It is Better to Burn Out then to Fade Away...

Freddie's life, to his own admission, was one of extremes. He lived for the moment and lived each moment to the fullest extent possible. On stage he presented a character who was larger then life, one who took into his soul the music of Queen and spread it to the waiting audience and even the world.

We are drawn into him by the power and passion of his voice and held by him in the total passion and belief that he has in his music and the presentation of that belief to us. In his words and in his music he soars heavenward and takes us on the journey so that even now, years later, we still feel his presence among us as we listen to him or watch the far too few videos released about his music and his performances.

Freddie's is a gift of music which he gives to us: each note

and each progression seems to bypass the ears, bypass the brain and sit squarely on the soul. The shivers that pass through the spine even with his video presence in the latest tour eclipse all that has gone before in the concert and all that will come after: that is his presence, and that is his gift.

And as with all romantic heroes - for Freddie is a romantic in his words, in his life and in his music - he was destined to burn himself out long before he should. In Freddie we can see also the Romantic hero of Blake or Coleridge, of Byron or the Brontë sisters. Like Emily Brontë's Heathcliffe he places all his passion into his music and in doing so, draws from his soul, from his sense of self. Without anyone to replace that passion, he is doomed to die. Each song gives more of himself and, while he is able to give, he goes on giving, even when his body is so wracked with pain that he can barely move, he still gives until his final gift to us is his very life.

And that gift, that gift of the romantic hero, is the gift that we return to him by remembering him, by enabling him to live in our hearts, our minds and our souls, by our