Christmas light display

I think we can probably all agree on one thing.  A homosexual who starts out life in Zanzibar East Africa with the name Farrokh Bulsara,  is not your typical path to rock stardom.  lol

Sal wrote:
Priest kicks Deep Purple's ass down the block.

And, they had a lead singer who makes Freddie look like Ward Cleaver.  [/font]

Me likes it.
But I gotta tell you you're using the same kind of hyperbole my cousin Dave does when we always argue about the Stones (his favorite) vs the Allmans (my favorite).
A couple of weeks ago he told me "alongside the Rolling Stones, the Allman Brothers just plain suck". lol

Because we didn't know any gay people at the time.

The people who knew he was gay, were for the most part, gay.


I have lived in a very different world. I have had the privilege since High school to know some amazing intelligent gay people. I spent much of my time around theater people and artists, and the learning curve is short. I would be lying if the junior high insecurity about sexuality that I was quite capable of coming out with an insensitive macho put downs, but never to a person who was gay. I hated the persecution, and quite frankly had the great privilege to know and share deep intellectual perspective which opened my eyes to the amazing world we lived in. From Randy Shilts who wrote the band played on and chronicled the aids melt down in SF, who was a brother of a friend to the people I shared a house with in graduate school who were all theater majors...I was the big insensitive jock who enjoyed watching a game rather than entering there world of creativity...yet when you are awakened at 2 in the morning to Louis Armstrong's band playing with all these talented musicians after the show in your bedroom which two of us shared and was a storefront church......you got educated. Creative people just were not as hung up about sexual preference way back even in the early 70s, but for somebody not to pick up Freddy was gay.....well.......I guess I thought the Bears had a good team this year.

I think there's a surefire way to determine whether or not Mercury really wanted to conceal his homosexuality.
Just do some research to find out which one of them suggested the name "Queen" for the band.  If you find out it was Mercury, I think you have your answer.  lol

we have the answer. 

While attending Ealing Art College, Tim Staffell became friends with Farrokh Bulsara, a fellow student who had assumed the English name of Freddie. Bulsara felt that he and the band had the same tastes and soon became a keen fan of Smile. In late 1970, after Staffell left to join the band Humpy Bong, the remaining Smile members, encouraged by Bulsara, changed their name to "Queen" and continued working together.[4] When asked about the name, Bulsara explained, "I thought up the name Queen. It's just a name, but it's very regal obviously, and it sounds splendid. It's a strong name, very universal and immediate. It had a lot of visual potential and was open to all sorts of interpretations. I was certainly aware of gay connotations, but that was just one facet of it.

I mean the folks I hung out with all knew, and most of those folks were urbane intelligent straight people who were constantly around homosexuals in the arts and theater......the only question would be who did not know.

2seaoat wrote:I mean the folks I hung out with all knew, and most of those folks were urbane intelligent straight people who were constantly around homosexuals in the arts and theater......the only question would be who did not know.

I was one who didn't know. But then again I never even knew the name Freddy Mercury until several years ago and by then he'd been dead of AIDS for decades (which I also didn't know). So I guess that probably doesn't count. lol