Somebody to Love: The Life, Death and Legacy of Freddie Mercury

I think this is the longest review I’ve left on a book yet but man this book reached deep down into my soul and touched it.

I came into this biography with a passing knowledge about Freddie Mercury, Queen and even the AIDS epidemic. I grew up listening to Queen as my parents were big fans. They had every one of their pre-90s albums on vinyl and I can still remember the very first one I listened to - News of The World, I picked that one because it had the "weird robot" on the front - I was instantly hooked. But growing up listening to their music and knowing their history are two different things. It wasn't until I was in my late teens coming to terms with my own sexuality that I learned who exactly Freddie Mercury was and how he died. I did some research on him, what limited stuff there was on the internet at that time, but it took until I was an adult to really take up an interest in him and his legacy.

I watched the recent movie biopic Bohemian Rhapsody and it completely reignited the fire of how much I have always loved Queens music. And instead of trolling through Wiki pages trying to learn all I could about the history of Queen, and more specifically Freddie, that I stumbled onto this book. And out of the seemingly 100s of Freddie biographies I could have chosen to read - I am so glad I picked this one.

Not only does this book seem to give a brash look at Freddies life, choices, and consequences but as it goes through his timeline it chronicles HIV/AIDS and its development and spread in history. Having these two story lines going on simultaneously made Freddies life and death all that more poignant. Not to mention, I was born in the late 80s. I was never around to see what our world was like at that time for LGBTQA people and the struggles they had to face with the AIDS epidemic. “We view the past from a different present” page 390. It is not something that is taught in school or anything so my knowledge of it was limited to hearsay, movie plots and what little information I had come across in my lifetime (ie I knew that our US Government at the time hindered a lot but I had no idea how badly they messed up our people until reading this).

While reading this book, any of the singles they mentioned, performances, articles, places, events etc I looked up (unless I had them already). So I listened to and watched things while reading this so I could really get in it. That so helped. There were only a couple songs mentioned that I couldn't remember hearing, I looked up people who I didn't know - basically immersed myself in this as much as I could.

And by the end of reading this, I had cried several times. This was an intense, incredibly emotional, powerful biography. Freddie may have made some questionable choices in his life but he deserves all the accolades and the legacy that came from his immense talents.

I found the history of AIDS was informative, however, I feel the authors over did it. True, you can't read a book about Freddie Mercury without reading about the disease that took his life, but bringing in the development of AIDS made much of the book long winded , and after a while I was wondering how much of of this book was padded with different excerpts from other books and not researched as well as they lead the reader to believe. One giant clue is at the end of the book, they give a long list of people who had died of AIDS and one of the first people they list was Andy Warhol. This is totally incorrect! Andy Warhol died of Arrhythmia after a very complicated gall bladder surgery. If you are going to write a book, do some fact checking, it's not hard to do.

I read this book straight through as I couldn't stop, it was so interesting. I've come to absolutely love Freddie Mercury and his musical genius. He seems to have been such a complex personality in some ways, but a superficial, devil-may-care chance-taker in other ways. I can (sort of) remember when he died, but I wasn't really into Queen/Freddie at that time. I vaguely recall hearing the news of his death on the radio; thinking "they just announced yesterday he had AIDS"; wondered how he died so soon; and quickly dismissed it. At the time, I was a young nurse totally focused on my career. I'll remember until the day I die the very first AIDS patient I took care of. It was in the early 80's; we didn't even know for sure what AIDS was. We knew it was contagious, but not how it was spread. This was a very young man who had been living in San Francisco who returned to his parents' home in Missouri to die. We had to gown-up; put on gloves; and mask to even enter his room. I remember scrubbing my hands till they almost bled after taking care of him. It was very sad for this young man to have to die. So I read with much interest this book and the history of the disease and how it came to be--ultimately finding its way to FM. So sad; what a waste to lose FM (and all the others) so young. I try not to ask myself, "why"; it's just the way it is. If you love FM and his music as I do, read this book

The author took advantage of “knowing” Freddie to write a book that just repeats the last chapter and doesn’t give anything of substance on Freddy.
Interesting information about HIV/AIDS, but I didnt buy a book about that. I didn’t learn
Anything about Freddie that I couldn’t find on the internet. Save your money

This book is very well written. It starts off explaining where AIDS originated from, how it came into the US and some other countries, and then it goes into Freddie's parents' lives and his life.

As a very long time fan of Freddie Mercury, I have read almost every book that has been written about him. This was written with respect and sensitivity towards Freddie, and not as a distasteful piece of gossip. It provides more bits of information about him that the others do not. There are pieces of information that dispute what others have said about Freddie in blogs and in books. There are some bits of information that makes me curious where the author obtained the information from, and there are some events and people left out of the book, but I believe the author has most of it correct.

