Freddie Mercury and David Bowie famously teamed up to release ‘Under Pressure’, but the relationship between the pair dates back to their pre-fame days as civilians. Both were young upstarts who dreamed of becoming pop stars but were a million miles away from accomplishing their ambition.
After leaving college in 1969, Mercury wanted to thrust himself into the music industry, but he also needed a job to pay the bills. Another love of his was fashion. Therefore, Mercury decided that was an avenue to pursue, and he landed himself a job operating a second-hand clothing stall on Kensington Market in London.
After Mercury had finished college in 1969, he toyed with performing as a musician, but to pay the bills, he worked on a second-hand clothes stall in London’s Kensington Market. While Mercury worked there, one of his customers was David Bowie, who he once sold a pair of leather boots. However, that wasn’t the first time they had crossed each other’s paths.
Their first meeting came when Bowie was booked to perform a lunchtime set at Ealing Art College. Mercury was one of the students in attendance and utterly desperate to be Bowie, who oozed star quality even pre-fame. The future Queen singer followed Bowie around all-day, offered to lug his gear for him, and helped set up the stage.
Mercury would cross paths with Bowie again after he and Roger Taylor began working on Alan Mair’s stall at Kensington Market. They had previously tried to run their own stall, but soon they discovered their talents didn’t lie in business. Mair was friends with Bowie’s then-manager, which is why the singer visited his stall. “‘Space Oddity’ had been a hit, but he said he had no money,” the market stall owner said in the book, Is This The Real Life. “Typical music biz! I said, ‘Look, have them for free.’ Freddie fitted Bowie for the pair of boots. So there was Freddie Mercury, a shop assistant, giving pop star David Bowie a pair of boots he couldn’t afford to buy.”
According to Mair, Mercury was a model employee. In the BBC documentary Freddie’s Millions, he dotingly said: “He was always efficient, he was very polite,” Mair said of Mercury in the BBC documentary Freddie’s Millions. “No one ever complained about him; he never had any attitude problems. He always got there a bit later, but that didn’t matter.”
Fittingly, 12 years after they first met at Ealing Art College, Queen and David Bowie had become two of the biggest acts on the planet, and they decided to bring their talents together for ‘Under Pressure’, which became a monstrous hit. If only somebody had told Mercury when he was carrying Bowie’s equipment that one day, he’d have a hit record with this mystical man he admired.
