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Queen guitarist Brian May has announced plans to release a new posthumous Queen album sometime later this year that features previously unreleased songs sung by late frontman Freddie Mercury.
It was first revealed last year that May and Queen drummer Roger Taylor had uncovered some of Mercury’s 1983 demos with Michael Jackson and were planning on releasing them, thought it’s unclear whether those tracks would be included on this album. Other rumoured Mercury collaborations include those with David Bowie, Andy Gibb and Rod Stewart.
In an interview with BBC Radio this week, May said the new compilation, expected to be titled Queen Forever, would surface by the end of the year. “We found a few more tracks with Freddie singing and all of us playing, and they are quite beautiful,” he said. “It’s a compilation, but it will have this new material which nobody in the world has ever heard. I think people will really enjoy it.”
May and bandmate Roger Taylor said they are handling the recording’s restoration process themselves. “We had to start from scratch, because we only had scraps,” said May. “But knowing how it would have happened if we had finished it, I can sit there and make it happen with modern technology. And we have Pro Tools these days; and you can do almost anything in Pro Tools.”
In terms of the compilations sound, May said most the the material dates back to the 1980s
when Queen were “in full flight”. He said the material is emotional. “It is the big, big ballads and the big, big epic sound.”
Next month, Queen will hit the road again with singer Adam Lambert fronting the band. The tour will see Queen headlining a run of Australian dates this August for the first time in 30 years, having not toured the country since 1985, when all the band’s original members were present.
Listen: Brian May & Denis Pellerin Interview BBC Radio Wales 23 May 2014
