Freddie Mercury made his mark with a legendary
singing voice, a memorable strut, and a larger-than-life stage presence. But as out there as his public persona was,
he kept a lot of big things to himself. From his nights on the town with Princess
Diana, to the real reason he could sing so well, here are the most remarkable things
we learned about Freddie Mercury after he died. Freddie Mercury's body was cremated, but there
was no public ceremony for the spreading of his ashes or even an announcement of where
the singer wanted his remains to go. Only one person knew what he wanted done with
them, and it's unlikely she'll ever reveal the secret. According to Rolling Stone, former fiancé
and long-time friend Mary Austin is the only person who knows where Mercury's ashes went. As she told the magazine, "He suddenly announced one day after Sunday
lunch, 'I know exactly where I want you to put me. But no one's to know, because I don't want
anyone to dig me up. I just want to rest in peace.'" So Austin kept Mercury's ashes for two years,
until long after her comings and goings stopped attracting press attention. Then she told everyone she was going out for
a facial, and buried his remains in secret. Because fans will be fans, there remains plenty
of speculation about where exactly Mercury's remains might be. Some think Austin took him all the way to
Zanzibar, though "I'm going for a facial" would be a weird way to try and cover that
up. Others think he's under a tree in his own
backyard. All that guessing is unlikely to amount to
much, though, because the only person who knows for sure where Mercury's remains went
will probably take the secret to her grave. In the 1980s, it wasn't uncommon for people
who suspected they might have been exposed to HIV to just not want to know for sure if
they had the virus. At the time, HIV was a death sentence. Now people are encouraged to get tested for
the disease and do what they can to avoid passing it to others. But in Mercury's time, much about the virus'
nature was unknown. Tests for its presence weren't considered
to be accurate, and the outlook for infected people was bleak. It's understandable why someone wouldn't want
to face the possibility that they'd contracted it. According to journalist Tim Teeman, Mercury
didn't know he was HIV positive until he began showing advanced symptoms of AIDS. While he might have suspected he carried the
disease at some point, he wasn't diagnosed until 1987, after a type of cancer called
Kaposi's sarcoma appeared on his shoulder. Longtime partner Jim Hutton said that up until
that point there'd been no real indication that Mercury was ill. Even after his diagnosis, Mercury was never
open about his illness, not even to his family. He kept his condition secret from the public
until confirming the rumors in a press release, the day before he died. Much has been made of Freddie Mercury's incredible
singing voice, which allowed him to reach the depths of "Somebody to Love" and the heights
of "Under Pressure." His vocal range has been rumored to span four
octaves and remains so impressive that in 2016 it inspired a team of scientists to look
into its biological source. Mercury professed a belief that his voice's
special quality came from his unusual teeth. That's why he never tried to have his overbite
corrected, despite being self-conscious about it. But the 2016 study concluded that it wasn't
his teeth behind his vocal range, but rather his vestibular folds. These are a pair of membranes located just
above the vocal cords, which are sometimes called "false vocal cords," as they're not
typically used for making sound. Mercury could use his to create subharmonic
vibration, which is how he produced that growl he's famous for. Whether or not his voice was really capable
of hitting four octaves is something the scientists weren't able to determine, so that aspect
of Mercury's talent remains a subject of debate for music fans. Freddie Mercury was able to navigate the line
between celebrity and privacy with grace, but for some famous people, being anonymous
is almost impossible. Lady Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales was
one of the most notoriously harassed celebrities of her time, and the constant media attention
was especially hard on her. According to Rolling Stone, Mercury befriended
Diana in the mid-1980s and sympathized with her situation. Along with some friends, he conspired to take
her out for a paparazzi-free night on the town. They disguised Di in drag by dressing her
in an army jacket, aviator sunglasses, and a leather cap, after which they snuck her
into the most raucous gay bar in London. The plot worked flawlessly. The bar patrons were so dazzled by Mercury
and his friends that they paid no attention to the princess, who was able to spend the
entire evening incognito. Diana was so thrilled with the experience
that she told Mercury and his friends that she hoped to do it again. Because Mercury was one of the first celebrity
AIDS victims, people are often surprised to hear that he was once engaged to a woman and
that she remained very close to him even after he started having relationships exclusively
with men. While the Bohemian Rhapsody movie glossed
over a lot of things, this aspect was pretty accurate. Even though they never married, Mercury often
referred to Mary Austin as his wife, and in a 1985 interview he once said, "All my lovers asked me why they couldn't
replace Mary, but it's simply impossible. I couldn't fall in love with a man the same
way I did with Mary." Mercury was involved with Jim Hutton for the
seven years prior to his death, but he left the former hairdresser with a pittance compared
to what he reportedly left to Mary Austin. She received the bulk of his estate, including
his money, his mansion, and his recording royalties. And Austin wasn't exactly kind to Hutton after
Mercury's death, either. In fact, she kicked him out of the house shortly
