Who Wants to Live Forever: A Long-Overdue Tribute to Queen

Playing the "what-if" game is popular among rock fans, if only because there's a surplus of people that could be the subject. The most common form that I know of is "what if ... so-and-so hadn't died? what kind of music would they have made?" Even authors get into this; the number of stories that make use of Elvis, Jim Morrison, and John Lennon post-death (just to name three off the top of my head) could probably fill a library shelf or two. Not hard to see why, either; it's a form of tribute, sure, but a form of protest too. It's one way of trying to reclaim the prodigious talents that shaped the lives of so many from the finality of the grave. Music is one of those things that gets into your head and heart, makes you a different person.

I bring this up because I've been poring through my old music collection, listening to stuff I haven't uncovered for a while, re-examining songs I hear so much that they've become simply background, and in doing so, I've rediscovered one of those talents whose passing left a hole in my musical life. I speak, of course, of Farrokh Bulsara, quite possibly the only rock star of Indian descent (the subcontinent, that is). Of course, Farrokh knew early in his career that his name might be something of a burden to his musical career, especially in the U.K., so he quickly changed it to something more euphonious to the ears of rock fans everywhere: Freddie Mercury.

As a recording entity, Queen is as old as I am; their first album came out two months before my birth, so I literally grew up with the band's music. I don't know when I first became aware of them, but I knew enough about them to recognize their music when I heard it on the soundtrack of the 1980 camp classic Flash Gordon (ah-aaaah!). I heard their music on the radio, danced to it at school dances, enjoyed their videos on the first network shows devoted to the nascent art form (anybody else remember Friday Night Videos?). I was in high school just as the touring phase of the original lineup came to an end due to what was later revealed as Freddie's struggle with AIDS, which was a bummer for people like me, who hoped to catch Mr. Mercury live at some point. Queen shows were already legendary, and like many fans, I'd seen Freddie's incendiary performance broadcast at Live Aid; his performance was voted as the greatest live musical performance ever in a British poll, and it's hard to disagree in terms of the raw power and showmanship he brought (not to mention the billion-plus audience). My best friend and I, both fans, used The Miracle and Innuendo, leavened with Greatest Hits, as part of the soundtrack to our last two years in high school. I felt then, and do now, that there was something irresistible about the operatic power and dazzle the men of Queen brought to their music.

Anyway, by the time November 1991 rolled around, I had other things on my mind than Queen. It was near the end of my first semester in college, and I was still getting used to college life; I didn't have time to follow all the news, music or otherwise, and just happened to catch the news report that Freddie had formally announced he had AIDS. In a measure of my naivete at the time, this surprised me. Sure, I'd picked up on the sexual ambiguity inherent in a band of men named Queen, but I hadn't thought anymore about it. Plus, at the time, being an openly gay or bisexual rock star wasn't looked upon well by the establishment, despite the spate of stars in the 1970s who'd made such claims (Bowie, Elton John, etc.). Guys like Rob Halford of Judas Priest fame were still in the closet as far as the mainstream was concerned, and if the Scissor Sisters had hit the scene then, they'd have been stuck in the NY drag scene a lot longer than they were. If you were gay, you were better off being an acoustic band (Indigo Girls, anyone?) or in a critical darling that sold a few thousand copies per album at best (Bob Mould leaps to mind). Anyway, the point was, it came as a shock. That was November 23, 1991.

On November 24, Freddie Mercury died. Talk about timing. Naturally, there was a lot of response in the music community; Queen were never critical darlings, but they had a nation of fans, especially among other musicians (Rob Halford said in an interview the only songs he had on his iPod were his own work and the entire catalog of Queen). In 1992, there was a massive concert in memory of Freddie to raise money for a trust in his name for AIDS research. I remember watching it on TV, and damn, was it impressive. David Bowie and Annie Lennox tearing into "Under Pressure," Metallica thumping through a too-brief set, James Hetfield ripping into "Stone Cold Crazy" backed by the surviving Queensters: wonderful stuff. A concert worth having on DVD.

But it just wasn't Freddie. No matter what heights were reached in his name, the man himself was gone. That stunning voice that could span four octaves and allowed him to sing in virtually any key. (Freddie recorded an album with Spanish opera singer Montserrat Caballe in the late 1980s, and kept up with her. She once said in an interview she considered the album one of the triumphs of her career.) The multi-instrumentality he brought to the table. The complexity of his composing ("Bohemian Rhapsody" has something like 60 chords in it). The showmanship and energy of every live performance. Even now, listening to albums twenty years old and more, you can hear it, all wrapped up in one dynamic person. There has not been anyone in his league since, not in rock anyway. Hell, there wasn't anyone in his league before.

So, fans like me have to make do with the back catalog Freddie left behind, and the memories of what his music meant to us. That's really what we're celebrating anyway, those moments of transcendence in our lives that were scored or propelled by those songs. With some songs, and some artists, transcendence is a little easier to reach. The title of this article is taken from a song from Highlander, a movie to which Queen provided the (unofficial) soundtrack, and although it refers to the main character of the film, it might as well have been penned with Freddie in mind. Those of us left behind salute you, Freddie.