Freddie Mercury: The song that interrupted death and the drag queen nicknames he exchanged with Elton John

Freddie Mercuty died in 1991 in London. It was a shock

“I wasn’t made for heaven. No, I don’t want to go to heaven. Hell is so much better. Think of all the interesting people you’re going to meet there!” he joked in one of his interviews. Having to hide his true identity, fighting a terrifying illness and being branded a pervert are just some of the sad situations that the brilliant Freddie Mercury —who would have turned 78 today— had to face.

Farrock Bulsara’s life (his real name) began on the island of Zanzibar, Tanzania, in East Africa on 5 September 1946. The son of Bomi and Jer Bulsara, he spent most of his childhood in India, where he attended St. Peter’s boarding school. He began taking piano lessons at the age of seven, although no one could have foreseen where his talent and love of music would take him. Freddie Mercury was still a teenager when his entire family had to flee their homeland, fleeing violent uprisings against the Sultan of Zanzibar. Because of their Indian and Persian ancestry, they were at risk of attack like thousands of other Arabs and Indians in Zanzibar, which was once a British colony and later had been ruled by an Arab-majority government.

So the Bulsara family moved to Middlesex in 1964 and from there Freddie joined the blues band Wreckage whilst studying graphic design at Ealing College of Art. A fellow student introduced him to Roger Taylor and Brian May, founding members of a band called Smile. Smile morphed into Queen when Freddie joined Roger and Brian as lead vocalist. The final member of the band, which would remain together for the next 20 years, was bassist John Deacon, who joined in 1971. The rest is history: in 1973 they released their debut album Queen, hailed as one of the most exciting in the history of rock music.

Little Frederick Bulsara and his mother Jer in Zanzibar

By the age of 25, Freddie Mercury was already fronting Queen in London. Though he stayed in the UK and never returned to his childhood home, the first Freddie Mercury museum opened in Zanzibar in 2019 to honour their local hero. The founders created the museum in the hope of reminding people where Freddie really came from, though they had to avoid certain aspects of his life due to the local laws against homosexuality.

Although Freddie was known for his flamboyant personality and often hinted at his sexuality in interviews, he eventually had to keep his relationships with men secret due to widespread homophobia in Britain. Even his bandmates only realised he wasn’t straight when they started noticing male groupies leaving his hotel room. He didn’t have any conversations with them about the subject until later, when the singer casually asked: “Do you realise how much I’ve changed in my private life?”

Her most significant relationship with a man was towards the end of her life. As Irish hairdresser Jim Hutton later wrote in his book Mercury and Me, they met in London’s gay nightclub scene in the mid-1980s, when Hutton was with someone else and did not recognise the famous singer. They later lived together and Freddie referred to Hutton as her husband, but they were never actually able to be a public couple. According to Hutton, the singer had to be shy in interviews, but among friends he would make statements such as: “For the first time I have found a satisfaction within myself.” He only spoke directly about Hutton in one interview, saying: “Piaf did it. So did Streisand. I have a hairdresser husband now!”

Freddie with a cup won in cricket. He was very good

Although the world didn’t learn of Freddie Mercury’s HIV status until 1991, his biographers later reported that he began showing symptoms as early as 1982. The singer reportedly went to a secret doctor’s appointment in New York before appearing on Saturday Night Live, to have a lesion on his tongue checked out. Under US law at the time, he would not have been able to fly to the US if he had tested positive for HIV, potentially delaying his journey to get medical help for these early signs of the virus.

His partner Jim Hutton also later tested positive for HIV. Hutton had been reluctant to take the test and delayed it out of fear, musing: “If I could go back all the time, there would be changes. Freddie and I never talked about AIDS, HIV or anything to do with this terrifying disease.” He added that they should have always used condoms, but never did. They also never discussed their sexual history or previous partners, and Hutton wrote that there seemed little point in doing so as they were not aware at the time that the disease was sexually transmitted.

