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Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara (Gujarati: àª«àª¾àª°à«‹àª– àª¬àª²à«àª¸àª¾àª°àª¾), 5 September 1946 – 24 November 1991)[2][3] was a British musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist of the rock band Queen. As a performer, he was known for his flamboyant stage persona and powerful vocals over a four-octave range.[4][5][6] 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. He died of bronchopneumonia brought on by AIDS on 24 November 1991, only one day after publicly acknowledging he had the disease.

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”.[7] In 2006, Time Asia named him as one of the most influential Asian heroes of the past 60 years,[8] 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.[9] In 2008, Rolling Stone editors ranked him number 18 on their list of the 100 greatest singers of all time.[6] In 2009, a Classic Rock poll saw him voted the greatest rock singer of all time.[10] Allmusic has characterised Mercury as “one of rock’s greatest all-time entertainers”, who possessed “one of the greatest voices in all of music”.[11]

Early life

Mercury was born in the British protectorate of Zanzibar, East Africa (now part of Tanzania). His parents, Bomi and Jer Bulsara,[a] were Parsis from the Gujarat region of the then province of Bombay Presidency in British India.[12][b] The family surname is derived from the town of Bulsar (also known as Valsad) in southern Gujarat. As Parsis, Mercury and his family practised the Zoroastrianreligion.[13] The Bulsara family had moved to Zanzibar so that his father could continue his job as a cashier at the British Colonial Office. He had a younger sister, Kashmira.[14]

The house in Zanzibar where Mercury lived in his early years

Mercury spent the bulk of his childhood in India and began taking piano lessons at the age of seven.[15] 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 (now Mumbai), India.[16] Aged 12, he formed a school band, The Hectics, and covered artists such as Cliff Richard and Little Richard.[17] A friend from the time recalls that he had “an uncanny ability to listen to the radio and replay what he heard on piano”.[18] It was also at St. Peter’s where he began to call himself “Freddie”. Mercury remained in India, living with his grandmother and aunt until he completed his education at St. Mary’s School, Bombay.[19]

At the age of 17, Mercury and his family fled from Zanzibar for safety reasons due to the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution.[7] 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.[20] 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.[21]

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.[22]

Career

Singer

Freddie Mercury in 1978

Freddie Mercury’s vocal range

Although Mercury’s speaking voice naturally fell in the baritone range, he delivered most songs in the tenor range.[23] His vocal range extended from bass low F (F2) to soprano high F (F6).[24] He could belt up to tenor high F (F5).[24] 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”.[25] Spanish soprano Montserrat CaballÃ©, 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”.[26] She adds, “His technique was astonishing. No problem of tempo, he sung with an incisive sense of rhythm, his vocal placement was very good and he was able to glide effortlessly from a register to another. He also had a great musicality. His phrasing was subtle, delicate and sweet or energetic and slamming. He was able to find the right colouring or expressive nuance for each word.”[24] 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 was said to have “the rawest vocal fold nodules” and claimed never to have had any formal vocal training.[27]

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.”[28] Compared to many popular songwriters, Mercury also tended to write musically complex material. For example, “Bohemian Rhapsody” is acyclic in structure and comprises dozens ofchords.[29][30] 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.[31] He wrote most of his songs on the piano and used a wide variety of different key signatures.[29]

Live performer

Mercury performing live in 1984

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”.[32] David Bowie, who performed at theFreddie 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.”[33]

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”.[34][35] 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.”[36]

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.[28] He once explained, “We’re the Cecil B. DeMille of rock and roll, always wanting to do things bigger and better.”[28] The band were the first ever to play in South American stadiums, breaking worldwide records for concert attendance in the Morumbi Stadium in SÃ£o Paulo in 1981.[37] In 1986, Queen also played behind the Iron Curtain when they performed to a crowd of 80,000 inBudapest, in what was one of the biggest rock concerts ever held in Eastern Europe.[38] Mercury’s final live performance with Queen took place on 9 August 1986 atKnebworth Park in England and drew an attendance estimated as high as 300,000.[39]

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 (in the studio) and Spike Edney (in concert), 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 synthesisers 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.[40] 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.[41]

