Having to hide his true self, battling a terrifying illness and being labeled a pervert by the
press.
Here are the saddest things about the legendary Freddie Mercury's life.
Freddie Mercury was still a teenager when his whole family had to flee their homeland
to escape the violent uprisings against the Sultan of Zanzibar in 1964.
Due to their Indian and Persian heritage, they were at risk of being targeted like thousands
of other Arabs and Indians in Zanzibar, which was formerly a British colony and had then
been ruled over by a majority Arab government.
The New York Times estimated at the time that the number of casualties was between 2,000
and 4,000 by the time the rebellions were over.
Although he stayed in the UK and never went back to his childhood home, in 2019 the first-ever
Freddie Mercury museum opened up in modern-day Tanzania to honor their local hero.
The founders created the museum in the hopes of reminding people where Mercury really came
from, although they had to avoid certain aspects of his life due to Tanzania's laws against
homosexuality.
One of the museum's founders explained that he is remembered as a great musician and artist
instead, saying -
"It's the biggest tribute that we, as Zanzibaris, can do for him."
Although Freddie Mercury was known for his flamboyant personality and would hint at his
sexuality in interviews, he ultimately had to keep his relationships with men secret
due to widespread homophobia in Britain.
Even his fellow band members only realized that Mercury wasn't straight when they started
noticing male groupies leaving his hotel room, as Brian May told The Times.
He didn't have a conversation with them about the subject until later when the singer casually
asked -
"I suppose you realize I've changed in my private life?"
His most significant relationship with a man came toward the end of his life.
As Irish hairdresser Jim Hutton later wrote in his book "Mercury and Me," they first met
in London's gay nightclub scene in the mid-80s when Hutton was with someone else and didn't
recognize Mercury as a famous singer.
They later lived together and Mercury referred to Hutton as his husband, but the pair were
never able to be a couple in the public eye.
As Hutton wrote, the singer had to be coy in interviews but would secretly refer to
his partner when he made public statements like -
"For the first time I've found a contentment within myself."
"I just uh, I want to do things my way and, and, uh, I want to have fun."
Mercury only directly spoke about Hutton in one interview.
According to "Freddie Mercury: An Intimate Biography," he told a German reporter -
"Piaf did it.
So did Streisand.
Now I have a hairdresser husband, dear!"
Although the world only found out about Freddie Mercury's HIV in 1991, his biographers Matt
Richards and Mark Langthorne later reported that he first started showing symptoms as
early as 1982.
The singer reportedly had a secret medical appointment in New York before performing
on "Saturday Night Live" to check on a white lesion that had appeared on his tongue.
Under American law at the time, he wouldn't have been able to fly into the US if he had
tested positive for HIV beforehand, which might have delayed his journey toward getting
medical help for these early indicators of the virus.
His partner Jim Hutton also later tested positive for HIV, as he recalled in his memoir, "Mercury
and Me."
Hutton had been reluctant to undergo the test and delayed it out of fear, reflecting -
"If I could do it all again there would be changes.
Freddie and I never discussed Aids, HIV, or anything related to this terrifying illness."
He added that they should have been using condoms the whole time but never considered
it.
The pair also never spoke about their sexual history or the partners they had been with
before they got together, with Hutton writing that there didn't seem to be much of a point
to it since they weren't aware at the time that the disease was sexually transmitted.
When Freddie Mercury was first infected with HIV, the highly stigmatized virus was a medical
mystery and patients faced vicious discrimination from the general public.
So he avoided telling people about his diagnosis, outside of his closest friends.
"He says, 'And you know what it is.'
(mumbles, makes face).
'Well yes, I have AIDS - but that's it.
We don't talk about it anymore.'"
His bandmate Brian May later commented in an interview with The Telegraph, saying -
"Freddie wanted his life to be as normal as possible."
Mercury was even reluctant to tell the rest of Queen at first: as May revealed to The
Times, they already knew what was going on by the time he revealed his condition to them,
broaching the topic for the first time by reportedly saying -
"I suppose you realize that I'm dealing with this illness.
You probably gather that I'm dealing with this thing and I don't want to talk about
it and I don't want our lives to change, but that's the situation."
The other members of Queen let him gloss over the subject but later started organizing their
recording sessions around Mercury and his need for privacy.
