Freddie Mercury was in a band before Queen aged 13: See the amazing pre-fame photos of The Hectics
26 May 2022, 15:59 | Updated: 26 May 2022, 16:05
Photos have emerged of Freddie Mercury with the line-up of his first band, The Hectics, which he formed at boarding school when he was just 13-years-old.
The trio of snaps show the future Queen frontman posing with his bandmates at St. Peter's Boys School.
The five boys were pupils at the English boarding school in Panchgani, near Bombay (now Mumbai), India.
Freddie Mercury - who was then known by his real name, Farrokh Bulsara - wasn't the lead singer of the band, but instead played the piano.
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His band members included Derrick Branche, Farang Irani, Victory Rana and Bruce Murray on lead vocals.
The Hectics played covers of well-known rock and roll songs for three years from 1959 to 1962 until Freddie was 16 - two years before Freddie and his family fled the Zanzibar revolution and moved to England.
The photograph was published on the Freddie Mercury Club's Instagram page to celebrate 61 years since Freddie formed the Hectics, on March 1, 1959.
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The photograph comes in the aftermath of the first known video of Freddie Mercury, when he was 18-years-old, unearthed on Youtube.
The video clip shows an 18-year-old Freddie with a group of friends as they lark around and pose for the camera, six years before he became famous as the lead singer of Queen.
The film was made while the singer was studying for the A-Level in art at Isleworth Polytechnic - now known as West Thames College - just before he graduated to Ealing Art School, where he started singing in public for the first time.
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The footage was recorded just months after his family's arrival in the UK - Freddie's mum and dad moved the family from Zanzibar to Feltham near Heathrow, in the spring of 1964.
In what is now rock and roll legend, Freddie Mercury went on to be the lead singer of Queen alongside original bandmates Roger Taylor, Brain May and John Deacon until his untimely death of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1992.
