OF POONA, AND FELTHAM

Zanzibar though it is now known by the name Tanzania, is a remote island in the Indian Ocean nearly twenty-three miles from the east coast of Africa. The clear, blue sky has a long lifespan each day and the pace is languid. The islanders let the sun do their work. They pick the fruit, coconuts and spices, and eke out a modest living today, much like they did yesterday and the day before.

Bomi and Jer Bulsara had lived on the island ail their lives and Bomi, a civil servant, worked in the early Forties as a High Court cashier with the British Government. He was based at the Beit El Ajaib the “House of Wonders” built by the Sultan Barghash at the end of the nineteenth century. The British Empire, of which Zanzibar was part, was contracting but the bureiucracy of colonisation was still very much in place.

The Bulsara’s first child, Farookh, was born on September 5, 1946 at the Government Hospital in Zanzibar. Ihe island iornitd the perfect backdrop to a happy childhood. Farookh jumped rock pools wnh the other children at the beach and lost all sense of time as he played in the grand botanical gardens attached to Zanzibar museum. His father finished work at 1.30 pm each day because it was much too hot to carry on after that time; it meant there were many family outings. In their home they would inculcate Farookh with their own Persian culture, reading to him fabules and legends like The Arabian Nights. Bomi Bulsara was quite well paid and the family had servants and a relatively high standard of living.

At the age of five Farookh, moved with his parents to Bombay, India; these regular upheavals ere part of Bomi s job and for a while they had lived in Pemba, another isolated island which in the Forties had no electricity supply.

As devout followers of the Zoroastrian religion, Bombay formed the Bulsara’s spiritual home. India wasely tolerant of other religions and Parsees (the name given to the adherents of Zoroastrianism) had fled there in vast numbers in the seventh and eighth centuries to avoid persecution by Muslims. The Parsees formed a strange social mixture. They adopted the language and dress of the Hindus, but they later acquired a peculiar Enghshness borrowed from the country s most recent visitors: the island had been part of the British Commonwealth since 1890. Perhaps the ceremoniousness of the English way of life and its tea-on-the- lawn civility appealed to their innate sense of pomp. It may also have been a reactionary statement directed at their host country.

While the family (now with the addition of a daughter, Kashmira, born in 1952) resided in Bombay the world’s seventh most populated city. Farookh was sent to St Peter’s, an English boarding school 50 miles away in Panchgani. His school in Zanzibar had been a missionary school run by nuns but this was a very different affair. In keeping with the colonialist tradition of imitating all things British, there was a great emphasis on etiquette. They played crtcket in the sun in lily-white flannels, meals uere served precisely on time, and vowels were never flat nor aitches dropped.

Panchgani is a hill town near Poona of just 3 000 inhabitants. It is far enough away from the hubbub and pollution of Bombay to give credence to the idea that it is a healthy environment m which to raise children. So healthy, in fact, that in 1957 when Farookh moved there, it had four schools, two for girls and two for boys. After taking the slow train from Bombay to Poona, the visitor takes a bus ride up into the clouds to Panchgani where there is a panorama of gentle slopes to the plain below.

On the day he first travelled to St Peter’s, Farookh met four other boys also on their way there - Farang Irani, Bruce Murray, Derrick Branche and Victory Rana a grand name for someone of grandiose ancestry a relation to a king no less. The five of them immediately forged friendships which would last throughout their school years.

Farookh more usually became Freddie to his friends and teachers a term of endearment his parents also adopted. They even referred to him as such in their message on his funeral wreath- “To our very beloved son Freddie we love you always. Mum and Dad”.

St Peter’s was efficiently run, the boys given a sense of freedom and encouragement and the tolerance shown to the different religious persuasions exceptional though Church of England was obviouslv the official school faith.

“I can think of nothing ugly about the place or the time we had there” said Derrick Branche. “I recall that Freddie’s and m schooldas were, if not the proverbially happiest days of our lives, then certainly a time of great joy, for in our innocence we had a marvellous time.».

The school was run like a typical English public school, and Freddie took his place with about twenty other boys in the school dormitory. His first public singing was in the school choir. Its number was complemented by girls from one of the nearby schools. Indeed, one of these girls formed Freddie’s first crush, Gita Bharucha.

