Freddie Mercury apparently spared no expense when it came to his close friends. Good friend Gary Numan recalls Mercury sending a limo to McDonald’s to get Numan a Big Mac.
Gary Numan, in his memoir, The Autobiography of Gary Numan, recalls that he went to see Queen perform in Tokyo and, after the show, they all went out for a sushi. But Numan is not a fan and Mercury did something about it.
“After a while,” Numan recalls, “Freddie Mercury came over and said, ‘Love, you’re not eating, what’s the problem?’ So I said, ‘Don’t worry about me, I’m just blown away to be here. I’m a massive Queen fan.’ He asked me what I’d like to eat, and I told him, ‘McDonald’s… but don’t worry, I’ll get one afterwards’.”
“Anyway, 15 minutes later, this limo turns up outside, and the driver gets out with a McDonald’s bag! Freddie has a quiet word with the manager, gives him a few yen, and there I am – having McDonald’s in a top-end Tokyo sushi restaurant with Queen! I was massively star-struck, but they were all such lovely, down-to-earth people.”
Numan remembers his first encounter with Queen as a 16-year-old fan hanging around the stage door of London's Rainbow Theatre in the 1970s.
Numan says, “Other bands would always rush past to their limos and ignore everybody.”
He adds, “but Queen were different. They invited everybody up to their dressing room, chatted to everybody and signed everything. It was a lesson in how to treat those who support you – I’ve always tried to emulate that wherever possible.”
[courtesy of Classic Hits Today]