Freddie Mercury ( b17 )

Featuring tracks such as "Too Much Love Will Kill You" and "Heaven for Everyone", the album also contains the song "Mother Love", the last vocal recording Mercury made prior to his death, which he completed using a drum machine, over which May, Taylor, and Deacon later added the instrumental track. After completing the penultimate verse, Mercury had told the band he "wasn't feeling that great" and stated, "I will finish it when I come back, next time”. However, he never made it back into the studio, so May later recorded the final verse of the song.

Tributes

A statue in Montreux, Switzerland, by sculptor Irena Sedlecká, was erected as a tribute to Mercury. It stands almost 10 feet (3 metres) high overlooking Lake Geneva and was unveiled on 25 November 1996 by Mercury's father and Montserrat Caballé, with bandmates Brian May and Roger Taylor also in attendance. Beginning in 2003 fans from around the world have gathered in Switzerland annually to pay tribute to the singer as part of the "Freddie Mercury Montreux Memorial Day" on the first weekend of September. The Bearpark And Esh Colliery Band played at the Freddie Mercury statue on 1 June 2010.

In 1997 the three remaining members of Queen released "No-One but You (Only the Good Die Young)", a song dedicated to Mercury and all those that die too soon. In 1999 a Royal Mail stamp with an image of Mercury on stage was issued in his honour as part of the UK postal service's Millennium Stamp series.

In 2009 a star commemorating Mercury was unveiled in Feltham, west London where his family moved upon arriving in England in 1964. The star in memory of Mercury's achievements was unveiled on Feltham High Street by his mother Jer Bulsara and Queen bandmate May

A statue of Mercury stood over the entrance to the Dominion Theatre in London's West End from May 2002 to May 2014 for Queen and Ben Elton's musical We Will Rock You. A tribute to Queen was on display at the Fremont Street Experience in downtown Las Vegas throughout 2009 on its video canopy. In December 2009 a large model of Mercury wearing tartan was put on display in Edinburgh as publicity for the run of We Will Rock You at the Playhouse Theatre.

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Ringo Starr ( b15 )

1990s

The first All-Starr excursion led to the release of Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band (1990), a compilation of live performances from the 1989 tour. Also in 1990, Starr recorded a version of the song "I Call Your Name" for a television special marking the 10th anniversary of John Lennon's death and the 50th anniversary of Lennon's birth. The track, produced by Lynne, features a supergroup composed of Lynne, Tom Petty, Joe Walsh and Jim Keltner.

The following year, Starr made a cameo appearance on The Simpsons episode "Brush with Greatness" and contributed an original song, "You Never Know", to the soundtrack of the John Hughes film Curly Sue. In 1992, he released his first studio album in nine years, Time Takes Time, which was produced by Phil Ramone, Don Was, Lynne and Peter Asher and featured guest appearances by various stars including Brian Wilson and Harry Nilsson. The album failed to achieve commercial success, although the single "Weight of the World" peaked at number 74 in the UK, marking his first appearance on the singles chart there since "Only You" in 1974.

In 1994, he began a collaboration with the surviving former Beatles for the Beatles Anthology project. They recorded two new Beatles songs built around solo vocal and piano tapes recorded by Lennon and gave lengthy interviews about the Beatles' career. Released in December 1995, "Free as a Bird" was the first new Beatles single since 1970. In March 1996, they released a second single, "Real Love". The temporary reunion ended when Harrison refused to participate in the completion of a third song. Starr then played drums on McCartney's 1997 album Flaming Pie. Among the tracks to which he contributed, "Little Willow" was a song McCartney wrote about Starr's ex-wife Maureen, who died in 1994, while "Really Love You" was the first official release ever credited to McCartney–Starkey.

In 1998, he released two albums on the Mercury label. The studio album Vertical Man marked the beginning of a nine-year partnership with Mark Hudson, who produced the album and, with his band the Roundheads, formed the core of the backing group on the recordings. In addition, many famous guests joined on various tracks, including Martin, Petty, McCartney and, in his final appearance on a Starr album, Harrison. Most of the songs were written by Starr and the band. Joe Walsh and the Roundheads joined Starr for his appearance on VH1 Storytellers, which was released as an album under the same name. During the show, he performed greatest hits and new songs and told anecdotes relating to them. Starr's final release for Mercury was the 1999 Christmas-themed I Wanna Be Santa Claus. The album was a commercial failure, although the record company chose not to issue it in Britain.

