Although he cultivated a flamboyant stage personality, Mercury was shy and retiring when not performing, particularly around people he did not know well, and granted very few interviews. Mercury once said of himself: “When I’m performing I’m an extrovert, yet inside I’m a completely different man.” While on stage, Mercury basked in the love from his audience; Kurt Cobain’s suicide note mentions how he both admired and envied the way Mercury “seemed to love, relish in the love and adoration from the crowd.”