Sunday Morning Post

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When Freddie Mercury sang a song, it was as if he was telling the grim reaper to give him just a little more time. He didn’t much care about leaving too soon, but he just wanted to make the song count.

He used to say he didn’t concern himself with things like mortality. To his way of thinking, dying was gonna happen no matter how much you cried about it. So why not raise a middle finger to the fucking thing and do whatever it is you were meant to be doing in the first place?

His talent was a deconstruction of the white picket fenced logic that was busy getting the world nowhere fast. He made magic with the absurdities and then he dressed them up in felt tipped bullets and made fire. He was a scoundrel and a prince, a king and a queen. He was heart and soul in a world that never seems to have enough of it.

He had the remarkable ability to treat each and every song as if it had never happened before. No matter if he’d written it years earlier and no matter if he had belted out the lyrics a thousand times since. Because that song, the one he was singing in that moment . . . it had never happened before.

His music possessed a desperate immediacy that felt wonderfully illogical. It felt the way music was supposed to feel when you were young and pissed off at the world. He was a totem to a generation of kids who wanted to believe in something, because he threw a wicked curve ball at the consecrated rules. He let everyone know it was okay to expect your music to behave differently. He was a cubist with his lyricism, a maestro with his vocals. And he knew us in a way we didn’t even know ourselves.

It really is impossible to believe he’s been gone almost twenty seven years, and that’s because his music will never go to sleep. I like to think the genius part of him went on a mystical vacation to a much better place than this.

His heart and soul, well . . it’s still working the room.

 

35 thoughts on “Sunday Morning Post”

  2. B,

    What a wonderful review of the man who was Freddie Mercury. You have managed in so few words to capture the essence of who he was. And you are so right.

    His music will never sleep. He is Haydn, Debussy, Stravinsky… musicians whose music was innovative and still here today and will be for all the tomorrows.

    Beautifully done, mi amigo…

    Q

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  4. Had to say I too was a fan. I still weep when I hear, Find me Somebody to Love. I’m crying as I write this. He was so poignantly sincere as if he spoke for all of us, panther like with an angel’s halo, that taut, gleaming chest harboring a heart the size of the moon. What a fucking legacy. Sigh

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  5. Beautifully done, Marc. (yeah like that’s an unusual occurrence from you) Anyway, Freddie was the best and like most of the greats, he didn’t dwell on it. Had he lived I think we would be listening to some pretty marvelous stuff. After all, that’s what he left us.

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  7. Wow, just wow. I’ve been trying to figure out what it is about Freddie and I think you’ve hit a part of it right in the solar plexus. I really do feel listening to each song it as though that is the last song in the world. There will never be another song written or performed. He just seems to put so much of everything, no matter the song.

    The thing I’ve been thinking about this weekend as I’ve continued my own Queen wallow is how he did that no matter the song. I have Queen playing on random on Spotify through my Echo and it just went from Get Down, Make Love to Innuendo. And somewhere soon, it will likely go from Teo Torriatte to I’m in Love With My Car. My point? That Freddie and the boys had this incredible ability to right some of the most ribald, raunchy songs (Fat-Bottomed Girls. Hello?), some remarkably silly songs, and then this wealth of such soul-searching beauty in so many other songs. And, yes, every one feels like it is the only song Freddie cared about while he sang it. Doesn’t matter if it’s Tie Your Mother Down or Love of My Life. He sang like he meant it.

    What I find fascinating is how many songs in his final years were premonitions of what was to come for him and … demands … of how it would be. Who Wants to Live Forever. The Show Must Go On. He sang with real pain and real love. He was a showman, but he used that showmanship to connect and bare his soul in a way that few do. And he still had fun doing it.

    Ok, I’ll stop now.

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    • Mark,

      First off, this is a carazy fun comment to read, so thank you for it.

      The rest, yes. To all of what you’re saying. And how you get it, and know. And those songs, fucking A right. They ran the spectrum madly and it was for keeps.

      The best of ’em lose wickedly. It’s always like that.

      Don’t stop. Ever.

      Liked by 1 person

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