gaga

If legend is to be believed, Lady Gaga, who's all the rage these days with juicy outfits and chart-busting mobile-phone commercials, picked up her name when she couldn't get enough of Queen's Radio Ga Ga. She hummed it all the time and it stuck. That's one version. Another says that record company marketing executives came up with the stage name. In either case, it couldn't be more fitting.

Lady Gaga is by all accounts an uncompromising individual, a unique weirdo, one-hundred-percent her own woman. There's no one like her, and she appears totally gaga. But there was someone who in his own time cultivated a similar in-your-face-and-whatcha-gonna-do-about-it attitude, who strutted the world's stages in hilarious kit and sang before enthralled audiences of millions.

I'm of course talking of Freddy Mercury, the frontman of Queen who died exactly twenty years ago today. I discovered Queen as a teenager and quickly bought their untitled debut album and Queen II, two jewels that are still among my most beloved CDs. Over the years, I added to the collection, everything from the 70s ("No Synthesisers!") and Innuendo, their farewell.

Curiously, Queen were most popular in the 80s when their greatest music was behind them. They recorded insipid drivel and vapid rock anthems, but one triumphal stadium tour followed another. They rarely played audiences of fewer than 100,000. Freddy Mercury pranced around the stage in tights and absurd jackets, flaunting his open, free and undiscriminating sexuality. Millions watched, gaped and cheered – at the music and the show, but also at a life lived to the fullest.

Twenty years ago today, Freddy died in his house in London of complications from AIDS. On my way home from work tonight, I stopped by to pay my respects and see how he was being remembered. There was a swelling crowd of 60, many of them young but a also few older characters, some of whom behaved as if they had known him, regaling fascinated audiences with stories from way back when. A good 30 bunches of roses and carnations were piled against the door and many letters and cards. Candles lined the forbidding wall that protects the property, burning stubbornly in the November chill.

Later at home, I put Queen II on the stereo and let it rock. With a glass of whiskey in hand, I searched for relevant memories, but there weren't any. I never saw them live. Freddy had died by the time I started buying CDs. Their music and stories I read are all I have. In the Guardian I found this tribute and in the comments a line that transposes Freddy to today: He was "the original Lady Gaga". Keep yourself alive!