Brian May pays tribute to Freddie Mercury's mother Jer Bulsara after she dies aged 94

The mother of the late iconic rock star has sadly died aged 94 on 13th Nov 2016

ByLaura Withers, http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/freddie-mercury-mother-dead-tributes--9289452

Brian May and Jer Bulsara (Photo: Facebook)

Jer Bulsara, the mother of former Queen frontman Freddie Mercury , died last Sunday "peacefully in her sleep", according to Brian May. 

Since the tragic news broke, Freddie's former bandmate and close family friend, Brian May has taken to social media to share his condolences.
Describing Jer as a "warm and devoted Mum" Brain, 69, compared Jen's likeness to Freddie - who died in 1991 after contracting bronchial pneumonia resulting from AIDS - saying both always had a "twinkle" in their eye.

Freddie Mercury's mother Jer Bulsara passed away aged 94 (Photo: John Furlong)

"Freddie’s Mum, Jer Bulsara, passed away a few days ago [13/11/16], very quietly and peacefully in her sleep. She was 94. It’s the wish of the family that the funeral and subsequent arrangements remain private," Brian wrote on his Facebook page.
"Jer was a warm and devoted Mum to Freddie, and, like Freddie, always had a strong twinkle in the eye. Although she was also devoted to her husband Bomi, and lived in the Zoroastrian faith as a good Parsee, she had an independent spirit and a strong sense of humour.

"Of course I knew her for over 50 years, and when I first used to go around to Freddie’s parents’ house in Feltham, only a few yards from where I lived, in our student days, Jer was a busy Mum, full of life and optimism.

Freddie Mercury and his Mother, Jer Bulsara

"And even then, fiercely proud of her children, Freddie and Kashmira," the former Queen lead guitarist recollected.
Reminiscing about one particular Queen gig years ago, where Jer was in the audience, Brian revealed Freddie acted up on purpose. He wrote: “I remember one night before a show in London (Wembley Arena, I think) when Freddie announced .. 'Mother’s in the audience tonight. Better throw in a few extra ‘f—ks !'
"There was never any sign that she was shocked."

Brian also insisted that after Freddie passed away, Jer remained "close" to him and her son's fellow bandmates, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon.

Freddie Mercury's Mother, Jer Bulsara sadly passed away last Sunday

Signing off his touching note, Brian said: "In private moments with us, away from the glare of the spotlights, in latter years Jer was always ready with a cup of tea when we visited, and we were always able to speak about ‘My Freddie’ without shyness, feeling that he was not far away."

A Queen fan’s pilgrimage to a sleepy Swiss town where Freddie Mercury found tranquility

A Queen fan’s pilgrimage to a sleepy Swiss town where Freddie Mercury found tranquility
By Amanda Loudin October 27
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/a-queen-fans-pilgrimage-to-a-sleepy-swiss-town-where-freddie-mercury-found-tranquility/2016/10/27/9eda4f88-9c70-11e6-b3c9-f662adaa0048_story.html

Crowds gather near a statue of Freddie Mercury, late singer of rock band Queen, on the shore of Lake Geneva in 2007. Mercury’s spirit permeates the town of Montreux, Switzerland. (REUTERS /Alamy Stock Photo)

For the past 50 summers, music lovers have flocked to the banks of Lake Geneva to take in the Montreux Jazz Festival. Drawing more than 250,000 visitors over its annual two-week run, the festival looms large and dominates the Swiss town’s landscape and culture. But Montreux has another claim to musical fame: It was where Freddie Mercury, the legendary lead singer and songwriter of Queen, came to find peace.

Like many well-known rock bands and musicians — including David Bowie, Deep Purple and Iggy Pop — Queen was drawn to Montreux by its quiet solitude and the lower taxes. The band members grew to appreciate the town so much that Mercury rented homes there. In 1979, they bought Mountain Studios, where they did much of their recording. Though Mercury died 25 years ago this month, a visitor today need only go slightly beneath the surface to find his spirit throughout the town.

I visited Montreux in June after a stay in Chamonix, France. With a return flight out of Geneva, I decided to tack on a couple of days in the town, drawn as much by its alpine lakeside location as its music history. I was charmed by both and upon arrival, drawn to the waterfront promenade for a stroll past the town’s restaurants, hotels and historical Chillon Castle.

When Mercury came to Montreux in 1978, it was not love at first sight. “He hated it,” says Peter Freestone, who was Mercury’s personal assistant from 1979 until his death in 1991. I spoke to Freestone via telephone from his home in Prague. “Early on, in fact, he said that the best place for the studio would be at the bottom of the lake.”

Montreux, apparently, was too quiet for the famously energetic Mercury. “Back when Queen first got here, the town was tiny and there was absolutely nothing to do,” says Freestone. “But if you wanted to record an album, it was perfect.”


Montreux began to appeal to Mercury once he had accepted his AIDS diagnosis in 1987, Freestone says. “At that point, Freddie needed and wanted peace and quiet, and the town could deliver it,” he explains. “The Swiss were very used to seeing famous faces in Montreux, and they tended to leave them alone.” Mercury could visit shops, eat out at local restaurants and move about town without the throng of fans and media following him in Montreux as they did in his home town of London.

Indeed, the city has plenty to offer. If following in Queen’s footsteps doesn’t appeal, there’s the lake, available for recreation of all kinds, touring the history-rich town and taking in the castle. It’s easy to enjoy it all in at a relaxed pace and simply people-watch along the promenade. As in most Swiss cities, the food is top-notch, albeit expensive. Montreux enjoys a temperate climate, and touring the area can be pleasant year-round. If jazz and crowds are not your thing, however, you probably want to avoid early July.

Queen produced seven albums in Montreux, including the band’s 15th and final one, “Made in Heaven.” The band members knew they were recording on borrowed time; Mercury worked as much as his diminishing energy would allow, with the other three members accommodating his scheduling needs. “The band spent as much time as possible in the studio during this period,” says Julia Tames, media and communications representative for Montreux Riviera, the local tourist office where I checked in. “After he passed, the rest of the band finished the album.” (It was released four years after his death, in 1995.)

“If you listen to the lyrics of ‘A Winter’s Tale’ from the final album, you can hear and see everything in Montreux,” Freestone says.

The album’s cover was shot in three frames in Montreux, later combined. The blended photo shows the 10-foot Freddie Mercury statue that still overlooks the lake from the town promenade, the three remaining band members on the shores of the lake and the boat house of the home Mercury rented while in Montreux.

Lake Geneva as seen from the Fairmont Montreux Palace. (Amanda Loudin)

These days, fans of Mercury and Queen can tour Mountain Studios, located on the top floor of the town’s casino. The control room is unchanged from Queen’s recording days except for a new recording console. Visitors can also see some of Mercury’s performance costumes, handwritten lyrics and a wide variety of memorabilia. A brass plate marks the spot where Mercury stood to record his final songs. Both an interior and exterior wall at the building are covered in signatures and handwritten tributes to Mercury.

To enter the studio, you must first pass through the dated, gilded casino and walk up to the second floor. Here Queen’s music loudly greets you, even if crowds do not. I had the studio to myself while there, and I meandered through its three rooms at my own pace.

Beyond the studio, “you can feel Freddie all over town,” Freestone says.

There’s the statue, a bronze work by Czech sculptor Irena Sedlecka that was unveiled in 1996 and has become, local officials say, one of the 10 most visited tourist attractions in Switzerland. And several of the bars and restaurants Mercury favored still stand: Fans can have a meal at Brasserie Bavaria, a drink at Funky Claude’s, or stay at the Montreux Palace, where Mercury and the band spent many a night.


 
Queen frontman Freddie Mercury is shown in Germany on July 20, 1986. (MARCO ARNDT/AP file photo)

A section of memorabilia from Queen's 15th album “Made in Heaven” and released in 1995, after Mercury’s death. (Richard Gray)

I stayed down the road/promenade from the palace at the Royal Plaza. Although the location was good, the hotel has seen better days, and a heavy 1980s vibe permeates the property.

Visitors with a boat can get a view of a lakeside house that Mercury rented for several years — he called it the “duck house,” due to the landlord’s decorating motif. Each fall, Freestone, who is semiretired, spends a weekend hosting several boat tours, taking visitors to view the house and other sights. You can generally score tickets from Freestone’s website or inquire about them at the tourist office. “We occasionally do walking tours as well, but that’s not quite as regular,” he says.

