Freddie Mercury
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| Freddie Mercury | |
|---|---|
 Mercury performing in New Haven, CT, 1977 | |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Farrokh Bulsara |
| Born | 5 September 1946 Stone Town, Zanzibar |
| Origin | London, England, UK[1] |
| Died | 24 November 1991 (aged 45) Kensington , London, England, United Kingdom |
| Genres | Rock, Hard rock |
| Occupations | Musician, singer-songwriter, record producer |
| Instruments | Vocals, piano, keyboards, guitar |
| Years active | 1969–91 |
| Labels | Columbia, Polydor, EMI, Parlophone, Hollywood Records |
| Associated acts | Queen, Wreckage/Ibex, Montserrat Caballé |
Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara (Gujarati: ફ્રારુક બુલ્સારા), 5 September 1946 – 24 November 1991)[2] 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.[3][4][5] 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.
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".[6] He died of bronchopneumonia brought on by AIDS on 24 November 1991, only one day after publicly acknowledging he had the disease. In 2006, Time Asia named him as one of the most influential Asian heroes of the past 60 years,[7] and he continues to be voted one of the greatest singers in the history of popular music. In 2005, a poll organised by Blender and MTV2 saw Mercury voted the greatest male singer of all time.[8] In 2009, a Classic Rock poll saw him voted the greatest rock singer of all time.[9] In 2008, Rolling Stone editors ranked him number 18 on their list of the 100 greatest singers of all time.[4] Allmusic has characterised Mercury as "one of the most dynamic and charismatic frontmen in rock history."[10]
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Early life
Mercury was born in the British protectorate of Zanzibar, East Africa. His parents, Bomi and Jer Bulsara,[a]Parsis from the Gujarat region of the then province of Bombay Presidency in British India.[11][b] The family surname is derived from the town of Bulsar (also known as Valsad) in southern Gujarat. As Parsis, Freddie and his family practised the Zoroastrian religion.[12] 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.[13] were
In 1954, at the age of eight, Mercury was sent to study at St. Peter's School,[14] an English style boarding school for boys in Panchgani near Bombay (now Mumbai), India.[15] 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".[16] 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.[17]
At the age of 17, Mercury and his family fled from Zanzibar for safety reasons due to the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution.[6] The family moved into a small house in Feltham, Middlesex, England. Mercury enrolled at Isleworth Polytechnic (now West Thames College) in West London where he studied art. He ultimately earned a Diploma in Art and Graphic Design at Ealing Art College, later using these skills to design the Queen crest. Mercury remained a British citizen for the rest of his life.
Following graduation, Mercury joined a series of bands and sold second-hand clothes in the Kensington Market in London. He also held a job at Heathrow Airport. Friends from the time remember him as a quiet and shy young man who showed a great deal of interest in music.[18] 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.[19]
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".[1] At about the same time, he changed his surname, Bulsara, to Mercury.
Career
Singer
Although Mercury's speaking voice naturally fell in the baritone range, he delivered most songs in the tenor[20] His vocal range extended from bass low E (E2) to coloratura soprano E-natural (E6). His belting register soaring to tenor high F (F5).[21] 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".[22] 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".[23] 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.[24] range.
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."[25] Compared to many popular songwriters, Mercury also tended to write musically complex material. For example, "Bohemian Rhapsody" is acyclic in structure and comprises dozens of chords.[26][27] 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.[28] He wrote most of his songs on the piano and used a wide variety of different key signatures.[26]
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".[29] 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."[30]
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".[31][32] 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."[33]
Over the course of his career, Mercury performed an estimated 700 concerts in countries around the world with Queen. A notable aspect of Queen concerts was the large scale involved.[25] He once explained, "We're the Cecil B. DeMille of rock and roll, always wanting to do things bigger and better."[25] 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.[34] In 1986, Queen also played behind the Iron Curtain, when they performed to a crowd of 80,000 in Budapest.[35] 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.[36]
Instrumentalist
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 and Spike Edney, 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.[37] Although he wrote many lines for the guitar, Mercury possessed only rudimentary skills on the instrument. Songs like "Ogre Battle" and "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" were composed on the guitar; the latter featured Mercury playing acoustic guitar both on stage and in the studio.
