Freddie Mercury was an eclectic mix of cultures. He was born on the African island of Zanzibar and was thus enmeshed in the Arabic-African culture; yet within his Father's house, he was bound by the strict rituals and regime of the Parsis faith. If you then compound this with his father's 'Englishness' brought about by his work with the British Court in Zanzibar, you can see in even the young Freddie the beginnings of an internal clash.
Most people belong. Most people have a social or cultural 'spot' which they know is their own. Whether this is Scottish, or English, Australian, American or Chinese is irrelevant. It is this culture to which they cling, the thing which gives them their initial identity. As they grow, the cultural influences will be influenced by their environment, but again these will be fairly static for most people.
Freddie, on the other hand, had to deal with a multiplicity of cultures as a child. Not only did he have the cultural influences as mentioned earlier, but he was born into a time that was at the end of British Colonialism and the beginnings of Nationalism, the beginning of the end of religion as a dominant force in much of the world, and also into the beginnings of the fastest-changing technological and social period in history.
His ancestry was Parsis (also known as Pharisee or Parsee), the followers of the prophet Zoroaster and an independent people with their own belief, their own language and their own culture. They initially came from the area of Persia, but are not Persian as a Persian identity did not exist at that time: the area, like most of the others, being that of independent tribes or states. Freddie is, on his Birth Certificate, listed as being of Indian nationality, yet even this is technically incorrect as his parents' culture and language are not Indian. The Parsis, much like the Romany and the Bedouin, were a 'tribal' group which was independent of any country of origin or nationality.
His name, Farrokh or Farookh (the first on his Birth Certificate, the second by use ) can be either Arabic, Parsis, or Hindi. Farookh, in Arabic, means 'a good judge'. Farrokh, on the other hand, means 'happy or fortunate' in Parsi and Persian. It is a pity that neither name's meaning seemed to occur for him.
His father, Bomi Bulsara, was a middle-ranking clerk working for the British. Keep in mind that at the time this was a highly-sought after position (working for the colonial masters) and one which brought better pay and prestige then local employ. It is also generally true that colonial people who worked for the British tended to try to live in the 'British Style' so that their 'masters' would not think them ignorant or savages. This upbringing would see Freddie assimilate quite comfortably into British society when he emigrated to England and would also cause him to consider himself British without the fierce nationalism that grew worldwide in the 50's to 70's.
Freddie's birth on the 5th of September 1946 was just after the end of the War in Europe and the beginning of the breakdown of Colonialism. It would take some years before this breakdown would reach Zanzibar and Freddie's childhood on the island was remembered fondly by him on the rare occasions that he spoke of it. He was of an upper middle class family and, as did many of the colonial employees, had servants to look after them. Throughout his life he seemed to maintain this need to be looked after. Many families who lost everything through the nationalist movements in African countries, found the loss of servants the hardest to bear: a cross which led to resentment in many, and in others the desire to be rich or famous and once more enter that area of being waited on. Freddie achieved that, never learning to drive, not shopping for himself, and having dressers and 'personal assistants' to help him. In some ways, these people could be seen to be the servants from his youth and an attempt to once more regain the joy and happiness he had as a child.
Zanzibar was largely a self-sufficient agricultural community. In the austere post-war years, the Island would still have been fairly well-off without many of the strictures that existed in parts of Europe for years.
Freddie, with his comfortable family life, and without the necessity of rationing, would never have gained a sense of rationing as a child. He had position and money: both equaling status and luxury. This, again, was something he enjoyed and craved throughout his life.
When he went to St Peter's boarding school in Panchgani, India he merged quite well into the pseudo-English Indian school. Again, this was a result as much of his cultural diversity as his personality. Yet it also had the effect of separating him from his family and from his childhood: neither of which ever returned. He was always a dutiful son to his mother (and we must assume to his father) yet the break of schooling meant that he was broken from the influences of childhood. As do so many students who board, he became independent and began to carve his own way in life, perhaps before he was truly ready.
One area that he did begin to explore was in public performance and, in that, saw a way that he could once again receive recognition and the attention that part of him craved. This path would give him fortune, fame and would enable him once more to enjoy the lifestyle of his lost childhood.
That his ancestry was from the Parsis in India is not in doubt. His first name was Parsi (or Parsee on his birth certificate), and his second name, Bulsara, comes from Bulsar, a town north of Bombay: it is certainly not an Arabic or Persian word. The Indian school enhanced his 'Britishness' but again, after the close of the British Raj in 1950, the end of the direct British influence in India had occurred. The school of St Peter's was an anachronism during the time of Freddie's tenure and again, there would be the sense of impermanency, of not really belonging there that would permeate Freddie's soul during his later life.
