Freddie Mercury - Solo Lover Of Life Singer Of Songs [Mp3 320 Kb Download
Amabella Tevebaugh
Freddie flew into Barcelona with Jim Beach, composer/arranger Mike Moran, and his personal assistant Peter Freestone. Freddie also took with him a tape containing a song he had written specially for the occasion.
On March 29, Montserrat was in London for her sold out performance in Covent Garden. Freddie was in attendance of course, and was, by all accounts, a quivering wreck. True to her word, as the final encore of the recital, Montserrat surprised her audience by announcing a brand new piece entitled Exercises In Free Love, written for her by Freddie Mercury and Mike Moran. The flawless performance evoked a standing ovation from the audience, and once again Freddie was ecstatic.
Freddie Mercury - Solo Lover of Life Singer of Songs [Mp3 320 kb download
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I have never heard, before or since, a singer with such a vocal range as Freddie. He had to be in control of every note of the orchestral parts. Standing over Mike at his keyboard with a feverish enthusiasm, he would examine and direct every violin part, every cello note, when they should play, and how loudly, and when there should be flutes and how high they should play.
Barcelona (the song) was recorded in April 1987 and was first performed by Freddie and Montserrat at the Ku Club in Ibiza on May 30, 1987. It was the finale to the worldwide Ibiza 92 festival. The hugely emotional reception it received from the Spanish audience, spurred Freddie and Montserrat to push on with the project, and Barcelona became a fitting title track to the album which was to follow, and a worldwide hit.
The Barcelona album was recorded over an 18 month period between January 1987 and July 1988, at both Townhouse studios in London and Mountain studios in Switzerland, and was produced by Freddie, Mike Moran and David Richards.
On October 8, 1987, Freddie and Montserrat appeared together again, this time at the huge La Nit event, on the steps of Montjuic Castle in Barcelona, to mark the arrival of the Olympic flag from Korea. In the presence of the King and Queen of Spain, Freddie and Montserrat performed three tracks, Barcelona, The Golden Boy and How Can I Go On, from their forthcoming album. The event was filmed for television worldwide, director Gavin Taylor working live with no less than 18 cameras.
On October 10, 1988, the Barcelona album was released to widely contrasting press reviews. For once, the music establishment was taken by surprise by the unlikely collaboration, and many struggled for things to say. But by far the majority were complimentary.
In Spain, the album was released three weeks earlier, on September 21, and promptly sold 10,000 copies in the first three hours of going on sale. It was the first collaboration between a rock star and opera diva, but a formula which was to be copied many times in subsequent years.
In America, the Barcelona album was released some four years after the original European LP, in July 1992. For that album, Hollywood Records repackaged the disc, using alternative artwork from the 1992 European CD re-issue, and, most significantly, remastered each track, thus creating something of a rarity. The famous title track single, meanwhile, was never released in America.
In 1992 Barcelona was adopted as the main anthem for the Olympic Games. The single was re-issued in August, and this time peaked at No. 2. Freddie and Montserrat were to have sung it together at the opening ceremony of the games, but of course, ultimately Montserrat sang it instead with Jose Carreras.
When Freddie Mercury died in November 1991, he left behind a body of recorded work spanning 20 years. The bulk of his archive naturally relates to the 15 studio LPs and 700 live concerts recorded with Queen, but Freddie also recorded two solo albums, several non-album singles, and guest appearances on numerous projects by friends. Add to this the material he produced, co-produced and co-wrote for other artists, and the legacy becomes far larger and more diverse than one might expect.
Though Freddie recorded the acclaimed "Barcelona" album with opera diva Montserrat Caballe in 1988, the "Mr Bad Guy" LP from three years earlier remains his only true solo album. However, this relatively small output belied a significant volume of out-takes and rarities, which until the turn of the millennium remained unheard. On 23rd October 2000 the long awaited, "Freddie Mercury Solo" box set was released. Conceived as the definitive collection, the 128-track, 12-disc collection (10 CDs, 2 DVDs) emerged after eighteen months painstaking work, as just that.
I spent 10 months working on the project, part of a small and dedicated team. My initial brief was to catalogue the hundreds of Queen tapes in the band's archive, but when the Freddie box set was proposed, I focused exclusively on Freddie's solo material until I had heard and catalogued every tape - and I do mean every tape.
