A Dublin hairdresser has revealed how helping out Queen’s wardrobe department gave her a chance to meet Freddie Mercury backstage.
The Queen frontman, who died 31 years ago today, came to Ireland as part of Queen's The Works tour in the summer of 1984. However, his wardrobe department got into a spot of difficulty ahead of the highly anticipated performance.
Linda Carmody Cullen, a hairdresser who worked in Peter Marks on O’Connell Street, explains that the band’s costume manager had visited the salon with a highly unusual request: to wash the group members wigs ahead of the concert. The large props were too heavy for the costume manager to take all at once to the RDS, so she offered to help carry them over once they’d gotten washed and blow-dried.
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Linda told Dublin Live: “The band were staying in the Gresham Hotel at the time and they wanted wigs for the ‘I want to break free’ rendition; there was also another big wig that he was wearing during the show. The costume manager came back in to collect them and we were wearing them on our heads.”
She was rewarded for her kindness with 8 free tickets to the gig. Her connection with the costume manager also helped her to sneak backstage on the night of the electric performance to meet Freddie Mercury.
Although Linda had never been a huge Queen fan, she was delighted to get to meet the renowned musician. She reveals he was very polite and thanked her for working her magic on the wigs.
She adds: “He was a real quietly spoken gent, and not very tall either. You’d think from his presence on stage he’d be a giant but he wasn’t even six foot.”
Linda got his autograph backstage, which she has kept stored safely in her home to this day. She says the encounter was very natural, adding that meeting a celebrity was much less frenzied in the days before social media.
The writer and performer of hits such as ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ passed away on the 24 November 1991 from HIV/AIDS related pneumonia, at the age of 45.
Queen performed in Ireland on several occasions, most famously in Slane Castle in 1986 to an audience of over 80,000 people. The concert is remembered as a rowdy affair, with band member Roger Taylor describing it as a "hairy moment." Over 70 concert goers were arrested at the venue after breaking through a barrier backstage.
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