Most fans of Freddie Mercury are interested in every aspect his life. He was fascinating. Most of us have wondered with great sadness as to when he was infected with the HIV virus. Not because we can change anything, but because we care about him. He definitely lived a dangerous and very self destructive life, which makes me so sad for him. The author provides a lot of good information, and even narrows down a date (within a matter of a couple of weeks) of when he suspects that Freddie was infected with the virus. I personally believe it was a couple of years before the author thinks due to the fact that at least two of his lovers died in 1986, but the author makes some good points regarding why he believes his time frame. None of us will ever really know, and the main point is, our beloved Freddie is gone. How I wish that were not true. The author also explains the much discussed topic of insurance for when they were on tour, and how Freddie was most likely able to dodge that issue. Freddie in fact had several HIV tests over a several year period. What I don't understand is why Freddie continued to have unprotected sex when the epidemic was on everybody's minds in the early 80's, (I remember the news coverage in the very early 80's well) and if he did indeed find out that he was most likely HIV positive why he continued to have unprotected sex.

The book is very sobering, it made me sad for Freddie. However, I am glad I read the book, and would definitely recommend it to any Freddie fans that are interested in his life and sadly, the downward spiral that took him from us far too soon. Rest in peace, Freddie. We love you.

This book was interestingly formatted, taking the time to explore the origins of HIV and AIDS and place those origins in perspective to lives with which we identify. Unfortunately, this book is in sore need of a qualified editor. It is badly overwritten and repetitive. Freddie Mercury's death took up half the book in excruciating detail; much of it is none of our business, as Mercury worked hard to maintain his privacy. Factual errors and omissions abound. For example, the authors talk about Liza Minnelli a number of times, without noting that six months after Mercury died, her own ex-husband and close friend Peter Allen died of AIDS. They extoll Mercury as a "one off," a flamboyant performer and prolific songwriter, never mentioning that Peter Allen was the same, but a man who left behind a catalogue of songs including "I Honestly Love You," "Fly Away," "The Theme from 'Arthur'" (for which he won an Oscar), "I Go To Rio," and hundreds more. Anyone who saw him leap on top of the piano for "Rio," or dance with the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes could never forget the amazing Peter Allen. But to validate their thesis that Freddie Mercury was "one of a kind," they simply forgot him. Inexcusable in a book such as this. Near the end of the book, they list those who suffer from HIV and AIDS without mentioning Peter Allen, and mixing many still alive with those who have passed. For authors who did such deep research into the epidemiological history of the disease that has taken so many lives, this is sloppy and insulting in the extreme. A good deal of Freddy Mercury's life as set out here is pure speculation, something the extremely private Mercury would have despised. I finished the book because I had invested so much time in it, but much of that time was wasted. Mercury deserves better.

This book is more about Aids the disease more than the musician from an author who obviously is not a scientist and whose education in that area is clearly lacking. Or alternatively, he is using the book to publish its own agenda or too lazy to research a topic before putting it in a book for people to read. As an educated lawyer, I stop reading and requested my money back from Amazon right away. This day with Amazon, anyone can put any garbage out there for people to read. Blame countries with lack of resources for your reckless behaviors. (sexual and otherwise).

I am just not quite sure what to say about this book. I thoroughly enjoyed the content that related to Freddie Mercury, the band, and the piecing together of events over the time he more than likely knew he was infected and his death. The quotes and interview snippets were interesting as well, not having read some of them before. However, I was not expecting another "And The Band Played On". There seemed to me to be as much of the book devoted to the history of HIV as there is to Freddie Mercury. It would have been very interesting, I'm sure, if I had not already been knowledgeable of the inception of the virus. I suppose I expected more focus on Freddie Mercury.

I wanted to like this book so much. It starts off with a l-o-n-g history of the AIDS epidemic. It is interesting, researched, and tedious in its telling of the band, the songs, and the people who didn't want them to succeed. Unfortunately, it constantly references his sexuality, his struggles with his coming out and his flamboyancy on the stage,. and every other page seems to say, "did I mention he was gay?" He liked one producer not because he was good or an effective promoter but because "he was gay like Freddie". Enough. Tell the man's story...we all know he was gay or bisexual and it's not a big thing. This book reduced all his genius to one part of the total that made him such a visionary in music. I'd give it 5 for the completeness of his story and a 2 for constantly going back to telling us he was gay.

I downloaded samples of most of the Freddie Mercury books wanting to know more about him following seeing the new movie and learing much of it was untrue. Anyway, I ended up picking this biography over the rest, but I also downloaded the book by Jim Hutton, because his was easy to get into and felt very intimate and personal. Since I didn't know much about Queen or Freddie, I thought I should read this book first to get a broad base of his life and career, before delving into the story of a lover that knew him for a specific period of time, but I couldn't put down Jim's account! When I finished, I read this book, and I was so disappointed!
First, there are inaccuracies in material reported from Jim's book and it made me wonder what else in this book is incorrect? I also didn't like that this biographer doesn't personally know Freddie or anyone else he writes about. This author relies on other biographers' material to tell this story--one being Lesley Jones, who's book sample was one I downloaded and rejected because I didn't like her style, but I got the impression she actually knew Freddie at least--along with quotes from Freddie, the other members of Queen, and others. He doesn't usually explain where the quotes come from in the book, but they are NOT from personal interviews. Again, because I know a few things were reprinted wrongly or taken out of context from Jim's book, I am leery of everything else reported.
I also did not like that there are photos at the very end of this book, because after you finish the story, there are pages and pages of discography, an index, and references--boring stuff you would normally skip. Had I not paged through all of it, I would've missed some neat photos, and that also would've been disappointing!
This book is a decent read, but what is true and what is not? Is there a better biography you should read? Probably--there are many!