The five boys who had met each other at Poona railway station formed themselves into a pop group and called themselves The Hectics. Freddie was a rather shy, reticent boy and was happy in the background thumping out basic chords on the ptano while Bruce Murray took on the role of front man. They practised in a spare dormitory and soon became the unofficial ‘school band’, appearing at fetes and school functions. Their heroes were Cliff Richard, Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Fats Domino and they belted out enthusiastic cover versions. Much of it was plain mimicry, down to the local girls screaming at the front of the stage; from half a world away they had kept a close watch on America and England.

Freddie was quiet but not afraid to express himself to either pupils or teachers. His school friends recall him ‘screaming like a banshee’ whenever he felt his feelings were being ignored. He was a good sportsman, excelling in table tennis and cricket. He also boxed in several competitions at the school, though his tall, lithe frame was not particularly suited to the sport.

During the holidays he would return to Bombay to be with his parents. The harbour port lying in the Arabian sea teemed with people and life and was a fascinating place for a boy to grow up. Although it was India’s commercial centre, much of it remained unspoiled and unchanged from centuries earlier. He would slip into the city, past the beggars and broken-down taxis, and head for the street bazaars. Snake charmers played their strange reedy tunes, fakirs reclined on beds of nails as proof of their faith, children begged incessantly, and traders cried that their mangoes or coconuts were the best in Bombay. At the harbour, workers toiled in the sun, washing clothes, beating them dry against stone slabs, naked backs leaking sweat. And out to sea, ships set sail heavy with tea. cotton and rice.

Perhaps much of the splendour and ceremony which later became Queen’s trademark was due to Freddie’s involvement with the Zoroastrian religion. He often went with his parents to the fine temples to worship. Sacred fires were lit in these imposing temples and prayers said before them as an act of faith. In Iran some fires have been alight for more than two thousand years and they are tended throughout the day by priests. Freddie was inducted into the religion as an eight year old at a ceremony called Navjote. He was given a purifying bath; it is, believed a clean body pre-empted a similar mind and soul. The priest chanted prayers while this took place, and afterwards in the shadow of an eternal fire, the new member repeated prayers and accepted the religion as revealed by Ahura Mazda to Zoroaster. At the end of the ceremony a sudreh, a white muslin shirt, another symbol of purity, was presented and a kusti, a cord made from lambs’ wool. The kusti was wrapped around the waist three times and many Zoroastrians wore it for the rest of their lives to remind them of Ahara Mazda. The final act was to shower the initiate with coconut, pomegranate, rice and rose petals while he wore his new clothes.

Jer Bulsara was adamant that Freddie learned to play the piano and she encouraged him to take lessons at school, for which the family had to pay an additional fee. At first he did these to placate her wishes but he fell in love with the instrument and eventually attained a grade five in the examination. It equated to a bizarre musical antecedence for Freddie. In the town he would hear the florid, apparently formless drone of traditional Indian music; the cinemas were awash with expansive Indian harmony songs; the piano lessons at school were based on classics and opera; and. all the time, pop music was a growing and vigorous influence.

Despite an emphasis on sport. St Peter’s was liberal enough to accommodate boys with artistic leanings. Mr Davis, the music teacher, used to hold sessions after tea in the evenings. He would play the boys pieces from operas and readings by classical English actors like Olivier and Cielgud. Freddie often appeared in school plays, most notably m Cure For The Fidgets. He was the ‘doctor’ and his characterisation included a suit, tie, heavily framed glasses and his hair swept back from his face.

«Whenever I think of Freddie at school, I always remember him smiling,» said Derrick Branche. «He seemed to be perpetually smiling, and thinking of that makes me smile too.».

St Peter’s, in keeping with a general public school education, imbued boys with certain qualities and traits. Freddie himself acknowledged that above all else it had taught him independence, to fend for himself. It also gave him a certain conceit, an imperviousness, and it was probably an important factor in his sexual development. Statistics show that homosexuality, as far as it was ever possible to equate it with any social grouping, was more prevalent among people from single sex boarding schools. Like any tendency, homosexuality depended on availability and especially in a teenager’s formative years, the all-male environment would almost tne inevitably have led to same-sex experimentation. Freddie showed an interest in girls, but out of necessity his adolescent happiness, sadness, sensitivity, hopes and desires were played out almost exclusively with males.

