| Name | Freddie Mercury |
|---|
| Background | solo_singer |
|---|
| Birth name | Farrokh Bulsara |
|---|
| Birth date | September 05, 1946 |
|---|
| Birth place | Stone Town, Zanzibar |
|---|
| Origin | London, England, UK |
|---|
| Nationality | British Persian |
|---|
| Death date | November 24, 1991 |
|---|
| Death place | Kensington, London, England, United Kingdom |
|---|
| Genre | Rock, Hard rock |
|---|
| Instrument | Vocals, piano, keyboards, guitar |
|---|
| Occupation | Musician, singer-songwriter, record producer |
|---|
| Years active | 1969–91 |
|---|
| Label | Columbia, Polydor, EMI, Parlophone, Hollywood Records |
|---|
| Associated acts | Queen, Wreckage/Ibex, Montserrat Caballé |
|---|
Freddie Mercury (born
Farrokh Bulsara (
Gujarati: ફ્રારુક બલ્સારા), 5 September 1946 – 24 November 1991) was a British musician, best known as the lead vocalist and a songwriter of the rock band
Queen. As a performer, he was known for his flamboyant stage persona and powerful vocals over a four-octave range. As a songwriter, Mercury composed many hits for Queen, including "
Bohemian Rhapsody", "
Killer Queen", "
Somebody to Love", "
Don't Stop Me Now", "
Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "
We Are the Champions". In addition to his work with Queen, he led a solo career, penning hits such as "
Barcelona", "
I Was Born to Love You" and "
Living on My Own". Mercury also occasionally served as a producer and guest musician (piano or vocals) for other artists.
He died of
bronchopneumonia brought on by
AIDS on 24 November 1991, only one day after publicly acknowledging he had the disease.
Mercury, who was a Parsi born in Zanzibar and grew up there and in India until his mid-teens, has been referred to as "Britain's first Asian rock star". In 2009, a Classic Rock poll saw him voted the greatest rock singer of all time. In 2008, Rolling Stone editors ranked him number 18 on their list of the 100 greatest singers of all time.
Early life
Mercury was born in the
British protectorate of
Zanzibar, East Africa. His parents, Bomi and Jer Bulsara, were
Parsis from the
Gujarat region of the then province of
Bombay Presidency in
British India. The Bulsara family had moved to Zanzibar in order for his father to continue his job as a cashier at the
British Colonial Office. He had one younger sister, Kashmira.
In 1954, at the age of eight, Mercury was sent to study at St. Peter's School, an English style boarding school for boys in Panchgani near Bombay (now Mumbai), India. At school, he formed a popular school band, The Hectics, for which he played piano. 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". Mercury remained in India for most of his childhood, living with his grandmother and aunt. He completed his education in India at St. Mary's School, Bombay.
At the age of 17, Mercury and his family fled from Zanzibar for safety reasons due to the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution. In 1969 he joined the band Ibex, later renamed Wreckage. When this band failed to take off, he joined a second band called Sour Milk Sea. However, by early 1970 this group broke 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 from the other members, Mercury chose the name "Queen" for the new band. He later said about the band's name, "I was certainly aware of the gay connotations, but that was just one facet of it". His vocal range extended from bass low F (F2) to coloratura falsetto F-natural (F6). His belting register soaring to tenor high F (F5). Biographer David Bret described his voice as "escalating within a few bars from a deep, throaty rock-growl to tender, vibrant tenor, then on to a high-pitched, perfect coloratura, pure and crystalline in the upper reaches". Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballé, with whom Mercury recorded an album, expressed her opinion that "the difference between Freddie and almost all the other rock stars was that he was selling the voice". As Queen's career progressed, he would increasingly alter the highest notes of their songs when live, often harmonising with seconds, thirds or fifths instead. Mercury suffered from vocal fold nodules and claimed never to have had any formal vocal training.
Songwriter
Mercury wrote 10 of the 17 songs on Queen's
Greatest Hits album: "
Bohemian Rhapsody", "
Seven Seas of Rhye", "
Killer Queen", "
Somebody to Love", "
Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy", "
We Are the Champions", "
Bicycle Race", "
Don't Stop Me Now", "
Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "
Play the Game".
The most notable aspect of his songwriting involved the wide range of genres that he used, which included, among other styles, rockabilly, progressive rock, heavy metal, gospel and disco. As he explained in a 1986 interview, "I hate doing the same thing again and again and again. I like to see what's happening now in music, film and theatre and incorporate all of those things." He also wrote six songs from Queen II which deal with multiple key changes and complex material. "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", on the other hand, contains only a few chords. Despite the fact that Mercury often wrote very intricate harmonies, he also claimed that he could barely read music. He wrote most of his songs on the piano and used a wide variety of different key signatures.
