With his white satin pantsuits, black nail polish and outrageous campery, Freddie Mercury personified '70s excesses. In death he stands larger than life - and three stories high - as a new musical taps into the enduring appeal of Queen.
 

There he stands: that most endearing and endring of rock stars, Farrokh Bulsara, three storeys high and dominating the streetscape as you emerge from London's Tottenham Court Road tube station. Bulsara - Freddie Mercury - is now as big in death as he was in life, thanks to a new musical and the statue recently erected in his honour in London's West End.

Twelve years after he died from an AIDS-realated illness in 1991, Freddie - the only rock star born in Zanzibar - is big business again. Like Princess Diana, his flame grows brighter as his reality retreats.

Freddie - and his seminal band, Queen - will be remembered for many things: glam, camp, nail polish and mascara, humungorock and tighter-than-tight, slashed to the-navel satin pantsuits. They were excess in all areas.

"Freddie, obviously went completely AWOL, which is why he got that terrible disease," the band's guitarist Brian May told Mojo magazine in a retrospective of their Britannic Majesties. "He wasn't a bad person, but he was utterly out of control for a while. In a way, all of us were out of control and... it scewed us up. I think the excess leaked out of the music into life and became a need. We were always tying to get to a place that has never been reached before."

With their limos, huge entourages and rapacious appetities for pleasure, even their long-time publicist, Phil Symes, concedes his boys wre hard to handle. "They were so confident that it often came across as being extremely arrogant. There were these four guys who played up the androgynous look with lots of make-up and black nail varnish. A lot of people couldn't handle them. The 'look' in the rock scene was tattered denims and long hair, then here comes Queen dressed in Zandra Rhodes satin threads. It was unheard of."

"Freddie had his own personal manager, assistants and a whole entourage of friends with him wherever he went. He was an extremely generous man, and he always loved to stage interesting parties."

When quizzed about the infamous Queen party said to have featured dwarfs with bowls of cocaine strapped to their heads, Symes' eyes twinkle. "The standard line we all say is: 'It might have happened, but I never saw it.' I can tell you of another party, though, where naked girls in painted-on suits served champagne and all the naked statues in the garden were alive."

The flamboyant frontman himself loved the mystique that surrounded the group, the stories that became larger than life. "You'd be surprised how much of it is exaggraged and blown up by the press just to make good copy," Freddie told Tony Parsons of New Musical Express in 1975. "I would give them a bit of spice and they would add all the trimmings."

It is 30 years since Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon released their first album, Queen, and for 28 years the quartet's mock aria, Bohemian Rhapsody, has bothered the top of magazine polls as an all-time favourite. But as long a Queen has been a rock 'n' roll colossus, they/it has been clawed at by the critics, especially the British music press, and it seems age has not wearied them. The latest Queen venture has not been spared.

Brian May and Roger Taylor's rock 'n' roll musical, We Will Rock You, written in collaboration with the humorist Ben Elton, was savaged by English theatre cirtics when it opened in London earlier this year. [Ed: Last year.] May insists he is not bothered. "The critics always hated us," he says. "Queen always pushed the boundaries just as we have done with this new production."

Initially, however, May needed convincing to agree to a musical featuring Queen's songs.

"I hate most musicals, apart from West Side Story," he says. "I just don't think they work. But I always thought our back catalogue contained songs that would be ideal for a show."

Symes says We Will Rock You - which features 37 Queen songs - has "opened up a whole new audience to the sounds of Queen".

"Without a doubt the spirit of Freddie is alive in this show," he says.

FREDDIE SAYS

"I'm as gay as a daffodil, dear."

"The bigger the better, in everything."

"The reason we're successful, darling? My overall charisma, of course."

"I'm a greedy bitch."

(On Billy Idol) "Is he just doing a bad Elvis pout, or was he born that way?"