After Mercury’s death in 1991, surviving band members Brian May and Roger Taylor and manager Jim Beach set up the Mercury Phoenix Trust (MPT) to raise money for AIDS education and awareness projects around the world.

For the past three years, the MPT has held a fundraising party at the Montreux casino around Sept. 5, commemorating Mercury’s birthday. The event is open to the public; fans can purchase tickets through the MPT. This year marked what would have been his 70th.

“It’s difficult to imagine Freddie at the age of 70,” Freestone says, “because he never wanted to slow down. We . . . use his birthday as an excuse to party, which is what he would have wanted.”

Loudin is a freelance writer based in Ellicott City, Md.

Joe Satriani: “Brian May-The Guitarist Whose Tone I’d Never Mistake for Anyone Else”

Joe Satriani: “Brian May-The Guitarist Whose Tone I’d Never Mistake for Anyone Else”
Posted 10/18/2016 by Guitar World Staff , photo by Peter Pakvis/Getty Images
http://www.guitarworld.com/artist-news/joe-satriani-guitarist-whose-tone-i%E2%80%99d-never-mistake-anyone-else/30034



Joe Satriani was asked to name one guitarist whose sound he would never confuse for anyone else.

His choice? Queen guitarist Brian May.

Speaking with Classic Rock, Satriani says, “Brian’s like a whole universe unto himself. The first time you hear him you go, ‘What the fuck is that?’ It’s beautiful music, original tone and an amazing application of the guitar—the harmony, the way he strings together his rhythm and solo parts, his ensemble and call-and-response parts.

“It’s unbelievable how deep his universe is.”

Satch has been on a Brian May kick for quite some time. Just last year, he raved about May in an interview with MusicRadar.com, noting, “Brian’s got a composing style that you notice right away. His guitar style is famous along with his gear—that famous guitar from the fireplace mantel that he and his dad built,” he said, referring to May’s Red Special, which he handbuilt with his father, Harold, while in his teens.

“I’ve played it,” Satch says, “and, unfortunately, I don’t sound anything like Brian when I play that guitar. Only Brian sounds like that.”

In that same interview, Satriani revealed his first time hearing May’s guitar work.

“When I was a young player and someone played a Queen record for me the first time, I was utterly floored,” Satch said. “There’s just nothing but questions in your mind. Meanwhile, your body is loving it. The visceral experience is just so wonderful and it's so much fun.

“He’s one of those guitar players that could mix fun and serious and really pull it off. That music can be cathartic and unapologetic and just make you want to get up and kick ass. I love that. That’s rock ’n’ roll right there.”

In the video from 1992 shown below, Satch and his pal Steve Vai join with May for a rendition of the Queen track “Tie Your Mother Down.”
https://youtu.be/ZS5hGIWFb4k

Google and Queen Release a VR App: The Bohemian Rhapsody Experience

Google and Queen Release a VR App: The Bohemian Rhapsody ExperienceBy Priya Trivedi -September 15, 2016  https://www.droidmen.com/google-queen-release-vr-app-bohemian-rhapsody-experience/

One of the most intense musical experiences in the world is listening to Freddie Mercury sing. To listen to him live in performance was a treat, and is something that will never happen again. The man was a sheer genius, and even forty years past the release of perhaps their most famous song, Bohemian Rhapsody, the song remains one of the most popular tracks of all times. What truly makes Freddie Mercury special is the fact that the man thought on a whole different level. Google now takes us inside the subconscious mind of Freddie Mercury with the release of The Bohemian Rhapsody Experience, a VR app.



The app takes you into a whole different world, and is perhaps the best way to enjoy this song. While many might that when they wear their VR headsets and start off this app, it will take them to a Freddie Mercury concert. However, the Bohemian Rhapsody Experience is not about that. The app does not transport you to a concert, but it does something else – it shows a 360 degree animation featuring various elements of the song.

The Bohemian Rhapsody Experience has been developed in cooperation of Brian May and Roger Taylor, the original members of Queen. They helped give the developers at Google a better insight inside the mind of Freddie Mercury. The users could now see the inspiration of the song, and the intense feelings that Freddie went through while he composed and sang the song.

Over the years, this song has been used in various pop cultural references, most recently in the Suicide Squad promos. Google, in association with Queen is all set to take the legacy of this song to a whole new level. The Bohemian Rhapsody Experience is indeed a very unique app, and we are pretty sure all the fans of Queen would enjoy this experience.

Queen’s Brian May on Adam Lambert and story behind Bohemian Rhapsody

Queen’s Brian May on Adam Lambert and story behind Bohemian Rhapsody

Ahead of their Hong Kong and China debuts, band’s guitarist and founding member talks about how Queen came to be, and the thinking behind bringing American Idol runner-up on board as lead singer
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 14 September, 2016, 8:18am UPDATED : Thursday, 15 September, 2016, 3:53pm http://www.scmp.com/culture/music/article/2018950/queens-brian-may-adam-lambert-and-story-behind-bohemian-rhapsody



Over the course of their career, rock legends Queen have sold more than 150 million albums – one of them, Greatest Hits (1981), the biggest-selling album in UK history.

They have had 18 number-one albums and 18 number-one singles – several of them fixed in rock’s firmament, such as Bohemian Rhapsody, We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions.

And they’ve earned a reputation as the most incendiary live band in history, responsible for arguably the most memorable live performance ever when they upstaged the whole of musical royalty at 1985’s Live Aid.

But one thing they’ve never done is play in Hong Kong – a tiny gap in their accomplished CV that will finally be filled in on September 28, when they perform at AsiaWorld-Expo, Lantau, as part of an Asian tour that also includes Singapore, Taipei, Tokyo, Bangkok and Shanghai. That last gig will also be their first in China.

“It’s extraordinary that we never could make direct contact with China all these years, and we have fans there and we never really knew,” says the band’s guitarist, Brian May. “It wasn’t possible in the old days. We wanted to come, but I think culturally we were unacceptable at that time. It’s amazing that we can actually come now. At the age of 69, it’s just extraordinary.”

The band on stage at the AsiaWorld-Expo, of course, won’t be all of Queen; singer Freddie Mercury died in 1991, while bassist John Deacon retired in 1997, leaving guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor to carry the torch. It is particularly tough to have been robbed of one of rock’s greatest frontmen, whose astonishingly versatile voice, blistering charisma and warm, humorous personality made him one of the most compulsively watchable performers ever to take to a stage.

We wanted to come [to China], but I think culturally we were unacceptable at that time. It’s amazing that we can actually come now-BRIAN MAY

The daunting task of trying to fill his shoes falls to American singer Adam Lambert. May has said he wanted to get away from Queen after Mercury’s death; his decision to breathe new life into the band came only because he found a new singer in 2005. It wasn’t Lambert, though; it was Paul Rodgers, formerly of Free and Bad Company, of whom the band were already fans.

“I just bumped into Paul Rodgers, who I’ve known for a while, and I found myself playing with him at a show, just a one-off, playing [Free classic] All Right Now,” says May. “There was obviously good chemistry, we felt good about it, and then he and myself and the lady who was to be his wife were in the dressing room, and she said, ‘You guys really have something; all you need is a drummer.’ And I said, ‘Well, I think I know a drummer.’

“So very organically we started to do a couple of things. And then we just thought, well, is this Queen or not? Without Freddie it’s never the original Queen; of course it’s not. So, the question was: can me and Roger and this man who influenced us be Queen?”

May says the collaboration with Rodgers “went organically”. Following that, he wasn’t sure he wanted to “continue to try to be Queen without Freddie”, but then “out of the sky came this boy Adam Lambert”.

May and Taylor first performed with Lambert during the 2009 season finale ofAmerican Idol, in which he finished runner-up, and he started to perform with them regularly in 2011. While they weren’t looking for a singer, May says, Lambert’s performances of Queen songs on American Idol made them realise that his soaring, versatile voice and theatrical stage presence made him the ideal candidate.

“I must have had 1,000 people e-mailing me saying: you have to see this guy; he’s the guy you need to be singing for you. When it came to the final, I think immediately there was some chemistry and I remember thinking, ‘Hmm, this could work’.”



“A couple of years later we had the opportunity to play an awards show, and the response was just phenomenal. Soon we found ourselves playing in front of 400,000 people in eastern Europe; it was the first fully fledged Queen show for years.”

