Queen vocalist Freddie Mercury, who died on this day 34 years ago, was, indisputably, the greatest rock frontman of his generation. Some might say that he was the greatest rock frontman of all time. But, according to Queen drummer Roger Taylor: “In real life nobody knew Freddie,” and he was nothing like the flamboyant showman that thrilled an audience of millions at Live Aid in July 1985

Reinhold Mack, who produced several Queen albums in the 1980s, as well as Freddie’s 1985 solo album Mr. Bad Guy, said: “It may sound strange, but one of the things people never noticed was that he was unbelievably modest and shy.” However, not everyone came away with such a positive experience of the ultimate rock showman, born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar in 1946.

Norman Sheffield, Queen’s first manager, wrote bitterly of his time with the band: “In 1975 they went to Japan and found 3,000 fans waiting for them, all chanting the band’s name. It was like Beatlemania.”

“Freddie had finally found the acclaim he’d craved all his life,” Sheffield said. “He felt like a god. Unfortunately, he soon started behaving like one, too.”

Sheffield told how Freddie, who wrote some of the band’s biggest hits on the piano demanded a grand piano: “When I turned him down, he banged his fist on my desk. ‘I have to get a grand piano,’ he said.”

At the time, Queen were riding high in the charts, but record company royalties can take a painfully long time to materialise. That didn’t wash with Freddie, according to Sheffield.

Freddie told him: “We’re stars. We’re selling millions of records, and I’m still living in the same flat I’ve been in for the past three years.”

After being told that he would have to wait a few months for the money to come through, Freddie “stamped his feet and raised his voice,” according to Sheffield.

Then the Queen frontman uttered a phrase that was to resurface as the chorus of one of the band’s biggest hits, some 14 years later: “No, I am not prepared to wait any longer. I want it all. I want it now.”

That song was actually written by Queen guitarist Brian May, and one of the things that distinguishes the band from any of their rivals is that, while Freddie was behind most of their biggest hits, every single member of the band individually wrote a Top 10 single.

Freddie was very keen to avoid the perception of Queen as just three musicians backing the singer.

Writer Tony Brainsby, who profiled the band from their very earliest days, recalled: “He emphasised their band is not Freddie Mercury and his three-membered escort, but four equal partners. And he succeeded in it.

“Queen could have easily become “Freddie Mercury and Others”, but we never think of them in any other way than as a band.”

Photographer Mick Rock, one of the key image-makers of Queen’s early years, said that the Freddie he knew was a complex character who very few people understood: “I think changes that occurred in Freddie just went with the image and the person that he became.

“You see it a lot within the music business: you see others putting on an image and it’s like they are writing about a character.

“I should think you actually get to the point where you don’t like that character any more. Then you can close the book and start again.

“But at that point, there were at least three sides to Freddie’s character. There was his past, there was the core Freddie, and there was Mercury. And it was Freddie that I enjoyed and loved. I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who was as much fun.”