(Credits: Far Out / Carl Lender)
Tue 2 September 2025 18:02, UK
Not everyone knocks it out of the park on their first step into rock and roll stardom. Hell, most people can hope to say something halfway coherent when they step up to the microphone, but even for someone that had more charisma in their little finger than most people have in their entire body, even Freddie Mercury wasn’t safe from some sour moments in Queen.
But looking at the history of the band, there’s no way that any other vocalist could have taken Mercury’s place. He was the consummate frontman, and even if Brian May’s guitar sound gave them a musical voice in another respect, there’s a reason why any reunion is normally billed ‘Queen + whichever singer they’re using at the time’. There’s no replacing someone like Mercury, but the frontman never saw himself as someone who needed to be idolised on that kind of level.
If anything, every show was his way of putting on his very own Broadway show in many respects. With the possible exception of David Bowie, no one approached the stage with as much gravitas as Mercury did, and even when the band were coming off a tour around the time of their Live Aid performance, the fact that they devoured an entire stadium of people left the entire music community in awe.
For someone with that kind of ability, though, it’s insane to think that Mercury was shy behind the scenes. Despite being one of the biggest frontmen of all time, Mercury was often extremely reserved when he got off the stage, and when the band finally decided to give him a go in their early days, Mercury didn’t exactly knock it out of the park as everyone might have expected.
Drummer Roger Taylor didn’t exactly hold back in his assessment of his bandmate, either, saying, “I don’t think you realise how dreadful he sounded before. I mean, he sounded like some manic goat. He sounded extraordinary, his vibrato. My mother’s face when she saw him. [But] he became this colossal force who could reach to the back of any gig or a stadium in Argentina. He reached everyone.”
The whole idea of Mercury having trouble singing sounds blasphemous, but looking at their track record, it’s easy to see where that comes from. It’s not like Mercury was being subtle whenever he sang, and throughout his career, there were bound to be those showtune numbers where he had the chance to play things up a little bit, like the tap-dancing part of ‘Seaside Rendezvous’ or every single piece of ‘Bring Back That Leroy Brown’.
So if you imagine that kind of voice being used in the wrong context, it starts to make a little more sense. Queen touched on a lot of different sounds throughout their career, but having the tongue-in-cheek showtune singer on a tune like ‘Stone Cold Crazy’ made about as much sense as putting Ozzy Osbourne in a three piece suit and expecting him to sing Frank Sinatra songs for the rest of his life.
Even if Mercury didn’t have a handle on it at first, he was willing to put in the miles in every way that he could. He was one of the biggest names in rock and roll for years and will continue to be referenced by singers for the rest of time, but that only came from the hours that he put into making sure his voice was right for every occasion.
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