Freddie Mercury’s previously lost recording of ‘Time Waits For No One’ has been released.
The song was penned for West End show ‘Time’ in 1986 by musician Dave Clark, however the Queen frontman – who passed away from complications with AIDS at the age of 45 in 1991 – recorded his own take on the ballad, which had been lost for a decade until last spring.
Speaking on their recording sessions for the song, Dave said in a statement: "We got on great … if I didn’t like something I’d say, and vice versa…we were both aiming for the same thing: to make something special."
Original keyboardist Mike Moran – who went on to produce ‘Barcelona’ with Freddie in 1987, which was later released on Queen’s 1999 ‘Greatest Hits III’ LP – plays piano on the unearthed recording as Freddie’s flawless vocals command the powerful ballad.
To accompany the release of the song, a music video has been released, which Dave spent four years working on from the negatives of the recording of Freddie’s performance of the song at London’s Dominion Theatre – which was shot in just three hours.
The making of ‘Time’ was fuelled by "fabulous food, vodka and Cristal Champagne," courtesy of Freddie’s personal chef Joe Fanelli, a press release states.
Dave, a member of the 60s group Dave Clark Five, previously revealed: "The version rehearsed at Abbey Road was just Freddie with a piano. It was magic and it gave me goosebumps.
"The produced version ended up with 48 vocal tracks. It took me years to track down the original master tape of just Freddie singing."
This isn’t the only unheard music from Freddie, as it was previously revealed that Queen has unreleased tracks with David Bowie laying around.
Peter Hince, the band’s former roadie, was travelling with the British rock legends when they collaborated with the late music legend – who passed away in January last year after a secret battle with cancer – on ‘Under Pressure’ in 1981.
In his new tome, ‘David Bowie: I Was There’, he said they had done much more together than the one song.
In an excerpt, he wrote: "They … performed some original songs they did together , and also covers. They were just jamming in the studio, and it all got recorded – ‘All The Young Dudes’, ‘All The Way From Memphis’ and various rock classics."
Peter teased there are some real gems of the icons duetting.
He said: "There’s stuff with Freddie and David singing together – proper full-length rock ‘n’ roll tracks. Raw, but good."
Although Queen’s management declined to comment on the tracks, the group’s guitarist Brian May recently said the famous pair "locked horns" during the recording of ‘Under Pressure’, the biggest hit from 1982 LP ‘Hot Space’.
The ‘We Will Rock You’ hitmaker said he tries to focus only on the "wonderful" memories he has of that time, and revealed there is still music that hasn’t "come to light" yet.
He said: "It wasn’t easy because we were all precocious boys and David was very… forceful, yes.
"Freddie and David locked horns, without a doubt. But those are the things that happen in a studio, that’s when the sparks fly and that’s why it turned out so great.
"[They locked horns] in subtle ways, like who would arrive last at the studio. So it was sort of wonderful and terrible. But in my mind, I remember the wonderful now, more than the terrible.
"And not all of what we did in those sessions has ever come to light, so there’s a thought…"
‘Time Waits For No One’ is out now on UMe/ Universal Music Group.
Freddie Mercury’s lost track Time Waits For No One released
