aeolianblues

Happy Birthday Freddie !!!

— Freddie Mercury

This is more punk than the whole of punk history.

I’ll tell you what’s ferocious. Freddie’s comeback to Sid calling him “Freddie Platinum” when they were recording down the hall from each other at London’s Wessex Studios (Queen for News of the World, Pistols for Bollocks).

Sid Vicious made the mistake one day of bursting into Queen’s control room and antagonizing their frontman. “Have you succeeded in bringing ballet to the masses, then?” he sneered. “Oh, yes, Simon Ferocious,” Mercury replied. “We’re trying our best, dear.” 

Then, according to Queen biographer Daniel Nester, Freddie rose from his chair and began to playfully flick the safety pins displayed on the front of Sid’s leather jacket. “Tell me,” he asked, “did you arrange these pins just so?” When Sid stepped forward in an attempt to intimidate Freddie, the singer simply pushed him backwards and inquired, “What are you going to do about it?” Sid immediately backed down. [x]

Freddie Mercury may very well have had the biggest dick energy of anyone who ever lived

Tags from @thirddeadlysin

[ID: a tag that read, “#imagine thinking you’re tougher than a bisexual zoroastrian parsi indian refugee openly thriving in 20th century britain”. End ID]

okay im!! just really emo about not only how freddies marathi accent comes out now and then but also!! he just acts!! so indian!! if youve ever had any relatives from any part of south asia You Know like the way he structures his sentences and does the head bobble a few times and does the ‘a a a a’ vocal fry thing when hes trying to think of the next word to say or how he says ‘sort of’ every ten seconds or the way he stutters when he says the word ‘it’ (which is Very specific hfjksdhg but thats. Such a desi thing to do) or how he directs people around with his hands when he has an idea,,,,,im having a TIME anyway the point of this post is freddie acts like that one sweet uncle you have in india who wears yellow and who’ll make you paratha despite not knowing how and then chastise you for not taking fifths after five minutes and im so full of love for this parsi gay legend wo w

okay im!! just really emo about not only how freddies marathi accent comes out now and then but also!! he just acts!! so indian!! if youve ever had any relatives from any part of south asia You Know like the way he structures his sentences and does the head bobble a few times and does the ‘a a a a’ vocal fry thing when hes trying to think of the next word to say or how he says ‘sort of’ every ten seconds or the way he stutters when he says the word ‘it’ (which is Very specific hfjksdhg but thats. Such a desi thing to do) or how he directs people around with his hands when he has an idea,,,,,im having a TIME anyway the point of this post is freddie acts like that one sweet uncle you have in india who wears yellow and who’ll make you paratha despite not knowing how and then chastise you for not taking fifths after five minutes and im so full of love for this parsi gay legend wo w

This is more punk than the whole of punk history.

I’ll tell you what’s ferocious. Freddie’s comeback to Sid calling him “Freddie Platinum” when they were recording down the hall from each other at London’s Wessex Studios (Queen for News of the World, Pistols for Bollocks).

Sid Vicious made the mistake one day of bursting into Queen’s control room and antagonizing their frontman. “Have you succeeded in bringing ballet to the masses, then?” he sneered. “Oh, yes, Simon Ferocious,” Mercury replied. “We’re trying our best, dear.” 

Then, according to Queen biographer Daniel Nester, Freddie rose from his chair and began to playfully flick the safety pins displayed on the front of Sid’s leather jacket. “Tell me,” he asked, “did you arrange these pins just so?” When Sid stepped forward in an attempt to intimidate Freddie, the singer simply pushed him backwards and inquired, “What are you going to do about it?” Sid immediately backed down. [x]

Freddie Mercury may very well have had the biggest dick energy of anyone who ever lived

Tags from @thirddeadlysin

[ID: a tag that read, “#imagine thinking you’re tougher than a bisexual zoroastrian parsi indian refugee openly thriving in 20th century britain”. End ID]

October 8th was the last time Freddie Mercury performed on stage. At the time, he was terribly ill with AIDS, although he didn’t want people to know about it. He announced that fact the day before he died. Being ill he continued to compose and record songs and even took part in making videos. The footage shows the flamboyant singer, painfully thin from the effects of the HIV virus which would kill him just months later, determined to complete his final video shoot. Mercury is shown applying make-up and checking his image and performance on screen monitors before stepping carefully onto the stage and delivering a solo performance of the band’s 1991 single “These Are The Days Of Our Lives.” He exits the frame after whispering the final line “I still love you.” Brian May, Queen’s guitarist, said of Mercury’s final scenes: “At this time, Freddie’s becoming weakened by this horrible disease, but he’d throw a couple of vodkas down and prop himself up on the mixing desk and go for it. “He spent hours and hours in make-up sorting himself out so it’d be OK,” May added. “He actually says a kind of goodbye in the video.”

