Freddie Mercury - The Great Pretender (not encoded - sorry about the last post - still had the encoder going)
MadCat
THE GREAT PRETENDER
Freddie Mercury, lead singer of British rock group QUEEN, who died of AIDS in 1991,
hid his Asian past.
Turned out immaculately in a loose-fitting sudreh - a shirt of white muslin symbolising his
innocence and purity - the proud eight-year-old boy appeared indistinguishable from dozens of
young Parsee Indians undergoing their initiation into the Zoroastrian faith.
With rice grains and rose petals flecking his neatly clipped hair, little Farok Bulsara left the
traditional Navjote ceremony to smiles from his parents, Bomi and Jer, and returned to his
boarding school where he was already being groomed from a privileged colonial adulthood.
That was never to be, but another infinitely greater elite awaited young Farok. As Freddie
Mercury, the brilliant singer of the rock band Queen, he became one of the world's pop icons.
But few of the millions of fans who mourned his death in November 1991 could have had any idea
that he was, in fact, Asia's first rock superstar.
So why did Mercury, who might have become a respected and high-profile spokesman for the new
generation of integrated British Asians, so ruthlessly deny his roots? And why only now - five
years after he died of AIDS-related illness - are those roots being publicity exposed in a
collection of previously unseen photographs recently exhibited in London?
To discover the answer we must start with his childhood. His father, Bomi, a middle-ranking
cashier at the High Court in the then British-controlled East African island of Zanzibar where
Farok was born at the Government Hospital on September, 5 1946, hoped his son might become a
doctor, lawyer or perhaps even an airline pilot, a profession to which the Parsees increasingly
gravitated.
His mother, Jer, who relished the cocktail party lifestyle of a civil servant's wife, had similar
dreams for her son. To ensure that he had the best education possible they sent him back to
India, their homeland, and enrolled him at the exclusive St Peter's School in Panchgani, several
hundred kilometres from Bombay in the cool hills of Maharastra.
It seemed their wishes would be fulfilled. Farok, who was seven when he arrived at the school,
was a bright pupil and he prospered, though, inevitably, he was nicknamed "Bucktooth" by his
fellow pupils.
At the age of eight he met his maternal aunt Sheroo Khory when she visited him at the school.
Sheroo now 74, says: "I remember him with great affection. Even before I got to the gate, he saw
me and came out to greet me. Then he showed me round with great enthusiasm. He was fond of
school and made friends easily."
Mohammadi Dholkawala, one of Farok's classmates, remembers how the boy topped the class in most
subjects in the six years he was at St Peters.
Yet it was not only in academic work that Mercury found his metier, Sheroo says: "Farok bagged
so many prizes at school. He was an all-round junior champion. He excelled at everything -
boxing, fencing, table tennis, you name it. He was also a very talented artist."
But it was his talent for music which really startled her. Once, while Farok's parents were
visiting, his mother began playing the piano and he copied it right away.
"He was so small that he had to turn the stool up on its end to reach the keys," says Mrs Khory.
"Then he began the tune that his mother had just played. I asked him who taught him and he
replied that he'd heard mummy playing it.
"Then another time he was listening to the radio. It was Indian music and when it was over he
played the same tune. Still, we didn't believe he could do it right off like that. We thought
someone must be teaching him.
"But he did once more and we realised he had real talent. That's when his parents arranged for
him have special music lessons at school. He must have been about nine or ten."
By his mid-teens, there was only one slight concern. Though still neatly groomed, and with his
black hair clipped respectfully short, young Farok Bulsara was among a small group of pupils who
had cottoned on to a disturbing new import from Western society: rock'n'roll.
Supplementing their shirts with bootlace ties and sporting dark sunglasses, the boys had even
gone as far as forming the school's first pop group, daringly named The Hectics after Farok's
flamboyant piano playing style. About this time his excellent academic record began to falter.
Although the boys were never allowed to perform outside school, Nariman Khory recalls what was
probably Farok's first public performance when the family went for dinner and the band at an
Italian restaurant struck up How Much Is That Doggy In The Window.
Aware that Farok was humming along, a member of the band asked him to join in and he took to the
stage and sang. "After the song he was all flushed and shy, but while he was on the stage you
could see that he had presence, even at that age," says Nariman.
Some 15 years later, the boy's name having been changed to Freddie Mercury and the piano switched
for a twirling microphone stand, his showmanship was to become the trademark of the world's most
successful glam-rock band, Queen.
By then all traces of India had been removed. Though his aquiline nose, flinty eyes and deep
olive complexion gave him a Latino or vaguely Oriental look, few of his many millions of fans
ever guessed they were hero-worshipping the first Asian pop star.
Mercury was certainly not about to alert them to the fact. In the few personal interviews that
he granted, he deliberately obscured his past, divulging only that hailed from Zanzibar. Some
biographers even referred to him as Persian - which, since the Parsees resettled in the Bombay
region around the ninth century and consider themselves Indian, is stretching the truth.
