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    LIFE Queen
    LIFE Queen
    LIFE Queen
    Ebook128 pages58 minutes

    LIFE Queen

    By The Editors of LIFE

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    About this ebook

    The Editors of LIFE Magazine present LIFEQueen: The Music. The Life. The Rhapsody.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLife
    Release dateOct 26, 2018
    ISBN9781547845606
    LIFE Queen

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      Book preview

      LIFE Queen - The Editors of LIFE

      late.

      CHAPTER ONE

      ROOTS OF A REIGN

      Boarding school, art school, ventures in astronomy. It’s a long way to the top when you want to rock ’n’ roll

      © MICK ROCK, LONDON, 1973, 2018

      John Deacon, Freddie Mercury, and Brian May, performing at Imperial College, London, 1973.

      In late November 1991, Freddie Mercury, Queen’s legendary lead singer, lay bedridden in Garden Lodge, his Georgian mansion in London’s Kensington neighborhood. Outside, paparazzi, fans, and passersby waited for a glimpse of the celebrity—or at least some confirmation of the rumors that had dogged him for years. Did he have AIDS, or didn’t he?

      Even on his deathbed, Mercury took pains to hide the truth. Assistants and friends learned to give him blood transfusions, eliminating the need for nurses who might have tipped the public off, and drugs were smuggled into his mansion in record-album covers. The most important of these was AZT, the best medication then prescribed for AIDS patients—and the only thing that was keeping Mercury alive. Once exploding with volcanic energy and insatiable appetites, Mercury could no longer get out of bed.

      He never really talked about being afraid of dying, said Peter Freestone, the star’s longtime assistant, who was with him in his last days. There was no point in being frightened . . . I think his only regret at the end was that there was so much more music inside him.

      During Queen’s fervid 20-year reign, the band released 15 studio albums, toured the world a dozen or so times, racked up numerous hit singles, and delivered what many consider the greatest rock ’n’ roll performance of all time (more on that later)—thanks in large part to Mercury’s musical and theatrical genius. In addition to writing a handful of indelible pop classics (the astonishingly original Bohemian Rhapsody tall among them), he galvanized audiences with a powerfully emotional voice while dazzling them with seemingly frivolous showmanship. Over time, Mercury appeared wearing bananas on his head (the Carmen Miranda of rock ’n’ roll, he said), an ermine gown and crown, and such comparatively mundane items as a harlequin suit, a psychedelic kimono, and a famous ballet dancer’s costume. No matter what Mercury wore, he routinely whipped audiences into a fine frenzy as he strutted across the stage wielding his trademark sawed-off mike stand.

      Despite his Dionysian performances (and life), Mercury was always in control—even right up to his final bow. It was Freddie’s decision to end it all, his longtime love Mary Austin later said. He knew it was coming and then he suddenly said: ‘I’ve decided that I have to go.’

      At some point, he simply stopped taking AZT. From then on, it was only a matter of time.

      THE FIRST CHILD OF BOMI AND JER Bulsara, the boy named Farrokh was born on September 5, 1946, in the British protectorate of Zanzibar, an island off the east coast of Africa. The Bulsaras were Parsis, Zoroastrian descendants of Persians who had fled to India to escape Muslim persecution. While Bomi worked as a high-court cashier for the British government, Jer looked after Farrokh, a lively child who took an early interest in music: Folk, opera, classical, he loved them all, she later said. I think he always wanted to be a showman.

      When Farrokh was six, Jer gave birth to his sister, Kashmira, but the boy’s happy home life would be short-lived. As Kashmira later said, I only had a year of him, referring to the fact that her older brother was sent to St. Peter’s, a boarding school in India, not far from Bombay (now Mumbai). I was a precocious child, Farrokh would say many years later, when he was known as Freddie Mercury, and my parents thought boarding school would do me good . . . It was an upheaval of an upbringing, which seems to have worked, I guess.

      Alone in a strange country, he would cry himself to sleep at night, though he later acknowledged that the experience toughened him up. I learnt to look after myself, he said, "and I grew up

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