This is Queen The Greatest,
and today we are heading back to 1995
to look at Queen’s fastest selling and most successful studio album to date –
Made In Heaven.
While the Tribute Concert had been the perfect occasion
for fans and the band to come together and celebrate the life,
the works and the dreams of one Freddie Mercury
for Brian, Roger and John
there still remained some unfinished business.
[Brian May] “Of course lurking in the wings
was all the material we’d done with Freddie, which was unfinished,
and what were we going to do with this?
Would we manage to make an album with it?”
[Roger Taylor] “Things like Winter's Tale
really came out of that,
that sort of desperately ill stage.”
[Roger Taylor] “They were made very much out of an awareness
that Fred wasn't going to be around very long.”
[Brian May] “I think I kind of dragged my heels,
I think I went through a very extended grieving process really,
because I kind of didn't want to talk about Queen.
I went out on my tour,
solo tour, and of course, all that people wanted to talk about
was Queen and Freddie's death and stuff,
and I couldn't deal with it.
I just said, ‘Look, let's just talk about what's happening now’.”
[Brian May] “So I had a bit of sort of denial stuff going on
and I think I was reluctant to get back into
opening those boxes and dealing with
Freddie's voice there.
And it was tough to begin with.”
[Brian May] “Roger made the first inroads
and he took some of the tapes down to his studio and started working on them.
And of course, that's the trigger I need
because I hear what he’s done,
and I go ‘no, no, no, don't do it like this.
You’ve got to do it like this’, you know?
So my juices were working and I just dived in before
I had time to think,
and I took over some particular tracks.
It was a monumental task.”
[Roger Taylor] “It was very weird working with Freddie's
voice coming out of the speakers.
But again, it was a very interesting process.”
[Roger Taylor] “Because we knew that the situation
was closing in on us and it was...
so we sort of made the most of every moment
and then really enjoyed it.”
[Roger Taylor] “I think Brian and I
certainly felt that we knew what Freddie would have been thinking.
And, you know, he felt he was almost in the corner of the room and
sort of knowing each other so well for so long,
we sort of thought he’d like that bit
but he probably wouldn't like that bit.
And so we sort of got there
and I was very pleased with the result.”
[Brian May] “I'm very fond of mother love,
and it has a little piece of ‘I'm Going Back’ at the end,
which is one of the first things that Freddie ever sang in the studio.
In fact, probably the first thing.
A Carole King Song.”
[Brian May] “And I wrote to Carole King to ask her permission
to use it, and she was delightful,
she was so supportive, and she said she was thrilled that we would,
you know, consider it important to put on there.”
[Brian May] “The whole album is a fantasy, really,
because it sounds like the four of us are there all together
having fun and making the album, but of course,
for most of the time when you're listening,
that's not the case.
You know, it's built to sound that way.
And a lot of love went into that.”
[Brian May] “There's tracks like ‘I Was Born to Love You’,
which of course was never a Queen track, that was a solo track
which Freddie did very hurriedly,
and he never kind of bothered about the backing tracks.
So we stripped everything away and
lovingly, cherishingly
re-edited all his vocal, put it all together,
and I spent months and months piecing together
our bits to make it sound like we were in the studio together.”
On it’s release in November 1995,
Made In Heaven raced to the top of the charts
and achieved multiple Platinum status around the world -
going on to sell in excess of 20 million copies.
Five tracks were subsequently released as singles,
all of which were top 20 hits in the UK.
[Brian May] “I think it's one of our best albums, strangely,
so good experiences all connected with that album,
and I love the album I can put it on any time.
And, obviously there were moments working on it
when you're just listening to Freddie's voice 24 hours a day
and that can be hard,
you know, you suddenly think, ‘Oh God, he's not here’,
you know, ‘why am I doing this?’
But now, having been through that,
I can listen to the album and it's just joy.
I feel like it was the right completion,
and it’s the right album to finish up on.”