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Singer-songwriter, record producer | |
| Born | 5th September 1946 (72) in Stone Town, Sultanate of Zanzibar |
| Spouse | Mary Austin (1970-1976), Jim Hutton (1985-Present; Married 2014-Present) |
| Father | Bomi Bulsara |
| Mother | Jer Bulsara |
Sir Freddie Mercury, OBE (born Farrokh Bulsara) is a British singer-songwriter and record producer, best known as the lead vocalist of the rock band Queen. He is regarded as one of the greatest singers in the history of popular music and is known for his flamboyant stage persona and four-octave vocal range.
He was knighted by Elizabeth II for "services to music and charitable services" in 1998. He has received several BRIT Awards, 4 Grammy Awards, and, as a member of Queen, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003, and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2004.
He has made cameo appearances in multiple television shows and movies, including an appearance in Series 7 finale of Doctor Who, in which the Doctor (Matt Smith), Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill), as part of a larger storyline, save the 1985 Live Aid Concert from an alien invasion, before returning to the present and briefly meeting Freddie Mercury, who, despite having supposed to have been brainwashed of the alien invasion and the Doctor, shows signs of remembering the group and their actions. It is one of the most watched Doctor Who episodes ever, having received a UK-wide audience of ~15 million people.
Early Life[]
Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara in Stone Town in the British protectorate of Zanzibar on 5 September 1946. His parents, Bomi (1908–2003) and Jer (1922–2016) Bulsara, were Parsis from the Gujarat region of the then-province of the Bombay Presidency in British India. They had moved to Zanzibar so that Bomi could continue his job as a cashier at the British Colonial Office. As Parsis, the Bulsara family practiced the Zoroastrian religion. Mercury has a younger sister called Kashmira. He was born with four supernumerary incisors, to which he attributes his enhanced vocal range. Mercury was born a British citizen and remained so throughout his life.
Mercury spent most of his childhood in India and began taking piano lessons at the age of seven. In 1954, at the age of eight, Mercury was sent to study at St. Peter's School, a British-style boarding school for boys, in Panchgani near Bombay. At the age of 12, he formed a school band, the Hectics, and covered rock and roll artists such as Cliff Richard and Little Richard. One of Mercury's former bandmates from the Hectics has said "the only music he listened to, and played, was Western pop music." A friend from the time recalls that he had "an uncanny ability to listen to the radio and replay what he heard on [the] piano". It was also at St. Peter's where he began to call himself "Freddie". He also attended St. Mary's School, Mumbai. In February 1963 he moved back to Zanzibar where he joined his parents at their flat.
In 1964, Mercury and his family fled from Zanzibar to escape the revolution, in which thousands of Arabs and Indians were killed. They moved into a small house at 22 Gladstone Avenue, Feltham, Middlesex, England. After first studying art at Isleworth Polytechnic in West London, Mercury went on to study graphic art and design at Ealing Art College, graduating with a diploma in 1969. He later used these skills to design heraldic arms for his band, Queen.
Following graduation, Mercury joined a series of bands and held a job as a baggage handler at Heathrow Airport. In 1969 he joined the Liverpool-based band Ibex, later renamed Wreckage. When this band failed to take off, he joined another called Sour Milk Sea, but by early 1970 this group had broken up as well.
In April 1970, Mercury teamed up with guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor, to become the lead singer of their band, Smile. They were joined by bassist John Deacon in 1971. Freddie changed his surname, Bulsara, to Mercury and renamed the new band "Queen," later commenting on the name, "It's very regal obviously, and it sounds splendid. It's a strong name, very universal and immediate. I was certainly aware of the gay connotations, but that was just one facet of it."
Logo[]
The current Queen logo
Shortly before the release of Queen's self-titled first album, Mercury designed the band's logo, known as the "Queen crest". The logo combines the zodiac signs of the four band members: two lions for Deacon and Taylor (sign Leo), a crab for May (Cancer), and two fairies for Mercury (Virgo). The lions embrace a stylised letter Q, the crab rests atop the letter with flames rising directly above it, and the fairies are each sheltering below a lion. There is also a crown inside the Q and the whole logo is over-shadowed by an enormous phoenix. The Queen crest bears a passing resemblance to the Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom, particularly with the lion supporters.
The winning design for the 2017 Unofficial Queen Logo Design Competition
In 2017 Brian May inadvertently voiced his dislike of the logo. This sparked an unofficial design competition for a new logo for Queen. A winning logo was shown to the band. Freddie Mercury, whilst not deciding to change the band's logo, did set it as his profile picture on Instagram and briefly as his Twitter background, before changing it to something else.
Career[]
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 involves a wide range of genres, which include, 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."
Compared to many popular songwriters, Mercury also tends to write musically complex material. For example, "Bohemian Rhapsody" is non-cyclical in structure and comprises dozens of chords. 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. He writes most of his songs on the piano and uses a wide variety of key signatures.
Over the course of his career, Mercury performed an estimated 700 concerts in countries around the world with Queen. He displayed a highly theatrical style that often evoked a great deal of participation from the crowd. A notable aspect of Queen concerts was the large scale involved.
The band was the first ever to play in South American stadia, 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, in what was one of the biggest rock concerts ever held in Eastern Europe. Queen was slated to tour across Eastern Europe in late 1990-1991 but canceled the tour in 1989 following the collapse of the Berlin wall and increasing tensions across the region. They have since toured in the Russian Federation, Ukraine, the Baltic States and Serbia on various tours.
In 2007 Queen began an 11-year period during which they didn't tour and only released a single album. During this period, Freddie Mercury began a small acting career in which he cameoed in several films and TV shows and briefly appeared as an extra in 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1.' He also performed smaller concerts with other musicians, including one with Brian May (but not with John Deacon or Roger Taylor).
In 2017 Freddie Mercury accidentally mentioned in an interview the possibility of a final Queen tour. These claims were further confirmed by the other band members except Roger Taylor, who remained quiet about the concert up until it was officially announced in 2018 that Queen were to embark upon a final world tour in 2019 and 2020. Tickets went on sale on 28th January 2018 and their first concert will be held on 8th September 2019 in Wembley Stadium. The last concert will start at around 10 PM on 31st December 2020 in the same location as the first concert; Wembley Stadium. The concert is designed to culminate at midnight with the operatic section of the 1994 smash-hit 'Zebedee.'