NOVEMBER 24, 1991 – Queen singer/songwriter FREDDIE MERCURY (b. September 5, 1946 in Stone Town, Sultanate of Zanzibar,now Tanzania, as Farrokh Bulsara) died from AIDS complications at his home in Kensington, west London, England. Mercury’s friend Dave Clark of The Dave Clark Five, had taken over the bedside vigil when he died. Another close friend Mary Austin had been a particular comfort in his final years, and in the last few weeks of his life made regular visits to his home to look after him. Near the end of his life Mercury was starting to lose his sight, and he deteriorated to the point where he could not get out of bed. Due to his worsening condition, Mercury decided to hasten his death by refusing to take his medication and continued taking only pain killers.
A little over 24 hours after issuing a formal statement where he announced his condition, Mercury died at the age of 45. The official cause of death was bronchial pneumonia resulting from AIDS. Austin phoned Mercury’s parents and sister to break the news of his death, which reached newspaper and television crews by the early hours of November 25th.
Mercury’s funeral service was conducted by a Zoroastrian priest on November 27th. In attendance at Mercury’s service were his family and 35 of his close friends, including the remaining members of Queen and Elton John. His coffin was carried into the chapel to the sounds of “Take My Hand, Precious Lord”/”You’ve Got a Friend” by Aretha Franklin. Mercury was cremated at Kensal Green Cemetery, west London. In accordance with Mercury’s wishes, Mary Austin took possession of his ashes and buried them in an undisclosed location. The whereabouts of his ashes are believed to be known only to Austin, who has stated that she will never reveal where she buried them.
In his will, Mercury left the vast majority of his wealth, including his home and recording royalties, to Mary Austin and the remainder to his parents and sister. He left £500,000 to his chef, Joe Fanelli; £500,000 to his personal assistant, Peter Freestone; £100,000 to his driver, Terry Giddings; and £500,000 to Jim Hutton. Austin continues to live at Mercury’s former home, Garden Lodge, Kensington, with her family.
Mercury’s parents, Bomi and Jer Bulsara were Parsis from the Gujarat region of the then province of Bombay Presidency in British India. The family surname is derived from the town of Bulsar (now known as Valsad) in southern Gujarat. As Parsis, Mercury and his family practiced the Zoroastrian religion. The Bulsara family had moved to Zanzibar so that his father could continue his job as a cashier at the British Colonial Office. He had a younger sister, Kashmira.
Mercury spent most of his childhood in India and began taking piano lessons at the age of seven. In 1954, at the age of eight, Mercury was sent to study at St. Peter’s School, a British-style boarding school for boys, in Panchgani near Bombay (now Mumbai). One of his formative musical influences at the time was Bollywood singer Lata Mangeshkar.
Later on, while living in London, he learned guitar. Much of the music he liked was guitar-oriented: his favorite artists at the time were The Who, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, and Led Zeppelin. He was often self-deprecating about his own skills on both instruments and from the early 1980s onward began extensively using guest keyboardists for both Queen and his solo career. Most notably, he enlisted Fred Mandel (a Canadian musician who also worked for Pink Floyd, Elton John and Supertramp) for his first solo project, and from 1985 onward collaborated with Mike Moran (in the studio) and Spike Edney (in concert).
At the age of 12, he formed a school band, The Hectics, and covered rock and roll artists such as Cliff Richard and Little Richard. A friend from the time recalls that he had “an uncanny ability to listen to the radio and replay what he heard on piano.” It was also at St. Peter’s where he began to call himself “Freddie”, and in February 1963 he moved back to Zanzibar where he joined his parents at their flat.
At the age of 17, Mercury and his family fled from Zanzibar for safety reasons due to the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution in which thousands of Arabs and Indians were killed. The family moved into a small house in Feltham, Middlesex, England. Mercury enrolled at Isleworth Polytechnic (now West Thames College) in West London where he studied art. He ultimately earned a diploma in Art and Graphic Design at Ealing Art College (now the Ealing campus of University of West London), later using these skills to design the Queen crest. A British citizen at birth, Mercury remained so for the rest of his life.
Following graduation, Mercury joined a series of bands and sold second-hand clothes in the Kensington Market in London with girlfriend Mary Austin. He also held a job at Heathrow Airport. Friends from the time remember him as a quiet and shy young man who showed a great deal of interest in music. In 1969 he joined the Liverpool-based band Ibex, later renamed Wreckage. He lived briefly in a flat above the Liverpool pub, The Dovedale Towers. When this band failed to take off, he joined a second band called Sour Milk Sea. However, by early 1970 this group had broken up as well.
In April 1970 Mercury joined guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor who had previously been in a band called Smile. Despite reservations of the other members and Trident Studios, the band’s initial management, Mercury chose the name “Queen” for the new band. He later said, “I was certainly aware of the gay connotations, but that was just one facet of it.” At about the same time, he changed his surname, Bulsara, to Mercury.
