The Freddie Mercury Tour in Montreux, Switzerland, was one of those things that at first impression seems displaced. While traveling I am constantly encountering things that seem out of place. Everything is everywhere now. I bought a scarf in Switzerland. For me, it’s a souvenir from Switzerland because that’s where I bought it. But it’s not really Swiss, except that it’s warm wool and perfect for wearing around your neck in the mountains. It’s a Scottish tartan plaid. And it was made in China.
It’s a global world now, no way around that, with all the world’s cultures fragmented and flying into each other like shrapnel. Nothing stays in place. Everything is everywhere. It seems that practically every culture is scattered around the world now. You find traces of practically every culture in any world capital now, and increasingly out in the provinces too. Humans have always been a migratory species, marching around the globe and settling in practically every conceivable place. Now, with modern transportation, the process is accelerated.
It’s no wonder there’s so much trouble around immigration, not just in the U.S. but in other countries, too, as we saw with Brexit. Marshall McLuhan warned us back in the ‘60s that the electronic media that was connecting the whole world would cause a global implosion, and the cultural collisions would rock all the institutions of the world. We’re seeing these cultural collisions playing out today.
From a traveler’s point of view, it is fascinating. It’s culture jamming. Cultural cross-fertilization spurs innovation and creativity and leads to renaissances. So from that point of view, it’s exciting to observe these changes taking place around the world. It’s fascinating when you go to one country and much of what you experience there is actually from other countries. Everything is everywhere and, for a traveler, it provides delicious little surprises wherever you go.
The Freddie Mercury tour I took as part of the Tauck Rhine Connoisseur river cruise earlier this month was one of those things that combined elements that I had previously thought of in separate contexts. I didn’t associate Freddie Mercury or his band Queen with Switzerland.
My knowledge of Queen is sketchy, but I’m not sure if it would have been possible to live at this period and not have heard some of Queen’s music. “We Will Rock You” is so ingrained in the culture that it’s almost like “Mary Had a Little Lamb” now. I don’t think that song is going away as long as there is human life on planet Earth. But when I saw the city of Montreux on my itinerary, Freddie Mercury was not the first thing that came to mind. Actually Montreux played a large role in the story of Freddie Mercury. He lived in an apartment near the shore of Lake Geneva in Montreux for about 13 years, in the final period before he died November 4, 1991, at age 45.
In the case of Freddie Mercury, many cultures are crammed into the package. He was himself a cross-cultural phenomenon. He was born Farrokh Bulsara in Stone Town, Zanzibar, to Parsi-Indian parents. He attended boarding schools in India from the age of 8 through secondary school. That’s where he began to learn to play the piano. He returned to his parents in Zanzibar after secondary school, then in 1964 his family moved to England to escape the Zanzibar Revolution. In 1970 he joined with the other musicians in a band that would become Queen.
The tour called “In the Footsteps of Freddie Mercury” was conducted by a company called Freddie Tours. The program itself, independent of the subject, was an innovative production. Each participant in the tour was given a tablet like a large iPhone to hang around the neck, and a set of cushioned, vinyl-covered headphones. We were led on a walking tour by a guide, whose throat mic was amplified through the headphones. But we also had the tablets, and at various points of the tour we would stop and look at a video presentation on the tablet to augment the in-person narrative. It was a great touch, bringing the video into the program without having to be somewhere where there were mounted screens. Each participant had their own screen.
Our guide was Lucien Muller, a Montreux native who has been passionately involved with preserving Freddie Mercury’s legacy for many years. He is the president of Montreux Celebration, which organizes the “Freddie Celebration Days” festival, which was created by his parents in 2001.
The content of the tour program and the videos was primarily compiled from personal reminiscences of Peter Freestone, Mercury’s personal assistant for 12 years, living with him till his death. It’s a very intimate portrait. Lucien Muller and Peter Freestone have been friends and associates for many years.
We walked along the shore of the sublime Lake Geneva, and our guide pointed out the Les Tourelles residential building down the shore from us where Freddie had his flat. The beauty of that place is voluptuous, a real pleasure to behold. But clearly, the highlight of the Freddie Tour was the Freddie Mercury museum housed in the Montreux Casino. It’s one flight up and overlooking the slot machines, craps tables, roulette wheels and the massive cluster of spinning and blinking neon-colored lights of the gaming floor. The museum is called “Queen: The Studio Experience”. It’s housed in the space that was once Mountain Studios, which Queen owned from 1979 to 1993, and where they recorded several of their albums.
There was another striking and odd historical link to the casino. Today’s casino stands where a previous casino was burned down, the subject of the song by Deep Purple called “Smoke on the Water”.
The story told in the song was that Frank Zappa and the Mothers were playing at the casino and someone in the audience fired a flare gun up to the wooden ceiling. The ensuing fire, as the song described it, “burned the place to the ground.” Deep Purple were having dinner at a restaurant when the incident took place and they had a view of it. Hence the title “Smoke on the Water.”
“Well, we all came down to Montreux on the Lake Geneva Shoreline…”
The casino was also the main venue for the Monteux Jazz Festival and was, as the song said, “the best place around” for musicians to play. It was burned down December 4, 1971, then rebuilt and reopened in 1975. It’s still a major venue for the Jazz Festival. The person believed to have started the fire has never been apprehended.
The museum had a rich collection of information and memorabilia. Several of Freddie’s wild stage outfits were on display in glass cases. They were close enough that you could have touched them if not for the glass. It was an eerie, almost tangible connection with Freddie because he wore those clothes. They retained his physical imprint, not to mention whatever vibes and resonances could exist unnamed. It was very evocative, like a reminder of a meeting that never took place.
There was a mixing board left over from Mountain Studio from when Queen owned it. There were sheets of paper with lyrics hand-written, left over from when the songs were being worked on in the studio. There were musical instruments, some originals and others replicas of the ones Queen used to record there. Some of the displays incorporated small video screens, or sound recordings accessible through headphones.
One display was simply a timeline painted on a wall showing stats from the Queen career, and they were impressive. Here are a few:
- Global record sales estimated at 300 million.
- Queen spent 1322 weeks, more than 25 years on the UK album charts.
- Five number one albums
- 17 number one singles
- Four Grammy awards
As the life story narrative wound towards its tragic close, the tour wound its way to the site of the Freddie Mercury statue at Lake Geneva’s edge. It was moving. It was a good way of developing some real understanding of the work of Freddie Mercury and Queen, and a good foundation for further exploration.
Some of the songs, with their great spirit of defiance and strength, like “We Are the Champions”, seem to be good anthems for today. It was a great experience, a great moment on that tour, a great thing to do when you are in Montreux.
David Cogswell is a freelance writer working remotely, from wherever he is at the moment. Born at the dead center of the United States during the last century, he has been incessantly moving and exploring for decades. His articles have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Fox News, Luxury Travel Magazine, Travel Weekly, Travel Market Report, Travel Agent Magazine, TravelPulse.com, Quirkycruise.com, and other publications. He is the author of four books and a contributor to several others. He was last seen somewhere in the Northeast US.