End of Part One
Part Two
England of the 1960's was a place of turmoil - the new music of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the burgeoning Rock scene was creating a culture of identity for young teens and adults. The 'teenager' as an identifiable entity had only existed since the mid-50's in America and slightly later in England. It was in the early 60's that the young Freddie came to England to live. A 'foreigner' he nonetheless fitted into the society quite well, encompassing the change and creation of a new cultural movement with finesse. It is hard for many people today to realise the impact of groups like The Beatles and The Stones; believing as they often do that their music is 'new' and 'rebellious' without realising that the majority is simply an evolution of or reaction to existing music. During the early 60's when these groups hit the scene music stopped and did a total change - a watershed. Music underwent its greatest revolution in centuries: it moved from being adult-centric to young adult-centric. The Beatles were considered to be rebellious and unacceptable (and the Stones were not even considered as appropriate). This change caused an identity to develop, a new culture based around the wants and likes of the younger people. These people are malleable, with spare time and spare money and led, if we take an overly simplistic view, to the creation of the recording industry as a powerhouse.
Freddie entered England at this time. He was a colonial, part of a group of nations still within easy memory of being subject states in an Empire. England was the ultimate expression of civilisation: the upper echelons of society and, for Freddie, what he initially aspired to. Once there, he found dissatisfaction. Whereas the Colonial English would still live in luxury with servants and money, the reality is as much as it always has been: a few living in luxury, some in plenty, and most in just enough or in want. When the Bulsara family entered England on Bomi's pension, their life would not be one of luxury and status, but one worse then that which they held in Zanzibar as the small status they once had was there no longer. For many colonial immigrants at this time, the dream died there. They would live in near poverty, crossing the line some decades further on and sinking into obscurity. Freddie still held on to his dreams, still sought the elusive fortune and fame that would bring him the happiness he so desperately needed to return.
He saw around him the explosion of new music and the fortunes that could be made over night. The rest of England was still in many ways in post-war poverty and austerity. Rationing had only finished a few years earlier and the young middle-aged men were a missing generation, victims of war. Television was young and neither it, nor the stage, ever really paid well in England. Although you could achieve some fame, it was a fame of poverty totally unlike America. Making money in conventional ways was gone: colonial preferred trade was a thing of the past, and England, as a world power, was fading. Yet in music, in modern music, fame and money could come and it was to this that Freddie set his sights.
Always single-minded, Freddie set his goal and then set about making it happen. Although highly intelligent, he was not suited to the formalised, rigid education system of the time. He did well in class, but was too open, too needful of something more to ever move into an area where he would be trapped for his future education. Utilising his creative flair, he entered Art College: an ideal place to meet like-minded individuals. Always an intelligent person, he needed an outlet for his creative side and used painting and art to release some of this urge, but never seeing it any more then a stepping stone for his future path. He chose Ealing as much for its graduands as for what it offered him. London was also the centre of the new music and the new culture, a culture that Freddie adopted with aplomb, quickly making it his own and then extending it with all the power and passion that he had within him. If the fashion was for floral, Freddie would make it floral and flowing; if floral and flowing, he would make it floral and flowing, with nail varnish, or makeup, or other forms of glitz and glamour.
It was the glamour that the early Freddie took onto himself. Glamour itself was a word from folklore, describing the methods used by the fairy folk to disguise their true natures and appear beautiful and rich and thereby trick mortals into their world. Once the glamour was no longer needed, when he gained fame and wealth for real, the glamour faded and was replaced by the intensity that had been hidden before.
Growing up in the 60's and the 70's was to grow up in a time of great change. The world was still under the very real threat of a nuclear holocaust, the Middle East was still very much a colonial area, heavily influenced by Britain, especially, the Moon landing was still news, decimalization was only just coming in to England as was the 'Common Market'. A car cost a few hundred pounds, a fifty pound-a-week job was considered excellent, strikes crippled the nation bringing entire industries to a halt and England ruled the music world.
A teenager/young adult at this time, Freddie continued to exist in a time and place of great change - almost a watershed in terms of culture and life. Independence of thought and action was being tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged. Schools began to move away from the strict curriculum that had dominated for decades and began to assume that the process was more important than the fact.
Parts of the Los Angeles hippie culture crossed into England, and combined with the new rebellious nature of the late-teen/early-adult people. These people, often children of war families grew up with a gap where the prior generation should be and grew wild because of this.
With this 'wildness' came an acceptance of humanity and of the self being more important then the many. State institutions began to break down and a corresponding androgynous sub-culture emerged. These people worked for what they needed, and relaxed to the new music and free way of life. Gender distinctions blurred as life became more important than living - both genders adopted similar dress codes, hair styles and makeup. Although with more of a tradition of 'staidness' behind hem, the English never went to the extremes of some places in America. In addition, there was not as much to protest against in England at this time: they had largely withdrawn from the World Stage, were not as consumer driven and had never really been as institutionalized as America during the immediately prior time. Yet this androgyny existed and Freddie embraced this wholeheartedly.
The nature of the androgynous being is similar in several ways to that of the arab whom he had grown up with. Long hair, soft flowing clothes and a like of luxuries were not as foreign to Freddie as they would be to a full-blooded Englishman whose attire of comfort was often a shirt, tie and jacket. Nor was his choice culturally in abeyance as the culture did exist in England at this time. In effect, Freddie adopted the part of England that was closest to Zanzibar and to his love of freedom and artistic expression.
