Icon no 10: Freddie Mercury

(Singer, songwriter, artist 5/9/1946-24/11/1991)

Aug 12, 2024

Warning: this post contains references to trauma, abuse and neglect

Freddie during his Live Aid performance (1985).

If we were to go back to July 13^th 1985, and London’s Wembley stadium, we would find a crowd of 70,000 people clapping in synchrony on the beat of a song. The clap alternates with a two-arm salute towards the singer, repeated. Across the world two billion people are watching live on TV. The singer is Freddie Mercury, frontman of the rock band Queen who will sell 300 million records worldwide. This is the greatest moment of the historic Live Aid concert with its incredible star line up. And it’s the greatest moment of Freddie Mercury’s career. A journalist watching from backstage will write, “the raw power that held his audience spellbound was so potent, you imagined you could smell it.”² A BBC poll will vote this the greatest rock performance of all time¹. The visionary behind the concert is singer Bob Geldoff, who will later say, “It was the perfect stage for Freddie: the whole world”¹.

Here I am looking at such moments in history from a specific angle, based on theory of narcissism. Anthony Ryle’s map of narcissism³ indicates that for people who find themselves this admired, this glorious, there may be something hidden (see theory post). This hidden factor has a part to play in creating the moment and the performance. This moment, for Freddie Mercury, is the furthest a human being might get from any experience of shame and vulnerability. He is now powerful. In this moment no other human being on Earth is more admired than Freddie Mercury. The seeking of such power and admiration, along with emotional distance, is in narcissism theory a reflection of overwhelming childhood experiences: of judgment and unsafe vulnerability. Power and emotional distance can be an escape from unsafe vulnerability. Admiration can serve as an escape from condemnation. If the measure of the admiration says anything about the measure of the trauma, then this most historic performance of this historic concert - in this blog, leads to questions.

The Live Aid performance was an 18-minute medley of Queen songs. The medley opened with Bohemian Rhapsody the band’s epic groundbreaking single from 1976. Bohemian Rhapsody is six minutes long, weaving together pop, rock and operatic sections in a powerful way that makes sense musically. At the time it was the most expensive single ever recorded. This is not because they had a lot of money finally to do their vision justice. They had very little money and it could have destroyed the band. And yet here is an expression of extravagance and abandon that we might expect from some more ancient royalty.

The full Live Aid set (1985) on Youtube

If narcissism contributes anything great to society, it is leadership of big vision projects that yield immortal results, although the risks are often high. There is a rejection of the constraints of reality and of human limitations. Bohemian Rhapsody is grandiose, important and rule breaking. Elton John said the radio stations would “never play it”. If there were a chart of ‘most narcissistic hit records’ it would probably be in the top five. Gary Langan was in the studio when they finally played back the finished recording: “I stood at the back of the room and my jaw was on my chest. I just hadn’t heard or felt or witnessed anything like this track. It was just amazing. You knew then it was destined for greatness. It had this whole charisma about it.”¹

Bohemian Rhapsody was at no 1 in the UK chart for nine weeks – going on to sell six million copies. With its groundbreaking video, the song turned Queen into global superstars. I am not here though to explore the making of this great record – largely the brainchild of Freddie. I am here to read its lyrics. And if this was a narcissistic record, then in keeping with narcissism, an impressive exterior may hide something quite different beneath.

The lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody have always been considered a mystery. Freddie always refused to be drawn on what the song was about. But there are theories. Roger Taylor the band’s drummer never said what the song was about. But he did say that it was decipherable if you ignored some “nonsense in the middle” which suggests to me that there is a way of making sense of the rest. This fits with Freddie’s way of revealing parts of himself – there was always some smoke and mirrors mixed with facts so that the public were kept guessing: “a closeted gay man playing a straight man fronting a band called Queen”¹.

A group of men with their hands on their faces

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Artwork for the six-minute single

We can assume that the title does not carry a lot of meaning because this was changed from ‘Mongolian Rhapsody’. Perhaps it was pointed out that ‘Mongol’ at this point in time had been misappropriated as a term for Downs Syndrome. Bohemian does though denote a socially unconventional kind of person which fitted Freddie well.

Before we look at the lyrics of this six-minute masterpiece, I want to go on a journey that Freddie Mercury took when he was Farrokh Bulsara. In this blog I am using the word ‘distance’ a lot to describe ways in human beings can separate themselves from emotional experiences within themselves that have come to feel unsafe. In narcissism, such distance is found in escape roles which provoke feelings that are far from vulnerability and humiliation – roles of admiration, power, judgment, exploitation or rescue. This story of Freddie Mercury begins though, not with emotional distance, but with physical distance.

