He Freddie Mercury singer he was about to call his most famous song ‘Mongolian Rhapsody’, but he crossed out the first word to opt for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ with which he went down in music history. The theme song was also going to include unconnected words like “matador” or “belladonna”which were eventually dropped from the final version in favor of “fandango”, “galileo” or “scaramouche” that appear incoherently in the middle of the song.

Those little secrets of the composer have been known thanks to the fact that the sotheby’s house has shown today in New York a selection of twenty objects that happen to be the most iconic of the singer and leader of Queen, part of a collection of a thousand pieces that will be released auction in London on September 6. Among all of them, the compositions of his fist and lyrics of some of his most popular songs stand out: ‘We are the Champions’, ‘Somebody to love’‘Don’t stop me now’ or ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, those that “for many of us were simply always in our lives”, as Sotheby’s points out in a presentation brochure.

Written in the pad of an airline

It is striking that all these manuscripts are sheets with the britisth midlands letterhead, a now defunct airline, and they are written in a haphazard way, sometimes on top of letters or calendars printed on the sheets. “He was the type of person who grabbed the first thing he had on hand when an idea came to him”, says Cassandra Hatton, vice president of Sotheby’s, to EFE, but warns about the supposed “disorder” that those sheets can translate a misleading idea. He gives as an example that ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ consists of 15 pages where Mercury wrote -and sometimes crossed out and corrected meticulously – the different vocal and musical parts of a piece of almost six minutes that travels from the rock opera with an audacity rewarded with success.

When writing ‘We are the champions’, Mercury already predicted that the piece could acquire hymn character and thought about how the audience would repeat rhythms and words from the song, whereas in ‘Somebody to Love’ the notes are written with different colors to clearly mark the different harmonies. Of all the manuscripts, it is the 15 sheets of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ that will go up for auction with a higher price, between a million and a million and a half dollars as the starting price.

A silver mustache comb

The appetizer of the huge collection Mercury’s personal belongings not only consists of his handwritten pages, but also includes some of the objects most associated with the image of Mercury. exuberant artist: the crown that was put on in his famous concert in the stadium of Wembley and the high-top Adidas sneakers that still have the stains on them from the last time she wore them to the concert in Live Aid in 1985. A black and red leather jacket, aviator glassesthe silver bracelet in the shape of a snake, and the most curious of all: a silver mini-comb barely 2 centimeters designed to brush the mustache (with a starting price of $900).

Although they do not appear in the selection exhibited in New York, the collection ‘Freddie Mercury: A world of his own‘ It will include clothing by the singer -often partly designed by him-, accessories of all kinds, books and paintings or objects purchased in Japan, a country whose culture Mercury particularly admired, Hatton recalled.

All the pieces that will go up for auction are part of the personal collection of the singer in his London home of Garden Lodge, in the exclusive neighborhood of Kensington, a Georgian-style house with 28 rooms famous for its legendary parties and which was his last resting place. Mercruy’s collection has been preserved since his death in 1991 and carefully cataloged by her great friend Mary Austin, who Mercury said was her only friend. “For me, it was a marriage,” the singer even said.

Sotheby’s is going to extract petroleum from the Mercury collection and, after the New York toll, the select collection will travel to Los Angeles and Hong Kong. But only Londoners will be able to see the full batch in the days leading up to the final sale.