Freddie Mercury

Biography

In his last years Mercury recorded songs in advance. He knew there was little time left and asked the band to write him as much as they could: he would sing what he could, and the rest would be finished without him. That is how the album “Made in Heaven” came about, released in 1995, four years after his death.

He was born on 5 September 1946 in Stone Town, the old quarter of Zanzibar, into a Parsi family from Gujarat. At birth he was named Farrokh Bulsara. His father worked as a cashier in the British colonial service, and in 1952 his sister Kashmira was born. At eight the boy was sent to St. Peter’s School in Panchgani, not far from Bombay. There he began to call himself Freddie, sang in the school choir, took piano lessons, passed Grade IV in theory and practice, and at twelve formed his first band, the Hectics, which played rock and roll. Schoolmates remembered that the only music he listened to and played was Western pop. He also collected stamps, and his stamp album is now kept at the Postal Museum in London.

In the spring of 1964, after the revolution in Zanzibar, the family fled to England and settled in Feltham, in Middlesex. Freddie studied at Isleworth Polytechnic and then at Ealing Art College, in the graphics department, and in the summer of 1969 graduated with a diploma in graphic art and design. His final project, according to some accounts, was devoted entirely to Jimi Hendrix, whom he adored. In the holidays he took casual jobs at Heathrow Airport and in a warehouse. With Roger Taylor he sold second-hand clothes and scarves at Kensington Market.

By then he had already tried his hand at bands. First came Ibex, from Liverpool, soon renamed Wreckage at his suggestion, then Sour Milk Sea, from Oxford, which had also broken up by early 1970. In April 1970 he became the singer of Smile, in which Brian May played guitar and Roger Taylor drums. He chose the name Queen himself, despite the doubts of the others. In February 1971 the bassist John Deacon joined them, and the line-up was settled. The band’s crest was also drawn by Mercury: the zodiac signs of all four members around the letter Q, two lions, a crab and two fairies.

In 1972, during the recording of the first album, he changed his surname from Bulsara to Mercury. The name appears in his song “My Fairy King” (“Mother Mercury, look what they’ve done to me”). At the same time, under the pseudonym Larry Lurex, he recorded two cover versions for Trident Studios, “I Can Hear Music” and “Goin’ Back”, which came out as a single in 1973.

The first Queen song in the British charts was his “Seven Seas of Rhye” (1973), and the first hit was “Killer Queen” (1974). The best known remains “Bohemian Rhapsody”: it was expected to fail because of its length (5:55) and its mixture of genres, yet the single stayed at the top of the British charts for nine weeks, and a video was made for it. On the album Greatest Hits he wrote ten of the seventeen songs, among them “Somebody to Love”, “We Are the Champions”, “Don’t Stop Me Now” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”. He wrote mostly at the piano, though by his own account he had hardly studied music and read it with difficulty. His guitar playing was at a basic level, but he composed “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” on the guitar and played rhythm on it. The stage prop he became known for, a microphone stand with its base removed, appeared after he snapped one off by accident at an early performance.

In 1975 the band toured Japan, and he fell for Japanese art and became a collector. On 7 October 1979 he performed with the Royal Ballet. In 1985 Queen’s set at the Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium drew about 75,000 spectators and put the band back at the top. In 1986 Queen played for 80,000 people in Budapest, behind the Iron Curtain. The last concert with Mercury took place on 9 August 1986 at Knebworth.

From 1983 he recorded solo material in Munich. With Giorgio Moroder he wrote “Love Kills” for the restored version of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” (1984). His first album, “Mr. Bad Guy”, came out in 1985, and in 1987 the single “The Great Pretender” reached the charts. He first saw Montserrat Caballé in Verdi’s “A Masked Ball” in 1983, later gave her a cassette of his songs, and in 1987 they began a joint album. “Barcelona” was released in October 1988, and its title song became one of the anthems of the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. Mercury’s last live performance was his appearance with Caballé at the La Nit festival in Barcelona on 8 October 1988. On 18 February 1990 he went on stage once more, when Queen were presented with the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music.

On 23 November 1991 Mercury publicly announced his diagnosis, and, on his instruction, the rights to “Bohemian Rhapsody” passed to the Terrence Higgins Trust.

The next day, 24 November, he died at his home in Kensington. The funeral was private, the body was cremated, and only those closest to him know where the ashes lie.