Genius

It is hard to look at the life and works of Freddie Mercury without seeing something extraordinary.

In his life, he was obsessed with "...fame and fortune and everything that goes with it.." ("We are the Champions") and lived a life which swung between intense privacy and public adoration. He was, in many ways, an eccentric, and his eccentricity, as happens in so many cases, hides his true genius from view.

In his works he showed this genius, not only in the music he wrote, or the lyrics he wove, but also in the way he presented the band Queen to the world, and the influence and role he held within that band. It is easy to dismiss him, as many critics do, as nothing more then a showman, a 'foppish dandy' who 'prances around the stage like a peacock' as this is the public eccentricity of Freddie - this is the way he connects to the fans and they connect to him via their acceptance and adoration of this.

It is often said that it is the fool who is the wisest person.

In Shakespeare especially we see this come to the fore: it is often the fool who knows truly what is happening and see clearly with the uncluttered wisdom of a child. The posturing, the prancing and preening all disguise the intense understanding of what he is doing, and weaves a spell whereby the audience is caught in the moment: drawn, as it were, into the song and the singer. Like the fool, Freddie dressed in his earlier days in bi-coloured outfits, wore makeup and danced. Each and every move, each item of apparel all designed with the single intent of taking the audience into his world of music and intensity. And like the fool, Freddie was no simple showman, but a person of intense wisdom and understanding of his soul, his body and his people.

As Freddie grew older, the persona of the fool disappeared as he no longer needed the tricks of this character to connect his music to his audience and he dominated them through sheer force of will and belief. Always one with a strong sense of self and of the steeled knowledge of his stardom ever supporting him, Freddie could extend this self, this ego, to enrapture thousands of people whenever he chose.