Every reel was scrutinised from beginning to end because one never knows for absolute certain what might be lurking on the end of the spool. Not every recording is necessarily detailed on the box in all cases.
Some of the tracks in the collection (particularly on the three "Rarities" discs) are just brief extracts from sessions, sometimes less than a minute long. Very often I would listen through an hour's worth of tape only to end up with a 45-second snippet of amusing dialogue for potential use. Even in those instances, it was always worth the effort.
On "Rarities 2", there is a lovely extract where Freddie and Mike Moran are jamming together. One moment Freddie is ad-libbing like a man possessed, and the next he slips into a beautiful and very soulful Aretha Franklyn-esque piece. It was the perfect ending to the disc.
Recording engineer Justin Shirley-Smith comments: "It was strange hearing the 'late night jam'. I was there at the original session, and I never thought I'd ever hear it again. It was material like this that was the biggest challenge. I think Freddie would have approved it for release. We didn't want any tracks to be featured which Freddie might not have approved of. On the other hand, this being a fan-driven project, we wanted to include as much material as possible. Consequently, there has been a certain amount of studio trickery to enable us to present some material which might otherwise have been left off."
Listening through every tape was an exhaustive process. We needed to be sure that we wouldn't find something relevant to this collection years down the line when it was too late. This is Freddie Mercury's musical legacy we're talking about here, so we gave it all the time it deserved. Justin Shirley-Smith and I were extremely careful not to miss anything.
Another significant aspect is the top-quality packaging. Queen art director Richard Gray did a superb job on the 120-page-book. The illustrations of rare Freddie solo releases from around the world come from Brian May's own collection, and there are some great and very rare photographs which fans (at the time, year 2000) would not have have seen before.
Also included are some of Freddie's original college sketches and paintings, plus a huge appraisal of Freddie by music journalist Sean O'Hagan. All these elements offer a personal feel to the package. While the project was orientated to Freddie's solo career, there are of course numerous references to Queen throughout. Brian wrote a lovely introduction for the book, detailing ground not covered before and I like to think that Freddie would have appreciated it - as well as the work we put into every other aspect of the project too. We tried to compile something weighty and impressive that the fans would love, obviously, but which Freddie would have approved of. The latter was paramount and a difficult thing to balance. There were those that thought we offered a little too much of Freddie at work, but I recall thinking it would be great to offer, for the very first and probably only time, some insight into the great man and wonderful musician at work; and therefore some of the frustrating out-takes too. I thought that element was important, and so too did the fans I spoke with much later when they heard it. We hear Freddie getting things wrong sometimes - he was human after all!!! - and ultimately triumphing and making it through to the amazing familiar songs we all love.
In addition to the nine music discs and the interview audio CD, the box included two DVDs. The first is a collection of Freddie's solo videos, carefully remixed in Surround Sound; it also features interviews with the directors who worked on Freddie's solo clips. The other is a fascinating two-hour documentary about his life: Freddie Mercury: The Untold Story.
For many years fans of the Barcelona album have always wanted to hear what it would have sounded like with a live orchestra. Believe it or not, it was almost entirely recorded on keyboards. The reason Freddie decided upon that at the time was largely due to the fact that he was already dealing with an opera singer who came from an entirely different world to his and to arrange a score for a full eighty piece orchestra was one step too far out of his comfort zone.
The book was created and designed by long time Queen photographer and graphic designer Richard Gray. As well as designing album and singles covers, Gray also photographed Queen on stage at the end of their last concert with Freddie and shot the last portrait taken of Freddie, both included in this book.
Freddie Mercury was a man of many talents and many different sides. The songs he wrote for and with Queen filled stadiums around the globe and have rightly gone down in history, but he also embarked on a solo career that took him from the clubs of Munich and New York to the great opera houses of the world.
He was the ultimate showman, but he kept his private life away from the prying eyes of the media; a larger than life rock star who loved disco, classical music and ballet. He was a restless spirit, a true chameleon who reveled in his own contradictions.
From his debut solo single I Can Hear Music, released under the name Larry Lurex, through the dance floor-influenced solo anthems of the 80s and up to his collaborations with legendary Spanish opera singer Montserrat Caball including the timeless Barcelona, this is a journey through the career of a unique talent.
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