A year after Queen finished her Magic Tour in 1986, Freddie Mercury was diagnosed with HIV. Due to his failing health, the band spent the last four years of his life recording two new albums together: 1989’s The Miracle and 1991’s Innuendo. Even though they stopped performing live concerts, they still put out some epic music videos together.
For The Miracle — which is released as a collector’s edition tomorrow — the music video for Breakthru has the band attempting the dangerous stunt of performing on top of a fast-moving steam train.
For the album’s title track, Freddie, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon were joined on stage by boys who were dressed as Elstree Studios, Queen’s outfit being a yellow military jacket and a T-shirt with Marilyn Monroe’s face on it. Inspired by Andy Warhol’s artwork. This week, this top was sold at auction in Knightsbridge, London for a whopping sum of money in the winning bid.
Bonhams, which hosted the rock, pop and film auction, listed Lot 203 as “Freddie Mercury/Queen: T-shirt depicting Marilyn Monroe from The Music Video The Miracle”.
The item description reads: “Oversized white cotton T-shirt with an Andy Warhol-inspired image of Marilyn Monroe printed on the front, stamped with 1988 European son designs, with slits cut out on the sides and a hand-sewn fitted collar, accompanied by a black and white image backstage from videotaping and a handwritten letter relating to the source.”
The accompanying behind-the-scenes photo captured Freddy and his young likeness.
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Printed on the back of the photo: “Queen for a day, treat four kids with lookalikes… Freddie Mercury and the Queen with their four young impersonators, filming the new video for The Miracle.”
The item description added: “One of the slits cut on both sides of the shirt is clearly visible in this photo. The handwritten source letter from [Freddie’s last boyfriend] Jim Hutton, and reads ‘This confirms that this shirt is the original one worn by the late Freddie Mercury during the filming of the Miracle video…’
In the end, the winning bid for a piece of the Queen’s history was a whopping £31,800.
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