Meeting one’s favourite artists tends to be a bit of a slippery slope. As much fun as it can be trying to rub shoulders with some of the biggest names in the music industry, there’s no telling whether that person is going to be genuine or if they’re going to leave you looking like just another fanboy wanting to take a picture with them. Although Bono has sometimes been known to be a bit too reverent of the icons who came before him, he did admit that meeting Freddie Mercury was a moment he wouldn’t soon forget.
By the time U2 had started cutting their teeth as a live act, Queen had practically turned their stage into their home away from home. Although Mercury may have been known as fairly reserved and professional in the studio, his way of igniting every venue he played was nothing short of alien in the 1970s, using the audience as his own personal plaything.
Whereas Queen was using their platform to entertain, Bono knew that anything that he did onstage had to mean something more than just entertainment. Birthed out of the punk scene, U2 were meant to be the kind of band that rallied against any kind of establishment at first, making the kind of post-punk with a political edge on albums like War.
While the group were supposed to stand against injustice, their following had ballooned to gargantuan levels by the time they reached the mid-1980s. Coming off the album The Unforgettable Fire, they were on top of the world with songs like ‘Pride’ when they were asked to perform at the massive charity event Live Aid.
While Bono would steal the show with his signature performance of ‘Bad’, the day belonged to Queen from the moment they stepped onstage. From the opening strains of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ to working the audience like an instrument, Mercury had Wembley Stadium in the palm of his hand for those few minutes onstage, a feat that should be studied until the end of time as to how to properly perform in front of an audience.
In between the performances, Bono got the chance to meet Mercury backstage. He was greeted with the same eccentricity that he saw onstage, saying, “Freddie Mercury comes up to me and says, ‘We’ve all agreed that we like you,’ and he had me up against a wall, and he was being very playful with me. I remember looking up and saying, ‘He’s very camp, isn’t he’, and somebody said, ‘QUEEN?’”.
What Bono got in those few seconds is just a small sample of the way that Mercury conducted most of his life. From the way he strutted across the stage to his eccentric lifestyle off the stage, Mercury always relied on pure camp to get him through every part of his life, perfectly captured in songs like ‘Seaside Rendezvous’ on the album A Night at the Opera. Queen may have been able to throw down every single time they hit the stage, but you never had to worry about whether they were taking themselves too seriously or not.