Live performer
Mercury was noted for his live performances, which were often delivered to stadium audiences around the world. He displayed a highly theatrical style that often evoked a great deal of participation from the crowd. A writer for
The Spectator described him as "a performer out to tease, shock and ultimately charm his audience with various extravagant versions of himself".
David Bowie, who performed at the
Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert and recorded the song "
Under Pressure" with Queen, praised Mercury's performance style, saying: "Of all the more theatrical rock performers, Freddie took it further than the rest... he took it over the edge. And of course, I always admired a man who wears tights. I only saw him in concert once and as they say, he was definitely a man who could hold an audience in the palm of his hand."
One of Mercury's most notable performances with Queen took place at Live Aid in 1985, during which the entire stadium audience of 72,000 people clapped, sang and swayed in unison. Queen's performance at the event has since been voted by a group of music executives as the greatest live performance in the history of rock music. The results were aired on a television program called "The World's Greatest Gigs". In reviewing Live Aid in 2005, one critic wrote, "Those who compile lists of Great Rock Frontmen and award the top spots to Mick Jagger, Robert Plant, etc all are guilty of a terrible oversight. Freddie, as evidenced by his Dionysian Live Aid performance, was easily the most godlike of them all." The band were the first ever to play in South American stadiums, breaking worldwide records for concert attendance in the Morumbi Stadium in São Paulo in 1981. In 1986, Queen also played behind the Iron Curtain, when they performed to a crowd of 80,000 in Budapest. Mercury's final live performance with Queen took place on 9 August 1986 at Knebworth Park in England and drew an attendance estimated as high as 300,000.
Instrumentalist
in
Frankfurt, 1984.]]
As a young boy in India, Mercury received formal piano training up to the age of nine. Later on, while living in London, he learned guitar. Much of the music he liked was guitar-oriented: his favourite 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), leaving most of the keyboard work exclusively to them.
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. The song also garnered Mercury a posthumous Ivor Novello Award. 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 synthesiser-driven in a way that is not characteristic of previous Queen albums.
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 the #8 position in the UK charts and was a hit in Spain. The title track received massive air play as the official hymn 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 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 number five in the UK in 1987. In September 2006, a compilation album featuring Mercury's solo work was released in the UK in honour of what would have been his 60th birthday. The album debuted in the top 10 of the UK Album Charts.
In 1981–1983, Mercury recorded several tracks with Michael Jackson, including a demo of "State of Shock", "Victory" and "There Must Be More to Life Than This"; none of these collaborations were officially released, although bootleg recordings exist. Jackson went on to record the former song with Mick Jagger for The Jacksons's album Victory, and Mercury included the solo version of the latter song on his Mr. Bad Guy album.
Personal life
In the early 1970s Mercury had a long-term relationship with Mary Austin, whom he had met through guitarist
Brian May. He lived with Austin for several years in
West Kensington. By the mid-1970s, however, the singer had begun an affair with a male American record executive at
Elektra Records, which ultimately resulted in the end of his relationship with Austin. Mercury and Austin nevertheless remained close friends through the years, with Mercury often referring to her as his only true friend. In a 1985 interview, Mercury said of Austin, "All my lovers asked me why they couldn't replace Mary [Austin], but it's simply impossible. The only friend I've got is Mary and I don't want anybody else. To me, she was my common-law wife. To me, it was a marriage. We believe in each other, that's enough for me." He also wrote several songs about Austin, the most notable of which is "
Love of My Life". Mercury was also the godfather of Mary's oldest son, Richard.
During the early-to-mid-80s, he was romantically involved with Barbara Valentin, an Austrian actress, who is featured in the video for "It's a Hard Life". By 1985, he began another long-term relationship with a hairdresser named Jim Hutton. Hutton, who himself was tested HIV-positive in 1990,
Although he cultivated a flamboyant stage personality, Mercury was a very shy and retiring man in person, particularly around people he didn't know well. He also 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."
== Illness and death ==
the day after Mercury's death.]]
According to his partner Jim Hutton, Mercury was diagnosed with AIDS shortly after Easter of 1987. Toward the end of his life, he was routinely stalked by photographers, while the daily tabloid newspaper The Sun featured a series of articles claiming that he was seriously ill. However, Mercury and his colleagues and friends continually denied the stories, even after one front page article published on 29 April 1991, which showed Mercury appearing very haggard in what was now a rare public appearance.
