Freddie Mercury (1946-1991) had a lonely childhood. He was born in the sultanate of Zanzibar, then a British protectorate, but at the age of eight his parents sent him to study at a boarding school in India, the country from which they came. There he began taking piano lessons – the only formal music education he would ever receive – and he turned out to be a prodigy, who could perform by heart the songs he heard on the radio.
After finishing secondary school he returned to Zanzibar, but in 1964 he and his entire family emigrated to the United Kingdom fleeing the revolution that overthrew the sultanate and unleashed a wave of repression against Arabs and Asian minorities.
In London he studied art and graphic design, and he was good at it, but he ended up leaving it to dedicate himself to music. He was in and out of rock bands and employed in various jobs (from street vendor to Heathrow baggage handler) until 1970, when he founded Queen with Brian May (guitarist) and Roger Taylor (drums). John Deacon (bassist) would join a year later.
Her first album, Queen (1973), was an immediate critical and commercial success, and was followed by Queen II (1974), Sheer Heart Attack (1974), A Night at the Opera (1975), A Day at the Races (1976). )…; more than one per year.
They were a different band, which mixed rockabilly, progressive rock, heavy metal, disco music, gospel and even a touch of classical music, and which had an extravagant but magnetic singer, not to mention that his was one of the best voices of the band. The history of rock.
They began the eighties with the album The Game (1980), on whose cover Freddie appeared for the first time with short hair and a prominent mustache, the stereotypical look of homosexuals of the time (in those years he began to be more open about his sexuality). They then released Flash Gordon (1980), Hot Space (1982), The Works (1984), A Kind of Magic (1986) and The Miracle (1989), surpassing themselves compared to the previous decade.
In 1995, Made in Heaven appeared, Queen’s last album and a tribute to Freddie, who had died four years earlier from an infection derived from AIDS. The last song he recorded was Mother Love, only half done, because he had no strength left, so Brian May finished it.
His family history is nothing short of a mess. His parents lived in Zanzibar, but culturally and ethnically they were not from there, nor were they from India. They belonged to the Parsi ethnic group, which is how the descendants of the Persians who fled to the Indian subcontinent after the Muslim conquest (7th century) are known, and who still profess the Zoroastrian religion today.
Born Farrokh Bulsara, he began calling himself Freddie at boarding school in Bombay, and the surname “Mercury” was taken from a fragment of the song My Fairy King that was a tribute to his own mother: “Mother Mercury, look what I have made”.
He had prominent teeth and four extra incisors. They gave him a particular gesture that as a child earned him ridicule from the other children. As an adult he did not take action because he feared the change would influence his voice.
He could sing from the highest to the lowest registers. Monserrat Caballé (1933-2018) would say that he differed from the rest of the rockers in the fact that he “sold his voice,” and not his image. In 2016, a team of scientists did a study on his voice, concluding that he had an unusually fast vibrato and the ability to make subharmonics, something difficult even for opera singers.