Tellingly, the band refers to itself as Queen + Adam Lambert, suggesting that no one is trying to replace Mercury. “The thing is, he’s not Freddie,” says May. “He doesn’t need to be. But he has an extraordinary instrument, and he’s a natural with crowds. He also has humility, which is nice, and that delightful kind of lightness which makes people warm to him, and it really fits so well with us because we’d spent those years with Freddie, who also had that lightness.”
I think the toughest part is finding the balance between making it my own and honouring the original recording

ADAM LAMBERT
Lambert says the challenge of filling a Mercury-shaped hole might have receded over time, but the eclecticism of Queen’s oeuvre remains as challenging as ever.

“I think the toughest part is finding the balance between making it my own and honouring the original recording. But I think over the years it has become much easier to do that because I think now the music is sort of in my body,” Lambert says.

Queen are perhaps the most eclectic mainstream rock band in history, taking in elements of opera, music hall, funk, folk, heavy metal, disco, prog rock, R&B, symphonic rock, Dixieland jazz, gospel and rockabilly. In addition to Mercury’s unique voice and presence, the British band (Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar and mostly raised in India, but was a British citizen throughout his life) are instantly recognisable for their tight vocal harmonies; their densely textured, multilayered, repeatedly overdubbed, wall-of-sound production; and of course May’s virtuoso orchestral guitar solos, played on the guitar he made himself in the early 1960s, known as the Red Special.

Queen formed in 1970 while they were students in London. May, then a physics student, has since completed his PhD and become a respected astrophysicist; he’s also a renowned animal rights activist and also an expert in stereoscopics, a sort of 19th-century experiment in 3D imaging, and will be meeting the Hong Kong company that produces stereoscopic views he designs for the first time when he plays in the city.

The band hit the big time with their third album, Sheer Heart Attack (1974), featuring debut hit single Killer Queen, and then went stellar with the follow-up, A Night at the Opera (1975), which included their biggest hit, Bohemian Rhapsody, a six-minute ballad/opera/hard rock opus that ripped up the rule book when it came to commercial pop, spent a record nine weeks at number one and pretty much invented the music video. It was Lambert’s startlingly ambitious choice to perform onAmerican Idol.

“Obviously that was such a big turning point for me,” he says. “I am glad I picked that one. Maybe if I hadn’t sung that song I might not be part of the band now.”



The album it appeared on, says May, “was life-changing for us. We were on the edge of disaster ’cause the whole operation was so much in debt. So if we hadn’t made that album, which was successful around the world, we probably wouldn’t be speaking at the moment. And artistically it was great because we finally had the freedom that we needed to get in there and do anything we wanted. We had full use of studios, state-of-the-art equipment and enough time to experiment very deeply with both music and the technical side.

“I think all these ideas which had been lurking in our brains but didn’t come out suddenly were able to come out. It was a period of high activity, high hopes and inspiration; it was a very good time, becoming ourselves.”

Not that there weren’t creative clashes. Each member wrote songs and contributed to each other’s songs, creating tensions about whose songs made the grade, and who was credited for writing them. The solution, says May, was the band’s eventual decision to all take joint credit for every song.

“It was a constantly evolving relationship. We were trying to paint on the same canvas and we really had very different ideas as to what the finished canvas should look like. Most groups split up after a while, usually because of the writing situation. Somebody in the band feels like they are not represented. When you bring a song into a group situation in the studio it’s like your baby. You care passionately about it. If that baby doesn’t get to grow up and be something in the world you feel frustrated. So we had to learn to accommodate each other and make sure there was room for somebody else to breathe.

“You get the situation where everybody will work very hard on somebody’s baby and then they get no credit on it. Eventually we thought: let’s change this. What we did was we share the authorship of everything, so no matter who brought the baby in, it would be everybody’s baby.”

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as:
Queen for a day

Freddie Mercury's Panchgani school bandmates remember 'Bucky'

Freddie Mercury's Panchgani school bandmates remember 'Bucky' - On the Queen frontman's 70th birth anniversary, members of the Hectics recount their early steps in music.

Anvar Alikhan
http://scroll.in/article/815380/freddie-bucky-mercury-the-12-year-old-rockstar-from-panchgani

A few years ago, I went to a little restaurant in Pune for lunch. I was waiting for a table when the proprietor and I got talking. Then suddenly, changing the subject, he asked me if I was a Freddie Mercury fan.

“Yes”, I said, slightly surprised by the question.

“I used to play the bass for Freddie Mercury,” he told me, with a small, proud smile.

I looked at this middle-aged Parsi gentleman with an old-fashioned bush shirt, greying hair, and slight Gujarati accent, and I thought I must have heard wrong.

“I used to play the bass for Freddie Mercury,” he repeated, “We played in a band together”.

My first thought was that he must be an eccentric. My confusion must have shown.

“We had a band called the Hectics,” he explained, “It was a long time ago. We were teenagers at the time, in school in Panchgani.”

His name, he said, was Farang Irani. He then proceeded to tell me the extraordinary story of Freddie’s very first band, formed 10 years before Queen.

Since then, I have managed to track down other members of the Hectics, as well as other members of Freddie’s old school gang, and put together their memories of what he was like when he was just a shy 12-year-old prodigy, starting his musical career in the little hill station of Panchgani in Maharashtra, where he was a student at St Peter’s school. At that time, he was known as Farrokh Bulsara.

So this is the story of Freddie Mercury’s talent, how it was born, and how it grew in those early, adolescent years. It’s a story that not many people know of, at least partly because of Freddie’s reluctance to talk about his past.

So tell me about the Hectics. What’s the story behind the band?
Victory Rana: Everybody now assumes that the band was started by Freddie. But it was actually Bruce Murray’s idea. He [Freddie] was the lead singer, guitarist, and the star of the show. The other members were Derrick Branche, who played the guitar; Freddie, who played the piano; Farang Irani, who played the bass; and I was the drummer. We were about 12 years old at the time.

Bruce Murray: Actually, we started the band mainly to impress the girls. We certainly were not musicians. Yes, Freddie was a great musician, but the rest of us just made a lot of noise. I had a guitar, which my mum had bought me. We had a drum that our music teacher helped us buy. We took an old tea chest and added a string to it and turned it into a bass. And we had the ancient school piano, which Freddie used to play. That was it. But I guess we achieved our objective, because the girls really loved us!

Gita Choksi: Yes, the girls absolutely adored the Hectics. For us they were like the Rolling Stones and Beatles and Aerosmith, all rolled into one.

Farang Irani: The Hectics became quite famous in Panchgani. All the school kids in town used to flock to our concerts, especially the girls. But the main reason for our success was Freddie. He was the only real musician among us.

Jer Bulsara with her son Farrokh, who the world knows as Freddie Mercury.

What kind of music did the Hectics play? Who were the musicians that inspired you?
Bruce Murray: We were into Elvis Presley, Cliff Richards and Little Richard. Also, other popular musicians of the ’50s, like Fats Domino, Ricky Nelson and Fabian. We did numbers like Yakkety Yak, Ramona, Girl of My Best Friend, Rock Around the Clock, and Tutti Frutti. We wore tight trousers, thin string ties, pointy shoes and Brylcreemed hair with big ‘puffs’, like our idols, Elvis and Cliff Richards. We really thought we were hot stuff.

Victory Rana: By the way, I’ve heard stories that Freddie was inspired by Bollywood music, and Lata Mangeshkar, but that is a lot of rubbish. The only music he listened to, and played, was Western pop music.

Freddie Mercury is considered to be one of the greatest rock musicians of all time. But how good a musician was he back then?
Bruce Murray: He was a prodigy. He could play anything! He had the unique ability to listen to a song on the radio, just once, and be able to play it perfectly. Our favourite programme was the Binaca Hit Parade, which was broadcast every Wednesday, if I remember correctly. If we heard a new song and liked it, Freddie would quickly learn the chords, and I would scribble down the words. And it would be the Hectics’ next hit number. Simple!

Victory Rana: Freddie was hugely talented. He was a natural musician. And he had an amazing voice. He could sing anything – from rock ’n’ roll to classical music. For example, apart from the Hectics, he was also part of a Western classical music group at school, where three boys would sing in three different keys. And that is probably one of the reasons for the eclectic sound he created for Queen in later years. By the way, his voice never changed over the years. If you listen to a Freddie Mercury CD, it sounds just like the young Freddie did back then, singing for the Hectics in Panchgani.

