Is This The Real Life? Read Free Page B

Muslim, Christian … if you could sing you were in the choir,’ says Murray.
    Although shy, the future Freddie Mercury’s flair for drama showed itself at St Peter’s, in more ways than one. He played a doctor in the school’s production of the nineteenth-century farce Cure for the Fidgets , and, during one performance, was accidentally jabbed in the backside by another actor’s sword. Outraged, he slapped the guilty pupil across the face and stormed off the stage. ‘There was a side to him which was somewhat frenzied,’ recalled Derrick Branche, who likened the teenage Freddie’s demeanour to that of Dean Martin’s goofball comedy partner Jerry Lewis: ‘Hands flapping and legs going every which way.’
    In Panchgani, the boys were surrounded by classical and Indian music, but Western pop was the soundtrack of choice. As Bruce Murray explains, ‘We all wanted to be Elvis.’ Three years into their time at school, Freddie, Bruce, Farang, Derrick and Victory formed their own group, The Hectics. The band commandeered the artroom close to their new dormitory, and drove their art teacher to distraction with their primitive twanging and thumping. Murray sang, Branche played guitar, Rana the drums, while Farang Irani copied the popular English skiffle groups of the time by fashioning a makeshift one-string bass out of a tea chest, a stick of wood and a piece of wire. Freddie played the school’s upright piano.
    In an environment starved of the real thing, The Hectics became the star attraction at any school function, playing to a mixed audience that included a highly enthusiastic contingent from the neighbouring girls’ school. ‘They would stand at the front and scream,’ recalled Derrick Branche, ‘just like they’d heard girls the world over were beginning to do when faced with current idols.’ Yet Freddie was happy to let Bruce Murray hog the limelight. ‘Freddie didn’t seem a natural frontman at all,’ said Branche. ‘He was quite content to stay well in the background.’
    ‘I was the singer as I was the best-looking one,’ laughs Murray. ‘We played The Coasters’ “Yakety Yak”, lots of Elvis, Dion, maybe some Ricky Nelson stuff. Fred sang backing vocals, but his thing was still the piano. He also had this quirky way of moving onstage, which you could see a little of later with Queen. We never played outside the school, except one time when I was visiting my aunt in Bombay and I saw Freddie on the street. He came into the house and he played the piano while I sang. For years after, my aunt would ask about “the boy with the buck teeth that played the piano”.’
    A photograph of The Hectics onstage shows a typical teenage school group of the early sixties. In the standard dress of white shirts, black ties, pleated trousers and identically greased hair, they pose self-consciously with their instruments; Farang Irani preparing to leap from the top of his cumbersome tea chest, onto which the band’s name has been wonkily stencilled. Bulsara looks even less like a future pop star than his bandmates, still a gawky schoolboy, grinning and showing the protruding front teeth, caused by the presence of four extra teeth at the back of his mouth.
    Bruce Murray insists that nobody called Freddie ‘Bucky’ to his face (‘or they would have had us to contend with’). But others maintain that he was widely known by this nickname or, as Subash Shah remembers it, ‘Buckwee’. Similarly, while Bruce Murray saysthat Freddie was always known by his adopted English name, Subash Shah remembers him only being known by his birth name of Farrokh while at Panchgani.
    At the age of twelve, Freddie won the school’s annual Junior All-Rounder prize for combined academic and sporting achievement. As the years passed, he became a capable cricketer (though he later claimed to loathe the game), field hockey player and bantamweight boxer. It was in the boxing ring that his friends saw further evidence of their