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Deep Purple ( B12 )

Band split and solo projects (1976–1984)

The end came on tour in England on 15 March 1976 at the Liverpool Empire Theatre. In the words of Jon Lord:

"At one point during the show, Glenn said to the audience, 'I'm sorry we're not playing very well, but we're very tired and jet-lagged.' And I remember spluttering to myself, 'Speak for yourself.' I was working like a Trojan to try and make this work ... Paicey was playing like a madman just to keep it all together ... Coverdale was singing his socks off. So to hear this guy who was extremely high on various substances telling the audience, 'I'm sorry, We aren't playing well' kind of rankled me a bit. I came off stage and went straight to my dressing room, which I was sharing with Ian Paice, and I said, 'Ian ... that's it, isn't it? That's absolutely the end of this band as far as I'm concerned. Why are we doing this to ourselves?' So he and I shook hands and said, 'It's over. Thank God.' About ten minutes later, Coverdale came in, big blustery guy that he is, and he said, 'I'm leaving the band!' And we said, 'David, there's no band to leave.'"

The break-up was finally made public in July 1976, with then-manager Rob Cooksey issuing the simple statement: "the band will not record or perform together as Deep Purple again". Later in the year, Bolin had just finished recording his second solo album, Private Eyes, when, on 4 December 1976, tragedy struck. In a Miami hotel room, during a tour supporting Jeff Beck, Bolin was found unconscious by his girlfriend and bandmates. Unable to wake him, she hurriedly called paramedics, but it was too late. The official cause of death was multiple-drug intoxication. Bolin was 25 years old.

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Gentle Giant ( B2 )

By 1966, the Shulmans' band — initially called The Howling Wolves, then The Road Runners — had taken on the name of Simon Dupree and the Big Sound and was pursuing more of a soul/pop direction. As lead singer and frontman, Derek Shulman took on the 'Simon Dupree' pseudonym while Phil played saxophone and trumpet, and youngest brother Ray played guitar and violin. (Both Ray and Phil also played trumpet and sang backing vocals for the group which, during its lifetime, briefly featured the future Elton John as pianist as well as recording a single with Dudley Moore as guest). Signing to the EMI record label, Simon Dupree and the Big Sound produced several non-charting singles before being pushed by their management and label in the direction of psychedelia. This resulted in the UK Top 10 hit "Kites" in the autumn of 1967 (and the release of the Without Reservation album later in the year).

(We grew up in a) house full of musicians and instruments... I started learning trumpet when I was five just because it was there and then took up violin when I was seven. We were made to practice for an hour a day at least, when we really wanted to go out and play. I suppose it was a good thing we were really, and eventually I wanted to do it anyway... I wasn't formally taught at all.

“

”

Ray Shulman on the musical upbringing of the Shulman brothers
Success only served to frustrate the Shulman brothers, who considered themselves to be blue-eyed soul singers and felt that their change of style was insincere and insubstantial. Derek Shulman was later to describe "Kites" as "utter shit.'' The Shulmans' opinion was confirmed, in their eyes, by the successive failure of follow-up singles to "Kites". Attempting to escape their new image, they released a pseudonymous double A-side single in late 1968 as The Moles - "We Are the Moles (parts 1 & 2)". This compounded their identity crisis as the single was subsequently caught up in a rumour that The Moles were, in fact, The Beatles recording under a different name and with Ringo Starr as lead singer. The rumour was eventually debunked by Pink Floyd leader Syd Barrett, who outed Simon Dupree and the Big Sound as the band behind the record.
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Istoric ( 60 )

18.07.1938 - s-a nascut Ian Stewart. (Rolling Stones) A murit in 12 decembrie 1985 in urma unui atac de cord, chiar in sala de asteptare a unui spital.

Freddie Mercury ( b16 )

Legacy

Continued popularity

The extent to which Mercury's death may have enhanced Queen's popularity is not clear. In the US, where Queen's popularity had lagged in the 1980s, sales of Queen albums went up dramatically in 1992, the year following his death. In 1992, one American critic noted, "What cynics call the 'dead star' factor had come into play—Queen is in the middle of a major resurgence." The movie Wayne's World, which featured "Bohemian Rhapsody", also came out in 1992. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, Queen had sold 34.5 million albums in the US by 2004, about half of which had been sold since Mercury's death in 1991.

Estimates of Queen's total worldwide record sales to date have been set as high as 300 million. In the UK, Queen has now spent more collective weeks on the UK Album Chartsthan any other musical act (including The Beatles), and Queen's Greatest Hits is the best-selling album of all time in the UK. Two of Mercury's songs, "We Are the Champions" and "Bohemian Rhapsody", have also each been voted as the greatest song of all time in major polls by Sony Ericsson and Guinness World Records, respectively. Both songs have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame; "Bohemian Rhapsody" in 2004 and "We Are the Champions" in 2009. In October 2007 the video for "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted the greatest of all time by readers of Q magazine.

Posthumous Queen album

In November 1995, Queen released Made in Heaven, an album featuring Mercury's previously unreleased final recordings from 1991—as well as outtakes from previous years and reworked versions of solo works by the surviving members. The album cover features the Freddie Mercury statue that overlooks Lake Geneva superimposed with Mercury's Duck House lake cabin that he had rented. This is where he had written and recorded his last songs at Mountain Studios. The sleeve of the album contains the words, "Dedicated to the immortal spirit of Freddie Mercury."

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Diverse ( 54 )