Queen’s Brian May: Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury recorded forgotten tracks
-
- June
- 26
Queen guitarist Brian May revealed today that pop icon Michael Jackson and former Queen front man Freddie Mercury recorded “a couple” of tracks together, tunes that May says “have never seen the light of day.”
May, who said Mercury even played the recordings for his bandmates, made the comments on his website, where he shared his thoughts on Jackson’s death.
“Hard to know what to say – what I feel,” May wrote.
“He used to come and see us (Queen) play when we were on tour in the States, and he and Freddie became close friends… close enough to record a couple of tracks together at Michael’s house… tracks which have never seen the light of day,” May (pictured below) wrote.
(photo courtesy of the Associated Press/Fabrice Coffrini)
It’s unclear whether May’s “light of day” comment will hold up — there’s already a clip making the rounds on YouTube that is billed as a duet between Mercury and Jackson, and certainly sounds legit:
As the world knows by now, Jackson died yesterday after being rushed by ambulance from his home. He was 50. An autopsy on the now-late King of Pop is due today.
Mercury, the dynamic and vocally gifted singer for Queen, died in 1991, but not before May said he and Jackson formed their personal – and, it turns out, musical – friendship.
“Amusingly, after Freddie and Michael has spent some time together recording, Freddie came back and played us the work in progress, and he remarked that Michael had come up with a great album title… BAD,” May wrote. “A little later, Freddie smiled his wicked little conspiratorial smile, and said… ‘I have a perfect idea for our album title – you may love it or hate it… but think about it… we can cal lit… wait for it… GOOD!’”
Obviously, it never came to pass, as Queen and Jackson never released a major recording together — aside from the clip making the YouTube rounds.
It will be interesting to find out if those recordings are still around.
If they are, you can bet somebody will come up with it.
Follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/jfitzgibbon
This entry was posted
on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 2:37 pm by Jorge Fitz-Gibbon.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
| 
RIP M.J GONE BUT NOT? FOR GOT IN
This is quite old news for Queen fans. There are demos around for “State of Shock” (later released with Mick Jagger) and “There must be more to life than this” (released in Freddie’s solo album), with MJ singing. Also there’s the song “Victory”. Yes, that one.
marcusbacus;
thanks for the update and the info. obviuosly, i wasn’t aware until May’s comments.
is there talk about releasing any or all of these recordings on a wider level?
marcusbacus is right.
And, since both of Freddie and MJ are gone, I can’t find any chance those songs will see the light of day in the future.
Montserrat Caballe: “The difference between Freddie and almost all the other rock stars was that he was selling the voice.”
Here I’ve tried to collect all notable tributes and quotes on Freddie Mercury from peers: http://www.tributespaid.com/quotes-on/f/freddie-mercury