I enjoyed this essay. Freddie was a symbol of outrageousness, imagination, pathos, defiance, cohesion, recklessness, theatre and huge talent to so many people – straight and gay. It is interesting to read how his life affected the gay community in particular.
“You might die soon. Not many generations of people live through their twenties and thirties with this somewhere near the front of their minds.” They certainly did!
…quite right. The idea that “in olden days, everybody died at twenty-two” is of course a mistake arising from averaging out the age of death when more children died before their fifth birthday, than lived past it…
…however at pretty much any point from the outbreak of the Great War until the end of National Service they lived with the possibility of participating in an existential war (so that’s much of the C20th)… …many more people in the C19th (young men, especially) were in dangerous occupations, which included going to sea, and exploring, settling or conquering much of the world…and thus likely to die young by violence, accident or disease… …and then we get back to the C18th, with the French Revolutionary/ Napoleonic Wars (for almost thirty years)…the American War of Independence…the Seven Years War…the War of the Spanish Succession…
…our C17th Wars with the French, the Dutch and each other…
…our C16th Wars with the Spanish, the French, the Scots and the Irish (and again, each other)…
…our C15th “War of the Roses”, immediately preceded by the Hundred Years War with the French…and so on.
In reality, my generation (I’m 64) are practically the first ever where young men (and some women)…didn’t live with the likelihood of sudden death…
All quite true, but war isn’t, of course, the only – or even the main – cause of death. Before antibiotics, even a small scratch could kill you. Diseases we now shrug off were frequently fatal. Syphilis was the AIDS of its time, and there were no drugs to treat it apart from mercury, which was itself a killer. Tuberculosis was rampant.
I was struck the other day by just how many of the great composers died at what we’d now consider young ages – considering the amount they wrote, it’s staggering. Here are some of the most famous (and prolific) composers who died in the first half of the 19th century:
Beethoven: 56
Schubert: 31
Mendelssohn: 38
Chopin: 39
Weber: 40
There were plenty of composers who lived far longer, certainly, but this does make the point.
Then again, childbirth and its after-effects not infrequently killed women, something again taken for granted.
In other words, Philip Hensher’s assumption that AIDS was a unique occurrence and before that, most people assumed that they would live to a ripe old age, is total bilge.
As Tom Lehrer remarked: “It is people like that who make you realise how little you have achieved. Do you know that when Mozart was my age he had been dead for two years?”
I wouldn’t call it total bilge but certainly the author uses Freddy’s fabulous talent to make a rather unrelated point. It’s easy to live and die quietly when you are not famous but being gay in Freddie Mercury’s time means you can live gay and write about it semi-famously, or die with an outsized portion of grieving. I don’t think Freddie made the out-going gay community any more out-rageous than it naturally is. And that only continued with the LGBTQABCXYZ movement.
I asked my 35 and 37 year olds if AIDS impacted their young adult lives and the answer was a definitive YES !
Raymond Inauen
2 years ago
I guess you could say the same for the momentary situation, f**k it! So many things are being vilified and so much is being polarized! We need some creative relief! I want to break free!
Let’s Go Brandon ! That’s easier to say than F*** J** B**** !
Ian Stewart
2 years ago
It would be nice if you acknowledged not just lesbians but his fellow band members in Queen, without whom Freddie would have been an also ran.
I recall the music press in the seventies berating Queen for their departure from hard rock to glamorous pop, and although it may have been Freddie leading the way, it was his band colleagues who chose to accompany him on that path as they were ridiculed by ALL the rock music community. They took some big risks, the video of them cross dressing for ‘I want to break free’ killing their success in the USA, and they were all very competent writers and musicians who could easily have left and joined ‘serious’ rock bands.
Lord Rochester
2 years ago
Good piece. But there’s a fair bit of bisexual erasure here, too. Mercury and Elliot, for sure. This always strikes me as odd when Mercury is written about: he moved around the Kinsey scale in his life and didn’t just steadfastly inhabit one end. I’m not sure where this need to make him a “gay man” comes from.
