Freddie Mercury and Mary Austin were so close, that at one stage Freddie asked her to marry him, and he also left her half of his £75 million estate, including the £25 million Georgian mansion in Kensington.
Austin inherited Mercury's One Garden Lodge mansion and the bulk of Mercury's estate, with the remainder going to his parents and sister and about $692,000 apiece going to Freestone and Mercury's boyfriend, Jim Hutton.
He was devastated by her decision, he said. However, Mercury did leave him with £500,000 (nearly $1 million, per the 1991 conversion rate), which he used to move back to Ireland. He also wrote a book about their relationship, simply titled Mercury and Me. Hutton died on January 1, 2010, after a long battle with cancer.
Three years after Freddie's death, Jim published a book about his time with the singer titled Mercury and Me. He worked as Freddie's gardener after moving into the singer's Kensington mansion, and preferred to stay away from the rock and roll lifestyle.
Who earns Freddie Mercury's royalties and how much do they get? After his death on November 24, 1991, Freddie gave his home, 50 percent of his recording royalties and most of his wealth to Mary Austin, with the remainder going to his parents and sister.
Now the huge success of the movie about the band Queen will see Mary Austin, the former fiancee of lead singer Freddie Mercury, scoop around $75million in royalties. She met Mercury in 1970 when she was a 19-year-old art student and they moved in together before he was famous.
Yet, Queen's income by the time of the News Of the World album was great enough to, well make the album great enough. In later albums, Queen decided to stop crediting and paying each band member separate amounts just for composing a track, everything was by Queen, for Queen, and split evenly in four payments.
With his farewell look straight at the camera as the song ends, Mercury whispers "I still love you", directed to his fans, which are his last words on camera. Director of the video Rudi Dolezal comments, "AIDS was never a topic. We never discussed it. He didn't want to talk about it.
4. Freddie Mercury – US$50 million. A cultural icon and the most famous face of all the members of Queen past and present, Mercury amassed a considerable fortune, thought to be worth US$50 million by the time of his death, according to Celebrity Net Worth.
It's been 28 years since Freddie Mercury died, but fascination about the flamboyant Queen frontman still rages on. Freddie was just 45 when he took his last breath at Garden Lodge, the high-walled mansion in London's fashionable Kensington where he lived with his life partner and 'husband' Jim Hutton.
Death. On June 2, 1979, Hutton died of liver cancer, two days after his 45th birthday, and a month after being diagnosed.
In Freddie's final will and testament, Jim received £500,000 – the same as Joe and Peter. Undoubtedly, this was a large sum of money, especially in 1991, but it was dwarfed by what Freddie left Mary.
The guests included the star's bandmates and their wives, as well as Elton John, Mary Austin and Freddie's partner Jim Hutton.
Mary Austin chose not to marry painter Piers Cameron, the father of her two children, Jamie and Richard, and divorced her husband Nick Holford. She later explained: “I lost my family, really, when Freddie died. He was everything to me, apart from my sons. He was like no one I had met before.”
Yes! authorship royalties. A part of the distribution rights royalties (because of his co-ownership of Queen Ltd.)
From accompanying the band on tour to Hungary, to being with Freddie's when he passed away from AIDS in 1991, Mary was never far from the star's side and even after his death she was one of the only people he trusted with his affairs.
Queen Still Hasn't Made Any Money Off 'Bohemian Rhapsody'
“We thought it would do well in the end, we felt good about it, but we didn't realize it would do that well,” May said in a recent interview on BBC Radio 2's The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show. “It's incredible around the world. It's like a billion-dollar movie.”
His father Bomi attended Freddie's funeral after his sad death from bronchial pneumonia, and the small family moved up to Nottingham away from London to be out of the spotlight.
Currently, Queen's catalogue is owned by Disney Music Group which purchased the rights for a reported $10 million in 1991. Speaking with CNN, a source close to the acquisition revealed that the discussions were “well underway” and the deal would be finalised “within one month.”
"Mother Love" is a song by Queen, from the album Made in Heaven, released in 1995 after Freddie Mercury's death in 1991. It was written by Mercury and Brian May. Mercury recorded two out of three verses before becoming too sickly to continue recording, so May recorded the final verse himself later.
The Story of... 'These Are the Days of Our Lives' by Queen, Freddie Mercury's heartbreaking farewell. In 1991, Freddie Mercury passed away aged just 45 due to complications from AIDS. 30 years on, and his final song for Queen remains a heartbreaking moment of pop history.
Freddie Mercury's Funeral - Dear Friends & Lily Of The Valley Acoustic Guitar By James Rundle - YouTube.
Yes. The Bohemian Rhapsody true story reveals that he was born Farrokh Bulsara on September 5, 1946 in Stone Town, Sultanate of Zanzibar (now Tanzania) in eastern Africa. He started going by "Freddie" while attending St. Peter's School, a British-style boarding school near Bombay (now Mumbai).
They own the catalog outside North America through the UK-based Queen Productions Ltd, which raked in a staggering £39 million ($48 million) in royalties in 2021.
In fact, the four-piece clashed on a regular basis, with May later saying: "It wasn't always nice, because families aren't always nice." Bands often fight and feud after long stints on tour and the excesses of rock 'n' roll take their tour.