A. Sawa/© Mercury Songs Ltd.
Dave Clark International
Universal Music Group
With Bohemian Rhapsody earning four Oscars earlier this year, interest in Queen and Freddie Mercury has been higher than it’s been for years. Now, Universal Music Group has announced the release of a hitherto unheard Freddie Mercury performance, ‘Time Waits for No One’.
Recorded in 1986 for the musical Time, the brainchild of musician Dave Clark, the song is being released with an accompanying video with previously unseen footage featuring Mercury at the Dominion Theatre in London.
The song features Mercury with a piano accompaniment, allowing his voice to shine. It is out now on UMe.
The original musical ran for two years from 1986. Mercury had agreed to record another song that Clark had in mind, ‘In My Defence’, for the show’s concept album, in October 1985, at Abbey Road Studios. It was during this session that Mercury asked Clark if he had another song he could perform. In January 1986, Mercury returned to Abbey Road to record the title track, ‘Time’, which a group of musicians, eventually recording 48 tracks of backing vocals. The final version had 96 tracks.
Clark recalled the original recording with only Mercury and pianist Mike Moran, and found it amongst his archives in 2018. Moran was brought in to record a new piano track, and stripped back the 96-track version to the single one featuring Mercury.
Clark still had the negatives from the video shoot from 1986, which had been stored in the meantime at Rank Laboratories at Pinewood, and returned to him in 2014.
The film, Bohemian Rhapsody, has earned over US$900 million at the box office, making it the highest-grossing music biopic in history. The single, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, was named the most streamed track of the 20th century and the most streamed classic rock song of all time in December 2018.
Simon Fowler/© Mercury Songs Ltd.