Freddie Mercury

Freddie Mercury was born Frederick Bulsara in Zanzibar on 5th September 1946, a virgo.

The embryonic superstar grew up in Bombay where his Civil Servant father worked. In 1959, aged 13, Freddie moved to London to finish his schooling . Eventually he enrolled at the prestigious Ealing College of Art.
In the late sixties, in the heady days following the anything-goes­ summers of hippy-dom, Roger Taylor and Brian May had their own band, 'Smile', and it was to this group that the emergent talent of Freddie Mercury was recruited. Soon the quartet was completed with John Deacon. The seeds of success were sown.
As an extrovert Freddie was the obvious choice to front the band and, perpetrating the biggest in-joke in pop's history, chose the name 'Queen' for the band. Freddie never denied his sexuality and his flamboyant stage presence quickly became the trademark of Queen.
March 1974 saw the beginning of 12 years of hits with EMI as 'Seven Seas of Rye' went into the charts.
In 1989 Queen moved to Parlophone but they were never to recapture the success of the EMI years.
Freddie's off-stage upper class accent and soft, girlish and flirtatious manner belied the raunchy stage persona which dominated even the largest arenas and enabled him to 'play' an audience like a keyboard.
The outrageous makeup, painted nails and semi drag on stage were the perfect compliments to Freddie's unique operatic voice. His dismantling of the mike stand allowed him grandstanding maneuverability long before radio microphones were available.
Ever the consummate: showman, Freddie even went so far as to learn an Hungarian non, phonetically, reading from notes scribbled on his hand, in Budapest in 1986. It was touches like this that endeared him to his international fans.
Despite calling himself a 'musical prostitute' Freddie's skill and talent shone through no more vividly than in the films and videos that the group have, over the years, presented to accompany their hits. Queen were, in fact, one of the first to exploit the new medium of video when it burst upon our screens in the 80's.
From 1974 to 1989 Freddie Mercury has had, either with Quern or a;- a solo artist, 17 Top 10 hits, 40 Top 75 hits and a staggering 295 weeks in the charts. Bohemian Rhapsody (the first release in 1975) was the Christmas No.l. Freddie can also take the credit for writing most of their early hits and, even later, still arranged most of them.
On 24th November 19?1, at the age of 45, Freddie Mercur y lost his 2 year struggle against AIDS and the music industry lost a colossus of talent.
No more will we see the likes of him in a frock on Top of the Pops (I Want To Break Free - 1984) or the true spectacle of Radio Gaga (1984 ) . The world will be a more boring place without a genius that many of us have grown up expecting to stun and excite us.
Goodbye Freddie, and thank you for your kind of magic.

(c) Pariss 1991