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Brian May reveals unheard Queen LP, ‘naughty’ We Will Rock You sequel

By | Published on Wednesday 28 May 2014

Brian May

Brian May has confirmed what was first hinted at last year, mainly that a compilation of as-yet unreleased Queen “ballads” featuring ‘lost’ vocals by the band’s late lead singer Freddie Mercury is on its way. And hey, it appears it might have at least one of Mercury’s shelved sing-songs with Michael Jackson on it, since those remain unaired even in the wake of Jackson’s post-death solo LP, ‘Xscape’.

May, of course, announced in November that a horde of Mercury’s old studio recordings, most of which date back to the 1980s, had been found in Queen’s archive vaults. It’s those that’ll form the basis of the collection, titled ‘Queen Forever’, which backs up the vocal tracks with present-day instrumentals made on ProTools.

And talking of ProTools, Brian May had a lot to say about sound editing software in relation to the ‘lost’ compilation, or “restoration job” in his words. It was all ‘ProTools this’ and ‘ProTools that’ in a recent chat with BBC Radio Wales.

This is what he said: “Well most of it comes from the 80s when we were in full flight, so it’s quite emotional. It’s kind of the big, big ballad and the big, big epic sound. It wouldn’t’ve been if we hadn’t done this restoration and had to start from scratch – we only had scraps, but knowing how it would’ve happened if we’d finished it then, I can sit there and make it happen, with modern technology. We have ProTools these days. You can do almost anything in ProTools”.

Including write a “naughty” and “kinda wicked” follow-on musical to May and Ben Elton’s Queen-themed ‘We Will Rock You’, if May’s BBC Radio Wales chit-chat is in any way true. Which surely it must be, mustn’t it?

Bri said he and ‘WWRY’ co-writer Ben Elton had “very secretly and quietly” previewed a sequel to the West End show, which is set to close this week, to a test-crowd, adding: “Everybody loved it, so we’re looking for a theatre. It’s kinda wicked. It’s very naughty. It’s a little naughtier than the first one”.



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