The heartbreaking request Freddie Mercury asked from his Queen bandmates.
The hobby you most likely don't know he had. One of his closest companions speaks out.
Onstage, Freddie Mercury was flamboyant and extroverted, but offstage, was a different story.
Freddie Mercury was born in Zanzibar, and his given name was Farrokh Bulsara. When he
was enrolled in St. Peter's School, he was already asking that his classmates call him
Freddie — it was, after all, much preferred to the nickname he was given: Bucky. The boarding school
was located in Maharashtra, India, and Mercury enrolled when he was 8 and left when he was 12.
According to The Better India, it was at that school that someone outside of his family
first realized what a talent for music he had. Even then,
he could instantly perform songs that he had just heard for the first time.
But Mercury was far from the commanding presence and the showman he would become later.
When the Hindustan Times spoke with some of his former classmates in 2018,
they remembered a shy boy who was picked on mercilessly for his teeth. One classmate recalled:
"He was shy, but never a nobody."
After boarding school, Mercury moved back to Zanzibar.
Shockingly, it wasn't until around 2015 that that same classmate realized the rock
legend that was Freddie Mercury was the same person he'd called Bucky in school.
"I'm a big ham, really, I just get on that stage and do it."
When Freddie Mercury kicked off his musical career by joining a band called The Hectics,
he was still at boarding school. The group performed covers of some of the massive American
and British hits of the day, putting their spin on artists like Elvis and Little Richard.
Many of Mercury's musical idols were all black or white, and that put the young, aspiring star in
something of an odd position. Singer-songwriter Leo Kalyan summed it up like this:
"There's no room for brown people in the Western music industry, and Freddie kind of knew that.
[He was] smart enough to know that he basically had to masquerade as a white man to succeed."
Brian May agreed, saying that it was after he had decided to try to break into the music business
in London that he stopped going by his last name of Bulsara, and adopted the name Mercury.
While Mercury himself hadn't spoken openly about
the racially-driven discrimination and prejudice he may have faced,
May's insight into his long-time friend is undoubtedly pretty accurate. May explained to BBC,
"The Bulsara person was still there, but for the public, he was going to
be this different character, this god." Queen and Freddie Mercury were in their
heyday during the 1970s and 1980s, and that's some important context for understanding why
Mercury never spoke about or confirmed his sexuality. Although he was frequently seen
in the company of both men and women, he never addressed his romantic life in a public way.
That's not entirely surprising for a few reasons, and while no one can
be sure exactly why he remained mum on the topic, there's a safe guess. At the time,
the world was still wildly homophobic. In the 1980s, there was something else going on:
the AIDS crisis. AIDS and HIV were still not understood and condemned as a "gay cancer."
Mercury didn't seem to talk about it much privately, either. The closest conversation
that has come to light is one that he had with Mary Austin, a woman he dated and was
engaged to before they called off a romantic relationship in lieu of a lifelong friendship.
Even she has said that she always thought he was gay, but he told her that he was bisexual.
"I think I'm bisexual."
When the Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody hit theaters, everyone had an opinion. The Los
Angeles Times says the movie was condemned for only touching on Mercury's relationships
with men and with his parents. But there's actually a good reason for the omissions:
Mercury kept those things private. He kept them so private, in fact, that he never told his
parents that he dated men. When they asked him about a man who was living with him in London,
he explained the man's presence by telling them that he worked for him as a gardener.
And that kind of makes sense. His family was both Indian Parsi and practicing Zoroastrian, and while
Mercury himself wasn't religious, he was deeply and unwaveringly respectful of his parents' faith.
That faith, however, taught that gay men could "be killed with impunity," says Encyclopedia Iranica.
They further say that gay men were seen as demons promoting the spread of evil in the world, so it's
little wonder then, that he simply kept that part of his life out of discussions with his parents.
There were two sides to Freddie Mercury, and one of the only people who knew the private version
was Mary Austin. They met in 1969 and at the time, he was just that guy with dreams of becoming
a rock star. Mercury proposed to her in 1973, and wrote the song "Love of My Life" for her.
When Austin spoke to the Daily Mail in 2013,
she invited them into the home he had left her. The mansion was as he'd left it,
filled with Louis XV furniture and enough art and antiques to outfit a small museum. She explained,
"Why would I want to change it?
It is his taste and style. It's beautiful. His presence is everywhere."
Even after calling off the wedding with Mercury's admission that he was bisexual,
they remained close friends, and she was one of the handful of people who stayed by his
side as he died. She shared a poignant memory of sitting with him during some of his last days,
watching videos of some of Queen's concerts.
Freddie Mercury and Jim Hutton met in the 1980s.
The first time Mercury offered to buy him a drink at the London nightclub called Heaven,
Hutton declined. It took another year and a half and another offer of a drink before
they connected and started dating. A few years later, Hutton was at his side as Mercury died.
