Bohemian Rhapsody, the Freddie Mercury bio-pic, is in cinemas this week, after a tortuous decade-long obstacle course where A-list screenwriters and leading men were hired and dropped and what has emerged, according to those who knew him, is a rose-tinted spectacle.
25 years dead he still arouses great interest, adulation and astonishment. Described by a biographer as “flawed and frail and flamboyant, a cursed exotic, a damaged diva”, he was outrageously shocking and shy. Early on he organised album launches with canapés served on the torsos of naked dwarves; commissioned hookers to mud-wrestle and perform live lesbian sex acts backstage for his guests; and unnerved a young Michael Jackson by chopping out lines of coke in front of him. And latterly appeared to have a death wish as he defied the AIDs storm, doing “everything with everybody” according to an actress friend. He died of AIDs-related pneumonia.
Born 5 September 1946 6.30am (astrotheme) Zanzibar, Tanzania to Zoroastrian Parsi parents he was despatched off to boarding school at 8, which gave him extreme separation anxiety. At 18 he had to flee from a revolution with his family to London. Aged 24 he formed the band Queen and stormed onto the music scene. He had a four-octave voice range, an electric stage presence and wrote over half of the songs on Queen’s Greatest Hits album. Queen gave over 700 concerts worldwide, always on a grand scale. He said “We’re the Cecil B DeMille of rock n’ roll.”
On this birth time, which is unverified, he had a Virgo Sun on his Ascendant making for a larger-than-life personality; with a maverick 10th house Uranus opposition a 4th house Sagittarius Moon. His Uranus was in a volatile and adventurous trine to an exuberant Mars, Jupiter, Venus in Libra; with the bleak, depressive Saturn Pluto in Leo hovering around the cusp of his 12th.
His creative 5th and 7th harmonics were strongly aspected; as was his genius/breakthrough 13H; and his super-star 22nd.
When he was diagnosed with HIV in 1987 tr Saturn was opposition his Uranus and tr Uranus was conjunct his Sun de-railing his plans for his life. His Solar Arc Moon was also opposition his Saturn/Pluto midpoint, moving over his Pluto just before his death four and a half years later.
A definite one-off.
Hello Marjorie,
Just saw the movie and was wondering re their greatest performance and probably the best rock performance ever
that was done by Queen at Live Aid on July 13 1985 starting at 18.41p.m., in Wembley Stadium, London.
The set lasted about 25 minutes.
Any thoughts? All the best.
Michael
The song of his “The Great Pretender” is absolutely riveting. Magical and unlike any other singer ….he had something either spiritual or maybe evil going on in his life/karma.
It’s troubling how tragic the male species is in this world, and the damage they can do not only to themselves but to others upon the world’s stage.