Thursday, 24 November 2011

20 Years Ago: Freddie Mercury died

Twenty years ago today, on the 24th November 1991, Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of the rock group Queen, died quietly at his home in West London of bronchio-pneumonia, brought on by AIDS, aged just 45.


The day before he had, for the first time, publicly announced that he was HIV positive. He is thought to have had the disease for about two years, during which time he had recorded a great deal of new material which was to be released posthumously. Few had noticed his failing health, and his death came as a tremendous shock.

Freddie Mercury,whose original name was Farookh Bulsara, was born in Zanzibar in 1946. His childhood was mostly spent in India, and then, in 1964, his family moved to the UK. In 1970, Mercury joined with Mike Grose, Brian May and Roger Taylor to form Queen.



Mercury enjoyed a rather colourful rock and roll lifestyle, and was openly bisexual at a time when many still found this shocking.

Many considered Mercury to be the ultimate showman, and he will always be remembered for his, and Queen's, performance at the Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium in 1985.



He wrote and performed on many classic rock tracks, most notably being Bohemian Rhapsody,which broke all the rules of what a successful chart song could and should be. Queen's songs still have a wide popularity and have, in recent years, been re-worked into both an orchestral symphony and a successful musical, We Will Rock You.

To this day, the gate of his former house is a place of pilgramage for Mercury's fans.

No comments:

Post a Comment