Freddie Mercury

Freddie Mercury

Birth: September 5th, 1946
Place of Birth: Zanzibar
Nationality: British
Job title: Singer, Songwriter
Partners: Mary Austin, David Minns, Jim Hutton, Others unknown
Died: November 25th 1991, London

The defining moment in any legend’s life is their death. Before a great person dies, they are simply the fodder of gossip columns across the world, a temporary starlet just like all the others. After they are gone, a haunting shadow and a deep reverence hangs over their name forever. Past mistakes are forgotten, unsuccessful projects become masterpieces and their life story is viewed as if it were an ancient Greek tragedy, a fable or an urban myth.

And what better way to exit than an untimely death? Would future generations have any idea who River Phoenix was had he lived to a ripe old age and died of natural causes? Would Nirvana’s Nevermind album still be bought today by a whole new generation of fans had Kurt Cobain lived to grow old and settle down? Like many urban tales, this month’s gay great suffered an early death, yet his name has lived on in history with more veneration than any other star that died young.

After travelling for a while, Bomi and Jer Bulsara, a young Persian couple, settled in the African island of Zanzibar. Jer got a job at the High Court of the British Government from which he earned a good wage and soon after they arrived, their first child was born, a son, whom they named Farrokh. Six years later, a daughter, Kashmera, arrived.

After a quiet childhood, their 8-year old son, Farrokh, was sent away to boarding school in India. St Peter’s English Boarding School was a traditional, stiff-upper-lip type of educational institution and although the move was daunting for the young boy, he fitted into the school very well. His first name was quite difficult for the English tongue to pronounce so he soon adopted the nickname of Freddie.

His sporting talents came to the fore right away, although he hated the traditional British pastimes of cricket and distance running. Boxing and table tennis were more his thing and he excelled at both. Along with his sporting prowess also came a more introspective liking for creative disciplines. While he loved art classes with a great passion, it was his musical talents that were noticed. At a parent’s evening, his father was advised to pay for some extra music tuition for his son and he decided to invest in piano lessons. The young Mercury, who had already won the school’s prize for being a top all-rounder, took to the piano very well.

In 1958, Mercury’s musical talents began to take him away from the classical genre and towards popular music. Although few western records were available to him, he loved to listen to American rock and roll. He and some of his friends decided to form a band, The Hectics. Although no records exist of the band, ex pupils still recall some memorable performances from The Hectics at school fetes and birthday parties.

After school, Mercury returned to Zanzibar, a country which was slowly falling into political unrest. His family stayed in the country for two years after his return but soon British families started to look for ways out. Having relatives in Middlesex, the Bulsara’s decided to make their get away from the bloody revolution at home and head for their relatives in the UK. After a few months, they were settled in their own house in Feltham ready to start a new life. Hungry for more education and with the persistent pressure from his mother to get a degree, Mercury went along to the local polytechnic college to get the single A-level he needed to get into university. In 1966, he passed his A-level Art exam with top marks and was accepted at the Ealing College of Art.

Whilst at college, Mercury encountered a band called Smile. Smile included Brian May on guitar, Roger Taylor on drums and good friend Tim Staffell on bass and vocals. Mercury was soon singing vocals and writing the odd track with the band.

When college ended in 1969, Mercury stayed in Kensington for the summer and set up a market stall selling Victorian clothes. He also moved in with Roger Taylor, gaining him even more access to Smile’s rehearsals. On 13th August he was introduced to a band called Ibex. Within days, he was gigging with them. Despite a few good performances, Ibex faded away along with the swinging sixties. It was then that Freddie changed his surname to something more memorable (Mercury, after his birth star) and set about finding a musical career elsewhere.

Mercury was still resolute in his aim to become a musician. He scoured the music press and responded to an advert by a band wanting a vocalist. He went along to an audition and the band, Sour Milk Sea, took him on instantly. They started to gig together, mostly in Oxford where guitarist Chris Chesney lived. Mercury and Chesney became very close and formed a relationship that was far too exclusive for the rest of the band. Upset at the exclusion of the other members, rhythm guitar player Jeremy Gallo decided to quit Sour Milk Sea. Gallo was actually vital to the band; he owned all their equipment! Once again, Mercury found himself the refugee of a split band.

Back in London, Smile suddenly found themselves without a vocalist when Staffell decided to pursue other projects. Friends Taylor and May asked Mercury if he would like to come on board. Mercury took the decision to change the band’s name to Queen. In the early seventies, bass guitarist John Deacon joined the trio and the band was complete. Mercury returned to many of his unfinished compositions of recent years and the band set about producing a hit. First of all came a minor success with the heavy rock and fast paced single Seven Seas of Rhye which spent 10 weeks in the 1974 UK charts. Then followed their first big hit with Killer Queen.

Only a few years later, they released a single that is still consistently voted into the top ten tunes of all time. Mercury’s love of opera, combined with his ballad writing skills, produced an all time classic; Bohemian Rhapsody. It shot to the top of the charts and stayed there for an amazing nine weeks. Queen’s place at the top was complete.

While the band was riding high on fame, Mercury was also managing to find happiness in his personal life. Early in 1970 he had met the woman of his dreams, Mary Austin. Mercury was crazy about his girlfriend and the two were intimate friends as well as lovers, so much so that she would stay by his side for the rest of his life, as well as inheriting his London home and vast fortune after he had died.