On 22 November 1991, Mercury called Queen's manager Jim Beach over to his Kensington home, to discuss a public statement. The next day, 23 November, the following announcement was made to the press on behalf of Mercury:
Following the enormous conjecture in the press over the last two weeks, I wish to confirm that I have been tested HIV positive and have AIDS. I felt it correct to keep this information private to date to protect the privacy of those around me. However, the time has come now for my friends and fans around the world to know the truth and I hope that everyone will join with me, my doctors, and all those worldwide in the fight against this terrible disease. My privacy has always been very special to me and I am famous for my lack of interviews. Please understand this policy will continue.
A little over 24 hours after issuing that statement, Mercury died on the evening of 24 November 1991 at the age of 45. The official cause of death was bronchial pneumonia resulting from AIDS. The news of his death had reached newspaper and television crews by the early hours of 25 November.
Although he had not attended religious services in years, Mercury's funeral was conducted by a Zoroastrian priest. Elton John, David Bowie and the remaining members of Queen were among the few people who attended the funeral. He was cremated at Kensal Green Cemetery and his ashes are in the possession of his mother.
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 further 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. 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.
Criticism and controversy
Sexual orientation and HIV
Mercury was an acknowledged bisexual. While some critics claimed he hid his sexual orientation from the public, others claimed he was "openly gay". When asked directly "So how about being bent? " by
NME in December 1974, Mercury replied "You're a crafty cow. Let's put it this way, there were times when I was young and green. It's a thing schoolboys go through. I've had my share of schoolboy pranks. I'm not going to elaborate further." A writer for a gay online newspaper felt that audiences may have been overly naive about the matter: "While in many respects he was overtly
queer his whole career ("I am as gay as a
daffodil, my dear" being one of his most famous quotes), his sexual orientation seemed to pass over the heads of scrutinising audiences and pundits (both gay and straight) for decades". John Marshall of
Gay Times expressed the following opinion in 1992: "[Mercury] was a 'scene-queen', not afraid to publicly express his gayness but unwilling to analyse or justify his 'lifestyle' ... It was as if Freddie Mercury was saying to the world, "I am what I am. So what?" And that in itself for some was a statement."
Mercury hid his HIV status from the public for several years, and it has been suggested that he could have raised a great deal of money and awareness earlier by speaking truthfully about his situation and his fight against the disease.
Other controversies
Members of Queen were widely criticised in the 1980s for the fact that they broke a United Nations
cultural boycott by performing a series of shows at
Sun City in 1984, an entertainment complex in
Bophuthatswana, a
homeland of (then)
apartheid South Africa. As a result of these shows, Queen was placed on a United Nations list of artists who broke the boycott and was widely criticised in magazines such as the
NME.
A further controversy ensued in August 2006, when an organisation calling itself the Islamic Mobilization and Propagation petitioned the Zanzibar government's culture ministry, demanding that a large-scale celebration of what would have been Mercury's sixtieth birthday be cancelled. The organisation issued several complaints about the planned celebrations, including that Mercury was not a true Zanzibari and that he was gay, which is not in accordance with their interpretation of sharia. The organisation claimed that "associating Mercury with Zanzibar degrades our island as a place of Islam". The planned celebration was cancelled.
Legacy
Continued popularity
The extent to which Mercury's death may have enhanced Queen's popularity is not clear. In the United States, where Queen's popularity had lagged in the 1980s, sales of Queen albums went up dramatically in 1992, the year following his death. In 1992 one American critic noted, "what cynics call the 'dead star' factor had come into play—Queen is in the middle of a major resurgence". The movie
Wayne's World, which featured "Bohemian Rhapsody", also came out in 1992. According to the
Recording Industry Association of America, Queen have sold 32.5 million albums in the United States, about half of which have been sold since Mercury's death in 1991.
Estimates of Queen's total worldwide record sales to date have been set as high as 300 million. In the UK, Queen have now spent more collective weeks on the UK Album Charts than any other musical act (including The Beatles), and Queen's Greatest Hits is the highest selling album of all time in the UK. Two of Mercury's songs, "We Are the Champions" and "Bohemian Rhapsody", have also each been voted as the greatest song of all time in major polls by Sony Ericsson and Guinness World Records, respectively. The former poll was an attempt to determine the world's favourite song, while the Guinness poll took place in the UK. In October 2007, the video for "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted the greatest of all time by readers of Q magazine. 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, Classic Rock magazine voted Freddie Mercury as the greatest singer in rock. In 1999, a Royal Mail stamp with the image of
Mercury on stage was issued in his honour as part of the Millennium Stamp series. In 2009, a plaque was unveiled in Feltham where Mercury and his family moved upon arriving in England in 1964. The star in memory of Mercury's achievements was unveiled in Feltham High Street by his mother Jer Bulsara and Queen bandmate Brian May.
A tribute to Queen has been on display at the Fremont Street Experience in downtown Las Vegas throughout 2009 on its video canopy. In December 2009 a large model of Mercury wearing tartan was put on display in the centre of Edinburgh as publicity for the run of We Will Rock You at the Playhouse Theatre.
