A lot of people know his music with queen, do you know the man?

Whilst growing up like a lot of people, the next queen song was never far away, and I bought it, mainly in picture disc form (vinyl) and 12 inch discs as opposed to 7. I made a lot of money off those discs when old Freddy died, I sold them at a local Saturday market, you know the type, turn up with a table, empty the boot of your car onto it, and sell off your unwanted items, for a small daily charge.

Now someone sent me an email last week, and said look into old Freddie's history, it intrigued me as to why someone asked that, so I did, and wow what I found surprised me.

I assumed wrongly the he was a local born guy, as he spoke perfect English with a localized accent, and sang more or less the same. To find out he was born abroad to a religion I had never even heard of came as very much a surprise, and made the dig all the more worthwhile.

Zoroastrian religion.

Ever heard of it? me neither, though apparently there are 6000 of these people in the UK that are of this religion, and 120,000 world wide. Allow me to give you a quote from an article I am going to use in this article quite extensively.

Just like Mercury himself, the occasion [of his funeral], which the singer had spent weeks planning in meticulous detail, was a bewildering mixture of flamboyance and secrecy, witnessing the collision of two very different worlds--the modern world of rock music and the ancient world of the Zoroastrian religion, in which Mercury had been brought up.

Zoroastrianism is one of the world's oldest and most exclusive religions. Founded by the prophet Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) in 600 B.C., it has only 120,000 members worldwide and just 6,000 in Britain. Its followers see life as a battle between two spirits, Spenta Mainyu, the "Bounteous Spirit," and Angra Mainyu, the "Destructive Spirit." Whichever one a Zoroastrian lives his life by determines where he or she goes to after death. The final resting place is the Zoroastrian equivalent to the Christian heaven or hell.

In the UK Freddie was never far from the limelight, never shy to say anything he wanted, and he spent a large amount of his time in the most expensive nightclubs, surrounding himself with hangers on and freeloaders.

Being gay!

When he came out as gay, the word had only just been hijacked in the UK to mean same sex intercourse. Growing up for my age group it was taught that the word meant being care free and happy. So when old people said I feel gay, you knew they were feeling happy.

Now allow me to show you some more text from the same article relating to Freddie mercury's life and then his thoughts.

For the first fourteen years of his life Farokh Bulsara had some of the world's most exotic places for a playground... Mercury's earliest years were spent on two remote idyllic islands, Zanzibar and Pemba, which lie in the Indian Ocean, off the east coast of Africa...

When he was five years old, Freddie was taken to another exotic place, the teeming Indian city of Bombay...

Mercury's parents were both Parsees and devout followers of the Zoroastrian religion, and it was in Bombay that the largest Parsee community in the world was to be found. In the tenth century, after the Islamic invasion of Persia, the Parsees fled to India, where they were free to practice their religion. India had a reputation as one of the most tolerant countries in the world when it came to religion, and in Bombay, with its polyglot population, many of the world's religious groups--Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jains, and Zoroastrians--lived side by side.

The Parsees were one of the most economically successful communities in Bombay. In their early days they had adopted the language and dress of India's largest religious group, the Hindus, but they later exchanged them for the customs and way of life of India's former colonial masters, the British. So the young Freddie was to receive a typical British public school education, even if it was achieved thousands of miles away from Eton and Harrow.

India, at the time the young Mercury arrived, had a population of 400 million, and Bombay was its largest city--and the world's seventh biggest. A harbor port lying on India's western seaboard overlooking the Arabian Sea, it was the country's financial and commercial center. Bombay was a fantastic place for Freddie to grow up in. He loved playing in its winding, narrow streets and visiting the beautiful Hanging Gardens in the affluent Malabar Hill area close by the Parsee hospital. He loved going to the bazaar to watch the snake charmers weave their magical, hypnotic tunes, or to gape wide-eyed at the fakirs, Indian holy men, lying on their beds of nails. In those crammed markets he would watch the traders sell the city's most exotic wares as he feasted on mangoes, coconuts, and litchis. In the afternoon he would go to the harbor and look out on a sea of ships laden with tea, cotton, and rice, ready to set off on voyages to distant parts.

Mercury enjoyed his boarding school, too. He excelled in sports, particularly cricket, boxing, and table tennis. The fast, furious pace of table tennis--involving a mixture of dexterity and speed--was something he was especially skilled in and he became one of the school champions at the sport. It was at school in

Bombay that Mercury also began the piano lessons that were to be crucial to those florid, bombastic compositions for which Queen became known. The city was a bizarre musical melting pot, where the eleven-year-old was simultaneously exposed to the classics and operas that his cultured parents loved, the meandering rhythms and romance of Indian music, and a pinch of that relatively new phenomenon, rock and roll, which was slowly beginning to invade the world.

Religion, too, played an important role in Mercury's life, and he went with other Zoroastrian youngsters to the fire temples where the Parsees worship. The sacred fires are a crucial part of their religion, and prayers are said in front of them as an affirmation of a believer's faith. They are kept permanently burning--in some parts of Iran there are fires that are two thousand years old--and are tended five times a day by the priests of the temple.

I will finish off with some of his own words & a video of course.

dressed in white singlet with a plastic beaker of champagne in one hand and a king-sized filter-tipped cigarette in the other, was in a relaxed and happy mood as he told me how he believed in living life to the very hilt. Leaning forward conspiratorially, his big brown eyes flickering with glee, he told me, "Excess is part of my nature. To me dullness is a disease. I really need danger and excitement. I was not made for staying indoors and watching television. I am definitely a sexual person. I like to [have sexual intercourse] all the time. I used to say that I would go with anyone, but these days I have become much more choosy.

"I love to surround myself with strange and interesting people because they make me feel more alive. Extremely straight people bore me stiff. I love freaky people around me.

"By nature I'm restless and highly strung, so I wouldn't make a good family man. Deep down inside I am a very emotional person, a person of real extremes, and often that's destructive to myself and others."

[Speaking about a time when he was involved in a violent fight at the New York club Gilded Grape, Mercury said:] "Life is for living. Believe me, I would be doing those things and having that philosophy even if I wasn't successful."

Mercury was stopped in full flow when I asked him if there was anything the man who had everything still wanted. In a moment of pure drama Mercury, ever the performer, looked up at me with eyes that now looked soft and soulful, paused for what seemed like an eternity, and said, "Happiness. I don't think I've got that."

Reading the full article for me.

Was like getting a rare insight into someone I felt I already knew, then feeling shocked that I never knew anything about him at all. All I really knew was knowledge given to me spoon fed style by the British press. All I really knew was his music and at one time he appeared straight and at others he appeared full on gay, I had known he had been lonely or he would never have spent to much time trying to be popular every night in nightclubs.

If you liked his music, take some time to read this whole article here.

What more fitting to end with than the show must go on!

Verdict = I knew nothing at all!

Image pixabay.

Bonus video below.