s life: “What I think was the greatest love of Freddie’s life was Garden Lodge and Jim” (timemark 42:20). Here are some other things Peter has said about Freddie’s relationship with Jim:
Surely, Jim was not just the “latest sex partner.”
The reason Peter Freestone, Rosemary Pearson, David Minns, and Jim Hutton all wrote books was because Freddie passed away. If Freddie were alive, I doubt that they would have gone against his privacy. It’s not fair to chide someone with the rational “if Freddie were here.” If Freddie were here, none of the books would have been published. They did it afterward when in his words, “it didn’t matter.” The book was made with good intentions; that’s what matters. Paul Prenter’s tell-all was spiteful. This is a false equivalence.
The reason people condemn Jim, and no one else is because they want to make it seem like Mary was more important to Freddie than Jim was.
They were both important to Freddie in different ways. Mary was a loyal friend, and Jim was his lover.
THE ONLY ONE ALLOWED TO SIT THERE SHOULD BE THE ARTIST AND THEN IT SHOULD GO BE IN A MUSEUM.
Hand made crafts should be worshipped for the art they are.
i respect this SOOOOO much more than any iron sword throne chair
This one involves way more stabbing
SHE BOUGHT A PEACOCK
Nobody gonna talk about how she collected roadkill for cOloR CoMpAriSoN
Stunning both on its own and as evidence that the difference between art (important) and craft (not important, or boringly utilitarian) is sexist, classist* bullshit.
25 years in the making? Extensive research including animal husbandry and handling of dead things? 14 threads per inch? If this was a painting, especially by a man, it would probably be more than an Interesting Thing on the Internet.
All that, AND it’s useful. At least technically. But, as @onceuponatmi said, it really should be in a museum! The fact that it’s *needlepoint*, at its size and level of detail, is extra amazing because it requires so much patience and meticulousness.
I hope the artist knows that she truly is an artist.
* it’s also racist but this example has nothing to do with that
