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brought to you by QuizillaFreddie Mercury: Rest in Peace............................Even in death you are still awesome.
Freddie Mercury's Obituaryby the Rolling Stones Magazine 1992Queen singer is rock's first major AIDS casualty
By Jeffrey Ressner
FREDDIE MERCURY, THE OUTLANDISH frontman for Queen, whose worldwide hits like ....Bohemian Rhapsody'' and ....We Are the Champions'' combined gaudy theatrical pomp with heavy-metal bluster, became the first major rock star to die of AIDS when he succumbed to complications from the disease on November 24th at his London home. He was forty-five years old.Mercury, whose real name was Frederick Bulsara, had not performed with Queen in concert since 1986. He had become a virtual recluse over the past two years, yet he repeatedly denied reports that he had contracted AIDS until the day before his death.....The time has now come for my friends and fans around the world to know the truth,'' he said in his statement, explaining that he had waited so long to make the announcement because ....my privacy has always been very special to me.''Although Mercury's condition was long rumored in the tabloid press and virtually an open secret in the music industry, his death still startled many fans and colleagues. Bouquets from Elton John, David Bowie, U2, Ringo Starr and the Scorpions adorned the West London Crematorium, where a brief funeral service in the Zoroastrian faith was held for his family and a few close friends, including the surviving Queen members, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon.....Of all the more theatrical rock performers, Freddie took it further than the rest,'' says Bowie, who collaborated with Mercury and Queen on their 1981 hit ....Under Pressure.'' ....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. He could always turn a cliche to his advantage.''Beginning in the early Seventies, the flamboyant Mercury - who cited Jimi Hendrix and Liza Minnelli as his main influences - led Queen through eighteen albums that sold 80 million copies worldwide, amassing almost a dozen U.S. hit singles, including his campy ....Killer Queen,'' the Elvis spoof ....Crazy Little Thing Called Love'' and the bass-heavy anthem ....Another One Bites the Dust.'' Queen's popularity nose-dived in the United States during the Eighties, but the group remained popular in England and around the world.Queen laced British glam pop with swooping arias, corny vaudeville themes and heavy-rock bombast, but it was Mercury's wicked taste for wretched excess that set the band apart. ....Freddie was clearly out in left field someplace, outrageous onstage and offstage,'' says Capitol-EMI president and CEO Joe Smith, who headed Queen's American label, Elektra Records, at the peak of the group's success. ....He was the band's driving force, a tremendously creative man.''Elektra's release of Mercury's overwrought, six-minute mock opera ....Bohemian Rhapsody'' - complete with a goofy choir chirping ....Mama mia, Mama mia'' - was only one example of his musical extravagance. He was even more extreme when it came to his concert performances, appearing in leather storm-trooper outfits or women's clothes and taking an arch, gay-macho stance that both challenged and poked fun at the decidedly homophobic hard-rock world.Offstage, Mercury was known for his wild antics and the lavish gifts he bestowed upon friends. To celebrate his forty-first birthday, for instance, he flew eighty pals to an exclusive hotel on the resort isle of Ibiza, where they were treated to fireworks displays, flamenco dancers and a twenty-foot-long cake carried by waiters dressed in gold and white costumes. ....All I can remember about the whole time we were making records and hanging out was that it was like one continuous party,'' says producer Roy Thomas Baker, who worked on five Queen albums.Excess also defined Mercury's sexual lifestyle. Though he lived with girlfriend Mary Austin for much of Queen's early career, he often boasted about his numerous trysts, claiming he'd had ....more lovers than Elizabeth Taylor.'' A former associate remembers seeing a line of men dressed in sailor suits marching into Mercury's dressing room after a concert date. Once the AIDS epidemic began taking its toll, however, he panicked about his promiscuity; he said that he refused to tour the U.S. for fear he might contract the disease. But as late as 1987, Mercury was telling interviewers that he had tested negative for HIV.BORN SEPTEMBER 5th, 1946, ON THE AFRICAN island of Zanzibar, to a British-government accountant and his wife, the