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Artist News Awards
Freddie Mercury’s childhood home gets blue plaque
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 2 September 2016
English Heritage has whacked one of those blue plaque things up on the side of Freddie Mercury’s childhood home in Feltham in West London.
Commenting on yesterday’s unveiling, Brian May said: “It is a pleasant duty to help install this little reminder on Freddie’s parents’ house in Feltham. It was here that I first visited Freddie soon after we had met through a mutual friend”.
Reminiscing, he continued: “We spent most of the day appreciating and analysing in intimate detail the way that Jimi Hendrix had put his recordings together in the studio – listening to Hendrix on vinyl played on Freddie’s Dansette record player – which had stereo speakers on opposite sides of the box! Feltham was the childhood neighbourhood for both of us but we never knew it until we met in the cause of music”.
Mercury’s sister, Kashmira Cooke, who did the actual unveiling, commented: “Mum and I are so proud and pleased that English Heritage is honouring our Freddie with a blue plaque, and that he will be amongst other famous names forever. Secretly he would have been very proud and pleased too”.
The plaque was glued onto the brickwork of 22 Gladstone Avenue days before what would have been Mercury’s 70th birthday, on 5 Sep. It’s also a few months shy of the 25th anniversary of his death, on 24 Nov.
