6th November 2020

Made In Heaven: Released 25 Years Ago Today

"It was the right album to finish up on." Brian May

Queen’s fifteenth studio album, Made In Heaven, came out on 6 November 1995 and was a set of thirteen tracks painstakingly put together from a period spanning 1980 to 1995. uDiscover look back on the album on it's 25th Anniversary.

Everyone mourned Freddie Mercury’s death at the age of 45 at his home in Kensington on the evening of 24 November 1991. Five months later, The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert held on Easter Monday, 20 April 1992 at London’s Wembley Stadium was a celebration of his life, one lived to the full. There were many who thought that this was it as far as new recordings from the band with Freddie out front. And yet, four years later, Brian May, John Deacon and Roger Taylor managed to construct a new album, featuring Freddie, that included his final recordings from 1991; material left over from previous albums and re-workings of songs that seemed relevant from May, Taylor and Mercury’s own solo ventures.

The new work, Made In Heaven, came out on 6 November 1995 and was a set of thirteen tracks painstakingly put together from a period spanning 1980 to 1995. These included Freddie captured in Mountain Studios in his latter months with posthumous recording taking place in Allerton Hill, Cosford Mill and Metropolis Studios. Fresh instrumentation was added to available Mercury vocals. Knowing he was dying, Freddie had committed several things to tape in Switzerland for future use. According to Brian May, he’d told the others, “’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.’”

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