After Bohemian Rhapsody had at last made its way out of the charts, Queen spent the rest of the year building a sizable golden disc collection with such hits as You’re My Best Friend, We Are the Champions and Don’t Stop Me Now. Mercury developed a liking for the rock and roll lifestyle and would often get through several thousand pounds worth of cocaine in a single evening. Good friends, close confidants, groupies and cronies all partied together well into the early hours for many, many nights during the seventies, all courtesy of their host Mercury.

But in the mid-seventies, Mercury started to face the biggest dilemma of his life. Constantly attracted to men throughout his life, he started his first short lived relationship with a man, record executive David Minns. Although still deeply in love with Austin, he at last had to admit that his attraction to men would not go away. By 1978, both Austin and Minns had been transferred to the ex-files and Mercury set about an exploration of his sexuality which would simultaneously lead him to fulfilment, love and sadly, his own death.

In the early 80’s, Mercury went through a drastic image change. His long hair suddenly disappeared and he grew a moustache. He started to hit the gay pubs and clubs of London on a mission for gratification. He enjoyed his new life of casual sex and parties. He was a regular at many of the London ‘dark rooms’ and his sexual exploits were the talk of the town, despite the blanket silence in the media regarding Mercury’s sexuality. Early in the eighties, Queen decided to ‘take a break from each other’. Mercury seized the moment and began doing some solo work, releasing his own album (Mr Bad Guy) as well as a memorable album with Spanish opera singer and best friend Montserrat Caballe.

The mid eighties had arrived to see Mercury riding high as one of the most notable musicians in the world. His professional life could not be better, yet his private life still felt empty. His years of short sexual liaisons were not part of his true character. A shy man off-stage, he endlessly wished that love would come his way. One night in a London bar, he at last met the man he had been waiting for. His name was Jim Hutton and he was an Irish hairdresser living in London. Mercury’s offer to buy him a drink was initially rejected; Hutton already had a boyfriend. But a few months later, spotting him again in the nightclub Heaven, Mercury had another go. This time, his advances were better received.

Freddie Mercury

Although living in Germany, Mercury was not going to let this chance pass him by. Every weekend he flew Hutton out to Germany and back again in time for work on Monday. After a few months, Mercury decided to move back to his London home and Hutton moved in. Fuelled by the heady feeling of a new love, Mercury would front Queen in one of the most memorable stage performances in history. At a quarter to six on July 13th 1985, Mercury took the stage at Live Aid. The set would live on as one of the best rock band performances of all time.

For Mercury, the performance may well have been more important than anybody in the audience could have guessed. The ‘gay plague’ which was ripping through the gay communities of the world had reached London. Over the years he had many casual sexual liaisons and he knew that many of his past partners had already succumbed to the killer disease. It was unlikely he would escape it. Whether he knew of his imminent death when he raised his fist in the air and accepted the roar of the Live Aid crowds on that day is not known for sure. It would, however, live on as an iconic performance simply because of the way the next few years would pan out for Mercury, Queen, his adoring public and the gay community as a whole.

Mercury’s HIV status was confirmed via the rather painful tissue test, which was all that was available at the time. Hutton, away at his parent’s house in Ireland, received a call from Mercury telling him about the procedure and explaining that he needed to speak to him as soon as he got home. A few days later, he sat him down and told his beloved Hutton that he had AIDS. Before he told him, he told his former girlfriend and the closest of all his friends, Austin. In time, he gradually told all the other important figures in his life from fellow band members to family and relatives but the information was still on a strictly need-to-know basis. Many people in Mercury’s life were still in the dark right up until the day before he died.

But far from fading away, Mercury chose to carry on working. After ‘coming out’ about his condition to friends and family, the discussion was closed. Hardly ever did Mercury refer to AIDS or HIV outside of his doctor’s surgery. He simply had an ‘illness’. To save those around him from hurt, he carried on, aware that he was dying but refusing to discuss it. As his illness started to take its toll, the media began to speculate that maybe he had AIDS. Former lovers came forward with kiss and tell stories. Journalists tried their hardest to confirm his positive status, but Mercury stood firm in his silence. AIDS awareness was still in its infancy and his condition would bring great embarrassment to his family, so he chose to live in silence.

On 8th October 1988, Mercury took to the stage for the last time. He looked worn out and ill. For the next few years he disappeared from view completely, resurfacing in late November 1991 when the announcement finally came that he was about to become another AIDS statistic. As if the announcement were his final swan-song, he died the very next day on 26th November 1991.

Ironically, since he had been declared HIV positive, he had strived to keep his condition a secret and to ensure that no shame could come upon his family, yet his death helped to open the doors for debate worldwide. AIDS was no longer a stigma, a gay plague, a shame. His death took AIDS from being ‘something other people have’ to something the whole world needed to wise up to. In every tribute to the great man, from concerts to singles, books to t-shirts, AIDS awareness was ever present. When Mercury died, the silence surrounding AIDS died with him.

There is a well known saying in the music industry that the best way to increase record sales is to die. For Queen this was very true. But the legend of Mercury differs in one respect to that of other untimely deceased stars such as River Phoenix, Kurt Cobain, James Dean or Michael Hutchins, Freddie Mercury didn’t become a legend when he died; he already was one.