THREAD: Today marks 30 years since we lost #FreddieMercury. Here (in thread-form) is a piece I wrote on him for @StandardIssueUK in 2016. 
I don’t know when I became a Queen fan but in 1989 I sang Killer Queen for anybody who would listen (I was 4 so literally everybody listened). A song about a high-class escort wouldn’t be anybody’s first choice for a kid to sing but I really knocked that shit out of the park.
Various big moments throughout my life have been scored by Freddie. At our school’s leavers concert I sat at the piano and played Friends Will Be Friends, not feeling remotely self-conscious about the fact that Freddie was a cracking pianist and Sooz Kempner…not so much.
Throughout my first year of uni whenever I felt down/lame I would play Queen’s first album in its entirety, from Keep Yourself Alive right through to the instrumental version of Seven Seas of Rhye.
For me there is a Queen song for every occasion. For angry retribution there is Death On Two Legs. For epic triumph there is Princes Of The Universe. For a case of the blues there is My Melancholy Blues and for the first throes of new romance there is The Millionaire Waltz.
Queen itself was a true unit: four incredible musicians who, for two decades, released scores of albums showcasing virtuosity and versatility.
In writing my 2016 solo show about lovin’ Queen I realised that Queen are not a band you grow out of. The music ages with you. A song like March Of The Black Queen doesn’t really belong in any era, it’s timeless. And that’s the word that sums up Freddie Mercury: timeless.
Freddie made music right til the end (some late recordings feature on Made In Heaven) and his frank announcement that he had AIDS just before he died did much to raise awareness of the disease. His death at 45 was a tragedy and being the world’s greatest frontman is his legacy.
And that’s what I’d like to write about last: Freddie the man and the performer. Because ending with his death is too sad and it was unquestionably far too soon.
He commanded the stage like no other, moving with grace and masculinity Elvis could only dream of.
The most famous example of his phenomenal stagecraft is of course Queen’s landmark set at Live Aid in 1985 where an estimated international crowd of 1.5billion were held in the palm of Freddie’s hand.
His strutting power as a frontman is worth nothing though without THAT voice.
Freddie Mercury’s voice is something that can’t be taught. With the range of the highest tenor and the depth of an operatic baritone, he soared through lyrical folk-inspired prog (Nevermore and The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke), gospel (Somebody To Love)...
...and the heaviest of heavy rock (Stone Cold Crazy, guys, treat yourselves to the ultimate traffic jam track).
Queen’s talent as songwriters saw them cover so many genres and succeeding in part due to Freddie’s ease with which he turned THAT voice to literally anything.
In contrast to his onstage persona Freddie was said to be sweet, chilled and even shy behind the scenes. In an 80s interview he joked “you look at me now and I’m really quite boring”.
He was no shrinking violet though. In a recording session in the late 70s a young Sid Vicious was making a nuisance of himself in a neighbouring studio. Squaring up to Mercury, he must have been shocked to be held against a wall, called “Jack Ferocious” and told to “fuck off”.
We don’t have Freddie anymore but he left us with so much of himself that the show truly does go on.
Before he died Freddie said to his manager, Jim Beach, “just never make me boring”. Boring is something Freddie Mercury never could have been and hearing him sing is as exciting to me now as it was in 1989. Freddie…to me you’ll always be the champion of the world.
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