{"id":516457,"date":"2026-04-06T20:39:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T20:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/516457\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T20:39:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T20:39:08","slug":"how-a-traumatic-childhood-turned-freddie-mercury-into-a-world-conquering-songwriter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/516457\/","title":{"rendered":"How a traumatic childhood turned Freddie Mercury into a world-conquering songwriter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mercury brought the grand tale to a suitably mournful and haunting conclusion on the follow-up to Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack (also released in 1974). On Lily of the Valley, he sings of magic departing Rhye, just as the elves leave Middle-earth at the close of The Lord of the Rings. \u201cMessenger from Seven Seas has flown \/ To tell the King of Rhye he\u2019s lost his throne,\u201d croons Mercury.<\/p>\n<p>As the music falls silent, you can almost hear the portcullis slamming shut \u2013 the saga of Rhye is done. Twelve months later he wrote Bohemian Rhapsody, and everything changed forever for both the band and rock music itself.<\/p>\n<p>Mercury was a luminescent talent whose achievements include single-handedly bringing the moustache back into fashion \u2013 but in the early 1970s a foray into Tolkien-esque world-building was hardly unique.<\/p>\n<p>Back then, <a class=\"ck-custom-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/led-zeppelin\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Led Zeppelin<\/a> couldn\u2019t seem to pick up a mandolin without singing about The Lord of the Rings (The Battle of Evermore, from 1971, explicitly references Ringwraiths). Rush got in on the action with their 1975 acoustic dirge Rivendell, named after Elrond\u2019s digs in the shadow of the Misty Mountains. Black Sabbath had by that point already cranked out The Wizard, widely regarded as having been inspired by Gandalf \u2013 a metal icon by dint of his love of runes and his expansive expertise on orcs and goblins.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the re-release of Queen II is a reminder that, before he was a rock god, Mercury was something just as fascinating: an explorer of strange and exotic worlds who had the gifts of a true storyteller.<\/p>\n<p>Had he lived past 45 \u2013 his age when he died in November 1991 \u2013 might he have returned to Rhye? As old age crept up, like the first hint of winter, it is easy to imagine him coming back around to that early phase of his career and once again revisiting his lost childhood in song. The tragedy is that we will never know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercury brought the grand tale to a suitably mournful and haunting conclusion on the follow-up to Queen II,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[5343,168438,180210,96,1004,93202,10866,128,2820,30335,11654,5438,58919,56,54,55,157732],"class_list":{"0":"post-516457","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-culture","9":"tag-culture-editors-choice","10":"tag-ed-power","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-freddie-mercury","13":"tag-jrr-tolkien","14":"tag-led-zeppelin","15":"tag-music","16":"tag-pop-music","17":"tag-queen-band","18":"tag-rock-music","19":"tag-standard","20":"tag-top-story","21":"tag-uk","22":"tag-united-kingdom","23":"tag-unitedkingdom","24":"tag-us-content"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}