"We're still as poncey as ever. We're still the dandies we started out to be. We're just showing people we're not merely a load of poofs." (New Musical Express, November 2, 1974)

Queen and The Sex Pistols were recording albums in London's West End when Sid Vicious wandered into the wrong studio to find Mercury alone at the piano." "Ah, Freddie Mercury, still bringing ballet to the massses are you?" hissed Vicious. "Oh yes, Mr Ferocious, dear," Mercury bit back. 'We are doing our best."

TRIVIA

Queen's self-titled first album was released 30 years ago in July 1973 but the single, Keep Yourself Alive, was rejected five times by th UK's Radio One play list and failed to chart.

A Night At The Opera, the album featuring Bohemian Rhapsody, was recorded in six different studios and was the most expensive album ever produced when it was released in November 1975.

Bohemian Rhapsody has been voted the best air guitar song of all time in an internet poll, so who better to compile an album called The Best Air Guitar Album in the World . .. Ever!, than the song's guitarist, Brian May? His compilation includes songs by the Who, Status Quo, Blur and Robbie Williams. AC/DC declined.

The Internet search engine Google lists 89,000 sites dedicated to Freddie Mercury.

BRIAN May laughs when reminded of Queen's 1974 debut show in Australia - the band's first outside England which caused a near riot at the Sunbury Rock Festival, outside Melbourne. Queen, particularly Freddie, were booed and abused by a yobbo crowd apparently outraged that "a bunch of English poofs" should top the bill over Australian acts including Billy Thorpe.

"It was all just a series of misunderstandings," says May. "Queen were unknowns and we never expected top billing. We were supposed to go on as the sun was setting so we could use our lighting equipment but we had to wait a while (the schedule had failed to account for daylight saving). The Australian stage crew didn't like this and started fighting with our stage crew."

HIT MACHINE

AFTER 30 years and 150 million record sales , here are some of our favourite hits:

Sheeer Heart Attack (1974) - the band's first international hit.

Killer Queen (1974) - reaches No. 2 in the UK and turns the band into stars.

Bohemian Rhapsody (1975) - at 5 min. 55 seconds they said it would never get airplay.

We Will Rock You (1977) - the flip side to We Are The Champions.

Crazy Little Thing Called Love (1979) - Freddie wrote Queen's first US No.1 hit in the bath.

Another One Bites The Dust (1980) - written by John Deacon, it was Queen's bigggest-selling single in the US.

Radio Ga Ga (1984) - written by drummer Roger Taylor, it reached No. 1 in 19 countries.

THE BOHO THING

IT HAS been labelled the greatest rock song of all time in several polls including one conducted by The Guinness Book of Records, but excuse me, does anybody actually know what it is about?

Bohemian Rhapsody, which recently enjoyed a rebirth in the cult movie Wayne's World, still baffles the remaining members of Queen - even though they collaborated on the music that went with lyrics penned by Freddie Mercury.

The operatic folly arrived in Australian lounge rooms in 1976 via a groundbreaking video on ABC TV's Countdown, promoting those of us accustomed to the suburban charms of Sherbert and Ted Murly to ask: What was this bombastic, pretentious band of English dandies on about?

"It is a bunch of old twaddle," explains Queen' longtime manager Jim Beach. "It was this stream-of-consciousness thing that Freddie started singing and the rest of us looked at each other in the studio going, 'What is he on about?'"

Guitarist Brian May (pictured left with Ben Elton and Roger Taylor) says people often overlooked Freddie Mercury's sense of humour, demonstrated so vividly in the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody. "Freddie always avoided explaining his lyrics as all artists should." he says. "I remember reading an interview with Paul Simon where he did explain the lyrics to one of his songs and it was really disappointing because I always assumed it was about something else. I suppose we'll never know now that Freddie's gone."

The band's drummer, Roger Taylor, claims he does know the hidden meaning of the words, but says he will go to his grave without revealing the truth.

That leaves lovers of Freddie's grandest folly with just one option: grab that air guitar, throw back your head and rock out to six minutes of glorious power-charged, overblown nonsense.