{"id":300404,"date":"2025-12-05T12:23:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T12:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/300404\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T12:23:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T12:23:09","slug":"inside-freddie-mercurys-debut-solo-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/300404\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Freddie Mercury’s debut solo album"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forty years ago,\u00a015 years into Queen\u2019s bombastic career, Freddie Mercury<\/a> released his debut solo album,\u00a0Mr Bad Guy. \u201cPersonally, I think he was trying to make his own version of\u00a0Thriller,\u201d says Justin Shirley-Smith, Queen\u2019s long-time sound engineer. \u201cAlong the same lines stylistically, and certainly he would have wanted it to be as successful. It comes a couple of years after, and looking at the covers, I get the sense there\u2019s an echo there, that expression and angle of the face.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was not as successful as Thriller \u2013 what is? \u2013 peaking at number six in the UK album chart and selling around 100,000 copies, some way behind the millions he was used to shifting with Queen. But four decades on, Mr Bad Guy is a timestamp of an intriguing period of Mercury\u2019s life, and indeed a much-debated footnote in the career arc of Queen themselves.<\/p>\n

Recorded in Munich, his home away from home, between Queen projects and released just three months before Mercury stole the show at Live Aid 1985<\/a>,\u00a0Mr Bad Guy\u00a0is the sound of Mercury freeing himself from the constraints and expectation of Queen. A new 40th-anniversary vinyl mix of the album, overseen by Shirley-Smith and Joshua J Macrae, restores and updates the recordings.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wanted to do something different that he might not have been able to accomplish with Queen,\u201d says Fred Mandel, a Canadian session musician who toured and recorded with Queen and Elton John<\/a>, and played on\u00a0Mr Bad Guy. \u201cWhich was his own compositions in a different genre.\u201d After the success of Queen\u2019s 1982 megahit \u201cAnother One Bites the Dust\u201d, Mercury wanted Queen to explore a more disco-indebted sound. \u201cBut some of the other guys wanted to go back to a more rock sound,\u201d Mandel says.<\/p>\n

\"INGLEWOOD,Mercury on stage in California in 1980 (Photo: Michael Montfort \/Michael Ochs Archives \/Getty)<\/p>\n

Mercury had already dabbled in a dancier solo sound for 1984 single \u201cLove Kills\u201d, written with disco legend Giorgio Moroder for a restoration of the 1927 classic silent movie\u00a0Metropolis, and wanted to go further. \u201cI don\u2019t think he did it with the intention of leaving the group. I think he did it with the intention of just creatively exercising his muscles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Mandel and Shirley-Smith knew Mercury well. Mandel first met him when he joined Queen as touring musician in 1982 (he later played on Brian May<\/a>\u2019s 1983\u00a0Starfleet\u00a0mini-album and on Queen\u2019s 1984 album\u00a0The Works). \u201cHe\u2019s a lot more reserved offstage than the persona that I think some people associate with\u00a0him,\u201d Mandel says. \u201cFreddie could be almost actor-ish sometimes. But he was a very bright guy, and I think he had a sense of where that was applicable, his personality. But to me, he was a very nice, very honourable guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1984, when he was 18, Shirley-Smith got a job at Queen\u2019s commercial recording studio in Montreux, Switzerland; he engineered Queen albums until 1995\u2019s post-Freddie swansong\u00a0Made in Heaven. \u201cHe said the studio should be in the lake rather than by the lake, because he found it boring, basically, in terms of his late-70s, early-80s lifestyle,\u201d Shirley-Smith says of Mercury\u2019s notorious partying. \u201cBut Freddie was always just very funny. Everyone was laughing around him, especially him and Roger [Taylor] together.\u201d<\/p>\n

They are both well placed to say that perhaps some things we understand from this time in Mercury\u2019s life aren\u2019t strictly accurate. If you\u2019ve seen the 2018 Mercury biopic\u00a0Bohemian Rhapsody<\/a>\u00a0(starring Rami Malek in the main role<\/a>), you might be under the impression that the 18 months before Live Aid were a tough period for Mercury. Partying to excess in Munich where he lived on and off between 1979 and 1985, Mercury was said to be lonely and completely alienated from his Queen bandmates.\u00a0Mr Bad Guy\u00a0seemed to suggest as much. The sleeve notes to the original record read: \u201cThis album is dedicated to my cat Jerry \u2013 also Tom, Oscar and Tiffany, and all the cat lovers across the universe \u2013 screw everybody else!\u201d<\/p>\n

But the distance from his Queen bandmates is exaggerated, Shirley-Smith says. \u201cThey had different interests in what they did in their spare time, but they were carrying on [as a band] pretty normally,\u201d he says, noting that while work began on\u00a0Mr Bad Guy\u00a0in early 1983, Queen had made 1984 album\u00a0The Works\u00a0and performed at Rock in Rio festival in Brazil in January 1985.\u00a0\u201cThe movie makes a lot of them being estranged,\u201d Shirley-Smith says. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think it was extreme as that.\u201d \u201cNo matter what the press thought, they were like the Four Musketeers,\u201d Mandel says. \u201cThey might have had arguments with one another, but they were relatively minor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"UNITEDMercury on stage at Wembley Arena with Brian May in Queen (Photo: Phil Dent\/Redferns)<\/p>\n