Freddie's choice of balladic and romantic music reveals his overall gentle and artistic nature: a nature that has never been fully idealised, or idolised in Western countries. Perhaps because of the harsher, colder climates, the artist has always been held in a more effeminate role in European culture then that of the East. Although a capable athlete, Freddie's artistic leanings moved him to a softer strata of society and he was able to give free expression to this part of his nature.
As an androgynous male, living in an artistic community during a time of change and lessening discipline, Freddie began what was his greatest, and perhaps only true, love affair: music.
For the next twenty plus years, music would be the essence of Freddie's life. His entire existence would revolve around it and it would sustain him and rule him, help him and destroy him. He would live with it, sleep with it, eat with it and it would eventually steal away his life.
To be a part of the culture of any form of artistic expression is to surrender yourself to that art. Each participant searches for their masterpiece and then searches beyond that to find the item that would surpass even that. The Classical Greeks knew of the cruelty of the muse and of the passion that it engendered in the artist. Many great legendary and folkloric figures ended up maiming themselves, or being maimed or killed once their masterpiece had been created as they knew that it would never be bettered by them, nor did they ever want to sink into obscurity. Pygmalion crafted his Galatea, his masterpiece, and never created again falling in love with the statue instead. Daedalus was imprisoned after creating his masterpiece, the labyrinth at Corinth and, although he escaped his son, Icarus, fell from the heavens and died, destroying the creative muse within the artificer. Art in any form is a cruel master with the search for perfection driving its adherents. More so when these people are at the level of genius.
Freddie wrote, and performed, and lived his life with his beloved music. It obsessed him and possessed him, bringing him to life and sustaining him before raising him on wings of music to the status of a god of rock, creating a legacy of life that flows forever from his star.
This mistress enveloped him and took him with her through his time with Queen, guiding him in his life choices and existence through the seventies and into the eighties and enveloped him in a sheath of musical life best seen in the huge temple-like stadia of the eighties.
All other loves fell by the wayside before this all-encompassing, all-uplifting, all-engulfing lover.
To be continued...
In the 70's and 80's Freddie's star rose as the world became aware and ultimately absorbed the music of Queen and Freddie. His dream of fame came true until he strode the world like a Titan: adored and even worshipped by his fans: raised upon an impossible pedestal with his star in the heavens and the weight of the universe across his shoulders.
As the freedom of the 70's became the corporate fallacies of the 80's Queen and Freddie took the new challenges and applied them to their music and to their lives. Freddie's androgynous lifestyle was left behind as the times changed and, although he still remained part of the fringe cultures, he became in appearance older: more grown up. Still bright, still full of vibrant life, yet now he was assured in himself: he had arrived and knew who he was and where he was going. As such, he appeared to fit right in to the 'me' generation of go-getters. Yet Freddie was still Freddie. He was still an outsider in terms of religion, background, culture, life-style and in the supremacy of his music. The ultimate corporate world of America tried to ignore him: unable to accept the conflicts within him. This was something that was obvious in the 70's, but hidden in the 80's and that complexity was difficult for the one-dimensional 80's 'upwardly' mobile people to accept. Changes in their music and in their presentation were slated. If they were experimental, they were not doing what they should. If they produced and played hits, they were accused of pandering to money and the mass market. The fact that Queen wrote music for their fans and performed it for them and for themselves seems to have totally bypassed the critics of their music.
Freddie was a complex entity living in a simple world. The rules had changed and everything that made Freddie Freddie was out of fashion. People could not understand and what people could not understand, they hate. Decisions to rebel by Queen - as they had always done - caused them to be punished for other people's mistakes. Music changed, delivery changed and Queen still remained Queen.
Yet even a Titan cannot hold against the world and problems occurred within Queen and within Freddie. New gods rose, time was passing and Freddie and Queen were getting older and the world was changing into a self-aggrandising fakeness of artificiality and throw-away items and people. The fantasy, fairy-tale nature of Freddie had no place in this world: it was an anachronistic throwback to the ancient world a decade past. Money talked. Power talked and more and more had more and more. A quick fix was required by the people who wanted light easy pop. Queen complied and fans complained and differences lead to a time apart only to return once more on top of the world again where they remained until the last performance and were then frozen for all time into eternity.
To be continued...
The vagaries of the music world are myriad. Oftentimes today money and quick fix imagery pass for what was once a communication between Man and Spirituality. In a world dominated by recording mega-companies and manufactured groups relying as much on technology as on researched 'sure-fire' music, there is little room for the new musician who performs for love, for fame and for their life.
It comes a little surprise that many musical tours are by groups from the 60's, 70's and 80's as these people learnt their music on the pub floors, the student lounges and in the back seats of leaky vans. Older musicians, before the mega-corporations, survived on talent and on fan support. Popularity wasn't based on sales, or downloads or ring tones, but on the fans who turned up to the shows and paid money to see their idols perform for their fans. This was the soul of music, the connection between the singer and the listener, and each singer sang to each listener and communicated to them and only to them. Music enveloped the listener and took them on the journey with the singer in an almost sexual union 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.
Vale Freddie,
Icarus Soars.