Freddie Mercury Rock Montreal, 1981

“Fuck you” - Freddie Mercury

Interaction with audience

I found some pictures online of Freddie from his boarding school days!

(I think he's the right-most in the first picture, and second from left in the third)

What a transformation from an unassuming Indian boy to a confident, world-conquering rockstar!

[x]

With his school band, The Hectics.

I found some pictures online of Freddie from his boarding school days!

(I think he's the right-most in the first picture, and second from left in the third)

What a transformation from an unassuming Indian boy to a confident, world-conquering rockstar!

[x]

every person can feel freddie’s presence in their souls when they sing MAMAAAAAA UUHHHH, I DONT WANNA DIE, I SOMETIMES I WISH I’VE NEVER BEEN BORN AT ALL with all the air in their lungs i’m not joking

it’s fucking crazy to think about the amount of people who have sung bohemian rhapsody? like it’s such a unifying song, by nature of the fact that so many people know it. it holds so many good memories for me and other people. it’s a song you scream in the car with your friends while you drive around your boring hometown, it’s a song you drunkenly sing with your arm around your best friend, or a song you sing along to with strangers when it’s on in public. it’s bittersweet to think about freddie’s legacy carrying on like that through his masterpiece. freddie carries on because he’s a part of so many people’s good memories and bohemian rhapsody is a huge part of that.

Reblog if you have sung bohemian rhapsody with your friends

every time i see this post i’m reminded of the video of 65,000 people singing bohemian rhapsody in near-perfect harmony

like, what other song can make that claim?

Some of the highlights of that video include:

Only days before my state went into lockdown, “Bohemian Rhapsody” came on in the restaurant kitchen I’d just been hired at and, no shit, every single worker in that little diner started singing along. Me (the only queer afaik), the manager, all the other kitchen workers, the dishwasher up front, the two people on the counter, all but two of the men over 30. Just belting out Freddie Mercury at the top of their lungs. And you can bet when “sometimes I wish I’d never been born at all” came around, we every single one of us ramped up the intensity and basically made sure Freddie could hear us in the afterlife.

One of the things that struck me, listening to the video, is that you cannot distinguish the original vocals from the crowd, and sometimes you can barely hear the music. And the POV is on the stage the speakers are playing the song from!

There’s good reason why, nearly fifty years after the height of their career, Queen is still considered one of the best bands of all time ever.

(And how albums left lying about in cars will eventually metamorphose into Best of Queen albums.)

Something else that’s rather incredible about this is, Bohemian Rhapsody is a very difficult song from a technical standpoint. Like–humor me, okay, go flip it on and try to sing the whole thing at the top of your voice without falling off-key, out of breath, or cracking at least once. Then come back.

Okay. You’re back? Welcome back. Unless you’re a trained singer, you probably can’t do it. There are too many long notes, too many key changes, and too many places where–if you’re singing all the parts–you’re just up and down the scale too damned fast. I’m saying this as a trained singer and I can’t do it. I always crack on “magnifico” and “leave me to die,” and I have a pretty decent range, but I know I sound ugly as hell on that final coda.

Okay. Now that we’ve established that, I want to talk a little about singing as a chorus. One of the things a lot of people learned during the pandemic is how hard it is to take twenty people, all in different places, and stitch them together to make a single coherent song with perfect pitch and timing. You’re all practicing on slightly your own tempo, slightly your own key, even if you’re all working from the same base track. (You can see this in a lot of the Wellerman compilations from Tiktok, where someone always says “Soon” a moment before everyone else on “soon may the Wellerman come.”) When you have a chorus comprised of many smaller choruses that are all traveling to be together, this is what dress rehearsal is for–to get all of you onto the same tempo so you’re starting and finishing at exactly the same time. This is a thing that normally only happens after at least several days of practice, and it is an important skill that must be taught. You’re not just born knowing how to do this.

I do not know how many people at that Green Day concert were trained singers. But I do know there is no way in hell all few thousand of them were a single group–they showed up a few at a time, maybe even flying solo for the night. Now go and listen to the video again. Listen to the ends of verses and the pickups. They’re fucking crisp as hell. Everyone is starting and ending at the same place. Not even a single note off. (And yes, you can hear when it’s a single note off, even in a crowd that big. A handful of people would be enough to throw it off.) And while a few in the crowd may be off-key, so many more are on-key that the cumulative effect is of the song being on-key. This isn’t even the band they’re there to see.

They don’t just know this song, this technically-difficult song, this long and complex song by a completely different band. They know it perfectly. They know it down to the fucking note. They know it so well that they did it in perfect synchrony, without a single chance to practice.

Do you know how insane that is?

I’ve thought people have the same upheaval of relief of multiple Queen songs, because Freddie was just so good at putting pure emotion into lines like that. Think back to the last time you heard anyone sing the lines, “Don’t stop me now!” Or “I want to break free!” Freddie’s lyrics become people’s emotions.