David B
2 years ago
Just a quibble, but AIDS wasn’t described until a few isolated cases from San Francisco and New York were separately reported in MMWR (the CDC house journal) in 1982, and had several other names before settling in AIDS. HIV was not determined to be the causative agent until 1983 when Luc Montagnier established the link.
Jon Redman
2 years ago
Is anyone else getting bored of being informed that you loved Freddie Mercury? I quite liked Don’t Stop Me Now and Who Wants To Live Forever. Both were quite pleasant pop tunes. When Elton John dies, no doubt it will turn out that “everyone” including myself loved him too, which will come as just as much of a surprise. I probably love Boy George, too.
Other than being a bit irresponsible in a showbiz way, none of them seems especially interesting. What am I missing?
Jon Redman
2 years ago
Indeed. I understand that Freddie, whom we all loved, used to throw parties for which he hired dwarves. The dwarves were dressed in loin cloths, spray-painted gold, and required to stand motionless around the room, holding aloft bowls of cocaine for the guests’ use.
Dwarfs, please (as in Snow White). Dwarves were invented by Tolkien.
Little things…
Dustshoe Richinrut
2 years ago
It was his creative drive that must have kept Freddie going. He faced the tough final years with dignity. I think then he must have wanted to emphasise his creativity as being his essence. Freddie did not have to be provocative, nor flamboyant or outrageous to make good music. Those things could just as easily have been added as spice to his works — and they were. He knew how to entertain with aplomb. But in spite of all the glamour of being a rock star, Freddie Mercury must have loved making music. The presence of the disease caused Freddie, as I saw it, to focus his mind on creating more beautiful sounds.
Last edited 2 years ago by Dustshoe Richinrut
Gayle Rosenthal
2 years ago
SInce I raised 3 boys I prefered they not be in my boys schools or anywhere around them. It’s not “bad”, but I do feel that the oversexualized adult communities or all kinds are insensitive to parental rights and preferences. This article is just more propaganda for the movement.
Karen Burgess
2 years ago
do you know who Kevin Spacey is?
Dan Croitoru
2 years ago
Who or what is censoring you? Unherd or your desire for likes under your post?
Gayle Rosenthal
2 years ago
Julie you have a very black/white attitude about this topic. Why the assault on your fellow readers ? Makes no sense.
I enjoyed this essay. Freddie was a symbol of outrageousness, imagination, pathos, defiance, cohesion, recklessness, theatre and huge talent to so many people – straight and gay. It is interesting to read how his life affected the gay community in particular.
Somebody is outraged even by the question
“You might die soon. Not many generations of people live through their twenties and thirties with this somewhere near the front of their minds.”
They certainly did!
…quite right. The idea that “in olden days, everybody died at twenty-two” is of course a mistake arising from averaging out the age of death when more children died before their fifth birthday, than lived past it…
…however at pretty much any point from the outbreak of the Great War until the end of National Service they lived with the possibility of participating in an existential war (so that’s much of the C20th)…
…many more people in the C19th (young men, especially) were in dangerous occupations, which included going to sea, and exploring, settling or conquering much of the world…and thus likely to die young by violence, accident or disease…
…and then we get back to the C18th, with the French Revolutionary/ Napoleonic Wars (for almost thirty years)…the American War of Independence…the Seven Years War…the War of the Spanish Succession…
…our C17th Wars with the French, the Dutch and each other…
…our C16th Wars with the Spanish, the French, the Scots and the Irish (and again, each other)…
…our C15th “War of the Roses”, immediately preceded by the Hundred Years War with the French…and so on.
In reality, my generation (I’m 64) are practically the first ever where young men (and some women)…didn’t live with the likelihood of sudden death…
All quite true, but war isn’t, of course, the only – or even the main – cause of death. Before antibiotics, even a small scratch could kill you. Diseases we now shrug off were frequently fatal. Syphilis was the AIDS of its time, and there were no drugs to treat it apart from mercury, which was itself a killer. Tuberculosis was rampant.
I was struck the other day by just how many of the great composers died at what we’d now consider young ages – considering the amount they wrote, it’s staggering. Here are some of the most famous (and prolific) composers who died in the first half of the 19th century:
Beethoven: 56
Schubert: 31
Mendelssohn: 38
Chopin: 39
Weber: 40
There were plenty of composers who lived far longer, certainly, but this does make the point.
