Made In Heaven: visiting Freddie's Duck House
LAJ visits Freddie Mercury's beautiful Montreux home The Duck House, where he and his daughter were able to meet in privacy.
I never visited the Duck House during Freddie's lifetime. The place on the very outskirts of the municipality of Montreux, beyond Clarens, was his secret haven, his hidden retreat. Though he rented it many times from the late 1970s, when it first became available, it was commonly believed that he always took the same penthouse with private roof terrace - now officially known as the Freddie Mercury Suite - at the Montreux Palace Hotel.
It was to this private house, however, that he returned regularly. We now know why. His only child, conceived during a brief affair in 1976 with the wife of a very close friend, now lived just across the border, in France, with her birth mother and stepfather. From the Duck House, Freddie was able to visit his little girl and her family without arousing suspicion; while she, accompanied by her nanny, Maria, was easily able to visit him.
Queen had conveniently acquired Mountain Studios, a small recording facility in the town's casino building. Thus was Freddie furnished with the perfect alibi. He had a legitimate reason to visit Montreux frequently: Queen recorded several albums here. Freddie was able to come and go without ever arousing suspicion. It was the perfect solution to his dilemma as to how to keep his daughter hidden from the world, unexposed to his impossible fame, and to maintain her family's privacy.
The Duck House is not a glamorous abode, though I can see why he liked it. The long, low, brutalist building only steps from the water's edge looks more like a single-storey factory than a domestic dwelling. Every one of its five rooms faces Lake Geneva, and has uninterrupted views of the water and the Alps.
My bedroom here looks directly onto the small, wooden Swiss-chalet boathouse so familiar to millions of Queen fans around the world thanks to the image on the cover of their final original studio album, 'Made in Heaven'. The view is eerie in a weirdly comforting way. Water laps in rhythmic waves under the boathouse jetty. Late evening, a fairylit schooner slips by silently in the blue, dwarfed by the majestic Alpine backdrop that never fails to stop the heart. There are few views in the world that can compete with it.
Inside the simply equipped house, the same russet ceramic floor tiles on which Freddie's bare feet once padded. The same wood-panelled walls. The same better-days wooden kitchen cabinets, antique utensils, crockery and cloudy glassware. And ducks: what seems like a million different ducks. Carved wooden ones, cast ceramic ones, others in crystal, marble and resin. They grace practically every surface. Keeping watch. Marking time. The ducks on the lake can't live forever. But these can.
Fans with funds enough to rent this house may do so - if they are lucky enough to find a free window in its frustratingly booked-up schedule. They come in May, when the mountains and the town have re-awakened after the winter slumber; in early September, for the globally renowned Freddie Mercury birthday celebrations; and in late November, to commemorate his passing on 24th.
Freddie didn't die here on this day thirty-four years ago. He left Montreux for the final time three weeks before his demise. Montreux and the Duck House were now distant memories. He would never see his cherished daughter again.
It was the magical view from the balcony of his Territet penthouse apartment, purchased unfathomably during his final year of life, that inspired his farewell offering, 'A Winter's Tale'. 'It's all so beautiful,' he wrote and sang with deep longing. Even in drab winter gloom barely graced by daylight, it still is.
