Tribute was paid to Queen and Mercury at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. The band’s performance of “We Will Rock You” with solo artist Jessie J was opened with a remastered video of Mercury’s “call and response” routine from 1986’s Wembley Stadium performance, with the 2012 crowd at the Olympic Stadium responding appropriately.
As the first major rock star to die of AIDS, Mercury’s death represented a very important event in the history of the disease. In April 1992 the remaining members of Queen founded The Mercury Phoenix Trust and organised The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness, to celebrate the life and legacy of Mercury and raise money for AIDS research, which took place on 20 April 1992. The Mercury Phoenix Trust has since raised millions of pounds for various AIDS charities. The tribute concert, which took place at London’s Wembley Stadium for an audience of 72,000, featured a wide variety of guests including Robert Plant (of Led Zeppelin), Roger Daltrey (of The Who), Extreme,Elton John, Metallica, David Bowie, Annie Lennox, Tony Iommi (of Black Sabbath), Guns N’ Roses, Elizabeth Taylor, George Michael, Def Leppard, Seal, Liza Minnelli, and U2(via satellite). Elizabeth Taylor spoke of Mercury as “an extraordinary rock star who rushed across our cultural landscape like a comet shooting across the sky.” The concert was broadcast live to 76 countries and had an estimated viewing audience of 1 billion people.