History
The album was recorded in a much different way from Queen's other studio albums. In early 1991, months before his AIDS-related death, vocalist Freddie Mercury recorded as many vocals as he could, with the instruction to the rest of the band—drummer Roger Taylor, bassist John Deacon and guitarist Brian May—to complete the songs later. Put to tape during this time were primarily "A Winter's Tale", "Mother Love" and what would eventually become "You Don't Fool Me".
After his death, the band returned to the studio in 1993 to begin work finishing the tracks. Brian May has described in interviews that Taylor and Deacon had begun some work in 1992, while May was on tour promoting his Back to the Light album. Upon his return in 1993, May felt they were not on the right path with the music and that they more or less started from scratch with the three of them working together with producer David Richards.
On the video Champions of the World, May described these sessions with Mercury as such:
| “ | By the time we were recording these other tracks after Innuendo, we had had the discussions and we knew that we were totally on borrowed time because Freddie had been told that he would not make it to that point. I think our plan was to go in there whenever Freddie felt well enough, just to make as much use of him as much as possible, we basically lived in the studio for a while and when he would call and say, 'I can come in for a few hours', our plan was to just make as much use of him as we could, you know he told us, 'Get me to sing anything, write me anything and I will sing it and I will leave you as much as I possibly can.' | ” |
With less than an album's worth to work with, the band decided to revisit previously recorded material. Whether Mercury had any input before his death as to which songs might be considered for this purpose has not been discussed by the band. The idea was to take existing songs on which Mercury sang and rework them as Queen songs.
Read more about this topic: Made In Heaven
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