This year fans around the world will be celebrating 75th anniversary of Freddie Mercury who was an acclaimed rock performer and whose live performances often took place in gigantic stadiums around the world to a large number of audiences. To his 75th birthday, Freddie Mercury’s friend Rudi Dolezal wrote a book about him called ” My friend Freddie”. “The reason why I wrote this book is because I wanted to give something to the fans and 80% of what I’m writing in the book about Freddie Mercury has never been told”, said Rudi Dolezal who claims to be Freddie’s favourite director for music videos and who knew him behind the scenes more than anybody. “it’s all about untold stories I had the privilege to share with my friend and mentor Freddie. I’m going to tell you who is in the gorilla costume in ‘ I’m going slightly mad ’. Is it really Elton John?”, he laughs and says ” Read my book.” The book is written in eleven languages and consists of 50-chapter stories and unreleased photos and interviews with Freddie Mercury. You can preorder your autographed copy for only $10 at http://www.myfriendfreddie.com with a dedication and signature of the author.
In an interview with a music director and producer Rudi Dolezal, he said “Mercury had the audience in the palm of his hand during his every single performance and he simply was the best at it”. His distinctly dramatic look often brought a sense of a great deal of participation to the crowd. He was described by the author of The Spector as ” a performer who would tease, shock and eventually charm his fans with various extravagant versions of himself” ( a quote from another internet source). While some said he took it further than the rest others said he took it over the edge and some simply admired him as a man who wears tights. According to Queen guitarist Brian May, Mercury was a man who could “make the last person at the back of the furthest stand in a stadium feel like that he or she was deeply connected”. ( another quote from another source). One of the funny traits of Mercury was that he used his broken microphone stand as his main prop on the stages. The story behind it is that during his early performance days he accidentally snapped it into half and discovered that it could be employed in a hundred different ways. “It was something which happened as an accident and the coincidence and he decided to stay with it and then it became something like a typical thing for Freddie. He was the only one who ever did it” said Rudi Dolezal when was asked about his friend’s broken microphone stand.
In 1985, after Mercury’s one of the most outstanding stagings with Queen at the Live Aid charity concert, their performance had been announced by music executives as the best live performance in the history of rock music and the program called “The World’s Greatest Gigs” aired their resuĺlts on TVs.
“If you ask me which stage performance of Freddie Mercury was the most superb, I’d say, without doubt, it’s Life Aid. Freddie gave his hundred percent to that concert just like his every other show. The concert was held not only for entertainment but to get money for people who were starving to death in Africa. It was the best performance by Freddie Mercury ever” said Rudi Dolezal during the interview.
One of Freddie’s colleagues describes him as a singer who cared more about connecting and interacting with his audience and learning how to bring them on his side by his incredibly magnificent ways of commanding the arena.
Around 700 concerts in countries all around the globe were performed by Mercury throughout his career with Queen. In 1981, the band broke worldwide records for concert attendance in Sãlo Paulo in the stadium called Morumbi while being the first ever to play in South American stadiums. Also, one of the largest rock concerts ever took place in Eastern Europe was staged by Queen in 1986 to a crowd of 80,000 in Budapest. On 9 August, 1986, Mercury performed his last live performance with Queen at Knebworth Park in England to the crowd of approximately 150,000 people. “When I had my cameras into the audience in radio Ga Ga, I saw three hundred thousand hands doing the “All we hear is ‘dum dum’ , Radio Ga Ga ‘dum dum,’ ” that was just fantastic and fabulous moment of my career as a director and producer” says Rudi Dolezal who at the time was filming part of the concert mainly for the documentary serious called ” Queen magic years” which then was released later that year. “We had no idea that this would be his last ever concert” said Rudi Dolezal with a hint of grief in his voice. At the end of the concert Mercury was seen draped in a robe, holding a golden crown over the head and bidding goodbye to his fans.
His fans all around the world will always remember him and his remarkable performances.