Freddie Mercury’s closest friend opens up about the Queen icon like never before | Exclusive

Mary Austin had the stories, the insight and the access. But writing a memoir about her lifelong relationship with Freddie Mercury felt insurmountable.

“I thought, no, I could never get this right,” Austin says from her home in London.

But about four years ago while living in Garden Lodge, Mercury’s cherished home in West London that he bequeathed to her upon his 1991 death, she and her two sons decided to hold an auction at Sotheby’s with some of Mercury’s artifacts – mostly furniture, artwork and some Queen lyrics found in a silver trunks.

But the real treasure would be the larger collection of Mercury’s handwritten lyrics, which, after much searching, were finally located in the upholstered piano stool in front of the Yamaha grand piano where Mercury composed the bones of Queen classics including “Somebody to Love,” “We are the Champions” and “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

“I had a rush of memory. It was almost as if Freddie’s fluttering by, you know?” Austin says of the discovery.

Exploring the lyrics made Austin, Mercury’s former fiancée and lifelong confidante, realize they needed contextualizing. Her vivid and frank recollections frame the creative archive A Life in Lyrics: The Official Creative Legacy of Freddie…

Original source: https://www.usatoday.com/entertainment/