Article on Freddie Mercury - fair?

Cafe Society
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While perusing the dead tree version of the Sunday Times one lazy afternoon, I came across this article on Freddie Mercury. ‘Ah!’, I thought, ‘I have a penchant for Queen, this should be interesting’. However, by the end I felt the piece had left a bad taste in my mouth. The author, one Cosmo Landesman, seemed to really lay into the singer with great aggression.

To start with:

Then, regarding his family background:

Hang on, are you able to both play up your Persian background and try and pass off as a ‘white European’ at the same time? Also, I find the parallel with the Jacko’s ‘skin bleaching’ terribly unfair. Furthermore, Mercury moved to England at 17 and became a British citizen. Why would it be wrong for him to try and ‘pass as a white European rock n roll star’?

The article then continues to try and debunk his friends’ claims that he was ‘shy and sensitive’ because he was promiscuous and had, in his own words, ‘more lovers than Liz Taylor’.

However, at the beginning of the article, the author wrote:

So, he admits that Mercury was a ‘private pop star’, yet later finds it curious that his friends would describe him as shy?

Landesman attacks Mercury’s handling of his AIDS contraction for not ‘spreading awareness’, yet I’m pretty sure if it were the other way around, he’d say that Freddie was being narcissistic and trying to drum up attention by yammering on about his bloody AIDS all the time.

To finish with, we have this cutting final paragraph:

Ouch.

The conspiracy theorist in me sees some kind of anti-gay agenda in this piece, the ST being part of Murdoch’s right wing media empire and all.

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Pressed submit instead of preview…

I’m not denying that Freddie was a bit up himself, but I believe that such an attitude is an excusable (or perhaps even necessary) trait for a global music star. I’m a Pink Floyd fan and gun for Waters over Gilmour (although they are both excellent in their own respects) and Waters is similar - cocky, self-assured etc. The advantage is that people like that don’t take shit from anybody when realising their artistic vision. This can be destructive (see Pink Floyd) but creative at the same time.

But, being somewhat of a Queen fan like I said previously, there may well be a blinkering bias involved with my discontent regarding Landesman’s article. Any objective observers think this thoughtpiece is an accurate reflection of Mr Bulsara? What about other Queen fans? Was he really obligated to share the AIDS issue or was that nobody’s business but his?

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I haven’t read the article at this point, but the quotes you cite seem to make it pretty clear that the writer has an agenda. The whole “snobbish phony” part - unless the article has a ton of cites backing this up, comes across as pointless wanking.

Queen rocked. Freddie Mercury was the perfect front man for Queen. He died. End of story.

(well, except for the fact that Paul Rodgers does a surprisingly great job fronting Queen - nothing like Freddie, but great in his own way…)

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Read it - okay, the reviewer is commenting on the Freddie Mercury he sees depicted in this documentary. To me, that is a little less damning - if the reviewer feels that the documentary portrays Mercury as a phony, who am I to disagree since I haven’t seen the video?

His armchair psychoanalysis - e.g., “how can someone who is gay and has sex by the dozens at gay clubs be thought of as ‘shy’” seems pretty clueless. I am not gay (nor do I have sex by the dozens, dammit! :slight_smile: ) but trying to judge who people really are - especially folks who live big, outsized lives, such as Mercury - seems pretty silly…

The reviewer seemed to not like the film and to think it make Freddie come off very poorly…

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I get the feeling the author has some axe to grind. While reading this crappy article I found myself thinking “yeah, and?” Perhaps he’s a spurned lover or something because he really comes off like a little bitch. Oh and the word is “pressured” not “pressurized”.

Gee, can you tell I’m a huge fan of Freddie? :slight_smile:

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Isn’t unexplained hostility towards musicians pretty much a hallmark of the British musical press? It was my impression that UK journalists are about as nasty towards their subjects as their counterparts across the pond are fawning.

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Wait, aren’t Persians also caucasian?

Anyhoo, this is a very agenda driven piece. So Mercury was human, so what. He was a great singer in a great band. That’s all that should matter.

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In British English, the word is “pressurised,” which is how it’s spelled in the article.

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Strange you should say that, the authors wife left him for another woman :slight_smile:

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The writer has a major axe to grind, yes. Some of the points he makes might be legit, but others are just there because he seems to figure “the more criticisms I have, the more valid they’ll all seem.” He is talking about how Mercury appears in the documentary, but he’s not disagreeing with what the documentary says.

As for the Asian thing, the point he is trying to make is that Mercury denied his family’s Indian roots. Persians are Caucasian, as Lochdale said. If Mercury presented himself as a Briton who grew up in Persia and didn’t talk about his family living in India for “generations,” I can see where the author is coming from about presenting himself as a white European. Although we also don’t know if Mercury had any Indian ancestry. Whether that stuff really makes any difference is another story. “Nothing really matters.” :wink:

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Strange you should say that, the authors wife left him for another woman :slight_smile:

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Bippy really has it in for this writer! Do you have pics or something?

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Has this Cosmo clown ever engineered a classic rock album that’s as good today as it has been for the past 20+ years. No? Okay, then. :dubious:

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Personally, I care not a flying toss what some dismissive journo has to say; i don’t even care if Freddie Mercury wasn’t the altruistic superhero I’m obviously supposed to have wanted him to be. Fact is, he was an incredible showman with an incredible voice and stage presence; that’s all it takes. So he wasn’t Mother Theresa (but then again, neither was Mother Theresa, apparently) - so fucking what? So he didn’t stand up for this or that - boo fucking hoo! I refuse to hold him to any other standard than the musical/performing one at which he so clearly excelled.

Cosmo who? C’mon Cosmo - let’s see you read out your whiny little article in front of 70,000 people in Wembley Arena and see if you can have them eating out of your hand, eh?

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What Mangetout said.

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Yeah, and all you people who criticise George Bush, how many times have you been President? The nerve of these people.

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That analogy would work better if Freddie was being criticised for failing to do his job properly.

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We’re talking about (ahem) “Rock and Roll Journalism” here, aren’t we? It’s all subjective–when reading articles like that, I always have a large grain of salt at the ready.

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Did this writer miss the part where Mercury fronted a band called Queen, for crying out loud? Or when he did state quite plainly and publically that he was “as gay as a daffodil”? Did the fact that Parsis generally do consider themselves to be ethnically Persian ever cross his mind? When are dying people obliged to tell the world if they value some semblance of privacy? This article isn’t “unfair”. It’s attrocious. This Landesman is fucking tool.

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Is a fucking tool. I don’t in any way mean to drag Tool into this.