young Frederick Bulsara was raised in Bombay, India, and moved to England with his parents shortly before reaching his teens. Earning a degree in graphic design at art college during the late Sixties, he joined a local blues-rock group called Wreckage; he dubbed himself Freddie Mercury after the mythological messenger of the gods. Around this time he also became friendly with members of Smile, a power quartet featuring guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor.....Freddie always looked like a star and acted like a star even when he was penniless,'' says May. ....The first thing I remember about meeting him was that he seemed like a gypsy. He was nominally living with his parents but stayed with whomever he wanted. He invited me round to his house, where he had this little stereo, and played me some Hendrix. Freddie said, ..This guy really makes use of stereo,' so we went from one speaker to the other, finding out how he produced those sounds.''Smile soon split, and the three struggling musicians started a new band that Mercury christened with his own regal touch. ....I'd had the idea of calling a group Queen for a long time,'' he said in a 1977 ROLLING STONE interview. ....It was a very strong name, very universal and very immediate; it had a lot of visual potential and was open to all sorts of interpretations. I was certainly aware of the gay connotations, but that was just one facet of it.''Recruited through a classified ad, bassist John Deacon filled out the new quartet, which rehearsed in private for nearly two years while some of the members finished school. Its 1973 debut album, Queen, went unnoticed, but its more eclectic second album, Queen II, released in early 1974, made the British charts. The group's third effort, Sheer Heart Attack, finally broke the band in America on the strength of a hit single about a high-class call girl, ....Killer Queen.''Although a 1975 headlining tour in the U.S. was interrupted because Mercury suffered from voice problems, a trek to Japan that year proved overwhelmingly successful. ....It was like the second coming of the Beatles,'' says Jack Nelson, the group's first manager. ....Somehow, word got out we were on the Hikari Express, and the train stations were mobbed with people beating on the railway cars. When the band played Budokan, the audience rushed the stage like a tidal wave. We had barricades in front with sumo wrestlers behind them, but the crowd just climbed over en masse.''Recharged by that Japanese invasion, Queen began recording A Night at the Opera, an album highlighted by Mercury's over-the-top ....Bohemian Rhapsody.'' ....I went over to Freddie's apartment,'' says Roy Thomas Baker, ....and he played me the first part on piano, which was like a ballad. Suddenly he said, ..Now this is where the opera section comes in, dear,' and I fell down laughing. It was originally supposed to be five or ten seconds, but when we started the sessions, it went to a minute, then more. We just went ..More, more, more,' until the recording head on the tape machine literally broke off.''The band's next album, News of the World, went platinum in the U.S., thanks to a double A-side single pairing Mercury's ....We Are the Champions'' with May's ....We Will Rock You.'' Both songs became instant hits. Around the same time, however, Queen incurred the wrath of the emerging punk movement. While recording ....We Will Rock You'' at Wessex studios, Mercury came face to face with Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious. ....So you're this Freddie Platinum bloke that's supposed to be bringing ballet to the masses,'' Vicious snarled, prompting a completely unfazed response from Mercury: ....Ah, Mr. Ferocious, we're trying our best, dear.''Ignoring the venom of punks and other critics, the band stayed as extravagant as ever. To celebrate Queen's album Jazz, Elektra and EMI, the group's British label, sponsored the rock party to end all rock parties in New Orleans, with Mercury&..39;s orchestrating every last detail. The $200,000 bash was a tribute to debauchery, a Sodom-and-Gomorrah-style orgy complete with dwarfs, transvestites, snake charmers and a stripper who puffed cigarettes with her crotch. There were ample servings of champagne and more exotic intoxicants.....It was definitely a Freddie party,'' says Joe Smith. ....He was testing the limits of what he could get away with, and people were kind of dazed, because there had never been anything quite like it.''Queen then reigned as one of the biggest rock acts in the world, a position solidified with
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