A statue of Mercury stands over the entrance to the Dominion Theatre in London where the main show, from May 2002, has been Ben Elton's We Will Rock You.
Importance in AIDS history
As the first major rock star to die from
AIDS, Mercury's death represented a very important event in the disease's history. In April 1992, the remaining members of Queen founded
The Mercury Phoenix Trust and organised
The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness to celebrate the life and legacy of Mercury and raise money for AIDS research, which took place on Easter Monday, 20 April 1992.
The Mercury Phoenix Trust has since raised millions of pounds for various AIDS charities. The tribute concert, which took place at
Wembley Stadium for an audience of 72,000, featured a wide variety of guests including;
Robert Plant (of
Led Zeppelin),
Roger Daltrey (of
The Who),
Extreme,
Elton John,
Metallica,
David Bowie,
Annie Lennox,
Tony Iommi (of
Black Sabbath),
Guns N' Roses,
Elizabeth Taylor,
George Michael,
Def Leppard,
Seal,
Liza Minnelli (and also
U2 via Satellite). The concert was broadcast live to 76 countries and had an estimated viewing audience of 1 billion people.
Appearances in lists of influential individuals
Several popularity polls conducted over the past decade indicate that Freddie Mercury's reputation may in fact have been enhanced since his death. For instance, in a 2002 vote to determine whom the UK public considers the greatest British people in history, Mercury was ranked number 58 in the list of the "
100 Greatest Britons", broadcast by the BBC. He was further listed at the 52nd spot in a 2007 Japanese national survey of the 100 most "influential heroes". Despite the fact that he had been criticised by gay activists for hiding his HIV status, author Paul Russell included Mercury in his book "The Gay 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Gay Men and Lesbians, Past and Present." Other entertainers on Russell's list included
Liberace and
Rock Hudson. In 2006,
Time Asia magazine named him as one of the most influential Asian heroes of the past 60 years: The article credited Mercury with having "duplicated in popular music what other Indians—such as
Salman Rushdie and
Vikram Seth — have done in literature: taking the coloniser's art form and representing it in a manner richer and more dazzling than many Anglophones thought possible." that
Sacha Baron Cohen, previously best known for his comedic characters
Borat,
Ali G and
Brüno, had been chosen to play Mercury in a film about his life. The motion picture is being written by
Peter Morgan, who had been nominated for Oscars for his screenplays
The Queen and
Frost/Nixon. The film, which is being co-produced by
Robert De Niro's
TriBeCa Productions, will focus on Queen's formative years and the period leading up to the celebrated performance at the
1985 Live Aid concert. Filming is due to begin sometime in 2011.
Discography
Notes
his parents defined themselves with "Nationality: British Indian" and "Race:
Parsi". The Parsis are an originally
Persian ethnic group of the
Indian subcontinent who follow
Zoroastrianism.
|-
| style="vertical-align:top; width:3em; text-align:right;"|b)
| The Bulsara family gets its name from
Bulsar, a city and district that is now in the Indian state of
Gujarat and is today officially known as
Valsad. In the 17th century, Bulsar was one of the five centres of the
Zoroastrian religion (the other four were also in what is today Gujarat) and consequently "Bulsara" is a relatively common name amongst Zoroastrians.
|-
| style="vertical-align:top; width:3em; text-align:right;"|c)
| Mercury is also portrayed as himself in the animated show
Cromartie High School as the character Freddie, and in the British Channel 4 show
House Of Rock along with
Marc Bolan,
John Lennon,
Notorious BIG,
John Denver and
Kurt Cobain.
|}
References
Notation done in Scientific Pitch, and thus is written one octave lower than what is displayed here.
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*part 2* *part 3*.
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External links
(official
EMI Music)
Freddie Mercury discography at Discogs
Freddie Mercury at Last.FM
Freddie Mercury at Find A Death
Category:1946 births
Category:1991 deaths
Category:1970s singers
Category:1980s singers
Category:1990s singers
Category:AIDS-related deaths in England
Category:Bisexual musicians
Category:BRIT Award winners
Category:British people of Parsi descent
Category:English male singers
Category:English people of Indian descent
Category:English pianists
Category:English rock guitarists
Category:English rock keyboardists
Category:English rock musicians
Category:English rock singers
Category:English singer-songwriters
Category:English songwriters
Category:English tenors
Category:English Zoroastrians
Category:Freddie Mercury
Category:Ivor Novello Award winners
Category:LGBT musicians from the United Kingdom
Category:LGBT people from Africa
Category:LGBT people from South Asia
Category:Parsi people
Category:Queen (band) members
Category:Zanzibari Indians
