NEWS POST DAILY
17 February 2016
Freddie Mercury was the face of Queen’s wildly popular mixture of hard rock, pop, cabaret, glam and opera in the ’70s, before becoming one the the AIDS virus’ most well-known casualties in the ’90s. He died on Nov. 24, 1991, just two days after confirming rumours that he had the disease.
At Queen’s zenith, Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon forged a completely new hybrid that centered on Mercury’s brand of impish decadence, one that ultimately became bound up in the mythology of his early passing, as well. But the group, and Mercury, was always more than the sum of its out-sized bacchanalia. Queen’s signature creative moment was also Mercury’s, as he layered his own voice into a choir for “Bohemian Rhapsody,” a painstaking process in the days of reel-to-reel tape. Over the years, Mercury also wrote “Killer Queen,” “Somebody to Love,” “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and “We Are the Champions” for Queen, while issuing a well-received solo reinterpretation of the Platters’ “The Great Pretender” in 1987.