But aside from a hailstorm in Munich one night \u2013 \u201cIt destroyed a lot of cars in the parking lot; one of Freddie\u2019s cars got pretty heavily damaged\u201d \u2013 Mandel says recording was plain sailing. There was no sign of Mercury\u2019s out-of-control hedonism, nor did he cut an unhappy, isolated figure.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot when I was there,\u201d says Mandel. \u201cI didn\u2019t get that impression at all. I mean, yes, there are elements of that in the recording,\u201d he says of songs like \u201cLiving on My Own\u201d, about the loneliness of touring. \u201cBut he was the same as I ever knew him. We were joking around. We went out to dinner in Munich one night, a traditional kind of German restaurant, and we hung out for a few days, and he seemed fine to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mandel says the week he recorded with Mercury and co-producer Reinhold Mack, who had produced all of Queen\u2019s 80s albums, Mercury was focused and businesslike \u2013 and as good as ever in the studio. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to autotune Freddie,\u201d Mandel says. \u201cJust let him go.\u201d Mandel says it was a case of: \u201cWhich vocal do you use \u2013 better or best?\u201d<\/p>\n

Creatively, Mercury was overflowing with ideas. Among moving ballads \u2013 the epic \u201cMade in Heaven\u201d and \u201cLove Me Like There\u2019s No Tomorrow\u201d, about his affair with the Austrian actress Barbara Valentin \u2013 there were complex and inventive arrangements (the theatre pop of \u201cMan Made Paradise\u201d) and new sounds in the disco power ballad of \u201cI Was Born to Love You\u201d, giddy synths of \u201cLet\u2019s Get It On\u201d and reggae track \u201cMy Love is Dangerous\u201d (\u201cwho wants their love to be safe?\u201d Mercury quipped at the time). <\/p>\n

The title track employs the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra: surprisingly given Queen\u2019s reputation for grandiosity, it was actually the first time Mercury had ever recorded with an orchestra. \u201cThat\u2019s because he did have a full orchestra,\u201d Mandel says, \u201cand his name was Brian.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"FredFred Mandel, a Canadian session musician, toured and recorded with Queen and played on \u2018Mr Bad Guy\u2019 (Photo: Gary Gershoff\/Getty)<\/p>\n

Mr Bad Guy knowingly pokes fun at his reputation for debauchery and flamboyance. \u201cI am a man of extremes,\u201d Mercury said at the time. Did either ever see the\u00a0Mr Bad Guy\u00a0side of him? \u201cI mean, obviously he was naughty. Everyone knows that, don\u2019t they?\u201d Shirley-Smith says. \u201cIn the traditional sense of the word bad, my experience was that he was very generous in every way.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t see any real diva moments with him,\u201d Mandel says. \u201cI\u2019d see people get irritated on the road. But I never saw him throwing stuff around the dressing room.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

Mr Bad Guy was released on 6 April 1985; after only one of the four singles reached the top 40 \u2013 \u201cI Was Born to Love You\u201d at number 11 \u2013 Shirley-Smith says Mercury quickly moved on. \u201cHe got slightly bored of this album, because he spent a lot of time at the beginning working on the songs,\u201d Shirley-Smith says. \u201cI think there was a rush at the end to finish it. I\u2019ve been in the studio with Freddie \u2013 he was impatient. The songs are really great, and a lot of the vocal performances are fantastic, but in terms of production and mix, I think it left a bit to be desired.\u201d <\/p>\n

He stresses this is not a criticism of Reinhold Mack. \u201cMack is a genius and his work on this album, getting Freddie\u2019s vocals the way they are and keeping the fun intact, was a real achievement. I think he was up against it, quite frankly, in many ways.\u201d There were \u201ctechnical problems with drum machines, and also the sync between the tapes. Now we can correct things like that and give it a bit more punch and weight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shirley-Smith continued to work with Mercury on Queen albums until Mercury\u2019s death from an Aids<\/a>-related illness aged 45 in November 1991. Even as ill health took its toll, the frontman was determined to work. \u201cYes, he was definitely keen just to carry on.\u201d In May 1991, Shirley-Smith helped record Mercury\u2019s last recording, \u201cMother Love\u201d, and recalls how the two of them worked in the studio alone on vocals for \u201cA Winter\u2019s Tale\u201d a few days earlier.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was amazing, really,\u201d Shirley-Smith says. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to describe, because it sounds like it should be very sad, but he always made light of everything. He had a walking stick but he was standing to sing in the control room, which is unusual. But he preferred to be right there with you and have eye-to-eye contact. He amazingly seemed to be enjoying himself, even though he was struggling to hit some notes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given it was relatively overlooked, Mr Bad Guy had ripples of a legacy. In 1993, \u201cLiving on My Own\u201d became a huge number one hit after a remix by No More Brothers; in 1995, \u201cMade in Heaven\u201d was re-recorded by Queen for their posthumous 1995 album of the same name, their first and only album since Mercury\u2019s passing.<\/p>\n

And piano ballad \u201cThere Must Be More to Life Than This\u201d \u2013 originally written for Hot Space \u2013 resurfaced on the 2014 compilation Queen Forever in a version with Michael Jackson on vocals. It was one of three tracks recorded during the infamous, ill-fated collaboration between Mercury and Jackson at the latter\u2019s Californian studio in 1983. Personal and creative differences meant the project fell apart. \u201cI only know what people have said: that he went there, but he wasn\u2019t too keen on [Jackson\u2019s] llama in the studio,\u201d Shirley-Smith says.<\/p>\n

But it means that, though inevitably overshadowed by Queen, Mr Bad Guy has its place in the Mercury story. \u201cWell, it\u2019s totally unique, isn\u2019t it?\u201d Shirley-Smith says. \u201cBecause he did two solo albums, and they\u2019re very different from each other. And hopefully we\u2019ve made it more accessible than it already was.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Mr Bad Guy\u2019 40th\u00a0Anniversary Special Edition is out now<\/p>\n

\t\tYour next read<\/p>\n


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