Blake Mark - Freddie Mercury

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This edition 2016 Omnibus Press

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Source ISBN: 978.1.78305.970.6

Ebook Edition OCTOBER 2016 ISBN: 9781783237784

Version: 2016-10-15

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Contents

Contents

It would be so boring to be seventy.

FM, 1987

T he last time I saw Freddie Mercury was on 9 August 1986. He was wearing a crown and coronation robes and promenading across the stage at Knebworth Park while the National Anthem blared in the background. Nobody knew it at the time, but this would be his final concert with Queen.

The band had played all the hits they always played the hits including Bohemian Rhapsody which, as the lyrics promised, came with thunderbolts and lightning, but also so much dry ice it looked as if the stage was on fire. Queens mission statement when performing live was very simple: blind em and deafen em. But my abiding memory is of the crown and the robe, and Freddies knowing grin, as if to suggest, Yes, of course I look ridiculous, but isnt it brilliant!

The first time I saw Freddie Mercury was on TV in winter 1975. He was just a hazy black-and-white image all hair and teeth in the video for Bohemian Rhapsody. My ten-year-old brain could not process all those Galileo Figaro!s and Bismillah! No!s. But then growing up in the seventies and eighties, you couldnt avoid Queen. As the years passed I fully discovered the music. No two Queen albums ever sounded the same; in fact, no two Queen songs sounded the same. But they always immediately sounded like Queen, and that was much to do with Freddie.

Over time, my impressionable young mind boggled to early Queen curios such as The Fairy Fellers Master-Stroke and Stone Cold Crazy songs that sounded like Led Zeppelin in ballet tights and a tutu. Later came Bicycle Race, perhaps the most peculiar pop song of 1978, and almost certainly (if the story is true) the only hit single ever inspired by a romantic tryst with a Tour de France rider. Later still, came the Queen/David Bowie musical summit Under Pressure, a track that sounds like several different songs fused together. It doesnt make sense but it remains inexplicably, indisputably magnificent.

By then, though, there had been two public versions of Freddie Mercury. There was the old one with the long hair and the teeth, and the new one with the short hair, the moustache and the teeth. Both made me laugh. But what they both brought to the music was a knowing wit and a craftsmans skill as a writer and interpreter of songs. The other members of Queen wrote songs often great songs but it was Freddie who sold them.

I thought, Im going to do exactly as I please, do as many multi-layer harmonies as possible, go well over the top and, you know, didnt give a shit about anybody else.

FM ON BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY, c. 1977

It was the same on stage: whether at Knebworth, Wembley or any of the other venues in which they blinded and deafened me. Queen were always ridiculous and brilliant, and no one more so than Freddie Mercury. As he sang in the Queen song Let Me Entertain You, to thrill you Ill use any device. He took the business of being Freddie Mercury seriously, but was aware of how absurd it all was. Look again at his performance at Live Aid. He can barely keep a straight face.

Offstage it was sometimes a different story. Freddies life was complex, troubled, shrouded in secrecy and, ultimately, tragic. He died far too young. But even now, twenty-five years later and on the eve of what would have been his seventieth birthday, his music remains inescapable. Its everywhere.

Since 1998 I have interviewed his band mates Brian May and Roger Taylor many times and have also spoken to around a hundred other people who knew Freddie during his forty-five years on the planet. Some of them knew him only as Farrokh Bulsara, or later Fred Bulsara, the person he was before Queen. Others knew him only as a world-famous rock star. All of them shed some light on his story.

This book, then, is the story of the man Freddie Mercury was and the man he became. Its a celebration of his humour and showmanship, but also of a musician and songwriter whose talents were sometimes lost behind that larger-than-life persona.

I sometimes wonder what Freddie Mercury would be doing now had he lived. Still singing with Queen? Judging a TV music talent show? Writing hits for other artists? Scoring a West End musical? Vacuuming the house in a short PVC skirt and high heels? Or enjoying a quiet life, but donning the crown and coronation robes whenever the mood took him? Whatever he would be doing, I hope it would still be as ridiculous and brilliant as ever.

TIMELINE

1946

5 September: Born Farrokh Bulsara in the then-British protectorate of Zanzibar.

1954

Sent to a British boarding school, St Peters, in Panchgani near Bombay (now Mumbai), India, where he starts piano lessons. Around this time he begins to call himself Freddie.

1958

Forms his first band in school, the five-piece Hectics, in which he plays piano. They play a basic rock n roll repertoire at school dances and local ftes.

1963

February: Having finished school, moves back to his parents home in Zanzibar.

1964

March: Due to political unrest in Zanzibar, the Bulsaras move to England where they settle in Feltham, Middlesex.

September: Freddie enrols at Isleworth Polytechnic where he studies art.

1966

Summer: Leaves Isleworth Polytechnic with a GCE A Level in art.

Mercury isnt my real name, dear. I changed it from Pluto.

FM, 1974

I t was March 1964 when the plane from Zanzibars Kisauni Airport landed at London Heathrow with Freddie Mercury on board. Back then, Queens future lead singer was seventeen years old and still known by his birth name of Farrokh Bulsara.