IN MEMORY

A week and a movie to celebrate musical champion Freddie Mercury

Freddie Mercury would have been 72 this week

There were Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, Bruce Springsteen, Bono, Robert Plant and all the rest, but many, myself included, would argue that Freddie Mercury was the godliest frontman of all time. Born this week in 1942 in Stone Town, Zanzibar, as Farrokh Bulsara, he rose to become one of the most revered and versatile singers of all time. He would have been 72 this past Wednesday, a day marked around the world as “Freddie for a Day”, with fans celebrating his life by donning a white vest and yellow jacket and sporting his trademark moustache. The event raises money for the Mercury Phoenix Trust, the Aids charity set up in his name in 1992.

In 1985 my parents took me to watch Queen perform at Sun City. As a kid, I was unaware of the enormous controversy that erupted because of the band’s breaking of the UN cultural boycott by playing in apartheid SA. Queen was blacklisted by the UN until apartheid was dismantled, and they were fined by the British Musicians’ Union as well as being lambasted in the press all over the world.

But as a child, I didn’t understand any of that. I just couldn’t believe that my parents had set me and my cousin loose in the crowd, after they had taken their seats in a sold-out Superbowl, with the only instructions being to meet at a designated door after the concert.

Being smaller and nimbler than the rest of the audience, we soon managed to manoeuvre our way to the front. When we couldn’t see over the barriers, we were hoisted onto the shoulders of fans in the front row.

We were close enough to feel the heat radiating off Freddie’s body. Close enough to be hit by stray beads of sweat dripping off drummer Roger Taylor’s forehead. And once or twice, I even thought I caught the god of music’s eye — he couldn’t miss the two delighted little faces beaming up at him and screaming his name.

It was a life-changing evening, in the presence of an exceptional talent with energy that the stage couldn’t contain. We screamed “Freddie” until we were hoarse, and when we got back home I became a collector of everything Queen, singing myself to sleep every night with his songs.

When Freddie died in 1991, at the age of 45, due to complications from Aids, I was distraught. His death touched me as if he was family. And in the years since then, his light has not dimmed. In clubs around the world, DJs still play Queen hits, and in football stadiums from the US to the UK to Japan and Brazil, fans stompstomp-clap in unison, chanting Queen’s anthemic We Will Rock You.

So influential is the band that just this summer, Queen songs occupied three of the Top 20 spots on the Billboard Hot Rock Songs Chart.

“Whenever and wherever people hear Queen’s music, it’s instantly recognisable,” says Brian Southall, who spent 15 years as head of press, marketing and promotion for Queen’s record label, EMI. “You could release Bohemian Rhapsody tomorrow and it would be a hit.”

The new film Bohemian Rhapsody, starring Rami Malek (inset picture) in an uncanny performance as Freddie Mercury, charts Queen’s extraordinary story, from the band’s roots as bright London college students to the dazzling heights of international stardom, when they filled stadiums across the world at record-breaking concerts.

As the story unfolds, it becomes clear why the band had such lasting appeal. The film also stars Gwilym Lee (Jamestown, Midsomer Murders) who plays Queen’s lead guitarist Brian May, Ben Hardy (East Enders, X-Men Apocalypse) as drummer Roger Taylor, and Joe Mazzello (Jurassic Park, Justified) as bass guitarist John

Deacon, as well as Mike Myers (Austin Powers, Wayne’s World) and Tom Hollander (Breathe, The Night Manager).

The movie also focuses on the moving and complicated personal story of Mercury the man, exploring his relationships with the men in his life and with his muse Mary Austin, played by Lucy Boynton (Murder on the Orient Express, Sing Street), who became a lifelong friend after they split up. It examines the band’s evolution, and Freddie’s struggle with Aids. ● LS