While he was at St Peter’s, Freddie’s parents moved back to Zanzibar. After his ‘0’ Levels, of which his best grades were in Art, English and History, they were reunited when he went back to Zanzibar to live in their new flat. He arrived home to the usual serenity; servants ironing his clothes, domestics helping his mother in the kitchen. It was a peaceable, uncomplicated life. Unknown to Freddie, the country was on the cusp of radical change. Britain was in the long process of disengaging its colonies and permitting countries to elect their own sovereign government. Zanzibar was comprised mainly of Africans with smaller social groupings of Arabs and Indians. In the autumn of 1963 an election was held and an Arab party came to power.

Africans in Zanzibar, many of whom assumed Zanzibar was their rightful territory because of its close proximity to the continent, were irate. They formed their own party. Afroshirasi, and assumed they would win the next election. They did not come to power at the next two hastily arranged elections and they naturally became suspicious of the balloting procedure. Nevertheless, the British Government handed over rule of the island in January 1964 to the Arab Sultan, just weeks after it had been declared an independent state.

Like much colonial business, too much had been left in abeyance and the British departure created social havoc. The Africans, exhausted by a flawed mandated system, resorted to violent means and a revolution broke out across the island. Many of the remaining British and the indigenous Indians feared for their lives and quickly left the country. The revolt eventually led to Zanzibar being united with an area on the African mainland formerly known as Tanganyika; together they became Tanzania.

The Bulsaras, carrying just two suitcases crammed with clothes and belongings, fled to England, a country on whose behalf Bomi Bulsara had served most of his life: n country they trusted and which they covertly revered, believing it to stand for decency, dignity, impeccable fair play. They contacted relatives already living in England and early in 1964 arrived at Feltham, a small town hidden on the west side of London. Falling within the county of Middlesex, and now trapped in the cheese wire grip of the M25, it is just a few miles south of Heathrow Airport, part of the ultimate urban sprawl that eases into the more sylvan, suburban charm of Sunbury, Staines. Chertsey, VValton-on-Thames and Esher. It is served by Hatton Cross tube station, which aside from Heathrow Central, is the most westerly point on the whole of London’s tube system.

The contrast between Zanzibar and Feltham could not possibly have been greater. The weather was perpetually damp and overcast, the only flora was privet hedges and sycamores in the municipal park, and people went about their business in drab clothes, in the archetypal starched British manner. Freddie Bulsara was the quintessence of exotic foreignness, a unique seventeen year old, but to people living in Feltham he was another swarthy youth; he might have been a Pakistani, Bangladeshi, or from any other far away country where Britain was begrudgingly fulfilling its empiric obligations. Either way, the welcome was muted. The Bulsaras could make of England what they wanted, or go home if they didn’t like it.

Freddie, who was still spending hours stabbing out paintings and drawings, decided to aim for art college. He signed up for a fashion and art course at Isleworth Polytechnic in west London. Every day he would line up with the other teenagers and travel on one of London’s famous red double decker buses to Isleworth a small town between Hounslow and Richmond upon Thames In later years Freddie rarely spoke of his early days m England and many believed it was a time of particular melancholy The move would have certainly caused traumatic cultural confusion and while there was no evidence of bullying Freddie quashed his natural exuberance and hung low his head with the others at the bus stop.

The Bulsaras put down a deposit on a modest house in Feltham and Bomi found work as an accountant with one of the major employers in the area the forte catering company. Freddie, like many students worked m the summer holidays firstly in the kitchens at nearby Heathrow Airport and then in a warehouse at Feltham Trading Estate. The other workers commented on his delicate hands and Freddie was soon using thts perceived fragility to his own gain he was excused most of the heavy work and they did it on his behalf. When the warehouse staff asked the college boy what his plans were for the future Freddie told them he was to become a musician this was the first time he had been overt about his dreams.

Freddie saved his earnings but announced one day to his mother that he wanted to give most of it away .She had been depositing the cash on his behalf at the Post Office and he had accumulated about £70. He told her a friend was about to be evicted from his flat and desperately needed money. He asked her to draw out £50 and when she asked if he would get it back he shrugged his shoulders. It was an early example of the generosity for which Freddie became famous. In later years such altruism came easy it invariably did with fabulous wealth but Jer Bulsara saw the early episode as a snapshot of his personality. That was his way always generous always thoughtful of others she explained.