Stone Town to Der A Salaam

It’s 3000 miles from Stone Town, Zanzibar to Mumbai. The journey by ship stopped first at Der A Salaam. Seven-year-old Farrokh was on his way to boarding school. He was the first born to his parents Bomi and Jer. A little sister had been born a year earlier. Both Bomi and Jer had been born in India as members of the Parsee community whose ancestors had fled Persia and the oppression of their minority Zoroastrian faith. Bomi had moved first to Stone Town, Zanzibar to find work and had later married the 18-year-old who was 20 years her junior. In Stone Town they had a relatively comfortable life and Farrokh was looked after by a nanny. When Farrokh was 12 months old, a photo was entered into a competition. It won “most beautiful baby photo of the year”. Physical affection from his parents though, was not a strong point.

Freddie was being sent to a boarding school in the hill station town of Panchgani near Mumbai. Apparently, the main reasons were that his parents wanted him to have a good education and that his father worked away a lot. There are hints that he was perceived as being clingy with his mother. But did this say more about the boy or about what his mother considered clingy? We will never know. There were reports also that he was seen as a cheeky or naughty boy¹. There was recognition early on that he had a feminine and shy side. Perhaps seven-year-old Farrokh felt punished for one or all of these qualities – later saying that “my parents thought boarding school would do me good”². Freddie never said it to a soul, but his parents turned out in this case, to be wrong.

The adult Freddie persistently avoided speaking about this time of his life. But there are a couple of exceptions. One day when he was famous, he was invited to dinner at the family home of his record producer, Mack. The producer over-heard Freddie confiding in his young son Felix about family life:

“I never had any of this. When I was young, I spent a lot of time away from my parents because I was at boarding school. Sometimes I would hardly ever see them”¹

A child standing next to a child

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Farrokh with his baby sister Kashmira just before leaving for boarding school

Der A Salaam to Bombay (as it was then called)

The second stop on the journey across the Indian ocean to Farrokh’s boarding school was Bombay itself. Freddie enrolled in a hill station charity school on February 14th 1955.² He was due to see his parents only once a year. But sometimes it was less, and he stayed with Bomi’s sister instead.

There are many things that can colour how survivors tell the story of a traumatic childhood. One, is that they know only the childhood they have had. There may be little in the way of different other childhoods to compare it with. Secondly, there may be a number of reasons why coming to terms with what it was like is not an option. With the second of these, the person will need to find a way of telling their story that avoids the strong feelings that it might otherwise bring up. Freddie said, “I look back on it and I think it was marvellous. You learn to look after yourself and it taught me to have responsibility.”¹ We all struggle at times to take responsibility and to look after ourselves. And there is nothing wrong with being a flamboyant rock star. But being rock star was, for Freddie at least, far from being a definitive life of responsibility and self-care. And there is evidence that his time in India wasn’t entirely “marvellous”.

Realistically for the seven-year-old, being 3000 miles away from parents, who were already somewhat at arm’s length would have had an impact on most children. Author Nick Duffell, who has taught in an Indian boarding school, has written about the emotional impacts boarding can have. In some children there develops a high-performance exterior which can be valued in leadership, politics or stages of the Live Aid kind. But emotionally, the child develops a certain kind of insecurity so that they find “authenticity and intimate relationships quite beyond them”⁴. Duffell goes on to say that boarding school can shape, in the extreme, “masochism, pathological rebellion or grandiosity – or a combination of all three.”⁴ This already aligns strongly with features of adult narcissism.

Freddie also stood out. He attracted name calling due to his femininity, shyness and his buck teeth. Teachers came up with the nickname ‘Freddie’ as an alternative to Farrokh because he was being called ‘Bucky’. School mistress Janet Smith remembered, “I couldn’t help feel sorry for him, as the others would make fun of him. Funny thing was, he didn’t seem to mind”². Children generally do mind when they are being made fun of. I suspect Freddie was already smoothing things over. Maybe as a child, putting his own feelings to one side was already something he was adept at. Before long, Freddie would not only be putting feelings to one side but would also start to build a persona partly around how he was being perceived. Such a persona was perhaps the route of least resistance. By the age of 10, he was also displaying an “aloof, somewhat condescending streak”.²

It is not difficult to imagine, in a single sex boarding school, a boy like this being a target for bullying or even sexual exploitation. Psychotherapist Joy Schaverien describes how the love of family gets replaced by peers during a time of puberty and sexual awakening. Sexual experiments may offer solace but may lead to abuse.”¹ In part B, I will look at the one interview in which Freddie the adult appears to answer questions about this. The interview was not late in his career but apparently offered a moment when his guard was dropped. He never elaborated any further. I will then come back to Bohemian Rhapsody and take a look at the lyrics.

Narcissism, Trauma and Celebrity

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