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“The Show Must Go On” – Queen frontman Freddie Mercury died 30 years ago
Freddie Mercury, on a performance in September 1984. Today marks the 30th anniversary of the death of the Queen frontman.
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Freddie Mercury died 30 years ago of complications from pneumonia. The legendary Queen frontman was one of the biggest and most popular stars in music history and he sang until he couldn’t go on.
Freddie Mercury is still present at every Queen concert. When the band, which is now on tour as Queen + Adam Lambert with their new front man, strikes the immortal classic “Bohemian Rhapsody”, then Mercury is played on the screen from the tape.
A real goosebumps moment. And the legendary singer gets thunderous applause every time. 30 years after his untimely death, Freddie Mercury’s popularity is unbroken.
Freddie Mercury: The man with the four-octave voice
“If I can no longer sing, darling, then I’ll die, then I’ll drop dead,” said Mercury, who was suffering from AIDS, a few months before he died of pneumonia on November 24, 1991 in London. That’s what Anita Dobson, wife of Queen guitarist Brian May, tells in a new BBC documentary. “Freddie Mercury: The Final Act” is dedicated to the tragic last months of the brilliant musician and flamboyant entertainer with the four-octave voice.
Mercury withdrew from the big stage as early as 1986 at its peak. Queen’s mammoth concert in front of 120,000 spectators in Knebworth Park is his last with the group that stands for world hits such as “We Will Rock You”, “Radio Ga Ga” or “Another One Bites The Dust”. He suspects that one day it could go on without him. “That’s the band’s instinct for survival. If I suddenly shouldn’t be there anymore, they’ll replace me,” he says in an interview in the mid-80s and grins. “But it won’t be easy to replace me.”
“The Show Must Go On”
He records two more full albums with his bandmates. “The Miracle” was released in 1989, “Innuendo” was released in February 1991 and contains the telling single “The Show Must Go On”. At this point, Mercury knows he has little time left. The musician, whose health is badly affected, uses his dwindling strength to sing more songs, the last time in May. They can be heard on the last album “Made In Heaven”, which was released in 1995 posthumously.
After the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in April 1992, when the remaining Queen musicians took to the stage at Wembley with stars like George Michael, Lisa Stansfield, Elton John and David Bowie, guitarist May and drummer Roger Taylor release Solo albums. Bassist John Deacon retires. “We didn’t think we’d make music together again,” says Taylor in the TV documentary “The Show Must Go On”. But it turns out differently.
The musical “We Will Rock You”, which premiered in London in 2002, caused May and Taylor to rethink. A year later, the duo appeared again under the name Queen for the first time at a concert in honor of Nelson Mandela in Cape Town – with Deacon’s consent. They then went on tour for five years with Paul Rodgers, the former singer of Free (“Alright Now”) and Bad Company (“Can’t Get Enough”), and even released a good album as Queen + Paul Rodgers: “The Cosmos Rocks “.
On tour with Adam Lambert for ten years
In 2009 Queen appear at the finale of the eighth season of the talent show “American Idol” with the two finalists Kris Allen and Adam Lambert. Everyone wins the show, but the powerful, extravagant Lambert impresses Queen. When they were due to perform at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 2011, the year of Queen’s 40th anniversary, they gave Lambert a call. He belts out “The Show Must Go On”, “We Will Rock You” and “We Are The Champions” and is finally recommended for a permanent commitment. Queen + Adam Lambert have been on tour regularly since 2012 and play concerts around the world.
Like his larger-than-life predecessor, Adam Lambert is a showman through and through. He’s not a Mercury copycat. May and Taylor wouldn’t have wanted that either. “You made it immediately clear that I should do my own thing,” emphasized Lambert in an interview with the German press agency last year. “The big challenge was to make it my own without straying too far from the original, because that wouldn’t feel right either.” So the singer convinced even skeptical Queen fans.
A new generation of Freddie fans
In the movie “Bohemian Rhapsody” Lambert plays a winking mini-role as a gay trucker who flirts with Mercury. The biographical feature film, for which lead actor Rami Malek won the Oscar, won a new generation of fans for the music of Mercury and Queen – and caused sales and streaming numbers to skyrocket. May recently revealed that a sequel is being considered.
30 years after the death of Freddie Mercury, who would have turned 75 in September, his myth lives on. Queen still fill the big halls and even appear in stadiums on occasion. Ten concerts in the London o2 arena alone are planned for 2022, at which Freddie Mercury is sure to reappear on the screen. In Germany, Queen + Adam Lambert will perform in Berlin, Cologne and Munich. Just like the old band motto: “The Show Must Go On”.
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