Hutton was at his side for some monumental events before that — like LiveAid— and some wonderfully
ordinary events, too. The Freddie Mercury that existed apart from the force of nature that
was on stage was incredibly different. Hutton once described their home life in Vanity Fair:
"I'd get in from work.
We'd lie together on the sofa. He would massage my feet and ask about my day."
Mercury was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987, and Hutton remained at his side. His book Mercury
and Me was a tell-all about their relationship, but perhaps most telling was the end of it. The
last time he saw Mercury was a few days before his passing when he asked Hutton to help him
downstairs to look at the artwork that still hangs there. Hutton did help him — promising to carry
him if he needed to — and Mercury sat and looked at the pictures in the spotlight. He simply said,
"Oh, they're wonderful." "At the moment,
there's a lot of things I'm doing within Queen that keeps me happy."
Everyone needs a hobby ... right? When Freddie Mercury was asked
about his hobbies in one infamous interview, he cheekily responded,
"I have a lot of sex."
As epic as that might be, Brian May has suggested there was something else that Mercury truly loved:
photography. In 2017, May released Queen in 3-D, which was a passion project that was pretty close
to his heart. He had already assembled a massive collection of stereoscopic photos,
which are photos that appear in 3D when viewed through a certain device.
The book contained hundreds of never-before-seen photos,
including one of Mercury taking a picture of May — who says it's one of his favorites.
And when he appeared on the British One Show,
he talked a bit about how passionate Mercury was about the art form, saying,
"He used to take masses of Polaroids of all his friends for portraits,
and then give them all away."
"But he loved his photography, yeah." When Brian May released his book Queen in 3-D,
it meant looking back through scores of photographs. He told People that
he hadn't entirely been prepared for the memories it brought back:
"You remember what was around you, but you also remember what was inside you."
He also spoke a bit about what Freddie Mercury
was like once he stepped off the stage, telling the outlet:
"We were very normal with each other, if 'normal' is the right word. [...] Freddie was an extrovert
onstage, as we all know, but he was very shy in his private life and liked to be private.
He liked those moments of just having a couple close friends around."
May's lumping himself in with just a few good friends doesn't seem to do their relationship
justice, though, as other comments suggest it was just as strong in private as it was on-stage.
In 2021, May spoke with The Guardian ahead of the release of his solo album.
He said that the time around Mercury's illness and death was devastating:
"I felt like life was over. I was very close to driving off the bridge several times. Very close."
But he says that now, there's a feeling that Mercury never left them, that he's still there
in spirit and still in their daily thoughts. Off-stage, for better or worse, May told Today:
"We were like brothers. We still are."
When Rolling Stone took a look at what had been going on behind the scenes of Freddie Mercury's
life in the 1980s, they said that it had been a long list of one-night stands, nightclubs,
drugs, and alcohol. The magazine wrote that it's unclear just when Mercury contracted AIDS,
but according to DJ Paul Gambaccini, Mercury had known the risks and said,
"Darling, my attitude is '[Screw] it.' I'm doing everything with everybody."
"I don't give a damn, I just, uh, I want to do things my way and, and, uh, I want to have fun."
Mercury had his first AIDS test in 1985. That one was negative, and when he had another two years
later, he refused to answer phone calls from his doctor's office. So, the doctor's office called
Mary Austin and told her the news. They didn't tell anyone else — not even the rest of Queen.
Brian May has said they knew something was going on, but exactly what, Mercury consistently refused
to say. He even went as far as denying the rumors that were already circulating. That said, it
wasn't until 1989 that Mercury had a sit-down with the rest of Queen. Mercury told his bandmates,
"You probably realize what my problem is.
Well, that's it, and I don't want it to make a difference. I don't want it
to be known. I just want to get on and work [...] I'd like you to support me in this."
It was the only time they ever talked about it.
Freddie Mercury was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987, and his final years were an attempt
to push himself as far as possible, to make music that would live on long after he died.
Jim Hutton would later say that if Queen hadn't had that last album and those final songs to
record, Mercury would have died much sooner than he did. Brian May told Rolling Stone,
"Freddie said, 'Write me stuff... Keep giving me words. I will sing.'"
So they did, and he did. The Show Must Go On was written by May,
who has said that he was very aware of the fact that he was writing words that
the incredibly shy singer couldn't find to say on his own. May said to Rolling Stone:
"Sometimes, Freddie wasn't able to vocalize [...] and [...] I think
Roger and I kind of vocalized for him, in writing some of the lyrics."
Mercury left the recording studio in September 1991,
and May's wife, Anita, would later say that he had told her that when he could no longer sing,
he would die — and that's exactly what happened. He stopped taking medication,
turned away nearly everyone who tried to see him, and released a statement on November 23
confirming that he had tested HIV-positive. The following evening, Hutton and Mercury's
assistant were getting ready to change out his blankets when they found he had passed away.
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text
Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline
at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts,
please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.