after the singer's passing. Hutton ended up taking the 500,000 pounds
Mercury left him and used it to build a home in his native Ireland, where he remained until
his death in 2010. Sexuality is a lot more complex than just
straight or gay. But in Mercury's day people would sometimes
assume that you had to be either one or the other. When the public learned of Mercury's AIDS
diagnosis, the disease was widely, and wrongly, associated only with gay people. It was then widely assumed that Mercury himself
must have been gay, too. But Mercury wasn't gay in the strictest sense
of the word. He continued to profess his love for ex-fiancé
Mary Austin even years after their physical relationship ended. It has also been asserted, in biographies
published after Mercury's death, that the greatest love affairs of his life were with
women. So it seems that the singer was emotionally
drawn to women but physically drawn to men. It's a state of affairs that seems to have
caused some upset toward the end of his life, even though he spent his last seven years
in a relationship with Jim Hutton, he still thought of Mary Austin as his soulmate and
therefore the natural heir to his fortune. "Y'know she's been a girlfriend of mine for
a long time, and uh, even though we're not together right now in the interim, I sort
of refer to her a lot." Freddie Mercury knew he was dying, but he
refused to feel sorry for himself. He wanted to remain productive, preferably
while free from unwanted media attention. So he chose to keep his diagnosis a secret. As bandmate Roger Taylor told Entertainment
Weekly in 1999, "He didn't want to be looked at as an object
of pity and curiosity. And he didn't want circling vultures over
his head." Mercury kept recording throughout most of
his final years, even when it became very difficult for him. According to GQ, Queen released the single
"The Show Must Go On" just six weeks before Mercury's death, and the singer was so ill
during recording that bandmate Brian May expressed concern about whether he'd be able to perform
the vocals at all. Mercury put those doubts to rest, though. As May later described the events, "I said, 'Fred, I don't know if this is going
to be possible to sing.' And he went, 'I'll f---ing do it, darling,'
vodka down, and went in and killed it, completely lacerated that vocal."" He couldn't keep it up forever, though. While recording "Mother Love" he stopped before
the last verse, and then said, quote, "I'm not feeling that great, I think I should call
it a day now. I'll finish it when I come back, next time." But there was no next time, Mercury never
went back to the studio, and May sang the last verse of "Mother Love" himself. Mercury's bombastic stage reputation didn't
follow him into his personal life or even into his relationship with his bandmates. It's said that Mercury was really the most
level-headed of the bunch, especially when it came to disagreements between his fellow
band members, which were evidently quite common. Mercury once said the band, quote, "argued
about everything, even the air that we breathe." Yet somehow the band persisted through it
all. According to writer Lesley-Ann Jones' biography
of Mercury's life, the front man was usually the guy who ended up keeping the peace, an
assessment the bandmates agreed with. As Brian May recalled in 2007, "It was normally Roger and I who were at opposite
ends. Everyone thinks that Freddie was difficult. Actually Freddie was great. He was a great diplomat." "We argue a lot, we fight a lot, but in the
end, what really is the key feature is that we must come up with some product." Freddie Mercury was friends with Michael Jackson
for a time, and the two intended to record music together at some point. But as it turns out, Mercury was just too
wild and crazy for Jackson's tastes. That's right, the guy who owned a chimpanzee,
once tried to buy Marvel Comics, and had dreams of building himself a giant robot replica
thought Freddie Mercury was too wild and crazy to hang out with. According to Mercury himself, quoted in Lesley-Ann
Jones' biography, the two musicians made efforts to record several songs together, but could
never really find the time to finish the tracks. The three songs they worked on together, "Victory,"
"State of Shock," and "There's More to Life Than This," ended up being completed without
each other's involvement on their own albums. Ultimately, the two stars had a falling-out,
supposedly after Jackson took offense to Mercury doing too much cocaine in his living room. "I think one of the tracks would have been
on the Thriller album, if I finished it. But I missed out." The HIV virus doesn't kill directly. It attacks the immune system, which makes
it possible for secondary infections to move in. That's what makes AIDS such an insidious illness;
it's not a single disease, but rather a lot of diseases, and the symptoms patients end
up showing are all specific to the viruses, bacteria, fungal organisms, and other microbes
that the individual patient is exposed to. Kaposi's sarcoma, which was Freddie Mercury's
first symptom, is a cancer caused by the human herpesvirus 8, which wouldn't cause symptoms
in a person who has a healthy immune system. As the symptoms of AIDS progressed throughout
his body, Mercury developed other horrifying complications. In 2017 guitarist Brian May told the Sunday
Times Magazine that one of Mercury's ugliest symptoms was in his foot. As May told the publication, "Tragically, there was very little left of
it. Once, he showed it to us at dinner. And he said, 'Oh, Brian, I'm sorry I've upset
you by showing you that.'" Ultimately, the singer was killed by pneumonia
brought on by complications from AIDS, a relatively common end for an exceptionally uncommon person. Check out our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite
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