Pieroblog: Freddie Mercury

FREDDIE MERCURY -

A ROCK MUSIC legend

Freddie Mercury was born in the African island of Zanzibar in 1946. His real name was Farrokh Bulsar, and his family came from India. He went to school in India, near Mumbay.

He hated his front teeth because they came out of his mouth – the cause was that he had two extra teeth! At school, everybody called him Freddie. He was bullied for his aspect. He was very shy and didn’t have many friends.

He liked table-tennis, hockey and boxing. He loved art and he made a lot of drawings for friends and relatives. He had a real musical talent, so he started to learn the piano when he was 7 years old. He also sang in the school choir and played parts in school theatrical productions. He was an excellent piano player.

When he was 18, there were political problems in Zanzibar, so he and his family had to move to London. He studied design in an Art school there and sang in a blues band in his free time.

He met Roger Taylor and Brian May, members of a band called Smile, and became the vocalist of the band. They changed the band’s name into Queen and Freddie changed his surname into Mercury.

He fell in love with Mary Austin and went to live with her. The bassist John Deacon joined the band in 1971. Their first album was Queen, but the big success arrived with their third album, A Night at the Opera and the single Bohemian Rhapsody.

In 1975 Freddie was already very famous for his extraordinary voice, his extravagances and his performances during concerts. Queen had tours in Europe, Japan and the USA.

All the members of the band wrote songs and decided about the albums together, but Freddie was the front-man of the band. Their big success continued all over the world. They had a concert in Sao Paulo in Brasil with 230.000 fans! Their performance during the Live Aid charity concert in 1975, where a lot of artists sang to raise money for starving people in Africa, was epic. One billion people watched the concert on TV!

The band started making videos of their songs, something new for that time.

Freddie worked with Dave Clark to create the successful musical “Time”; he danced in a classical ballet show in London with the Royal Ballet and recorded some songs with his favourite opera singer, Monserrat Caballè. The song Barcelona became the anthem for the 1992 Olympics. He loved parties, having lots of friends and… cats!

He also released records as a soloist but worked with Queen for all his life. After seven years of marriage with Mary, they stopped living together but they remained best friends. He had many partners after that, women and men, but Mary was the love of his life. She worked with him and helped him when he discovered that he had AIDS. Freddie didn’t want anybody to know about his disease and kept it secret until 1991.

The members of the band and his last partner, Jim Hutton, also knew he was ill but they worked together until the end. He announced to his fans he had AIDS the day before his death. At that time there were no therapies to fight this terrible disease. He died at the age of 45.

20 years after his death, he is still considered one of the greatest artists of the history of rock music. There is a fantastic musical about Queen’s songs, We Will Rock You and a very nice biopic with the actor Rami Malek playing Freddie, Bohemian Rhapsody.