Queen to Release New Album With Unreleased Freddie Mercury Songs

Freddie Mercury in 1978. Photo: Carl Lender/Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Queen guitarist Brian May stopped by BBC Radio ostensibly to discuss Diableries: Stereoscopic Adventures in Hell, his new book on 19th century French stereoscopic cards. But after detailing his lifelong love of the cards and their odd visions of hell, May revealed plans for a new Queen album featuring unreleased Freddie Mercury vocals from the Eighties.

Asked what his favorite Queen song ever recorded was, May said the answer changes every time, but “my favorite at the moment is ‘Made in Heaven,’ which was never a single but it’s the title track off the [1995] album we made after Freddie was gone with all the pieces that were left.

“I’ve just been doing something very similar because we found a few more tracks with Freddie singing and all of us playing and they’re quite beautiful. People will be hearing this work toward the end of the year.”

May revealed the album will “probably” be called Queen Forever, with the material primarily taken from the Eighties “when we were in full flight.” “It’s a compilation but it will have this new material on which nobody in the world has ever heard and I think people will really enjoy it,” said the guitarist. “It’s the big, big epic sound. It wouldn’t have been if we hadn’t have done this restoration job. We only had scraps, but knowing how it would’ve happened had we finished it, I can sit there and make it happen with modern technology.”

The guitarist also admitted that he has “secretly and quietly workshopped” a follow-up to We Will Rock You, the wildly successful musical based on the band’s songs. “We are working on a sequel, yes,” said May. “In fact, we’ve already very secretly and quietly workshopped, which means you stand it up and get people to sing it and act it. Everybody loved it, so we’re looking for a theatre and we hope to have a sequel out there at some point. More than this, I cannot say. It’s a little naughtier than the first one.” We Will Rock You author Ben Elton will return for the sequel.

But before any of that, Queen will embark on a 19-date cross-country tour with Adam Lambert kicking off June 19th at Chicago’s United Center and wrapping up July 20th at Washington D.C.’s Merriweather Post Pavilion. “This is the closest that you’ll ever get to see Queen as it was in our golden days, but it’s not a reproduction,” May told ROLLING STONE. “It’s not an imitation. We’re here live and real and we have a great singer. They’ll be a lot of newness about this. I think that’s very exciting. It’ll be loud and dangerous and all the things that people used to look for in us.”