Freddie Mercury kept his AIDS hidden from the public for many reasons, but one factor
of his tragic diagnosis was that it was essentially considered a death sentence at the time.
When it first became headline news in the early 80s, the disease was initially called
GRID, or gay-related immunodeficiency, due to the fact that it initially appeared to
mostly target homosexual men.
Activists had to fight for governments to even acknowledge the crisis, which meant that
medical research progressed very slowly at first.
Brian May later insisted that Mercury narrowly missed out on the combination of drugs that
would have saved his life, telling The Telegraph -
"He missed by just a few months.
If it had been a bit later he would still have been with us, I'm sure."
The life-saving cocktail of drugs was developed in the 90s.
Highly active antiretroviral therapy required a patient to take three medications a day
but the results were fast: according to the CDC, mortality rates fell by 47 percent after
it was widely introduced.
Although Freddie Mercury tried to hide his illness from the public, he couldn't disguise
how much his body had physically declined over the years.
As Brian May wrote in his book, "Queen In 3-D," one of the major pressing issues by
late 1991 was that Mercury's disease had caused him to lose most of one of his feet.
Mercury reportedly shocked his bandmates by revealing it to them during dinner.
He immediately apologized, telling the guitarist -
"Oh Brian, I'm sorry I've upset you by showing you that."
May replied by insisting that he wasn't upset for his own sake, but by the realization of
the pain that Mercury's body was going through.
Elton John also reflected on Mercury's declining health during those final months in his memoir,
"Me: Elton John Official Autobiography," revealing that the singer's vision was almost gone by
the end.
However, he added that even as he was too ill to get out of bed, that when John visited,
Mercury was acting like his usual self by gossiping and acting outrageous.
He went on to write -
"I couldn't work out whether he didn't realize how close to death he was or if he knew perfectly
well but was determined not to let what was happening to him stop him being himself."
In 1991, the last year of Freddie Mercury's life, the singer had his final recording sessions
by Lake Geneva in Switzerland.
In a tiny studio owned by Queen, Mercury took shots of vodka to steel himself before delivering
improbably powerful vocals on their final tracks as a complete band.
As Brian May later reflected in an interview with The Telegraph -
"We all knew there wasn't much time left.
He obviously was in a lot of pain and discomfort.
For him, the studio was an oasis."
Mercury loved the process of recording music and wanted everyone to carry on like normal,
even if his strength was fading, with May telling The Times that the singer never allowed
anyone to coddle him, adding -
"Certainly those days towards the end were fabulous, full of laughter and joy, Freddie
as wicked as ever."
Their final song was a ballad called "Mother Love," which May wrote in the studio between
takes.
May described how Mercury had to physically brace himself while recording the first two
verses, but that was all.
As May recalled -
"We didn't quite get to the end.
I gave him the last verse and he said, 'Oh darling, I'm not feeling too good now, so
I'll come back to it' ... And he never did."
In the completed version of "Mother Love," May sang the last verse himself.
The British press had been relentless in speculating about Freddie Mercury's health since a Harley
Street clinic told a tabloid that his blood had been tested for HIV, as biographer David
Bret noted in "Freddie Mercury: An Intimate Biography."
In his final days, he finally made a public statement about having AIDS, with the Los
Angeles Times reporting him saying -
"Following enormous conjecture in the press, I wish to confirm that I have been tested
HIV-positive and have AIDS."
He died of bronchial pneumonia caused by his AIDS on November 24th, 1991, about 24 hours
after making this monumental statement.
After his death, newspaper columns called the globally beloved singer a pervert and
spoke about the illness as a reflection of his morality, using it as an excuse to condemn
HIV positive people for their lifestyles.
As Mercury documentary filmmaker James Rogan later told Pink News -
"There were headlines like, 'I'd shoot my son if he had AIDS,' and ones where they'd
catch you unawares and you'd read it and think: 'How did this manage to make it into print?"
Despite the negative press and his illness, the singer chose to spend his last days thinking
ahead to Christmas and leaving thoughtful presents for his loved ones to discover.
As his friend Elton John later wrote in a book about AIDS, "Love is the Cure," he was
shaken out of his grief on Christmas morning that year by the arrival of a package, a painting
by one of his favorite artists.
The gift came with a sweet note from Freddy that referenced their drag queen names for
each other, reading -
"Dear Sharon, I thought you'd like this.
Love, Melina.
Happy Christmas."