Farang Irani: He was born with the gift. Even as a toddler I believe he loved to sing at family get-togethers and parties – and he loved all the attention it got him. That is something that never changed as he grew up.

I believe his nickname as a kid was Bucky, because of his buck teeth. Was he very sensitive about that?
Farang Irani: Yes, you know how cruel school kids can be. He was very conscious of his protruding teeth. He used to keep trying to cover them with his upper lip, and when he laughed he had the habit of covering his mouth with his hand. Later on in life he grew a moustache, probably to try and cover his teeth. His real name, of course, was Farrokh. But when we first started calling him Bucky, I remember he started calling himself Freddie to try and divert us. But the name Bucky stuck – at least as long as he was in school.

Subash Shah: Yes, looking back, I’m sure he must have been very sensitive about it. But he took it in his stride. He never made an issue of it, or fought back.

Gita Choksi: You know, we old friends still call him Bucky after all these years. For us it’s just a term of affection.

Tell me more about Freddie Mercury, what sticks in your memory about him as a kid?
Victory Rana: He was very much of a loner. Happiest when he was playing the piano, or in the art school. But he was also a good sportsman – hockey, athletics, boxing….

Bruce Murray: I remember a boxing match where Freddie was really getting hammered in the ring, and we all kept telling him to concede the fight. But, no. Freddie insisted on fighting on till the end, with blood all over his face. He could be very tenacious.

Gita Choksi: When Freddie was small he was a very good all-round student. In fact, when he was about 12, he won the school’s best all-rounder prize, and got a double promotion. But after that, unfortunately, his studies went completely downhill.

Farang Irani: He was an introvert, but he could also be quite a clown when he wanted to, like Jerry Lewis, the famous comedian of those days. He used to collect stamps, and had a very rare collection. It would probably be quite priceless today. He was also very fond of cycling and we used to cycle from Panchgani to Mahableshwar and back – about 20 km – just for fun.

Was there any music teacher who played an important role in developing his talent as a child?
Farang Irani: Freddie started out by singing in the school choir. One of the teachers spotted his talent and suggested to his parents that he should take special music classes to develop that talent.

Victory Rana: We had various music teachers over the years, but the one Freddie really admired was a lady called Mrs Jay, who played wonderful jazz. Freddie used to love to sit and listen to her play.

Gita Choksi: Yes, there were various music teachers. But the one who taught Freddie the piano was an Irish lady called Mrs O’Shea. She understood his very special talent, and tried to nurture it. He was the apple of her eye.

Bruce Murray: Yes, she doted on Freddie, and tried to encourage him to play classical music. But Freddie just wanted to play rock ’n’ roll. Finally she gave up and let him do what he wanted. Freddie was born with that very special gift and, boy did he make use of it!

So the school encouraged the Hectics in their musical aspirations?
Victory Rana: No, no. Quite the opposite! The school was very strict, and traditional. They hated the kind of music we played, and the kind of look that we had to go with it – our Elvis Presley hairstyles and tight trousers. They used to refer to the band as “the Heretics”. They discouraged us from even listening to that kind of music, let alone playing it. We didn’t even have a radio to listen to pop music, for example, so we used to sneak into the teachers’ common room and listen to Radio Ceylon. And we used to play in secret, stealing time out from our very tight school schedule. But when we started playing at school fetes and things, and the staff saw how popular we were, they relented, rather grudgingly. Also, I think the fact that we helped raise money for the school with our concerts may have helped!

Tell me more about the Hectics’ concerts….
Farang Irani: We played mainly at school functions, socials and fetes. We had quite a fan following, especially among the girls. They used to come to our shows and scream hysterically, as if we were the Beatles or something.

Gita Choksi: I remember the time they took their little guitars and turned them into electric guitars with the help of a school teacher and an enterprising electrician. We were thrilled at their whole new sound at the next concert.

Bruce Murray: We were lucky that the school let us play our music. From the racket we made we should have probably been sent to prison.

Freddie Mercury is considered to have been one of the most flamboyant showmen in rock ’n’ roll history. Were there any early signs of that in his performances with the Hectics?
Victory Rana: Freddie was very shy, but once he started playing his piano, he became a completely different person. But I don’t remember him as being any kind of showman – not at that age, anyway.

Gita Choksi: The real showman of the Hectics was actually Bruce Murray. Freddie was a great musician, but he was very much of an introvert.

Subash Shah: Yes, Freddie was very shy. But he was also “a born show-off”, and his entire personality would transform once he was performing. To give you one example: one evening, as teenagers, we were walking on a beach in Zanzibar. Music was playing and Freddie spontaneously started to do the twist, the popular dance move of the time. It was such a mesmerising performance that the next thing we knew was that a group of conservative local girls, wearing burqas, had formed a circle around Freddie and began to twist with him. That was the power of his showmanship, even back then.

Farang Irani: From what I’ve heard, that’s how Freddie remained all his life: a great showman on stage, but very shy in real life. A kind of dual personality.

Freddie Mercury was considered not just a great musician, but also a great songwriter. Did he write any songs in school? Or poetry?
Farang Irani: No, but he was very good at art. He was the great favourite of our art teacher, Mrs Blossom Smith. If he hadn’t become a rock musician, I think he would have grown up to be a successful artist or fashion designer.

Bruce Murray: Yes, he was always very artistic. When he first came to England he went to art school and, boy, he could really paint. I still remember the wonderful sketches he used to show me. In those days he seemed to be more proud of his art exam certificate than his music.

Did he display any signs of future greatness back then? Any indications of the shape of things to come?
Victory Rana: To be quite frank, no. Yes, Freddie had a lot of talent, and he was very passionate about his piano playing. But who could say, based on that, that he’d grow up to be the megastar that he became?

Farang Irani: His parents were good solid middle-class Parsis with middle-class values. His father was an accountant in Zanzibar, and he wanted Freddie to become an accountant or a lawyer.

Bruce Murray: If only I knew how big he would become, I would have applied for the post of his manager.

Subash Shah: Our teachers would have summed up Freddie by saying he had potential but should try harder. How wrong they would have been!

By the way, there’s a legend floating around that after St Peters, Freddie Mercury was put into Cathedral School in Mumbai (then Bombay) – which is interesting because it means he’d have been a classmate of Salman Rushdie, whose novel, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, features an Indian rock idol named Ormuz Cama, obviously based on Freddie. Is this legend true?
Gita Choksi: That’s a great story, but it’s definitely not true.

Subash Shah: After Panchgani, Freddie went to school in Zanzibar for a couple of years. And then there was a revolution in Zanzibar, and Freddie’s family migrated to England.

So what did the other members of the Hectics go on to do in life?
Victory Rana: I did something very different from Freddie: I joined the Nepalese Army, trained at Sandhurst, and finally retired as a Major General. I was posted with the UN Peacekeeping Force in Lebanon and Cyprus at various points in my career. My last assignment was as the Nepalese ambassador to Myanmar.

Farang Irani: My family ran a well-known Irani restaurant in Bombay called Ideal, in the Fort area, so after school I joined the family business. I later moved to Pune and started a restaurant called Bounty Sizzlers, which I currently run. [Note: Farang Irani has since passed away.]

Bruce Murray: After school, I came to England and worked at various dead-end jobs, but I also played in various bands part-time. Then I got married, and that put an end to any ambitions of becoming a famous rock star – though I still continued to play in various bands. About 30 years ago I opened a music store called The Music Centre in Bedford. My son now has a band of his own called the Quireboys, which has had a couple of hits over the years, and I help manage the band.

And what about the fifth member of the Hectics, Derrick Branche? What did he go on to do?
Bruce Murray: Derrick also migrated to England in the mid-’60s, and became an actor. He acted in lots of popular TV serials, including The Jewel in the Crown, and also in films like My Beautiful Laundrette. He now lives in Goa, but he’s become a recluse. We’ve tried to get in touch with him, but that’s like trying to fly to the moon.Freddie Mercury with Mary Austin, his one-time girlfriend and long-time close friend.

Did you ever meet up with Freddie Mercury in later years? Had he changed a lot? Or was he still the same Freddie inside, despite everything?
Bruce Murray: I used to meet up with Freddie quite often in London, even after he had become famous. I remember, he once asked me for dinner with Elton John. But then he was a busy guy, touring the world and all that, and I didn’t want to impose myself, so we drifted apart. The last time I saw Freddie was in Las Vegas, in the late ’70s. I heard him playing at one of the casinos, and I went backstage to see him. He said, “Hey, what the f**k are you doing here?" and he seemed genuinely pleased to see me. So we chatted for a while, and then he was gone. Our lives had changed. I never saw him again.The rockstar Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the rock group Queen, during a concert in Paris, France, in September 1984. (Photo credit: AFP/Jean-Claude Coutausse).

Gita Choksi: Well, Derrick Branche had a rather different experience. He went to see one of Freddie’s concerts in England, and after the show he went backstage to say hello. But Freddie apparently looked right through him. Maybe that was part of his thing of not wanting to let out the fact of his Indian origins, because he thought it would hurt his career.

Subash Shah: It’s strange, I had heard about the famous Freddie Mercury, but I had absolutely no idea that he was my childhood buddy, Freddie Bulsara. I didn’t find out about that until long after he was dead. And that’s the case with many of our school friends. We had absolutely no idea that he was Freddy Mercury!

Victory Rana: Yes, that’s true. After school I lost track of Freddie. And given the very different kind of life that I led in the army, I’d never even heard of Freddie Mercury. It was only after he died, in 1991, that someone sent me a magazine cutting about Freddie, which happened to mention my name as one of the Hectics. It was only then that I learned his whole story. I went out and bought a couple of Freddie Mercury CDs, I remember. I could hardly recognise the face on the cover, but the voice sounded exactly like the Freddie I knew from our Hectics days.

We now know that Freddie Mercury was gay – something that he himself apparently didn’t know for sure till he was in his 30s. But did anyone have any inkling of it back then?
Gita Choksi: His old art teacher, Mrs Blossom Smith – who was especially fond of him, by the way – always thought he was slightly effeminate. But she thought it was part and parcel of his artistic temperament.

Farang Irani: You might say he seemed a bit of a sissy, and in school plays he often played the women’s roles. He also had a habit of calling the boys darling, which was slightly shocking back then. But those were very different times, and there were many things we didn’t understand back then.

Note: I finally managed to track down the fifth, reclusive, member of the Hectics, Derek Branche, who now lives quietly in Goa. When I sent him a message through mutual friends, saying I wanted very much to meet him, I got a cryptic message back, saying: “Freddie was a lovely man. Highly talented, fun-loving and a good friend. But I don’t like to talk about anybody, dead or alive.”

Freddie Bulsara left St Peter’s (and the Hectics) in 1962. Two years later, he migrated with his family to England, where he did a diploma in graphic design. Then, after having played with bands like Ibex and Sour Milk Sea, he finally joined a band called Smile, and persuaded them to change their name to Queen, and give themselves a makeover. By then he had already officially changed his last name to Mercury – after his ruling planet.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Freddie Mercury's modest London home gets blue plaque

Freddie Mercury's modest London home gets blue plaque


Neighbours in suburb of Feltham remember noisy neighbour who became flamboyant Queen star
Brian May and Kashmira Cooke, Freddie Mercury’s sister, at the unveiling. 

Photograph: Stuart C Wilson/Getty ImagesMaev Kennedy Thursday 1 September 2016 15.15

The present occupier of Freddie Mercury’s bedroom in the London suburb of Feltham, nine-year-old Daria Mihailuka, was playing it cool amid the hordes of media camped on her narrow street of brick and pebble-dash terraced houses. “I’m not like his greatest fan,” she said of the late Queen singer. “I’m more into modern music – I like Justin Bieber.”

But Daria said Mercury’s trajectory, from the springboard of the small suburban bedroom to one of the biggest pop stars in the world, was an inspiration. “I want to be a singer-actor-dancer, and I am a good achiever – my vocal skills can get better – and he shows me that you can start out just right here and become a huge star.”
The house in Feltham. Photograph: Nils Jorgensen/Rex/Shutterstock

The house’s owner, family friend Ray Edwards, shook his head in amazement at the coterie assembled on his small front garden: Mercury’s sister Kashmira Cooke; the new culture secretary, Karen Bradley; former arts council chair and English Heritage blue plaque panel member Sir Peter Bazalgette; and, towering over them and the garden wall lined with cameras, Queen guitarist Brian May and his silver mop of curls.

Fortunately Edwards is a serious fan. When Bohemian Rhapsody is blasting out too loud, Daria shouts down from her room: “Turn it down Ray!” He thought the estate agent was winding him up when he was told the Bulsara family – Freddie’s birth name was Farrokh Bulsara – had previously owned the house.

Although a paradise for plane spotters due to its proximity to Heathrow, even Feltham’s most loyal residents would hardly describe the west London suburb – where Mercury once had a holiday job washing dishes – as glamorous. On Thursday however, there was nearly as much excitement on Gladstone Avenue as when Mercury used to arrive in a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce to visit his mother.

Mercury, the embodiment of flamboyance and effervescence, died in 1991 of an Aids-related lung condition, aged 45. Outside the Feltham home, Mercury’s immaculately dressed cousin Pouras Dastur remembered the neighbourhood’s reaction to the teenaged Mercury’s homemade, hand-embroidered velvet flared trousers: “Heads turned.” His sister remembers competing for the only bathroom with a brother whose hair was high maintenance even then.

Freddie Mercury. Photograph: Courtesy of Universal

Many neighbours well remember the family, and their occasionally noisy son. Carole and Derick Burgess bought their house in 1964, a month before the Bulsaras – still family friends – moved in two doors up, fleeing the revolution that had gripped their home island of Zanzibar.

On summer evenings they remember Mercury practising guitar in the back garden, or in his room with the windows wide open. Burgess is more of a modern jazz man, and remembers snapping to his wife: “Does he only know one chord? When is that boy going to learn to play that guitar?”

May also remembers the small back bedroom. He was another local boy, at one point living only a few hundred yards away, when he was introduced to the Ealing Tech art student through the singer of his first band, Smile. Mercury insisted they listen to a Jimi Hendrix track on his Dansette record player – the posh model with the autochanger. “Yeah, Jimi Hendrix, great,” May said, but Mercury forced them to listen to it again and again, bouncing around the place in excitement, analysing the sound and the production technique bar by bar. “That’s what we’re going to do. We’re gonna be a group,” Mercury assured him. “I was thinking, well … can you even sing?” May recalled.

As it turned out he could, with one of the most spectacular vocal ranges in pop music. “I won’t be a rock star, I will be a legend,” May remembered him saying. And that turned out to be true too.


Bazalgette, as a member of the blue plaques panel, pushed hard for the honour for the modest house and the immodest man, but he was pushing an open door: many of the others agreed that Queen’s music was “the soundtrack of our lives”.

The culture secretary nodded in agreement: the first number Bradley can remember watching on Top of the Pops was Bohemian Rhapsody, and the jukebox in her parents’ pub, the appropriately named Queen’s Head in Buxton, took more money from it than from all the other records together.

“This is a very happy occasion,” May said, “with a tinge of sadness – because he should be here.”

Queen rocked Knebworth 30 years ago today in Freddie Mercury’s last show

Queen rocked Knebworth 30 years ago today in Freddie Mercury’s last show
Alan Davies
alan.davies@whtimes.co.uk
@alpdavies09 August, 2016 - 20:50



Freddie Mercury and Queen on stage [Picture courtesy of Queen Productions Ltd}

Today – August 9 – marks 30 years since Queen rocked Knebworth House in what proved to be Freddie Mercury’s final concert with the band.

Queen’s performance at Knebworth on August 9, 1986, was the final date of the band’s hugely successful Magic Tour.

Having already sold out gigs at Wembley Stadium, singer Freddie Mercury, guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor and bassist John Deacon added a massive outdoor show at the iconic Hertfordshire venue.

A picture of the band’s arrival by helicopter was later used as part of the gatefold sleeve for a live album of the 1986 tour.

However, Mercury was later diagnosed with AIDS, and subsequently died in 1991.

“They had a whole fairground backstage. I remember they had scantily clad ladies mud wrestling backstage.”

Knebworth House’s Henry Lytton Cobbold

The rock band stopped touring as a group until 2005, making the Knebworth concert the last time the four members of Queen performed live on stage together.

Knebworth House’s Henry Lytton Cobbold remembers the gig well, both as Freddie Mercury’s last concert and for the fact that they didn’t push record on the video footage.

He said: “That’s the big horror of the Queen concert.

“There were big screens all around the arena, including one massive one on top of the stage, and they filmed the whole thing but didn’t press record.

“So although they had the sound desk mix from that show, the only visual images are tiny little bits of news clips.

“Can you believe that on Freddie Mercury’s last concert, the great showman, no one actually pressed record?

“There’s a Dutch bootleg of somebody filming a screen at the back of the audience for the whole show, so there’s a record of it, but no proper film.

“So the concert becomes a bit mythological because of that.”

Of the band’s performance, Henry added: “It was fantastic. They were at the top of their game.

“Having done Live Aid the year before, this was taking that and really conquering the world with that particular tour.

“We didn’t know at the time, but sadly it was Freddie Mercury’s last show.

“But boy, to arrive in style with that helicopter shot and to give that performance.”

Bohemian Renaissance Man: An Interview With Dr. Brian May, Rock Star And Astrophysicist

Bohemian Renaissance Man: An Interview With Dr. Brian May, Rock Star And Astrophysicist

12/07/2016 3:21 AM IST
Nick Simmons Writer, musician and television personality.



There are things known, and things unknown, and in between is Brian May.

First, what is known.

Brian May is revered around the world as the lead guitarist of Queen, one of the most iconic rock n' roll bands of all time. Queen's ascent was stratospheric, their reign imperial in its reach. Their music video for Bohemian Rhapsody is said to be, perhaps, the most influential music video of all time, and the first music video that got as much attention as the song itself. Some music critics have maintained that the video lead to the rise music video culture, and thus to the cultural phenomenon that became MTV. All four members are in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and all four have written chart-topping hits on their own. At their peak, they were nearly unmatched in popularity, stuffing stadiums with writhing fans like open, super-sized sardine cans. Even now, one can still scarcely attend a club or a sporting event without hearing May's riffs; they are trans-generational. While Queen's anthem-centric 70s contemporaries sometimes court a conscious irony to stay properly relevant, Queen remains unabashed and literal. What basketball or football game would be complete without the omnipresent double-stomp and clap of "We Will Rock You" (which May wrote by himself)? It is so effective, it seems, at whipping a crowd into a froth, that the task is left to few other bands or songs to this day. Try playing Bohemian Rhapsody in a car full of people and not hear at least one of them (if not all of them) sing along from the very first verse (including clumsy attempts at the infamous high and low harmonies). In any credible list of the greatest guitarists of all time, May is almost always somewhere in the single digits. Music legends that came after Queen have almost unanimously cited them as an influence, most recently Lady Gaga citing the Queen song "Radio Gaga" as her namesake. May seemed destined for the life he seized from an early age - he designed his own iconic guitar, the Red Special, when he was just sixteen, and became a classically trained pianist and accomplished vocalist, holding his own even in comparison with Queen's own legendary Freddie Mercury.


All of this goes without saying. All of this is, more or less, known.

What people usually don't know is that Brian May is also an active and accomplished astrophysicist.

Read that again.

Yes, as though musical world domination were not quite enough of an accomplishment, legendary rock star not quite prestigious enough a title, Dr. Brian May - yes, as in doctorate in astrophysics - has not only bent genres, but apparently space-time as well. It is safe to say he was the only rock star in the building at NASA, shoulder to shoulder with NASA scientists and engineers, during the much-publicized New Horizon's flyby of Pluto last year. He studied reflected light at Imperial College in London before the band broke, and completed his PhD thesis there more than thirty years later, independently catching himself up on the advances made in his absence while he and Queen took over the world. He has worked (and published a book) with Sir Patrick Moore, who proceeded to name an asteroid after May. The list goes on.


I picked both sides of Dr. May's brain and tried to bring this stratospheric figure back down to earth, to see if, perhaps, achieving greatness more than once is possible for the rest of us mere mortals.


NS: For those unaware - please describe what your specific credentials are as an astrophysicist, and what you study. What does your astrophysics work entail, and what are your scientific interests?

BM: Three years physics undergrad for a Bachelor of Sciences (Honors) at Imperial College London, four years post-grad in the Infra-Red Astronomy department at Imperial College, for a PhD in Astrophysics, which I completed 30 years after starting it! And I am a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.


NS: What sparked your initial interest in science?

BM: Pure fascination, and a wish to understand the Universe we live in.

NS: I understand this was your passion before the band took off - as much as the rock star life is a fantasy almost everyone dreams about, were you at all ambivalent about putting your academic career on hold for over thirty years to be a rock star?

BM: I always had the twin passions. I was lucky I was able eventually to follow them both. I think we all realize ourselves best by opening up both sides of our intellect... artistic and scientific. It's really only the last couple of generations that forgot that! If you look at Copernicus, Fox-Talbot, Newton, even Einstein ... you see this clearly - they saw no distinction between the two.

NS: I find people often think of science as cold and unromantic. What moves you about it, how can we convince people to be more enthused about it?

BM: I don't think you can do much persuading ... people either get it or they don't. But you can just open the door. That's what Sir Patrick Moore did for me. I used to beg my parents to let me stay up to watch "The Sky At Night" when I was a kid.

NS: You attended Nasa's briefing for the New Horizon's flyby of Pluto last year - and you said that they "inspired the world." I found this a fascinating dynamic--your reverence for your fellow scientists sounded a lot like the way people describe you, and Queen. How do you feel about the hero worship of musicians, as opposed to scientists?

BM: I think it's all healthy. Most of the scientists I know these days are into Rock Music and vice-versa. Matt Taylor, PI of the Rosetta mission, is a heavy metal freak! It's all good.

NS: What would you change about public attitudes and misconceptions about science, if you could?

BM: I would try to re-educate people in regards to animals, and by that I mean non-human animals. It's a basic tenet of my life that ALL life is precious, and every animal is worthy of respect and a decent life without persecution. I feel like there is a certain percentage of human beings who will never understand that. So we need to educate, and legislate, and enforce laws to protect every creature, especially those whose voices cannot be heard: children and animals. I hate cruelty, and despise those who abuse any animal.

NS: Do you find there is a difference in reception from the UK to the US in terms of people's interest in science generally? What are your impressions of the cultural differences between how much we emphasize the scientific worldview, vs. the UK?

BM: I think it's all coming together. The world is getting smaller. But I fear the world is stepping back into non-empathetic government, by which I mean the Right, those who deny the rights of the poor, the sick, the weak, and animals. In the UK we already got ourselves an awful, awful, disingenuous and unfeeling government. The government's politics are pure selfishness. I fear the USA heading in that direction under someone like Trump. Common Decency is my watchword, and I see the human race in the main heading in the opposite direction. However there are good people out there. I guess time will tell. But I sure do know what the ancients meant when they talked about "Good" and "Evil." They are both walking the Earth at this minute.

NS: Even one of your two titles would be enough for an ambitious individual. For those of us who find the task of "doing it all" daunting - do you think we could all be renaissance people, if we tried? Is it all hard work and effort, or do you think you were born with a natural inclination for multiple fields?

BM: I think it takes work and dedication, but also a degree of luck. I worked hard and was dedicated - but I was also lucky. I have been lucky to have shared moments with some of the greatest people on Earth ... from Nelson Mandela, to David Attenborough, to Tony Iommi to Virginia McKenna to Patrick Moore, to great high level operators at NASA, and so many others. I guess the great thing is to be focused on one course for sustained periods ... to succeed in one thing... to achieve excellence. And the great perk of achieving excellence in one discipline is that you get to interact with the best people in other disciplines.

NS: What's next for Dr. Brian May? Are you working on anything you're excited about?

BM: Finishing an Album with Kerry Ellis after this tour ... and then back for a bonus stint with Queen and Adam Lambert.

I'm also working on a few different books ... mainly in various areas of Stereoscopy.

Okay, Stereoscopy is my third passion.

But the hardest passion to have is living life to the fullest and dealing with love. I have that passion too... and it's nearly killed me a few times.

Brian May is due to release another captivating title under The London Stereoscopic Company - Crinoline: Fashion's Most Magnificent Disaster. The book presents a visually striking 3-D exploration of one of fashion's most disastrous yet most celebrated garments, the Crinoline, featuring contributions from fashion icons Vivienne Westwood and Zandra Rhodes. www.londonstereo.com

BrianMay.com

New Zealand Queen fan meets band's guitarist Brian May all in name of research

New Zealand Queen fan meets band's guitarist Brian May all in name of research9:34 PM Thursday Jul 7, 2016

Adam Lambert, and Brian May of Queen perform in the US in 2014. Nick Braae met Brian May when the band toured New Zealand. Photo / Getty

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

They're questions that one Kiwi Queen fan must have asked himself when he got to meet the legendary rock band's famed guitarist Brian May as part of his studies at Waikato University.

Nick Braae's world-first research into the British group has already led to a thesis, numerous articles and essays, an upcoming book, and even a just-released guide to Queen's songs in French.

Surprising as it seems, there is a science to the band's music, and Mr Braae has delved into it by listening to every recording by Queen between its eponymous 1973 debut Queen and 1980's The Game.

He also explored some of the musical relationships between Queen and contemporary artists, such as the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.

A long-time fan of the band, Mr Braae said he was drawn to the group because of their rich and intricate songwriting and production style.Nick Braae says Brian May was very friendly, polite, and really interested in his work. Photo / Supplied

"It was fascinating to discover how their backing vocal arrangements were constructed, for example, and the idiosyncratic ways in which their songs were structured," he said.

"Further, it was extremely rewarding to uncover all of the subtle influences on the musicians from such an array of styles."

A big highlight was meeting and interviewing Brian May while the rock god was touring the country with Queen three years ago.

"He gave many insights into what occurred behind the studio doors, and these provided an invaluable complement to my own analysis," he said.

"He was also very friendly, polite, and really interested in my work - it was quite surreal."

His main research finding was that Queen were continually experimental in terms of the form, style and harmonies of their songs, but they also had highly consistent ways of arranging and recording songs.

Many tracks, therefore, struck a fine balance between musical novelty and familiarity.

Mr Braae also found that they slowly pieced together their style through the early albums, with their biggest hit, 1975's Bohemian Rhapsody, acting as a culmination to this process and a summation of their musical essence.

His chief supervisor, Associate Professor Ian Whalley, said that given the popularity of Queen internationally, it was surprising how little had been written on them from a musical perspective.

"The study has addressed a large gap in the popular music literature, while also developing methodologies that can be applied to other bodies of work."

Nick Braae's top five Queen songs

• Bohemian Rhapsody (A Night at the Opera, 1975)

• It's Late (News of the World, 1977)

• It's a Hard Life (The Works, 1984)

• Liar (Queen, 1973)

• Somebody to Love (A Day at the Races, 1976)

- NZ Herald

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=11669838

The Freddie Mercury Project

The Freddie Mercury Project




The Freddie Mercury Project


The Freddie Mercury Project

FREDDIE Mercury was an icon, an innovator, a musical maverick and a cultural legend. This summer leading Welsh chamber orchestra Sinfonia Cymru presents The Freddie Mercury Project, an exciting collaboration with internationally acclaimed composer and violinist Vlad Maistorovici.

The Freddie Mercury Project will be coming to The Riverfront on 12th June, with special offers for young people and families, and a chance to watch an open rehearsal prior to the performance.

Sinfonia Cymru has commissioned Vlad Maistorovici to create Queen Concertante, new arrangements of iconic Queen songs including We Are The Champions, Bohemian Rhapsody and Killer Queen. Upbeat and stirring, this is set to be a thrilling experience for music fans as they hear intricate new settings of Freddie Mercury’s brilliant original compositions played with passion by a live 23-piece chamber orchestra.

Maverick composer-performer Vlad Maistorovici takes on three roles in The Freddie Mercury Project: conductor, violin soloist and composer. One of the most exciting artists of his generation to emerge from Romania, he performs internationally as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician in repertoire ranging from classical to modern. His compositions have been championed by world-class orchestras and artists.

The Freddie Mercury Project will be at The Riverfront in Newport on Sunday 12th June at 3pm. This will be a fun and exhilarating afternoon of great music played by a passionate and talented orchestra. Full priced tickets are £16, concessions are £12, tickets for people aged under 27 are £5 and family group tickets are available for just £20.

Before the concert there will be an open rehearsal for audience members interested in gaining an extra insight into the orchestra and the music. If you are interested in watching the rehearsal, please contact The Riverfront for more details on 01633 656757.

2016 is a very special year for Sinfonia Cymru as it marks 20 years since Principal Conductor Gareth Jones founded the orchestra. In celebration of its 20th birthday, this year’s programme is based around the theme of innovation, something that has always been an integral part of the Sinfonia Cymru ethos.

With this in mind, it is no surprise that the orchestra was drawn to the groundbreaking work of Freddie Mercury and Queen.

“Sinfonia Cymru is made up of some of the best young musicians in the early stages of their professional careers. In addition to being supremely talented, our musicians love a challenge and are always eager to try new things. This gives the orchestra an exuberance and vibrancy that is perfectly suited to the music of Freddie Mercury. We are thrilled to be working with Vlad on The Freddie Mercury Project,” said Sophie Lewis, Chief Executive of Sinfonia Cymru.

To find out more information about The Freddie Mercury Project and to purchase tickets visit the Sinfonia Cymru website at www.sinfoniacymru.co.uk or contact The Riverfront in person, by telephone or via their website www.tickets.newportlive.co.uk.

Brian May: ‘All sorts of stuff happens in my workshop’

Brian May: ‘All sorts of stuff happens in my workshop’
When he’s not playing guitar for Queen, Brian May PhD is an astronomer and inventor. He talks about his latest gadget – an update on the Victorian stereoscope

 

‘This is a proper scientific instrument’: Brian May poses with an Owl viewer at Tate Britain. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

Nicola Davis @NicolaKSDavis

Sunday 29 May 2016 09.30 BST

Brian May is examining his hands. His fingernails are painted with a futuristic, silvery polish, but it’s his fingertips he’s focused on. They are, he informs me, covered with soft calluses. It’s hardly surprising – he’s just flown in from Barcelona, where he’s been on tour, thrashing out hits with Queen (with American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert on Freddie duties). But here in London, his guitar is nowhere in sight. Because it’s not a gig he’s eager to talk about: it’s the launch of his latest invention.

Dubbed the “Owl VR Smartphone Kit”, his low-tech, adjustable plastic gadget looks like a cross between a kiddie’s shoe gauge and Google Cardboard. By attaching a smartphone to the back of its frame, using some tape, a metal plate and a magnet, the device can be used to view 360-degree videos – handy, since Queen are currently filming one of their own. But as May reveals, it can do far more than that. Slot in a card bearing two, almost identical, photographs and when you look through the lenses the image suddenly bounces forth in glorious 3D – a technique known as stereoscopy. With an app, he demonstrates, you can even make 3D versions of your smartphone shots. “This is a proper scientific instrument,” he says, with the confidence of a man who has a patent pending.

His pride in the contraption is palpable, and rather endearing – not least because he admits his invention (available for £25 a pop this June) is unlikely to be a big money-spinner. But then, May is on something of a mission to share his seemingly inexhaustible fascination with the art of stereoscopy. As well aslending the Tate highlights from his vast collection of Victorian “stereocards”, he’s co-authored several books on the topic and spent years tinkering away to perfect the Owl. Essentially an upgrade of the Victorian stereoscope, it not only lets you marvel at images from the past, but also propels you into virtual reality. And that, says May, might have more attractions than you’d think...

Let’s be honest, an obsession with Victorian photographs is a bit niche. Where did that come from?
It all happened when I was a kid. I opened my eyes and I saw the world around me. I loved music and I loved images as well. And I loved astronomy – I used to beg to be allowed to stay up to watch Patrick Moore on The Sky at Night. I was told when I was a kid that you can’t be an artist and a scientist: you have to choose. I felt very strongly that there was something wrong with this, and I always pursued music alongside the science I loved. Stereoscopy, to me, is magical.

How did you stumble across it?
I think it was the hippopotamus in the wild animal series of Vistascreen. They gave them away free in Weetabix packets. I would have been nine, and I sent away for the viewer – it cost one-and-six pence plus a Weetabix packet top – and you got a little Vistascreen viewer back. Suddenly, instead of two little pictures there was the hippopotamus, real, with its mouth yawning, and you felt like you were going to fall in. I was just enchanted.

