The iconic Queen frontman, whose story was brought to life on the big screen by Rami Malek in the Oscar-winning 2018 biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, began life not as Freddie Mercury, but as Farrokh Bulsara.
Born in Zanzibar, an island off the coast of Tanzania (then a protectorate of Britain), on Sept. 5, 1946, Mercury’s parents were Parsi, followers of the Zoroastrian religion whose ancestors came from Persia.
Bomi Bulsara, his father, was a high-court cashier for the British government, meaning that he, his wife Jer, Farrokh and their younger daughter Kashmira were able to live in cultural privilege, standing in stark contrast to much of their island home’s population.
By the time their son was 8, in 1954, he was sent to St. Peter’s Church of England School all the way in Panchgani, India, near his parents’ home city of Bombay, now Mumbai.
By all accounts, Mercury arrived at St. Peter’s as a terribly shy child, self-conscious about the prominent overbite that earned him the nickname “Bucky.” But he soon began to blossom, earning the more affectionate nickname of Freddie from his teachers as he began to develop his own tastes.
“He was quite happy and saw it as an adventure as some of our friends’ children had gone there,” his mother told The Telegraph in 2011. “Right from the start, Freddie was musical. He had it on his mind all the time. He could play any tune. He could hear something and play it straight away.”
