{"id":331409,"date":"2025-12-23T11:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T11:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/331409\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T11:03:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T11:03:09","slug":"queen-to-unveil-lost-christmas-song-recorded-in-1974-that-no-one-has-ever-heard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/331409\/","title":{"rendered":"Queen to unveil lost Christmas song recorded in 1974 that \u201cno one has ever heard\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

An unreleased Queen<\/a> Christmas song that \u201cno one has ever heard\u201d will soon be released, according to guitarist Brian May<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The song, titled \u2018Not For Sale (Polar Bear)\u2019 was recorded in 1974 during the making of the band\u2019s second album \u2018Queen II\u2019, but it didn\u2019t make the final cut.<\/p>\n

Five decades on, it\u2019s now been unearthed from the archives and received its first radio play on Planet Rock today (December 22). It will also appear on the reissue of Queen II due out in 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople might possibly have heard a bootleg version of \u2018Not for Sale (Polar Bear)\u2019 by Smile, it\u2019s a song that goes back a very long way, but to my knowledge no one has ever heard this version.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued, \u201cIt\u2019s a work in progress and will appear on the forthcoming rebuild of the Queen II album \u2013 coming next year \u2013 but I\u2019m sneaking this into my Planet Rock special because I\u2019m fascinated to know what people think about it. I hope people have a wonderful Christmas and a great New Year!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In other news, earlier this month May gifted Black Sabbath<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0Tony Iommi<\/a> with a left-handed replica of his classic Red Special guitar.<\/a><\/p>\n

The original Red Special was assembled from\u00a0scratch\u00a0in the early 1960s by May with his father Harold, as he was unable to afford a major brand.\u00a0Built with mahogany from an old fireplace mantle and an oak fingerboard with mother-of-pearl buttons, it\u00a0remained\u00a0May\u2019s primary guitar on stage throughout Queen\u2019s success in the \u201870s and \u201880s and became synonymous with the band\u2019s sound.<\/p>\n

May\u2019s wife Anita Dobson implied that despite Queen working on\u00a0new music\u00a0with Adam Lambert, it was unlikely that they would resume full-scale touring<\/a>. \u201cThey will do little bits and bobs, but they\u00a0won\u2019t\u00a0do those big tours,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

May suffered a minor stroke last year<\/a>, which he said came on \u201call of a sudden, out of the blue\u201d.\u00a0He said it left him without any control over one of his arms and described it as \u201ca little scary\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An unreleased Queen Christmas song that \u201cno one has ever heard\u201d will soon be released, according to guitarist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,3584,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-331409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-rock","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}