Then again, childbirth and its after-effects not infrequently killed women, something again taken for granted.
In other words, Philip Hensher’s assumption that AIDS was a unique occurrence and before that, most people assumed that they would live to a ripe old age, is total bilge.
As Tom Lehrer remarked: “It is people like that who make you realise how little you have achieved. Do you know that when Mozart was my age he had been dead for two years?”
Wolfgang Amadeus, 1756 – 1791.
I wouldn’t call it total bilge but certainly the author uses Freddy’s fabulous talent to make a rather unrelated point. It’s easy to live and die quietly when you are not famous but being gay in Freddie Mercury’s time means you can live gay and write about it semi-famously, or die with an outsized portion of grieving. I don’t think Freddie made the out-going gay community any more out-rageous than it naturally is. And that only continued with the LGBTQABCXYZ movement.
I asked my 35 and 37 year olds if AIDS impacted their young adult lives and the answer was a definitive YES !
I guess you could say the same for the momentary situation, f**k it! So many things are being vilified and so much is being polarized! We need some creative relief! I want to break free!
We are too nice to use it. Our wives would not approve.
you don’t know the half of it
Let’s Go Brandon ! That’s easier to say than F*** J** B**** !
It would be nice if you acknowledged not just lesbians but his fellow band members in Queen, without whom Freddie would have been an also ran.
I recall the music press in the seventies berating Queen for their departure from hard rock to glamorous pop, and although it may have been Freddie leading the way, it was his band colleagues who chose to accompany him on that path as they were ridiculed by ALL the rock music community. They took some big risks, the video of them cross dressing for ‘I want to break free’ killing their success in the USA, and they were all very competent writers and musicians who could easily have left and joined ‘serious’ rock bands.
Good piece. But there’s a fair bit of bisexual erasure here, too. Mercury and Elliot, for sure. This always strikes me as odd when Mercury is written about: he moved around the Kinsey scale in his life and didn’t just steadfastly inhabit one end. I’m not sure where this need to make him a “gay man” comes from.
Just a quibble, but AIDS wasn’t described until a few isolated cases from San Francisco and New York were separately reported in MMWR (the CDC house journal) in 1982, and had several other names before settling in AIDS. HIV was not determined to be the causative agent until 1983 when Luc Montagnier established the link.
Is anyone else getting bored of being informed that you loved Freddie Mercury? I quite liked Don’t Stop Me Now and Who Wants To Live Forever. Both were quite pleasant pop tunes. When Elton John dies, no doubt it will turn out that “everyone” including myself loved him too, which will come as just as much of a surprise. I probably love Boy George, too.
Other than being a bit irresponsible in a showbiz way, none of them seems especially interesting. What am I missing?
Indeed. I understand that Freddie, whom we all loved, used to throw parties for which he hired dwarves. The dwarves were dressed in loin cloths, spray-painted gold, and required to stand motionless around the room, holding aloft bowls of cocaine for the guests’ use.
Dwarfs, please (as in Snow White). Dwarves were invented by Tolkien.
Little things…
It was his creative drive that must have kept Freddie going. He faced the tough final years with dignity. I think then he must have wanted to emphasise his creativity as being his essence. Freddie did not have to be provocative, nor flamboyant or outrageous to make good music. Those things could just as easily have been added as spice to his works — and they were. He knew how to entertain with aplomb. But in spite of all the glamour of being a rock star, Freddie Mercury must have loved making music. The presence of the disease caused Freddie, as I saw it, to focus his mind on creating more beautiful sounds.
SInce I raised 3 boys I prefered they not be in my boys schools or anywhere around them. It’s not “bad”, but I do feel that the oversexualized adult communities or all kinds are insensitive to parental rights and preferences. This article is just more propaganda for the movement.
do you know who Kevin Spacey is?
Who or what is censoring you? Unherd or your desire for likes under your post?
Julie you have a very black/white attitude about this topic. Why the assault on your fellow readers ? Makes no sense.