Solo career

In addition to his work with Queen, Mercury put out two solo albums and several singles. Although his solo work was not as commercially successful as most Queen albums, the two off-Queen albums and several of the singles debuted in the top 10 of the UK Album Charts. His first solo effort involved his contribution to the Richard “Wolfie” Wolf mix of Love Kills on the 1984 album (the song also used as the end title theme for National Lampoon’s “Loaded Weapon”) and new soundtrack to the 1926 Fritz Lang film Metropolis. The song, produced by Giorgio Moroder, debuted at the number 10 position in the UK charts.[42]

Mercury’s two full albums outside the band were Mr. Bad Guy (1985) and Barcelona (1988). The former is a pop-oriented album that emphasises disco and dance music. “Barcelona” was recorded and performed with the opera singer Montserrat CaballÃ©, whom he had long admired. Mr. Bad Guy debuted in the top ten of the UK Album Charts.[42] In 1993, a remix of “Living on My Own”, a single from the album, reached the No.1 position on the UK Singles Charts.[43] The song also garnered Mercury a posthumous Ivor Novello Award. Allmusic critic Eduardo Rivadavia describes Mr. Bad Guy as “outstanding from start to finish” and expressed his view that Mercury “did a commendable job of stretching into uncharted territory”.[44] In particular, the album is heavily synthesiser-driven in a way that is not characteristic of previous Queen albums.

Barcelona, recorded with Spanish soprano Montserrat CaballÃ©, combines elements of popular music and opera. Many critics were uncertain what to make of the album; one referred to it as “the most bizarre CD of the year”.[45] The album was a commercial success,[46] and the album’s title track debuted at the No.8 position in the UK charts and was a hit in Spain.[47] The title track received massive air play as the official hymn of the 1992 Summer Olympics (held in Barcelona one year after Mercury’s death). CaballÃ© sang it live at the opening of the Olympics with Mercury’s part played on a screen, and again prior to the start of the 1999 UEFA Champions League Final in Barcelona.[48]

In addition to the two solo albums, Mercury released several singles, including his own version of the hit The Great Pretender by The Platters, which debuted at number five in the UK in 1987.[42] In September 2006, a compilation album featuring Mercury’s solo work was released in the UK in honour of what would have been his 60th birthday. The album debuted in the top 10 of the UK Album Charts.[49]

In 1981–1983, Mercury recorded several tracks with Michael Jackson, including a demo of “State of Shock”, “Victory” and “There Must Be More to Life Than This”.[50] None of these collaborations were officially released, although bootleg recordings exist. Jackson went on to record the single “State of Shock” with Mick Jagger for The Jacksons’s album Victory.[51] Mercury included the solo version of “There Must Be More To Life Than This” on his Mr. Bad Guy album.[52]

Personal life

Relationships

In the early 1970s Mercury had a long-term relationship with Mary Austin, whom he had met through guitarist Brian May. He lived with Austin for several years in West Kensington. By the mid-1970s, however, the singer had begun an affair with a male American record executive at Elektra Records, which ultimately resulted in the end of his relationship with Austin.[53] Mercury and Austin nevertheless remained close friends through the years, with Mercury often referring to her as his only true friend. In a 1985 interview, Mercury said of Austin, “All my lovers asked me why they couldn’t replace Mary [Austin], but it’s simply impossible. The only friend I’ve got is Mary and I don’t want anybody else. To me, she was my common-law wife. To me, it was a marriage. We believe in each other, that’s enough for me.”[54] He also wrote several songs about Austin, the most notable of which is “Love of My Life”. Mercury was also the godfather of Mary’s oldest son, Richard.[40]

During the early-to-mid-80s, he was romantically involved with Barbara Valentin, an Austrian actress,[55] who is featured in the video for “It’s a Hard Life”.[56] By 1985, he began another long-term relationship with a hairdresser named Jim Hutton. Hutton, who himself was tested HIV-positive in 1990,[57] lived with Mercury for the last six years of his life, nursed him during his illness and was present at his bedside when he died. Hutton claimed that Mercury died wearing a wedding band that Hutton had given him.[57] Hutton died from cancer on 1 January 2010.[58]

Personality

Although he cultivated a flamboyant stage personality, Mercury was a very shy and retiring man in person, particularly around people he did not know well.[18][26][59] He also granted very few interviews. Mercury once said of himself: “When I’m performing I’m an extrovert, yet inside I’m a completely different man.”[60] While on stage, Mercury basked in the love from the audience, which was famously noted by Kurt Cobain, in his suicide note, when he wrote of how he both admired and envied Mercury for being able to do so.[61]

