Viva Freddie! Mercury's 65th Birthday
When commenting on Freddie Mercury just after his death, David Bowie remarked that “of all the more theatrical rock performers”, the Queen front-man “took it further than the rest. He took it over the edge”. And, of course, Bowie “always admired a man who wears tights”.
This September 5th would have been Freddie Mercury’s 65th birthday, and since his death twenty years ago, it seems fair to say that no-one since him has matched his virtuoso juggling act of natural musical ability, song-craftsmanship, and a stage presence of pure spunk. No other male vocalist in popular music has delivered bass low F (F2) to soprano high F (F6), let alone with a precision from operatic master-class; it is difficult to think of another voice that can switch from the low, grinding sounds of dirty, diesel-soaked rock, to strong or delicate celestial resonance that osculate with the voice of Montserrat Caballé, (look to Brighton Rock for this range in a single song, for example); and to accompany these elements, theatricality that could enrapture a world-wide audience in 1985 and help mark Queen as the performance of the Live Aid concert.His stage persona seemed to incorporate the essentials of everything from Joseph Grimaldi to Alice Cooper, and, in a few poses, you too can do the Freddie.
Mercury adopted his name around the same time he formed Queen with Roger Taylor and Brian May in 1970, and the band under-went the traditional pub-act routine all aspiring rock-musicians know; the quixotic pursuit which could be described well by Oscar Wilde’s line that we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. I remember when first reading about this that at the end of every day, Freddie, the former art-student and resident of three different continents, would fold his jeans carefully, for they were his only set.
But after a few years Queen landed a record deal, and they released three albums in two years, in those days when artists used to pump out at least an album every eighteen months. True success came with 1975’s A Night at the Opera, though, when, for various reasons, the band needed to break it big. Opera is the word. Queen’s harmonizing, and their blending of “classical” sounds with choral arrangements and heavy-hook guitar, gave new ideas of notion of “rock opera” that The Who’s Tommy never could, even if the album wasn’t set in a story. Because the music was operatic. You could imagine it at the Palladium. When mixed with this, Brian May’s Japanese work in the middle of album could be said, in some fanciful way, to be The Mikado goes 1970s rock.
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati