4 August

32 years since Freddie died, amazing. I don't think it's well enough understood what a tragedy his passing was. Not just because he was so young and we lost so much music that never got to be written or performed, but because as a person he faced marginalisation his whole life, as an immigrant to Britain, and then as a gay man at a time when it was still very dangerous to declare that. And he created this phenomenal personality to bust through all of that. 'Freddie Mercury' was a character, like Chaplin's Little Tramp. It wasn't the man himself. It was much more than about music, it was his genius way to get revenge on the world for excluding him. All of his songs were about that battle. And then, having succeeded, he contracts a horrible disease and dies a horrible death, at only 45. Like reality gave him a final 'know your place, boy'. Those close to him say he died gracefully. But I'm sure part of that was also that he still felt a shame at being gay and not fully accepted even by his own family. (Bohemian Rhapsody is almost certainly a song about his mother rejecting his sexuality.) Those were very different times to now. I suspect he died as he lived, feeling unloved and unwanted for who he really was, despite the adulation he achieved. The adulation made his life-project even harder, because he never knew who was genuinely interested in him, the man, and who only wanted to know him as Freddie Mercury, the star.