Criticism and controversy

Sexual orientation

Mercury was an acknowledged bisexual.[17][62][63] While some critics claimed he hid his sexual orientation from the public,[7][26][64] others claimed he was “openly gay”.[8][65] In December 1974, when asked directly “So how about being bent? ” by the New Musical Express, Mercury replied “You’re a crafty cow. Let’s put it this way, there were times when I was young and green. It’s a thing schoolboys go through. I’ve had my share of schoolboy pranks. I’m not going to elaborate further.” Homosexuality was legalised in the United Kingdom in 1967, only seven years earlier. In the 1980s, he would often distance himself from his partner, Jim Hutton, during public events.[57]

In 1992, John Marshall of Gay Times expressed the following opinion: “[Mercury] was a ‘scene-queen’, not afraid to publicly express his gayness but unwilling to analyse or justify his ‘lifestyle’ … It was as if Freddie Mercury was saying to the world, “I am what I am. So what?” And that in itself for some was a statement.”[66] A writer for a gay online newspaper felt that audiences may have been overly naÃ¯ve about the matter: “While in many respects he was overtly queer his whole career (“I am as gay as a daffodil, my dear” being one of his most famous quotes), his sexual orientation seemed to pass over the heads of scrutinising audiences and pundits (both gay and straight) for decades”.[67]

HIV

Mercury hid his HIV status from the public for several years, and it has been suggested that he could have raised a great deal of money and awareness earlier by speaking truthfully about his situation and his fight against the disease.[68][69]

Other controversies

Queen were widely criticised when they broke a United Nations cultural boycott in 1984 by performing a series of shows at Sun City, an entertainment complex in Bophuthatswana, a homeland of (then)apartheid South Africa. As a result of these shows, Queen was placed on a United Nations list of artists who broke the boycott and was widely criticised in magazines such as the NME.[36]

A further controversy ensued in August 2006, when an organisation calling itself the Islamic Mobilization and Propagation petitioned the Zanzibar government’s culture ministry, demanding that a large-scale celebration of what would have been Mercury’s sixtieth birthday be cancelled. The organisation issued several complaints about the planned celebrations, including that Mercury was not a true Zanzibari and that he was gay, which is not in accordance with their interpretation of sharia. The organisation claimed that “associating Mercury with Zanzibar degrades our island as a place of Islam”.[65] The planned celebration was cancelled.

According to his partner Jim Hutton, Mercury was diagnosed with AIDS shortly after Easter of 1987.[70] Around that time, Mercury claimed in an interview to have tested negative for HIV.[26] Despite the denials, the British press pursued the rampant rumours over the next few years, fuelled by Mercury’s increasingly gaunt appearance, Queen’s absence from touring, and reports from former lovers to various tabloid journals – by 1990 the rumours about Mercury’s health were rife.[71] Toward the end of his life, he was routinely stalked by photographers, while the daily tabloid newspaper The Sun featured a series of articles claiming that he was seriously ill.

However, Mercury and his inner circle of colleagues and friends, whom he felt he could trust, continually denied the stories, even after one front page article published on 29 April 1991, which showed Mercury appearing very haggard in what was now a rare public appearance.[72] Brian May confirmed in a 1993 interview that Mercury had informed the band of his illness much earlier.[73] Filmed in May 1991, the music video for “These Are the Days of Our Lives” features a painfully thin Mercury, which are his final scenes in front of the camera.[74]

After the conclusion of his work with Queen in June 1991, Mercury retired to his home in Kensington. His former partner, Mary Austin, had been a particular comfort in his final years, and in the last few weeks of his life made regular visits to his home to look after him.[75] Near the end of his life, Mercury was starting to lose his sight, and his deterioration was so overpowering he couldn’t get out of bed.[75] Due to his worsening condition, Mercury decided to quicken his death by refusing to take his medication.[75]

On 22 November 1991, Mercury called Queen’s manager Jim Beach over to his Kensington home, to discuss a public statement. The next day, 23 November, the following announcement was made to the press on behalf of Mercury:[76]

Following the enormous conjecture in the press over the last two weeks, I wish to confirm that I have been tested HIV positive and have AIDS. I felt it correct to keep this information private to date to protect the privacy of those around me. However, the time has come now for my friends and fans around the world to know the truth and I hope that everyone will join with me, my doctors, and all those worldwide in the fight against this terrible disease. My privacy has always been very special to me and I am famous for my lack of interviews. Please understand this policy will continue.

