It was a simpler time, where a man could wear leather S&M gear on stage while bull-whipping another man and still be considered absolutely into girls but not many people could have been that shocked when i stepped out of the closet towards the end of my life although my homeland of Zanzibar cancelled a 60th birthday celebration because of my homosexuality.I was a real hotchpotch, born in Tanzania, ethnically Asian, raised Zoroastrian, schooled in India and growing up in England.
I met guitarist Brian May in Art School and drummer Roger Taylor and we would sell second hand clothes in a market together and added a bass player, the guy who made Brian's amp, John Deacon, and made a band called Smile but i changed it to Queen, one reason was because it's a strong, regal name and also because of the gay connotations and i was the chief song-writer, 'Bohemian Rhapsody' was one of mine, a song about a homicidal dude, some Italian words, repeating the name of a Renaissance astronomer and then ending with a emo style freakout.
It was Queen who made the Sex Pistols famous, pulling out of the Bill Grundy Today programme at the last-minute, which saw our late replacement on the show, the Sex Pistols, give their infamous expletive-strewn interview which catapulted them to fame.
In my career i worked with David Bowie, Michael Jackson and Montserrat Caballe but my best collaboration was with Princess Diana.
She dressed up in an army jacket, leather hat and aviator sunglasses and we went for a night on the town to a gay bar and no-one noticed the most famous woman in the world standing right beside me.
I died of AIDS only hours after even admitting i had the disease and as one of the first major celebrity casualties of the disease, i brought attention to it i was voted number 58 in a poll of the '100 Greatest Britons' which is awesome for someone not even British.
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