When Freddie Mercury was first infected with HIV, the much-stigmatised virus was a medical mystery and sufferers faced fierce discrimination from the general public. He therefore avoided going public with his diagnosis, telling only his closest friends. “Freddie wanted his life to be as normal as possible,” said bandmate Brian May. Freddie was even reluctant to tell the rest of Queen at first: as May revealed, they already knew what was going on when he told them of his status, addressing the subject for the first time by saying: “I guess you realise I’m dealing with this disease, and I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want our lives to change, but that’s the situation.”

With Jim Hutton. her last partner

Mercury hid his illness from the public for many reasons, but one factor in his tragic diagnosis was that at the time it was essentially considered a death sentence. GRID (Homosexuality-Related Immune Deficiency) was the original name for AIDS in 1982. Activists had to fight to get governments to recognise the crisis, which meant that medical research progressed very slowly at first.

Brian May later insisted that Freddie narrowly missed the drug combination that would have saved his life, saying: “He was only a few months away. If it had been a bit later he would still be with us, I’m sure.” The life-saving drug cocktail was developed in the 1990s, and Mercury died in 1991.

Freddie at an Elton John concert in 1984. They had both given each other nicknames (Grosby Group)

Although Freddie tried to hide his illness from the public, he was unable to disguise the physical deterioration his body had suffered in recent years. As May wrote in his book Queen In 3-D, one of the main problems was that the disease had caused him to lose most of one of his feet. The singer apparently shocked his bandmates by showing it off during a dinner party. He immediately apologized, telling the guitarist, “Brian, I’m sorry I upset you by showing you this.” May replied, insisting he wasn’t upset by that, but by the confirmation of the pain his friend’s body was in.

Elton John also reflected on Freddie’s declining health during those final months in his memoir, Me: Elton John Official Autobiography, revealing that the singer’s vision had all but disappeared by the end. However, he added that although he was too ill to get out of bed, when John visited him, Freddie behaved as usual, gossiping and doing outrageous things. He also wrote: “I couldn’t work out whether he didn’t realise how close he was to death or whether he knew perfectly well but was determined not to let what would happen to him stop him from being himself.”

Mother Love, the last song recorded by Freddy Mercury before he died and left unfinished. The last verse is sung by Brian May

In his final year of life, the singer conducted his final recording sessions beside Lake Geneva in Switzerland. In a tiny studio owned by Queen, Mercury took shots of vodka to steel himself before laying down a powerful vocal on his final tracks with the full band. As Brian May later reflected in an interview: “We all knew he didn’t have much time left. He was obviously 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 as usual even though his strength was failing. May told The Times that the singer never allowed anyone to coddle him, adding: “Those days towards the end were fabulous, full of laughter and joy, Freddie as wicked as ever.” His final song was a ballad called Mother Love, which Brian wrote in the studio between takes. May also described how Freddie had to strain himself physically while recording the first two verses, but that was all: “We didn’t get to the end. I gave him the last verse and he said, ‘Honey, I’m not feeling very well now, so I’ll come back to it later’ – and he never did.” On the full version of Mother Love, Brian sang the final verse himself.

The last photo of Freddie Mercury in the garden of his house in London, where he was married to his partner, Jim Hutton

The British press has been speculating about Freddie Mercury’s health ever since a Harley Street clinic told a tabloid that his blood had been tested for HIV. In his final days, he made a public statement about AIDS: “Following the enormous speculation that has appeared in the press, I wish to confirm that I have tested positive for HIV and that I have AIDS.”

He died of AIDS-induced bronchopneumonia on November 24, 1991, about 24 hours after making this monumental statement. After his death, newspapers called the singer a pervert and spoke of the disease as a reflection of his morality. Freddie documentary maker James Rogan later recounted: “There were headlines like, ‘I would shoot my son if he had AIDS,’ and headlines that caught you off guard, and you read it and thought, ‘How did that get into the press? ’”

Despite all the negativity and his illness, the singer preferred to spend his final days thinking about Christmas and leaving thoughtful gifts for his loved ones to discover. As his friend Elton John later wrote in a book about AIDS, Love is the Cure, on Christmas morning that year he was shaken by a package that arrived, a painting of one of his favorite artists. The gift had a loving note from Freddie that referenced their drag queen name for each other, and read: “Dear Sharon, I thought you might like this. Love, Melina. Merry Christmas.”