A little over 24 hours after issuing that statement, Mercury died on the evening of 24 November 1991 at the age of 45, at his home in Kensington.[62] The official cause of death was bronchial pneumoniaresulting from AIDS.[77] The news of his death had reached newspaper and television crews by the early hours of 25 November.[78]

On 27 November, Mercury’s funeral service was conducted by a Zoroastrian priest. An intensely private man, Mercury’s service was for 35 of his close friends and family, with Elton John and the remaining members of Queen among those in attendance.[79][80] Mercury was cremated at Kensal Green Cemetery, West London, with the whereabouts of his ashes believed to be known only to Mary Austin.[81]

In his will, Mercury left the vast majority of his wealth, including his home and recording royalties, to Mary Austin, and the remainder to his parents and sister. He further left £500,000 to his chef Joe Fanelli, £500,000 to his personal assistant Peter Freestone, £100,000 to his driver Terry Giddings, and £500,000 to Jim Hutton.[82] Mary Austin continues to live at Mercury’s home, Garden Lodge, Kensington, with her family.[82] Hutton was involved in a 2000 biography of Mercury, Freddie Mercury, the Untold Story, and also gave an interview for The Times for what would have been Mercury’s 60th birthday.[70]

Legacy

The extent to which Mercury’s death may have enhanced Queen’s popularity is not clear. In the United States, where Queen’s popularity had lagged in the 1980s, sales of Queen albums went up dramatically in 1992, the year following his death.[83] In 1992 one American critic noted, “what cynics call the ‘dead star’ factor had come into play—Queen is in the middle of a major resurgence”.[84]The movie Wayne’s World, which featured “Bohemian Rhapsody”, also came out in 1992. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, Queen have sold 32.5 million albums in the United States, about half of which have been sold since Mercury’s death in 1991.[85]

Estimates of Queen’s total worldwide record sales to date have been set as high as 300 million.[86] In the UK, Queen have now spent more collective weeks on the UK Album Charts than any other musical act (including The Beatles),[87] and Queen’s Greatest Hits is the highest selling album of all time in the UK.[88] Two of Mercury’s songs, “We Are the Champions” and “Bohemian Rhapsody”, have also each been voted as the greatest song of all time in major polls by Sony Ericsson[89] and Guinness World Records,[90] respectively. The former poll was an attempt to determine the world’s favourite song, while the Guinness poll took place in the UK. In October 2007, the video for “Bohemian Rhapsody” was voted the greatest of all time by readers of Q magazine.[91] Consistently rated as one of the greatest singers in the history of popular music, Mercury was voted second to Mariah Carey in MTV’s 22 Greatest Voices in Music.[8] Additionally, in January 2009, Mercury was voted second to Robert Plant in a poll of the greatest voices in rock, on the digital radio station Planet Rock.[92] In May 2009, Classic Rock magazine voted Freddie Mercury as the greatest singer in rock.[10]In 2011, NME magazine readers voted Mercury second to Michael Jackson in the Greatest Singers Ever poll.[93] In 2011, a Rolling Stone readers’ pick placed Mercury in second place of the magazine’s “Best Lead Singers of All Time”.[61]

Tributes

A statue in Montreux, Switzerland (by sculptor Irena Sedlecka) has been erected as a tribute to Mercury.[94] It stands 3 metres high overlooking Lake Geneva and was unveiled on 25 November 1996 by Freddie’s father and Montserrat CaballÃ©.[95] Beginning in 2003, fans from around the world gather in Switzerland annually to pay tribute to the singer as part of the “Freddie Mercury Montreux Memorial Day” on the first weekend of September and the Bearpark And Esh Colliery Band played at the Freddie Mercury statue on 1 June 2010.[96] In 1999, a Royal Mail stamp with the image of Mercury on stage was issued in his honour as part of the Millennium Stamp series.[97][98]

