Before starting a just-announced first-ever North American concert series with Adam Lambert, Queen’s Brian May and Roger Taylor were at work on compiling a second recording featuring leftover tracks from Freddie Mercury — including a memorable collaborative moment with Michael Jackson.
But May says there aren’t more than five remaining songs, after he and Taylor scoured the archives in order to issue Made in Heaven. Thet 1995 album of similarly polished odds-and-ends arrived four years after Mercury succumbed to AIDS-related illnes — becoming a four-times platinum smash in their native UK.
With not enough material for anything more than an EP, there remains then the inevitable question of rounding out a proposed Queen long-player. May and Taylor were asked about the possibility of recording new songs featuring Lambert, with whom they have been working on the road since the 2009 Idol finale.
Queen’s remaining guitarist and drummer say they are open to that idea, though nothing is set in stone.
“Well, you know, anything is possible,” May offered. Taylor said: “It’s logical; it’s a very logical thing to do so I don’t know.” And then May added: “You never know. You never know.”
This as-yet-untitled project would represent the first original music released under the Queen banner since work with Paul Rodgers led to 2008’s The Cosmos Rocks. No release date has been mentioned.
“We have a few songs that we discovered which were sort of stuck away in a drawer and I think we’d overlooked them,” May says. “Yeah, we have two or three or four or five, I don’t know — but it’s not a whole album’s worth but definitely some significant material. Freddie sounds just so alive and fresh, it’s like it was recorded yesterday and we’re playing together a lot of the time, you know. So, you hear something which I think people will enjoy. And it’s been a voyage of discovery for us because we thought after Made in Heaven there wasn’t any more Queen material. But, yeah, but there it is and I think you’ll get a kick out of it.”
Queen was originally rounded out with John Deacon, but the bassist has since retired.
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