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QUEER HISTORY
Who was Freddie Mercury?
September 5, 1946 (59 years ago today): Rock star Freddie Mercury is born in Zanzibar.
Liz Highleyman | September 05, 2005
Freddie Mercury
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Flamboyant frontman Freddie Mercury and his band Queen became one of the most successful rock acts of all time – despite his shifting gender presentation and relationships with both women and men.
Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara on Sept. 5, 1946, in the British colony of Zanzibar, an island off the coast of what is now Tanzania. His parents were Parsees (Zoroastrian Indians of Persian descent), and his father worked for the British civil service. In the early 1950s, he was sent off to boarding school outside Bombay, where he formed his first band, the Hectics.
Mercury returned to Zanzibar in 1962, but two years later his family moved to Middlesex, England. He enrolled at the Ealing College of Art in London, where he majored in graphic art and design. After graduating in 1969, he opened a stall with a friend in the hip Kensington Market, selling art and secondhand clothes.
In 1970, after performing with two short-lived bands - Ibex (later known as Wreckage) and Sour Milk Sea – Mercury joined with friends Brian May and Roger Taylor to form Queen. The name "was open to all sorts of interpretations," Mercury later said. "I was certainly aware of the gay connotations, but that was just one facet of it."
By this time, Mercury had adopted an androgynous glam style, replete with velvet and fur clothing, makeup, and black nail polish. A natural showman, he had already developed a flamboyant stage presence. But his campy demeanor and flashy outfits did not seem to raise many eyebrows. "Ambiguous sexuality was par for the course then," recalled one former band-mate.
That same year, Mercury began dating Mary Austin, a girl from a poor family who worked near his market stall. After they had lived together for six years, she began to feel that something was amiss with their relationship. When she confronted him, he told her he thought he was bisexual; she replied that she suspected he was probably gay. The couple ended their romantic relationship but remained close friends.
Mercury had told everyone he'd one day be a star, and his prediction came to pass. In 1974, Queen's third album, Sheer Heart Attack, catapulted the band to fame. Though some critics complained that they were all show with little musical talent, Queen became phenomenally popular and drew crowds in the tens of thousands wherever they performed around the world.
A man of many faces, Mercury changed his image in 1980, adopting a macho "clone" look with a moustache and a leather biker jacket. He professed his love for opera and flowers and peppered his speech with "dears" and "darlings." His affairs with men were an open secret, but he never publicly announced his sexual orientation.
Mercury learned he had AIDS in the mid-1980s, but only told a few confidantes. He gave up his hedonistic lifestyle, settling down in his London mansion with his partner, Jim Hutton – who passed as his gardener – and several exotic cats. He died at home in November 1991 due to AIDS-related pneumonia, attended by Austin (to whom he willed his mansion and most of his fortune) and Hutton (for whom he bought a plot of land in Ireland). Mercury was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with his fellow band members, in 2001.
Further Reading
Freestone, Peter, and Dave Evans. 2000. Freddie Mercury: An Intimate Memoir by the Man Who Knew Him Best (Omnibus).
Hutton, Jim, and Tim Wapshott. 1994. Mercury and Me (Bloomsbury).
Liz Highleyman is a freelance writer and editor who has written widely on health, sexuality, and politics.
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