In 2009, a plaque was unveiled in Feltham where Mercury and his family moved upon arriving in England in 1964. The star in memory of Mercury’s achievements was unveiled in Feltham High Street by his mother Jer Bulsara and Queen bandmate Brian May.[99] A tribute to Queen has been on display at the Fremont Street Experience in downtown Las Vegas throughout 2009 on its video canopy.[100] In December 2009 a large model of Mercury wearing tartan was put on display in the centre of Edinburgh as publicity for the run of We Will Rock You at the Playhouse Theatre.[101]

A statue of Mercury stands over the entrance to the Dominion Theatre in London’s West End since May 2002, where the main show has been Queen and Ben Elton’s musical We Will Rock You.[102][103]

For Mercury’s 65th birthday, Google dedicated their Google Doodle to him. It included an animation set to the chorus of “Don’t Stop Me Now”.[104]

Importance in AIDS history

As the first major rock star to die of AIDS, Mercury’s death represented a very important event in the disease’s history.[105] In April 1992, the remaining members of Queen founded The Mercury Phoenix Trust and organised The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness to celebrate the life and legacy of Mercury and raise money for AIDS research, which took place on Easter Monday, 20 April 1992.[106] The Mercury Phoenix Trust has since raised millions of pounds for various AIDS charities. The tribute concert, which took place at Wembley Stadium for an audience of 72,000, featured a wide variety of guests including; Robert Plant (of Led Zeppelin), Roger Daltrey (of The Who), Extreme, Elton John, Metallica, David Bowie, Annie Lennox, Tony Iommi (of Black Sabbath), Guns N’ Roses, Elizabeth Taylor,George Michael, Def Leppard, Seal, Liza Minnelli (and also U2 via Satellite). Elizabeth Taylor spoke of Mercury as “an extraordinary rock star who rushed across our cultural landscape like a comet shooting across the sky”.[107] The concert was broadcast live to 76 countries and had an estimated viewing audience of 1 billion people.[108]

Appearances in lists of influential individuals

Several popularity polls conducted over the past decade indicate that Freddie Mercury’s reputation may in fact have been enhanced since his death. For instance, in a 2002 vote to determine whom the UK public considers the greatest British people in history, Mercury was ranked number 58 in the list of the “100 Greatest Britons”, broadcast by the BBC.[109] He was further listed at the 52nd spot in a 2007 Japanese national survey of the 100 most “influential heroes”.[110] Despite the fact that he had been criticised by gay activists for hiding his HIV status, author Paul Russell included Mercury in his book “The Gay 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Gay Men and Lesbians, Past and Present.”[111] Other entertainers on Russell’s list included Liberace and Rock Hudson. In 2006, Time Asiamagazine named him as one of the most influential Asian heroes of the past 60 years: The article credited Mercury with having “duplicated in popular music what other Indians—such as Salman Rushdie and Vikram Seth – have done in literature: taking the coloniser’s art form and representing it in a manner richer and more dazzling than many Anglophones thought possible.”[8] In 2008, Rolling Stone’ magazine ranked Mercury No.18 in its list of the “Top 100 Singers Of All Time”.[6]

Portrayal on stage

On 24 November 1997, a monodrama about Freddie Mercury’s life titled Mercury: The Afterlife and Times of a Rock God opened in New York City.[112] It presented Freddie Mercury in the hereafter; examining his life, seeking redemption and searching for his true self [113] The play was written and directed by Charles Messina and the part of Mercury was played by Khalid GonÃ§alves (nÃ© Paul GonÃ§alves) and then later, Amir Darvish.[114] Billy Squier opened one of the shows with an acoustic performance of a song he had written about Mercury titled I Have Watched You Fly.[115]

Portrayal in film

Brian May announced in a September 2010 BBC interview[116] that Sacha Baron Cohen, previously best known for his comedic characters Borat, Ali G and BrÃ¼no, had been chosen to play Mercury in afilm about his life. TIME commented with approval on his singing ability and visual similarity to Mercury.[117] The motion picture is being written by Peter Morgan, who had been nominated for Oscars for his screenplays The Queen and Frost/Nixon. The film, which is being co-produced by Robert De Niro’s TriBeCa Productions, will focus on Queen’s formative years and the period leading up to the celebrated performance at the 1985 Live Aid concert. Filming is due to begin sometime in 2011.[118]

In April 2011, Brian May confirmed that a lot of work was still being done in preparation for the film. He said that after holding back for a long time due to mixed feelings, the band had approved a team to start filming later in 2011, and Baron Cohen’s eagerness had been the key to progress.[119]