More than 30 years after his death, Parsi boy Farrokh Bulsara — better known, of course, as Freddie Mercury, lead vocalist and pianist of the rock band Queen — lives on.
At least, it seemed that way in the first of six auctions of his belongings at Sotheby’s in London on Wednesday.
A 16th-century Indian miniature depicting A Prince on Horseback With His Entourage sold for £266,700, against an estimate of £30,000-50,000.
Sotheby’s said it was “a nod to Mercury’s ancestry, acquired in the last six months of his life”.
Bulsara was born on September 5, 1946, in Stone Town in the British protectorate of Zanzibar (now part of Tanzania) to Parsi parents from Gujarat, Bomi and Jer Bulsara. He attended boarding schools in India and arrived in Britain in 1964 after his family fled the Zanzibar Revolution.
In 1954, at the age of eight, he was sent to study at St Peter’s School, a boys’ boarding establishment in Panchgani near Bombay. It was here he started being called “Freddie”.
He also attended St Mary’s School in Bombay before moving back to Zanzibar where his parents had returned.
From 1980, until his death on November 24, 1991, at the age of 45, he lived in Garden Lodge, a detached Georgian-style villa in Kensington in west London. He filled the elegant house with beautiful objects, which are now being auctioned. In accordance with his wishes, he was given a Zoroastrian funeral.
Mercury’s collection is being sold by Mary Austin, his former lover and closest friend.
Although the evening was meant to be a black tie affair, “some attendees chose to emulate Mercury’s style at the auction, with one attending wearing a white sleeveless shirt, high jeans and Adidas high-top sneakers completed with a Mercury-inspired moustache and haircut”, one report noted. “Others simply dressed eccentrically in an apparent nod to his memory, donning avant-garde check suits and unorthodox footwear.”
Spotting one of the lookalikes, the auctioneer, Oliver Barker, chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, quipped: “Freddie has walked in, don’t worry we won’t tell anyone.”
At the start of the auction, billed as “Freddie Mercury: A World of his Own”, he observed: “It has been a once-in-a-lifetime privilege for all of us at Sotheby’s to celebrate the legend that is Freddie Mercury.”
The month-long exhibition of many of the 35,000 items, which are being sold in 1,500 lots — on Wednesday all 59 on offer fetched high prices — had “caught everybody’s imaginations”, Barker added.
Wednesday’s auction fetched £12.2 million against an estimated £4.8 million. A record 2,000 people from 61 countries registered to bid.
The top lot of the sale, Mercury’s adored Yamaha grand piano (1973) — the instrument he used to compose Bohemian Rhapsody, Don’t Stop Me Now and Somebody to Love — sold to an online bidder for £1,742,000.
The first item to cross the million-pound barrier was the autographed working lyrics for Bohemian Rhapsody (c. 1974), which fetched £1,379,000.
We Are The Champions
(c. 1977) went for £317,500; Don’t Stop Me Now (c. 1978) for £317,500; Killer Queen (c.1974) for £279,400; and Somebody to Love (c. 1976) for £241,300.