After Isleworth he was accepted to study graphic illustration at Ealing College of Art and in September 1966 he moved into a rented flat in Kensington. He had to travel a few miles through London’s maze of streets to reach Ealing each day but it at least allowed him to escape Feltham and a family from which he was growing increasingly alienated.

His timing was impeccable. The year, 1966 the summer and autumn especially was halcyon a unique cultural explosion across the boundaries of art, music, fashion and literature. London, the famous borough of Kensington and Chelsea in particular, was its epicenter. The capital was a blank canvas, a naked body, an open stage, an empty page and the world waited with a rare urgency to see how it would be embellished.

Ealing College of Art had a rich tradition: Pete Townshend of The Who and Ron Wood of The Faces and The Rolling Stones were former students. The course was roughly divided between illustration, graphic art and advertising. It was a progressive syllabus, focused on a multi media approach which was later adopted at most colleges. It was no, however, a premium London art college to match St Martin’s, Slade, Camberwell, Hornsey or the Central College, and it is noteworthy that three of its most famous ex-students were pop musicians and not artists. While its outlook was liberal some students felt the tutoring was too relaxed and overlooked much of the basics of graphic design. On completion, students received a diploma from Eahng but tt was not an actual Diploma of Education (Dip. Ed) which most of the other colleges awarded.

Freddie though much emphasis has often been placed on his artistic bent, was a mediocre student.t He did not have the perseverance to apply himself to the humdrum of graphics and much of his course work was ordinary. He was undisciplined and spent too many hours indulging himself drawing fellow classmates in grainy almost child-like-detail. He had no delusions about his own work fellow students recall him roaring with laughter at his own paintings and drawings. He was, like many art students, primarily out for a good time the scent of bohemianism more pungent than an academic inclination. He would have been better suited to a course in fine art it was more akin to his erratic nebulous ideas.

In 1967 Freddie, like millions of other teenagers discovered Jimi Hendrix. He saw him as the embodiment of cool and began to dress like him constantly drawing his portrait - the contorted face, heavy lips, headband, wire wool hair, upside down white Fender Stratocaster - the image was everywhere, filling all the available space on the walls of his flat. Freddies entire wardrobe was based on Hendrix, down to the tightly knotted chiffon scarves he wore in the cleft of his neck, hanging loosely down to a multicoloured silk shirt, but the attire was nothing out of the ordinary, not by London 1967 standards at least. «Freddie wasn’t an outrageous flamboyant personality at all,» said a fellow student at Baling, Graham Rose. «He was as skinny as a pencil and used to wear tight jeans or crushed velvet trousers which made htm even skinnier But what he wore was no different from what we were all wearing at that time. On the whole he was a quiet guy, though he was prone to fits of giggles.

The rare times Freddie showed any streak of exhibitionism was in his impersonation of Jimi Hendrix. He would either use a T-square or ruler to represent the microphone as he ran through an animated impression, purple haze all in his brain. He was, however, generally wary of the spotlight and had an attack of stage fright at the end-of-year college fashion show. He had agreed to model an outfit comprised of a two-tone brown acket and a shirt made of fur and plastic. He got half-way down the catwalk, stopped suddenly, and ran back to the anonymity of the curtains.

At Ealing Art College Freddie gravitated towards Tim Staffell, who was by then an established member of 1984 with Brian May. They had much in common. «1 think both of us had the tendency to draw but we didn’t have real artistic quality, not like the guys who turned up on the first day with brilliantly drawn portfolios and all their plans mapped out,» said Staffell. «College was like a starting point for us both. It was a time of readjustment, we were two people being created in a way.» Students on the same course remember Tim Staffell wearing a pair of steel toe-capped boots which he had polished with an emery cloth until they shone like chrome. Cartoon characters were then daubed on to the steel. He had a deep interest in science fiction and the work of the English nonsense poet Edward Lear.