What brought Mercury to Europe was changing face of African politics. Fearful that their
comfortable position might be jeopardised by Zanzibar's independence, Bomi and Jer joined
thousands of Asian families seeking a secure future in prosperous Britain.
Along with 17-year old Farok and his sister Kashmira, 10 they packed their belongings and arrived
in decidedly unexotic Feltham, a London dormitory town under the Heathrow flight-path.
As they moved into Gladstone Avenue, a dreary cul-de-sac of 1930's semi-detached houses,
residents peeping through their frilly net curtains at the area's first influx of Asian
immigrants raised eyebrows at Jer's traditional sari. The unfamiliar scent of spices wafting
from the kitchen window further aroused their suspicion.
If their neighbours found themselves lapsing into prejudice, their fears were soon allayed.
Within a month, recalls Derick Burgess, who lived nearby, the Bulsaras looked every inch the
English family.
The Bulsaras maintained links with the Parsee community. During holidays from Marks & Spencer's
Hounslow branch, where she rose to supervisor, Jer returned with Bomi -who worked for an
airline-to visit Freddie's grandfather, a respected priest in their home town of Bulsar on the
Gujarati coast.
Freddie, who had changed his name while still in India, rarely accompanied them. Reshaping his
hair, first into Jimi Hendrix-like bush and later into the long-back, feathered-top cut that
epitomised the 70's, he turned his back on his upbringing. After he left Ealing College of Arts
and his pop career began to take off, Bulsar, Bombay and the Parsees were never mentioned.
As his reputation grew, Mercury became more and more secretive. He instructed Bomi and Jer never
to speak about his past, and they still respect his wishes today. Visitors are politely turned
away from the affluent Nottingham suburb of Mapperley, where 88-year old Mr Bulsara and his wife,
who is about 10 years younger, moved into a newly built bungalow to be close to Kashmira and her
family earlier this year.
Burgess, a regular guest during the Gladstone Ave days, says Freddie was equally coy about his
sexuality. He would arrive in his Rolls Royce with his female companion of many years, Mary
Austin, but never with his boyfriend, Jim Hutton.
Whatever his fans would have made of his gay Indian background is, in any case, of no concern to
Mr and Mrs Bulsara. To his doting parents he was, and remains, a brilliant and beloved son. As
Jer Bulsara wistfully said, while providing the captions for the photographs on exhibition: "This
was out baby."
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mad...@mulder.crc.net.au
http://www.crc.net.au/~madcat/pussy.htm
prop...@aol.com
In article <5a4dkg$s...@atlas.bit.net.au>, mad...@mulder.crc.net.au
(MadCat) writes:
>THE GREAT PRETENDER
>
>Freddie Mercury, lead singer of British rock group QUEEN, who died of
AIDS in
>1991,
>hid his Asian past.
You say this was an Australian article? It seems kind of biased to me,
like someone is trying to make a good story out of somethng that isn't.
Freddie was secretive about all aspects of his private life; one would
expect his childhood to be included. He didn't 'hide' his past very well,
or we wouldn't know all this. It doesn't seem to me that he was less
forthcoming about this than about the rest of his private life.
Other opinions?
Mike
"I'm so hip, I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis."
Julie M. Barton
Isn't it generally believed that "Mustapha" was a tribute to his
roots? If so, he was hardly hiding his heritage!
Julie
prop...@aol.com wrote:
>In article <5a4dkg$s...@atlas.bit.net.au>, mad...@mulder.crc.net.au
>(MadCat) writes:
>>THE GREAT PRETENDER
>>
>>Freddie Mercury, lead singer of British rock group QUEEN, who died of
>AIDS in
>>1991,
>>hid his Asian past.
>You say this was an Australian article? It seems kind of biased to me,
KWORKMAN
In article <5a6m5j$3...@server1.erinet.com>, jba...@erinet.com says...
>
>Isn't it generally believed that "Mustapha" was a tribute to his
>roots? If so, he was hardly hiding his heritage!
>
>Julie
I don't see how Mustapha is a tribute to Freddie's roots. It sounds
Arabic/Islamic, and Freddie was neither. (I know some say it has some
Farsi words in it too, but Farsi is the native language of Persians from
Iran, not Parsis from India, which is Freddie's background.) I must
confess the song Mustapha bewilders me. The only sense I can make of it
is that Freddie felt like playing around with Arabic-sounding music and
Arabic-sounding words. This is of course IMHO--I mean no offense.
Katie
Patt B.
> confess the song Mustapha bewilders me. The only sense I can make of it
> is that Freddie felt like playing around with Arabic-sounding music and
> Arabic-sounding words. This is of course IMHO--I mean no offense.
Katie,
You weren't in the least offensive. Throughout his career, Freddie experimented with a variety of
different sounds and syllables. patt.
"Are you ready for some entertainment? Are you ready for a show?"