Virtual reality and 360-videos seem a world away from Victorian “3D”, but it’s all the same. The Victorians were for the first time able to see their favourite politicians and royalty and actors privately, in their stereoscope, but they were also travelling to the pyramids, to China and to India. They didn’t have TV or the internet or films; they had the stereoscope – and they experienced the world in a way that was totally new. I think virtual reality is going to bring us back to this.
FacebookTwitterPinterest Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

As well as this gadget, you famously invented your Red Special guitar… do you have a house full of contraptions you are working on?
I love inventing. I have my little workshop and all sorts of stuff happens down there. The first version of this was made out of cardboard – this was all designed geometrically in my little workshop. We did a guitar and we made a telescope in my dad’s workshop. I am always doing stuff.

Was Queen a distraction from science, or science a distraction from Queen?
Both, really. I always believed that I should do both, that I could do both. But when I was attempting to finish off my PhD in astronomy at Imperial College London – not succeeding – we were rehearsing Queen and I was teaching in a comprehensive school. It was painful that I had to give up something in order to do something else. But I did – I said “Music is calling me, and if I don’t answer that call now it will go away”. So we all went off and took a giant step. But strangely enough, when you take a giant step in one direction it gives you the opportunity to take other giant steps later on; so I was able to come back to the PhD 30 years later and finish it off. I was able to come back to stereoscopy because it never really left me.


If you could put virtual reality in an abattoir, I think we'd see a lot of people turning vegan overnight

You’re passionate about animal rights, particularly when it comes to badgers and foxes. Do you think virtual reality and 360-degree videos, like those you can view with the Owl, have a role in activism?
I think so. I think if this technology could be applied to letting people understand that animals have the same kind of feelings as we do, that would be a giant step. If you could step into this world through virtual reality and become a fox which is being pursued by a pack of hungry hounds, and experience being torn apart, I think that might actually change a few people’s sensibilities. If you could put virtual reality in an abattoir and if people could see what happens to those animals that they were eating, I think we’d see a lot of people turning vegan overnight.

You’ve also been vocal about fracking - how do you feel about the latest plans in North Yorkshire?
I think it’s another example of money winning, selfishness winning. Nobody cares that they are inconveniencing other people, destroying other people’s lives. I think we have gone wrong in Britain: we have the wrong kind of people governing us – people who have no concept that other people matter.
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Should we be looking for extraterrestrial homes for mankind, or should we pay more attention to looking after Earth?
I’d love to see us looking after our planet. If we start setting up colonies on other planets, we are going to ruin them as well, aren’t we? I actually said this at a Starmus convention, and in the front couple of rows were about 10 astronauts. I said, with great trepidation, “I admire these people for going off on pioneering space travel. But I fear for humanity, doing this, because I don’t think humanity is ready. We destroy everything we touch.” I came off and Neil Armstrong came up to me and said “You’re right, that needed to be said.” I treasure that moment.

You’ve also embraced blogging with your page, Brian’s Soapbox. You seem pretty pissed off a lot of the time. Has society gone to hell in a handcart?
That’s what soapboxes are for – to get angry on. I think Britain is in a horrible, awful state, where it is obsessed by economics and money and it has forgotten that life is to be lived and enjoyed. I hate the building that goes on senselessly to satisfy people’s speculative desire to make money. London is a disaster.

Are you ever tempted to just grab your Owl and immerse yourself in the good old days - back to Queen’s early years, for instance?
Back to 1851, perhaps. I would love to be at the Great Exhibition – the Crystal Palace that was in Hyde Park. To walk in to that would be unbelievable. I think virtual reality will take care of that one day.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/29/brian-may-owl-stereoscope-interview

Queen guitarist Brian May uses 'Victorian virtual reality' to keep the memory of Freddie Mercury alive

Queen guitarist Brian May uses 'Victorian virtual reality' to keep the memory of Freddie Mercury alive
11:44, 25 MAY 2016 UPDATED 11:44, 25 MAY 2016 BY JASPER HAMILL

Rock legend reveals the astonishing mix of old and new technology that lets him 'connect' to cherished recollections of tragic singer

Brian May/Getty

The legendary Queen star Brian May has told how he uses an old-fashioned form of virtual reality to keep the memory of Freddie Mercury alive.

Brian spent decades taking special photographs of the celebrated front man using a Victorian technique called stereoscopy to produce stunning 3D images.

Until today, there has been no way for the 68-year-old rock god to easily share these astonishingly lifelike portraits with the world, because they need to be looked at through a special viewer.

Now the Queen guitarist has released a brand new device called the OWL , which will give millions of fans the chance to see these stunning images of Queen in all their pomp.

Radio VR: Brian shows off his latest creation

At a demonstration of his new gadget yesterday, Brian showed journalists how it could also be used to view the very latest virtual reality films and games, allowing ordinary people to enjoy cutting-edge technology without breaking the bank.

"Photographic portraits are always magical, but when it's a 3D portrait it's so real that it's almost painful," he told The Mirror .

"I have beautiful pictures of Freddie in all his magnificence and in full health.

Getty

"Now he isn't here anymore, this is the closest thing to being able to see Freddie and look him in the eye.

"Losing Freddie was like losing a family member. You have that inside of you and carry it forever.

"Sometimes you connect to it, just for a moment."

Virtual memories: Queen fans will soon be able to use the OWL to view never-before-seen images of Freddie Mercury and the band

Brian's love of stereoscopic photography is almost as old as his love of music.

His passion started when he began to discover old Victorian snaps which created a 3D illusion using two normal images - a similar technique to modern virtual reality.

These pictures were taken from two slightly different angles and then viewed through a special device, fooling the eye into seeing a three-dimensional image.


Joaquim Alves GasparVictorian virtual reality: A stereoscopic device used by the military

"I used to dream of being able to share stereoscopic images with people, but it needed a special camera and viewer," he added.

"Now what's thrilling me is that I can share this stuff with everyone and it's so instant."

The Owl will cost just £15 and is produced by the London Stereoscopic Company, which was founded in 1854 and revived by the Queen guitarist in 2008.

It works in a similar way to Google's Cardboard device. Users can magnetically attach their smartphone to the OWL and then peep through the viewer and see images, films or games in 3D without strapping a heavy helmet to their head.

The smartphone also responds to movement, allowing OWL owners to look around a virtual world.

Majestic: An image from Queen's original video for Bohemian Rhapsody

At the demonstration yesterday, Brian also showed off an animated virtual reality music video for Bohemian Rhapsody, made by Google, which could be viewed through the OWL.

He declined to say whether he preferred the Google-made version of his hit song to its depiction in Wayne's World (below), which showed the film's long-haired stars headbanging to Brian's seering guitar solo.



"I loved Wayne's World," he continued.

"I took it to Freddie, who didn't have long to go, to get his approval.

"He loved it too."

However, the rock star admitted to being in two minds about modern virtual reality.

"There will be good and bad to VR," he said.

"Some people will never go out of their rooms, which is probably not healthy, but it will be a way of educating people in a way they haven't been educated before."

FacebookA sign of things to come? Mark Zuckerberg walks past audience members wearing VR headsets

He suggested people would use the technology to create their own personal realities, which some would never want to leave again.

But he also suggested his fellow conservationists could use the new tech to produce films that allow viewers to put themselves in the perspective of a hunted animal.

He continued: "Virtual reality will bring a lot of good and darkness too. We need to deal with the darkness."


ITVQueen: Brian May, Freddie Mercury John Deacon and Roger Taylor

Brian is about to release a book called Queen in 3D which he will collect images of the band taken in their seventies and eighties heyday as well as more recent images which can be viewed using the OWL.

He has previously published a similar tome called Diableries: Stereoscopic Adventures in Hell , focusing on 1860 depictions of the underworld, and Crinoline , showing off stereoscopic images of highly flammable dresses worn in the Victorian era.

Both these books feature images which can be viewed in three dimensions using the OWL.

David G Burder, former president of The Stereoscopic Society and The International Stereoscopic Union, said: "This is the finest Stereoscope to appear in the last 120 years.
In future there will be no point in producing a stereoscopically illustrated book without an OWL."

Brian has also been working on a top secret VR project with NASA, although details of this program are being kept hush-hush at the moment.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/queen-guitarist-brian-uses-victorian-8044771