Mercury played the piano in many of Queen’s most popular songs, including “Killer Queen,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy,” “We Are the Champions,” “Somebody To Love” and “Don’t Stop Me Now.” He used concert grand pianos and, occasionally, other keyboard instruments such as the harpsichord. From 1980 onward, he also made frequent use of synthesizers in the studio. Queen guitarist Brian May claims that Mercury was unimpressed with his own abilities at the piano and used the instrument less over time because he wanted to walk around onstage and entertain the audience. Although he wrote many lines for the guitar, Mercury possessed only rudimentary skills on the instrument. Songs like “Ogre Battle” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” were composed on the guitar; the latter featured Mercury playing acoustic guitar both onstage and in the studio.
Mercury’s two full albums outside the band were “Mr. Bad Guy” (1985) and Barcelona (1988). Mr. Bad Guy debuted in the top ten of the UK Album Charts. In 1993, a remix of “Living on My Own,” a single from the album, posthumously reached number one on the UK Singles Charts. The song also garnered Mercury a posthumous Ivor Novello Award from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. Allmusic critic Eduardo Rivadavia describes “Mr. Bad Guy” as “outstanding from start to finish” and expressed his view that Mercury “did a commendable job of stretching into uncharted territory.” In particular, the album is heavily synthesizer-driven in a way that is not characteristic of previous Queen albums.
His second album “Barcelona”, recorded with Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballé, combines elements of popular music and opera. Many critics were uncertain what to make of the album; one referred to it as “the most bizarre CD of the year.” The album was a commercial success, and the album’s title track debuted at #8 in the UK and was also a hit in Spain. The title track received massive air play as the official anthem of the 1992 Summer Olympics (held in Barcelona one year after Mercury’s death). Caballé sang it live at the opening of the Olympics with Mercury’s part played on a screen, and again prior to the start of the 1999 UEFA Champions League Final between Manchester United and Bayern Munich in Barcelona.
In addition to the two solo albums, Mercury released several singles, including his own version of the hit “The Great Pretender” by The Platters, which debuted at #5 in the UK in 1987. In September 2006 a compilation album featuring Mercury’s solo work was released in the UK in honor of what would have been his 60th birthday. The album debuted in the UK top 10.
Although he cultivated a flamboyant stage personality, Mercury was shy and retiring when not performing, particularly around people he did not know well, and granted very few interviews. Mercury once said of himself: “When I’m performing I’m an extrovert, yet inside I’m a completely different man.” While on stage, Mercury basked in the love from his audience. Kurt Cobain’s suicide note mentions how he both admired and envied the way Mercury “seemed to love, relish in the love and adoration from the crowd.”
Mercury’s final live performance with Queen took place on August 9, 1986 at Knebworth Park in England and drew an attendance estimated as high as 160,000. With the British national anthem “God Save the Queen” playing at the end of the concert, Mercury’s final act on stage saw him draped in a robe, holding a golden crown aloft, bidding farewell to the crowd.
The outer walls of Garden Lodge in 1 Logan Place became a shrine to Mercury following his death, with mourners paying tribute by covering the walls in graffiti messages. Three years after his death, Time Out magazine reported, “Since Freddie’s death, the wall outside the house has become London’s biggest rock ‘n’ roll shrine.” Today fans continue to visit to pay their respects with messages in letters appearing on the walls. Hutton was involved in a 2000 biography of Mercury, Freddie Mercury, the Untold Story and also gave an interview for The Times for what would have been Mercury’s 60th birthday.
On November 24, 1997, a monodrama about Freddie Mercury’s life, titled “Mercury: The Afterlife and Times of a Rock God,” opened in New York City. It presented Freddie Mercury in the hereafter: examining his life, seeking redemption and searching for his true self. The play was written and directed by Charles Messina and the part of Mercury was played by Khalid Gonçalves (né Paul Gonçalves) and then later, Amir Darvish. Billy Squier opened one of the shows with an acoustic performance of a song he had written about Mercury titled “I Have Watched You Fly.”
Consistently rated as one of the greatest singers in the history of popular music, Mercury was voted second to Mariah Carey in MTV’s “22 Greatest Voices in Music”. Additionally, in January 2009, Mercury was voted second to Robert Plant in a poll of the greatest voices in rock, on the digital radio station Planet Rock. In May 2009 a Classic Rock magazine poll saw Mercury voted the greatest singer in rock. In a 2010 poll conducted on the BBC Two series “I’m in a Rock ‘n’ Roll Band!”, Mercury was named the vocalist in the ultimate fantasy band. In 2011 NME magazine readers voted Mercury second to Michael Jackson in the “Greatest Singers Ever” poll. In 2011 a Rolling Stone readers’ pick placed Mercury in second place of the magazine’s “Best Lead Singers of All Time.” In 2013 Gigwise readers named Mercury the best frontman ever.
In 2010, a proposed biographical film about Mercury was announced by Queen guitarist Brian May, but the project underwent many changes in the script and casting until it was released in 2018 as “Bohemian Rhapsody” with Rami Malek portraying Mercury.
READ MORE:
http://www.freddie.ru/e/bio/
http://www.freddiemercury.com/
http://www.mercury-and-queen.com/
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006198/bio
http://www.keno.org/classic_rock/queen_bio.htm
http://www.queenonline.com/en/the-band/members/freddie-mercury/
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/freddie-mercury-mn0000130028,biography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Mercury
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_(band)
https://www.facebook.com/freddiemercury/
ads