Queen's Freddie Mercury just loves to be pampered. He says it conserves his energies for more important things. And, anyway, he likes people around him at all times—even at home in London, surrounded by his Erté prints, his Hokusai woodcuts and lacquered Japanese furniture, his Aretha Franklin and Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler records and his piano. He supposes it's because he grew up in an English boarding school in India (his father was a civil servant commuting among the colonies) and there were always people around.

These days, wherever Mercury goes on this tour, his entourage includes Paul and Dane, two assistants; David, a friend; and a bodyguard who is as discreet as a 6'8", 250-pound former college football star can be. If the size of one's retinue is any measure of status, then Freddie Mercury is unquestionably a star.

The East Coast is where Queen first broke in America, a little over a year ago, but even here it's hard to determine just who the group's fans are. At Madison Square Garden, on this, Queen's fourth tour of America, the audience was evenly divided between under-18s in ragtag street wear and those first-generation rock fans now moving into Sisley jeans affluence. It's a following as eclectic as the group's stage repertoire — a singular and highly stylized potpourri of heavy metal, rococo and English vaudeville themes, soldered together with explosions, dry ice, strobes, spots, prerecorded tapes and a workshopful of technological tricks.

From the outset all eyes were on Mercury. A slight, chimerical figure more mischievous than sexual, he strutted and scampered around the stage, using his shortened mike stand as a surrogate guitar or to machine gun guitarist Brian May or bassist John Deacon. Mercury appeared to be everywhere and everything at once, tossing thunder flashes to the four corners of the stage during "Ogre Battle," then acting the arch romantic at the piano, playing his own dreamy ballad, "You Take My Breath Away," his profile suffused in the dying glow of a single spotlight as he struck the final chord.

And, of course, Mercury's costume changes are almost a show in themselves: from stark-white haute-couture grease-monkey overalls into equally white Nijinsky leotards; then, during the taped section of "Bohemian Rhapsody," Mercury vanished backstage to exchange the white leotard for a black sequined one. (The first two nights of the tour Mercury tore his fingers and his leotards to shreds during the change. He now has two assistants to help him, and the switchover time is down to 45 seconds.) For an encore he sashayed onstage in a flowing silk kimono, which opened to reveal red shorts, suspenders and a bruise on his left thigh. The song was "Big Spender," a piece of bump-and-grind burlesque kitsch that's more a parody than a celebration of high camp, with Mercury taking great pains not to compromise his sexuality, slurring the crucial word in the crucial line: "I could see you were a man of distinction." Segueing into "Jail-house Rock" allowed Mercury simultaneously to assert the stud ethic and proclaim that whatever else he may represent, first and foremost he's for rock & roll — even though his parting shot to a Garden audience screaming for more added a bruising note of cynicism to the whole affair. "Thank you New York. It was a pleasure doing business with you...."