Like Tim Staffell, Freddie Bulsara was becoming obsessive about rock music. The capital was alive with groups and venues and Freddie was anxious to take it all in, Bands and artists like The Who. Alexis Korner and Georgie Fame would appear at west of London venues like The Attic in Hounslow, the Rikky-Tik in Windsor, and such was the profusion of clubs, south west London had three top-notch venues, the Eel Pie Island Club on the Thames at Twickenham, St Mary’s Ballroom in Putney and The Crown pub in Richmond, where promising new groups like Rare Bird would appear. Freddie was also a regular patron of the music club held during lunch times at Haling College where, among the many guests, were Chicken Shack and Tyrannosaurus Rex. «I went to some of the concerts with him and after one he said to me that he too would be a pop star one day,» said fellow student Gillian Green. «It was just a throw-away remark. Everyone seemed quite flamboyant back then, making outrageous statements, so it was nothing new to hear someone talk like that.».

Tim Staffell, who was as close to Freddie as anyone at this time, saw few, if any, of the outrageous qualities he was to later adopt. «The Freddie Mercury Queen persona just wasn’t there at Baling.» said Tim Staffell. «When I was at college I was na’i’ve, egocentric, ignorant - and my experience since has led me to believe that so was everyone else. We were all searching for mutual growth, fencing with each other if you like. Freddie was much like everyone else, except I remember him having a more dry sense of humour. I thought he was more cynical than everyone else. He was mildly cynical at a time when people weren’t cynical at all. He was not destructively so, it was a humour device.».

As they progressed through the course, the students competed with each other to see who could dress the most shockingly. Freddie painted all his finger nails black and it became part of his image around college. Although he was known for his high-pitched cackle, extravagant mannerisms, and a certain epicene quality, few of his contemporaries considered him to be homosexual. David Bowie had made androgyny chic, and to a lesser extent homosexuality had been sanctioned as a valid statement of liberation. At least one other student on Freddie’s fashion course had been homosexual and there would have been no real reason to hide his feelings; in fact, it might have earned him a certain kudos. «Freddie was very easy in the company of women, very matey,» said Gillian Green. «I don’t think he was concealing that he was gay, because I don’t think he was at the time. I know of girls he went out with and I know for a fact he had a relationship of about six weeks with one of them.

He was known for his expressiveness, but most people knew him only on a superficial level. He revealed very little about himself or his background. «He was very easy going,» said Gillian Green. «He had a lot of bon homie, but there was a lot he kept to himself. He was shy in many ways and used to blush quite a lot, and then get embarrassed because he was blushing.» On one of the rare times he spoke of his past, Freddie eulogised life in Zanzibar to another student. John Matheson, and promised to one day take him there so he could see such beauty himself. Gillian Green found Freddie of a very different disposition on the extremely rare occasions he mentioned his past. «He talked about his background as it it was repressive and enclosed.» she said. «You could tell he didn’t like talking about it. He said he was so glad they had come to England. He could not understand why his parents had made so little attempt to integrate. He was a bit scathing actually, about how they could come to this country and make so little effort. He told me they could barely speak English. They seemed to want to disappear but he didn’t.».

Aside from the shock of a new country and culture, the Bulsaras had suffered a great blow to their dignity. In Zanzibar and India Bomi Bulsara had been a fairly high-ranking official, mixing in diplomatic circles, and with enough wealth to afford servants and pay for Freddie’s privileged education At Forte’s he was a down-table accountant; it was perhaps understandable that, unlike Freddie, they would pine for their former life. Through their religion and circle of Parsee friends they were attempting to build a small bastion of Zanzibar in Feltham.

Freddie’s public school education precipitated his estrangement from his parents which was completed when they moved to England. There was a harmony between them again before Freddie’s death, and indeed his funeral was in accordance with the Zoroastrian faith, but their relationship in life, if not death, was shallow.

Without a past, and with a family fused to the shadowy background, Freddie was able to become whatever he wished. He never spoke with Tim Staffell of his family, and Tim did not detect «a trace of him being different or trying to find his feet.’ The obsession of the times was self-discovery and Freddie capitalised on this. His parents had inadvertently left him the widest canvas imaginable; with a swish of a cloak, or feather hoa, Freddie was about to devour life, and the times when he would look over his shoulder were so seldom as not to matter.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 704