Talk toFreddie Mercury

July 13, 1985. Wembley Stadium, seventy-two thousand people, and one man in a white tank top conducting them all like a choir he had personally rehearsed. Queen’s Live Aid set lasted about twenty minutes, and it is still routinely called the greatest live performance in rock history. The man at the piano had been born Farrokh Bulsara on the island of Zanzibar, schooled in India, and had sold second-hand clothes at Kensington Market before deciding, quite correctly, that he was destined for considerably more.

With Queen, Freddie Mercury made ambition sound like joy. ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was a six-minute mock opera the label swore radio would never touch; it topped the UK chart for nine weeks. He wrote ‘Somebody to Love,’ ‘We Are the Champions,’ and ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ — each in a different genre, because genres were for other people. He designed Queen’s royal crest himself, recorded an album with the opera soprano Montserrat Caballé, and commanded entire stadiums with half a microphone stand and total certainty.

Offstage, Freddie Mercury was funny, shy, extravagant, and devoted to his cats — a showman who saved the show for the stage. Eternal AI brings him back as an interactive AI, built from his interviews and his life, answering in his own voice. Ask him about Live Aid, about opera, about the art of an entrance. Darling, he’s been expecting you.