These 11 Rare Photos Of Freddie Mercury Were Taken By Paparazzi Before His Death And People Find Them Disrespectful

Queen fans rejoiced when Bohemian Rhapsody was released, and despite the controversy surrounding the film, the movie grossed more than $800 worldwide, making it the highest grossing music biopic ever made. And while Bohemian Rhapsody was filled with grandiose music number recreations and costumes the film strayed away from Freddie Mercury’s sexuality and AIDS diagnoses, but pictures from his last days released by paparazzi photographers have brought this private life to the light – but not everyone is happy.

Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara to Pakistani parents in Tanzania. His onstage persona was garish but offstage, his husband, Jim Hutton, described the two as “naturally private people.”

That’s why when the singer was diagnosed with AIDS his bandmate, guitarist Brian May, said he chose to deal with it in a discreet manner. In May’s book titled ‘Somebody to Love: The Life, Death and Legacy of Freddie Mercury’ he writes: “He never asked for sympathy from anyone else. He was a very strong person and always liked to be in control of his own destiny.”

(Freddie arrives at the stage door with Terry Gidding’s, his bodyguard, and Joe Fanelli, his cook.)

(Freddie leaving after a show, looking nervous of the people crowding around the car)

“There was no drama, no tears in his eyes,” May wrote of finding out about his illness. “He was incredibly self-contained. We didn’t feel we could speak about it to anyone.”

These photos, published in the Daily Mirror, are said to be the last photos taken of the rock star before his untimely death on November 24, 1991.

In the images, Mercury’s already small body has become even frailer.

He passed away from bronchial pneumonia as a result of his AIDS diagnoses

But he was not alone for his final days, surrounded by a small circle of close friends, but most importantly his partner Jim Hutton.

The pair met at a club in 1984, where Mercury offered to buy him a drink. Hutton, a hairdresser at the time, was already in a relationship and refused the singer’s advances. A year later they met again and fell in love.

“He might have worried about how coming out would have affected him professionally but he didn’t say that. We both thought our relationship, and being gay, was our business,” Hutton told Tim Teeman for The Times of London in an interview.

Hutton and Mercury kept their relationship private but in 1994, the singer’s husband decided to share some of their intimate moments with the public through a memoir titled ‘Mercury and Me,’ which included thoughts and photographs from their relationship. The photos of Mercury below were taken by Hutton in 1991 in the backyard of their Garden Lodge home in London.