that fulfilled both, leaving the listener complete and the singer avid for more. As Freddie, and many other singers found, the singing of the song is a gift to the listener and the listener takes and feeds on the singer of songs, leaving them exhausted and somehow empty, yet also filled with an ecstasy that lifted them higher then others before bringing them down. In order to attempt to hold on to this high, musicians often turned to excesses: drugs, alcohol, sex, fast cars or whatever else gives them something of the ultimate music high.

Every live performer experiences something of this, but it is the singer who gives all of themselves to many who experiences the ultimate passion and ecstasy in an almost religious experience. As Freddie knew and experienced, the ultimate high leaves an emptiness that cannot be filled by normal means. Freddie was a man of excess as excess was what he needed to fuel the intensity of his performance and the depth of his spiritual link to his audience. Perhaps unique among those who soar above the crowds, Freddie could control these. He needed the total release that excess brings, but as he showed again and again, the excess could be turned off as he needed to.

This, as well, was a legacy of his understanding of the separation of Freddie the man and Freddie the performer.

As a child of different cultures, a youth of changing times, and an adult who held the world in his grasp Freddie was always and in all ways an entity who never really fitted, yet could exist in all areas, all times and mean everything to anyone. Freddie could love, but it would only be a part of Freddie that loved that part of his life: the entire Freddie was too huge, too universal for any one person to hold as he lamented often in his words and music. In the like, Freddie could live, but it would only be a part of Freddie that lived each part of his life. The world itself was too small to encompass the genius and, eventually, the life of Freddie.

Nature abhors a vacuum and the world abhors someone who does not fit into its parcels. In a world of plasticine people with throw-away lives those who break free and fly above are brought crashing down by those who cannot understand, or who are jealous or who simply want to take without giving. The die is cast and icarus falls.