Type to search

Features Interviews

Queens’ Tragic Rhapsody

Theatrical, brilliant, excessive and doomed – there had never been another band like Queen or a frontman like Freddie Mercury

Sep 05, 2014

Queen begins and ends with Freddie Mer­cury. He embodied the band’s identity, its tri­umphs and failings, and he was the psyche whose loss it couldn’t survive. But in the beginning, there was no Freddie Mercury.

He was Farrokh Bulsara, born on Sep­tember 9th, 1946, in the British protector­ate of Zanzibar, off the east coast of Africa to a Parsee family that practiced Zoroastri­anism, one of the world’s oldest monotheis­tic religions. Farrokh’s father, Bomi, was a high-court cashier for the British govern­ment, which meant that he, his wife, Jer, and Farrokh ”“ and later Farrokh’s sister, Kashmira ”“ lived in cultural privilege, com­pared to much of the island’s population. In 1954, when Farrokh was eight, the Bul­saras sent him to St. Peter’s Church of Eng­land School, in Panchgani, India. Located 150 miles from Bombay (now Mumbai), St. Peter’s had been regarded for years as the best boys boarding school in that part of the world. Farrokh arrived as a terribly shy boy, self-conscious about the prominent upper teeth that immediately earned him the nickname “Bucky.” (He would remain sen­sitive about his teeth the rest of his life, cov­ering his mouth with his hand whenever he smiled. At the same time, he realized that the pronounced overbite ”“ caused by four extra teeth at the back of his mouth ”“ may have been his greatest blessing, giving his voice its distinctive resonant embouchure.)

Many remembered Farrokh seeming lonesome at St. Peter’s. “I learnt to look after myself,” he said years later, “and I grew up quickly.” When some schoolteachers began calling him Freddie as an affectionate term, he seized the name instantly. He also culti­vated his own tastes. Freddie’s family had steeped him in opera, but he was also devel­oping a love for Western pop sounds ”“ espe­cially the boisterous piano-based rock & roll of Little Richard and the virtuosic R&B of Fats Domino. After Freddie’s aunt Sheroo noted that he could hear a tune once, then sit down at the piano and play it, his parents paid for a private music tuition. In 1958, he formed a band, the Hectics, with some other St. Peter’s students. In Freddie Mer­cury: The Definitive Biography, a student at a neighboring girls school, Gita Choksi, said that when he was onstage, Freddie was no longer a shy boy: “He was quite the flam­boyant performer,” she said, “and he was ab­solutely in his element onstage.”

Some students at St. Peter’s believed Far­rokh had a crush on Gita, but she said she was never aware of it. Others thought it was already plain Farrokh was gay, though there is little evidence of him being sexually ac­tive. Janet Smith, now a teacher at the girls school, remembered him as “an extremely thin, intense boy, who had this habit of call­ing one ”˜darling,’ which I must say seemed a little fey. It simply wasn’t something boys did in those days . . . . It was accepted that Freddie was homosexual when he was here. Normally it would have been ”˜Oh, God, you know, it’s just ghastly.’ But with Freddie somehow it wasn’t. It was OK.”

In 1963, Freddie returned to Zanzibar and his family. British colonial rule ended that same year; then, in 1964, the island erupted in revolution and slaughters, and the Bulsaras fled to Feltham, Middlesex, in England, near London. The weather was rough and the income not as good, and Freddie began changing in ways they didn’t get. “I was quite rebellious, and my parents hated it,” he told Rolling Stone in 1981. “I grew out of living at home at an early age. But I just wanted the best. I wanted to be my own boss.”

Whatever he had left behind in Zanzi­bar and Bombay, Freddie Bulsara would never claim it as a past that he was willing to talk about. He was just in time for the era of Swinging London, the time of the Bea­tles and the Rolling Stones. Life was open­ing up for him, and he intended to revel in every moment of its future.

Like Bulsara, the two other men who initiated Queen, Brian May and Roger Taylor, were at­tending London colleg­es in the late 1960s. May was tall, lean, soft-spo­ken, erudite and developing into a visionary guitarist. What most informed his sensibil­ities, he later said, was the range of harmo­ny-steeped music he had been hearing since the 1950s: the vocal blends of Buddy Holly and the Crickets, the layered strings of pop­ular Italian concertmaster Mantovani and then, in the 1960s, the innovative meth­ods of the Beatles. In late 1963, May and his father built him an electric guitar with mahogany parts taken from a fireplace. (Known as the Red Special, it is the guitar that May still plays.) May and a friend, bass­ist Tim Staffell, were playing in a cover band called 1984 when both started college ca­reers in the mid-Sixties. May attended Im­perial College, studying math, physics and astronomy; in 1968, he and Staffell start­ed a new band, Smile, which would be clos­er to the fierce improvisational spirit then gaining ground in British rock being made by Cream and others. They posted a note on an Imperial College bulletin board, seek­ing a drummer who could play like Ginger Baker and Mitch Mitchell. Taylor, who was studying, answered the ad. Taylor was pret­ty-faced, a bit rowdy, and could play what Smile was looking for, though he was clos­er to the spacious style of the Who’s Keith Moon, and, like Moon, he had an instinctive sense of tonality. “I remember being flabber­gasted when Roger set his kit up at Imperi­al College,” May told Mojo in 1999. “Just the sound of him tuning his drums was better than I’d heard from anyone before.” Smile’s trio were now in place.

Staffell also shared musical interests with Freddie Bulsara, who by then was attend­ing Ealing College of Art, where both were students. By this point, Bulsara was less reserved. He had long hair, was exotical­ly handsome, even dangerous-looking, and had a sinuous way of moving. Staffell took Bulsara to meet Taylor and May in early 1969. Bulsara struck them as a little pecu­liar ”“ he painted his fingernails black, he could be effeminate ”“ but he was endear­ing. He could also be imperious. “At that stage,” said May, “he’s just kind of an enthu­siast. He says, ”˜This is really good ”“ it’s great how . . . you’re aware of building up atmo­spheres and bringing them down. But you’re not dressing right, you’re not addressing the audience properly. There’s always opportu­nity to connect.’ ”

Tags:
Previous Article
Next Article

You Might also Like