KeepOnSinging wrote:

CEK40 wrote:

View, unobstructed wrote:

Thank YOU so much, KOS and CEK for introducing these two to me...

I barely knew who Freddy Mercury was. And Caballe !!  I see she is now 83 years old. 

 
No problem View...Freddy Mercury and Queen were one of my two favorite bands...

Wish I had been listening when I was a lot younger.  CEK, have you ever watched the short documentary (about 24 min. long) entitled "20 Minutes That Changed Music"?  It is about Queen playing their Live Aid set in 1985.
 

I have seen it, several times and other documentaries.  Queen must have surely been among the most gifted/talent groups overall.  If I remember correctly, every single band member had written songs that made it into the charts.

gabriele wrote:

CEK40 wrote:

View, unobstructed wrote:

Thank YOU so much, KOS and CEK for introducing these two to me...

I barely knew who Freddy Mercury was. And Caballe !!  I see she is now 83 years old. 

 
No problem View...Freddy Mercury and Queen were one of my two favorite bands...

Ditto, CEK. What is the other?

Freddie told her early on about being HIV positive and she was so cool about it. Not at given at those times.


 

Gabriele...My other favorite band was The Eagles....

View, unobstructed wrote:

I must agree with you View...when you first listen to it years ago as you are younger the words are not as strong with meaning as they are when you listen to it as you get a bit older and wiser.  I do remember those years and how much fear there was during that time of unknowing anything about it...

I guess in a sense this could be Freddie's "swan song"...he was to me a very talented person and his death left a whole in the music world....

KeepOnSinging wrote:

View, unobstructed wrote:

   

Your last sentence has triggered a memory that I have not thought about for the past six or seven years.  Fear made community evaporate, friends as well as health professionals.

Oh, I could not agree more. I found "How Can I Go On" particularly heartbreaking, but so passionately and beautifully conveyed and so many layers of meaning.  The poetry is, IMO, extraordinary.  I wonder how many people listen to the words.  "Guide Me Home" to me is sad but somewhat hopeful.  "How Can I Go On" undoes me as I imagine it does for all of us on this board.  But then then these songs have a lot in common with a great art song like, "The Erlking" (Goethe wrote the lyrics and Schubert the music,) with a father trying to save his child and the child dying at the end. I am trying to find a way to incorporate these two songs, along with some other songs, into a talk I am preparing to give on what I have learned about feeling marginalized and feeling desperately alone in the midst of being a mom to three children when dad is waging an unsuccessful battle with mental illness.  I know that "How Can I Go On" resonates with sons and daughters who have a parent who battles mental illness.  

View, this is the memory your last sentence triggered.  On Dec. 31,2000 right after church, I received a phone call from a young friend whose husband was dying from AIDS. We had known them for several years and had spent a lot of time with them. Her husband was in hospice at their house and she had been told that he had only three hours to live.  Would we please come to be with him and her and to sing during those last hours?  And so my two sons and I went over and we sang until his last breath.  But what affected me and the young woman who called me the most was my older son's complete lack of fear because he wanted our friend to know we were not afraid.  He immediately went to the end of the bed and began to rub our friend's feet as we all sang.  That experience plus singing to my children at night every night including in their teens, when and if they asked, are probably the best concerts in which I have participated.  Several years, later the wife who called me was also dying in a hospice hospital; and my daughter and I went to sing to her for several days before she passed away in her sleep.  

After hearing these two songs and several other of his duets with Caballe, I decided to do a little research on Freddie Mercury's life.  There is no way to pigeonhole him, but then this is true of all human beings.  His girlfriend, Mary Austin, with whom he broke up when he decided he was more interested in being with men than with women, is the person he called the "love of his life" at the end of his life.  Towards the end of his life Freddie had had several bad relationships with men and noted that no matter what, Mary was always there for him.  He left to her the bulk of his fortune as well as his grand home.  There are more layers to the story than this.  But I am going to stop here.  
 

I read a couple of books on Freddie Mercury's life too, KOS.  Mary Austin paid the rent when they lived together before he came into fame and fortune.  He had also asked to marry her, but backed out when she asked him whether it was time to get the dress.  Later and with stardom came the usual 'hangers on'.  The song that gives me chills every time, is "Who wants to live forever?".
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jtpf8N5IDE    
 

View, unobstructed wrote:

Some fun questions...

I will bring these questions forward.  If anyone would like to answer them.