Freddie Mercury 058

Look closer for the first two stanzas from Bohemian Rhapsody:

Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide
No escape from reality
Open your eyes
Look up to the skies and see
I’m just a poor boy, I need no sympathy
Because I’m easy come, easy go
Little high, little low
Any way the wind blows
Doesn’t really matter to me, to me

Farrokh Bulsara born on the 5th of September 1946. He was known professionally as Freddie Mercury, was a British singer-songwriter and record producer, best known as the lead vocalist of the rock band Queen. He was known for his flamboyant stage persona and four-octave vocal range. Mercury wrote numerous hits for Queen. He led a solo career while performing with Queen, and occasionally served as a producer and guest musician for other artists.

Mercury was born of Parsi descent in Zanzibar. Growing up there and in India, moved with his family to Middlesex, England in his late teens. He formed Queen in 1970 with guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor. Mercury died on November 24th, 1991.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” is a song by the British rock band Queen from their 1975 album A Night at the Opera. Written by lead singer Freddie Mercury, the song is a six-minute suite, notable for its lack of a refraining chorus and consisting of several sections: an intro, a ballad segment, an operatic passage, a hard rock part and a reflective coda. It is one of the few progressive rock songs of the 1970s to achieve widespread commercial success and appeal to a mainstream audience.

Mercury referred to “Bohemian Rhapsody” as a “mock opera” that had resulted from the combination of three songs he had written. It was recorded by Queen and co-producer Roy Thomas Baker at five different studios between August and September 1975. Due to recording logistics of the era, the band had to bounce the tracks across eight generations of 24-track tape, meaning that they required nearly 200 tracks for overdubs. The song parodies many different elements of opera by using bombastic choruses, sarcastic recitative, and distorted Italian operatic phrases. Lyrical references include Scaramouche, the fandango, Galileo Galilei, Figaro, and Beelzebub, with cries of “Bismillah!“

Although critical reaction was initially mixed, “Bohemian Rhapsody” became regarded as one of the greatest rock songs of all time, as well as Queen’s most popular. The promotional video is also credited with furthering the development of the music video medium. It has appeared in numerous polls of the greatest songs in popular music, including a ranking at number 17 on Rolling Stone‘s list of “the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. A Rolling Stone readers’ poll ranked Mercury’s vocal performance as the greatest in rock history.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” topped the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks (plus another five weeks following Mercury’s 1991 death) and remains the UK’s third best-selling single of all time. It also topped the charts in countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the Netherlands, and sold over six million copies worldwide. In the United States, the song peaked at number nine in 1976, but reached a new peak of number two after appearing in the 1992 film Wayne’s World. In 2004, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2018, the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody led it to become the most streamed song from the 20th century. In 2021, it was certified Diamond in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units.

-credit wikipedia.com

The artwork: 

The first print of this illustration is available for charitable donation. Contact lisafromlsu@gmail.com for details.

Digital Print on Archival Matte – Original illustration done in graphite and prisma colors: Cerulean Blue-sounds like a different, but very interesting place; Spanish Orange-Mercury never lived in Spain but his music was popular there; Violet Blue-violets flourish in widely divergent areas, and Gold because Mercury knew Bohemian Rhapsody would be released a gold record and he refused to cut it down from 6 minutes.

Artist: Tobin Bortner of Bastrop, Texas – drawing done in June of 2022 – ©Tobin Signs, LLC/Look Closer Illustrations 

DERIVATIVE Work references: Face from sky_com – 16-9; Jacket from generationofrock_wordpress_com – FreddieMercury04 

What you get:
$40 (36.95 + 3.05 tax)
11 x 14 Print Package with Authenticity Sheet
signed and numbered (run of 130)
Domestic Priority Mail $8 (Free shipping)