Queen’s front-man Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara on Thursday September 5, 1946. He would have turned 65 yesterday.
Mercury, who’s parents identified as British-Indian, was born in Zanzibar and grew up there and in India until his mid-teens before his family moved to England. He’s atop of the list of Rolling Stone Magazine’s 100 Greatest Singers list. In 2006, Time Asia named him as one of the most influential Asian heroes of the past 60 years. And today, Google.com, the most popular front page in the world, commemorated Mercury with a 98-second "Google Doodle" video set to Queen’s "Don’t Stop Me Now."
According to a former partner, Mercury was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987 but didn’t go public with the news until 1991. A day after he made the announcement, we lost Mercury to complications from AIDS.
Even in his last days, Mercury threw himself into his love of music and shared his majestic four-octave range with us. Queen’s Brian May told Rolling Stone that Mercury could hardly walk when the band recorded "The Show Must Go On" in 1990.
Queens’s "The Show Must Go on"
"I said, ‘Fred, I don’t know if this is going to be possible to sing,’" May says. "And he went, ‘I’ll fucking do it, darling’ — vodka down — and went in and killed it, completely lacerated that vocal."
A snippet from the lyrics Mercury sang that day.
My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies,
Fairy tales of yesterday, will grow but never die,
I can fly, my friends!The Show must go on!
Yeah! The Show must go on!
I’ll face it with a grin! I’m never giving in!
On with the show!
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