Freddie Mercury
Freddie was born on the island Zanzibar that now is part from Tanzania. His parants where both British, as his father worked over there as a diplomate. Freddie was at a boarding-school in Bombay, India till his 13th, when his family went back to England. After his secondary education, he went to the Ealing College of Art, where also Pete Townshend from the Who, Ron Wood from The Faces and Rolling Stones and Roger Ruskin Spear from The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band were studying. He left the college with a diploma for art and design that is similar to a academic degree. With his artisic feeling he was, as most artstudents, intrigued by the possibilities that popmusic give. In the band Sour Milk Sea and Wreckage he began to learn to write his own songs and cultivy his stage caracter. he gave hisself the name Mercury, after the mythologic messenger from the gods. He presumable had the feeling he had a message for someone.
May and Taylor wanted to listen to Freddies ideas, however May had the intention the continue with his study. The formula from Mercury was simpel enough: combine the 'heavy' approach from Led Zeppelin with a new kind of visual flair. Extravagance + popfeeling = succes. Why not? In that time David Bowie was still a folksinger with 1 co-incidence hit. Glitter and glam where not discovered, (however Freddie was the man to do that) and of course the rolmodel Jagger, that has with a lot of succes practised extravagance. Let we call our band Queen, says freddie. Why not? On the college of art we learned to be more fashionaware, allways be a step in front, told freddie his new colleagues. The bassist Tom Staffell from Smile, was the person that brought Freddie in contact with Brian and Roger. Brian still knows that Freddie, when he came to the smile performances, he allways be ready with suggestions: Why do u waiste your time with this? shouted Freddie. You have to make more original material and performe it more demostrative. If I was your leadsinger i should do that! May and Tayler where because of their experiences with Smile become shudder. May had build a guitar with Utmost precision, that was as good as or better than any guitar available at that time. Freddie had very resolute ideas about presentation and performing. They where all intelligent and competent people, that could get easely well payed jobs in 'the real world'. So if they started a band they would take it seriously, so that it can (and have to ) be a succes. So they started tranquil. Hole 1970 they where repeating and writing (all three wrote songs) and where planed on their material, while the appearance mainly stayed limited to parties from friends. None of the three would rush anything. After (that's the legend) they worn six basist, came the lucky one, John Deacon nr. 7.
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