Bechstein Debauchery

FREDDIE MERCURY

George Michael and Freddie in 1990.

This lad was full of surprises: originally a hard-rock composer, then moving on to piano ballads, and flirting with loads of genres throughout his career, including progressive rock, mediaeval, music-hall, opera, classical, gospel, jazz, rockabilly, flamenco and disco; he lived in Tanzania, India, England (both London and Liverpool), Switzerland, West Germany and USA; he practised different sports including table-tennis, boxing and hockey, but wasn't especially fond of football (ironically, he wrote one of the most famous football anthems, We Are the Champions); born in Africa, but speaking with a posh London accent; stubborn about his decisions, yet supportive of the others' contributions; a musician who was the band's chief songwriter, arranger, producer, singer (both lead and backing), pianist and keyboardist; a person who brought, in a unique way, complex arrangements to the masses.

Farrokh Bulsara's musical life started off when he was living in India, taking classical piano up to level IV, and playing in a rock n' roll band at boarding school. When he moved to London, Freddie (as he was known already) took interest in singing and composing, soon buying a guitar and learning to play it in order to write songs, which from the very beginning featured elaborated melodies, outrageous structures and clever harmony. His musical tastes ranged from Led Zeppelin to Chopin, from Jimi Hendrix to Liza Minelli, from The Beatles to Aretha Franklin, which contributed to the eclectic character of the tunes he penned. At first, Freddie composed in the genre known then as heavy metal (today it'd be regarded as hard-rock), using the acoustic guitar he'd got in the London flat he shared with Roger (it's been commented that he also had a Telecaster and an upright piano). My Fairy King, a song he'd started writing in 1970, would become a turning point in his career, since it marked the beginning of his extravaganzas, and he decided to change his surname to Mercury because the "mother Mercury" line was in reference to his own mum. From then on, the prominent difference between his on and off stage personalities would keep on growing.

'Queen II' (1973) showcased Mercury using keyboards more, and flirting with other genres such as mediaeval, classical and music-hall. Nevermore was his first piano ballad (sans the slow bit in My Fairy King on the first album), and from then on Freddie would contribute to at least one in almost every album up to 'Magic'. The record was followed by a tour and on summer 1974, the band were commissioned to write material for an upcoming album in around two weeks. Such schedule enabled Mercury to use all his skills without losing quality, and he learnt a lot from the six new tracks he came up with: Lily of the Valley continued the piano-ballad tradition, Killer Queen and Bring Back That Leroy Brown enhanced his vaudeville influences, In The Lap of the Gods had a dramatic intro where, for the first and only time in Queen and Freddie's career, opera and rock were actually combined, and ... Revisited featured a triple metre, another recurring aspect in Mercury's songwriting (Jesus had been a forerunner, and followers would include We Are the Champions, Somebody to Love and some others up to his last composition, A Winter's Tale).

'Sheer Heart Attack' was followed by a world tour, where Freddie practised and improved his abilities both as pianist and singer, and at the time they came back to London he was ready to write new songs for the fourth album. Off the five released tracks he penned, all of them had piano as main instrument, and again they explored different styles: Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon and Seaside Rendezvous were even more vaudeville-esque than Killer Queen and Leroy Brown, while Death on Two Legs and Love of My Life took classical piano to a level Fred hadn't reached before, both in very different contexts; Bohemian Rhapsody, by its side, proved to be Mercury's (and Queen's) most complex, yet most successful, masterpiece.

The album was issued in the middle of a short UK tour, and in January 1976, just before going to the States to promote 'A Night at the Opera', Freddie produced, played piano and sang harmonies in Eddie Howell's Man From Manhattan, which would be a #1 hit in South Africa. After the tour he sat down in summer to compose material for the new Queen record, coming up with another piano ballad, another music-hall number, and adding two more styles to his catalogue: gospel and waltz. After turning 30, changes in his personal life (including the break-up with his long-time girlfriend) led him to become less interested in his musical career: for the 1977 album, 'News of the World', he only wrote two numbers (a jazz piece and a strange progressive song) and recycled one he'd got from the 'Opera' period, We Are the Champions, which would turn out to be one of his most famous tracks ever. Mercury's lack of interest wasn't only reflected in the creative side, but also when it came to performance: two songs off the album don't feature Freddie at all and another one has him only in backing vocals.

After the album there were several changes, which included Freddie buying a concert piano in the States on early November 1977, and the band taking a year outside England to avoid taxes. There, Freddie spent his time between Nice (France) and Montreux (Switzerland), using his black Steinway to compose and record and taking advantage of the new life he was starting. As a result, 'Jazz' would feature him back in the creative throne of the band: he contributed five songs to the album (a fast rock with subtle music-hall influences, a sort of progressive-pop, an outrageous Eastern thing, a powerful hard-rock and, of course, a piano ballad) and sang in all tracks except for two.

Freddie and the gorgeous Olivia Newton-John in 1980.

By the end of the decade, Freddie would split his time between London and Munich, slowly adding New York to the list. While he was still the main composer in Queen albums, his efforts were now considerably simpler than his celebrated early-to-mid 70s epics. During this time, Mercury wrote in more styles, as if he'd put himself the task of exploring new genres with every album: 'The Game' has rockabilly, 'Flash' has a symphonic movement, 'Hot Space' has disco and 'The Works' features a sort of techno-influenced number. And of course, piano-ballads continued. 1985 marked the release of his first solo album, with all the songs written by Freddie himself, including an obvious American tone (e.g. the orchestra in Mr Bad Guy is clearly influenced by George Gershwin). While most of them included his piano as main instrument, he seemed to become less interested in that side of music: now songs were written at synths and were harmonically less complex. Moreover, his input in Queen declined too, as 'A Kind of Magic' only features one full song he composed (an intricate hard-rock piece called Princes of the Universe), and very few piano parts. For all those albums his voice would be dramatically different (he now smoked) as well as his appearance (he grew a moustache).

After the last tour Queen ever did (where Freddie only played piano on three songs, and guitar on one), Mercury learnt about his disease, and the last years of his life featured him at the best of his capacity in all aspects: he did a classical record with Mike Moran and Montserrat Caballe, wrote or co-wrote over half of Queen's last albums, programmed some extraordinary synthesiser-orchestras and had some of his most celebrated vocal performances ever. On 24th November 1991, he died.