Queen - Made in Heaven
On November 6, 1995, "Made in Heaven", the fifteenth and final studio album by the band "Queen", was released.
In early 1991, immediately after completing the album "Innuendo," the four members of the band "Queen" knew that Freddie Mercury's hourglass was running out. Mercury, who was battling AIDS far from the eyes of the world media, found a last refuge of peace and tranquility in the picturesque town of Montreux, Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva, where the band had purchased the legendary Mountain Studios in the late 1970s. Rather than succumb to physical decline and shut himself away in his home, Mercury made a momentous decision that defined his image as an artist until his last breath. He asked his bandmates, guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor and bassist John Deacon, along with their dedicated producer and longtime partner David Richards, to write as many lines, melodies and sketches for him as possible, with the goal of recording every note and syllable that his aching body was still capable of producing, and leaving behind raw material for the band to complete after his death.
The sessions that took place at the Montreux studio between January and May 1991 were some of the most charged, intimate and wonderful moments in the history of world rock. Mercury, who had already had difficulty standing on his feet for a long time, would arrive at the studio control room, lean on a walking stick, drink a small glass of vodka to warm his vocal cords, and cling to the microphone. To the surprise of his friends, precisely at the moments when his body completely betrayed him, his voice reached emotional depths, crystalline clarity and operatic power that had never been heard before. To take advantage of every minute of energy, the band members recorded the playing around him at record speed and sometimes improvised live in the control room, without using an isolated vocal booth. In May 1991, Mercury recorded the last singing parts of his life, returned to London, and on November 24, 1991, he passed away at the age of forty-five, leaving the music world heartbroken.
After Mercury's death and the historic tribute show at Wembley Stadium in April 1992, the three remaining members were deeply saddened by the loss of their first album together for nearly two years. Brian May toured in support of his solo album Back to the Light, and Roger Taylor worked on his solo album Happiness?. It was not until the fall of 1993 that May, Taylor, and Deacon returned to Mountain Studios in Montreux to open the vault of recordings left behind by their friend. Along with the three original sketches that Mercury had recorded in the spring of 1991, they collected vocal recordings from his 1985 solo album Mr. Bad Guy, hidden tracks from the albums The Works, A Kind of Magic, and The Miracle, and songs from Taylor's side band The Cross. For nearly two years, the three worked together with producer David Richards and engineers Justin Shirley-Smith and Joshua J. Macrae to dismantle the original vocal channels and assemble a new, rich, and magnificent musical envelope around Mercury's voice, as if the four of them were playing together in the same room for the last time.
The album opens with the magnificent and moving work "It's a Beautiful Day", based on a free and spontaneous improvisation on piano that Mercury recorded at Musicland Studios in Munich back in 1980, before the recordings of the album "The Game". John Deacon and Brian May took the short and intimate opening in which Mercury sang about a sense of freedom and hope, and added to it an uplifting classical symphonic passage written by Mercury, until the song bursts into a sweeping optimism that sets the tone of the entire album, not as a somber funeral rite but as a glorious celebration of life.
It's immediately followed by the title track "Made in Heaven", originally taken from Mercury's solo album "Mr. Bad Guy." While the original 1985 version relied on synthesizers and mid-'80s pop production, here May, Taylor and Deacon scrap the old accompaniment and build a massive wall of classic stadium rock sound around Mercury's theatrical, fateful vocals. May's wailing Red Special guitar, Taylor's heavy drums and Deacon's racing bass give the lyrics about a fate written in heaven a chilling, new meaning.
The third track, "Let Me Live," reveals one of the band's most fascinating stories. The song began in 1983 during the "The Works" album sessions in Los Angeles as a joint jam with singer Rod Stewart and guitarist Jeff Beck, but was shelved at the time. In the 1995 version, the members of "Queen" transformed it into a moving and powerful gospel-rock anthem, in which Mercury, Taylor and May share the lead vocal duties one after the other, like a final spiritual conversation between the three voices who have shaped the band's vocal sound for more than two decades, accompanied by a sweeping gospel choir that includes singers Rebecca Leigh-White, Gary Martin, Catherine Porter and Miriam Stockley.
But the album's most poignant emotional peak is found in the fourth track, "Mother Love", the very last song Mercury ever recorded. The song was co-written by May and Mercury in May 1991, with the clear knowledge that it was the singer's swan song. Mercury recorded the song's verses line by line, and in the final chorus, he produced from his exhausted throat a high, mighty, chilling note that raises eyebrows with every re-listen. After singing the penultimate verse, Mercury told May that he was too tired to continue and would rest a bit before returning to complete the final verse, but he never returned to the studio. Deeply heartbroken, Brian May stepped to the microphone and sang the song's final verse himself in a trembling, quiet voice, like a painful passing of the torch from brother to brother. At the end of the song, the band members weaved a surreal sound collage that rewound the timeline of Mercury's life, from his famous audience calls at a concert at Wembley Stadium in 1986, through fragments of recordings from "One Vision" and 1970s albums, an early segment performed by a young Mercury in 1972 on the song "Goin' Back" under the stage name Larry Lurex, to the sound of a baby crying, sealing the circle of life.
After this chilling moment, John Deacon's song, "My Life Has Been Saved", provides a moment of grace, warmth, and comfort. Originally recorded in 1989 as the B-side to the single "Scandal" from the album "The Miracle," the song has been reworked here, rich and melodic with caressing acoustic and electric guitars, while Mercury's vocals sound close, human, and full of gratitude.
The energy bursts into full force on the sixth track, "I Was Born to Love You", which also originally originated as a fast-paced disco-pop song on Mercury's 1985 solo album. The members of "Queen" stripped the song of its old dance synthesizers and transformed it into a dizzying, unbridled hard-rock bomb, in which May's virtuoso guitar solo and Taylor's thunderous drumming catapult Mercury's massive voice to the forefront. To give the song the feel of a live band kicking in the studio, the trio incorporated improvised vocal samples of Mercury from the songs "A Kind of Magic" and "Living on My Own" at the end of the song, making the track one of the album's biggest radio hits.
The center of gravity of the second part of the album rests on two tremendous anthems, "Heaven for Everyone" and "Too Much Love Will Kill You". "Heaven for Everyone" was written by Roger Taylor back in 1987 for his band "The Cross", when Mercury was a guest on the original recording as lead singer. For "Made in Heaven", May, Deacon and Taylor recorded a completely new musical accompaniment, broad and atmospheric, which catapulted the song as the album's lead single straight to number two in the British charts. It is immediately followed by the masterful ballad "Too Much Love Will Kill You", written by Brian May in 1988 with Frank Musker and Elizabeth Lamers during a period of personal crisis and painful divorce. The song was originally recorded by Mercury and the band for the album "The Miracle", but was shelved at the time due to legal issues over publishing rights. Although May performed the song himself at the Mercury tribute show and on his solo album, the unveiling of the original studio version with Mercury's wounded, deep, and unforgettable vocals gave the song a chilling prophetic dimension and earned its writers the prestigious Ivor Novello Award.
The three tracks that seal the official part of the album showcase the poetic and experimental side of the Montreux sessions. On "You Don't Fool Me", producer David Richards created a real feat of studio magic, gathering fragments of sentences, whispers and harmonies recorded by Mercury in the last months of his life, and stitching them over a funky, sensual and hypnotic groove led by John Deacon, on which Brian May laid one of his most brilliant and melodic guitar solos of the 1990s. It is followed by the peaceful and pastoral farewell postcard "A Winter's Tale", the last song Mercury wrote and composed entirely alone. Mercury wrote the song while looking out the window of his house in Montreux at the seagulls, swans and snow-capped mountain peaks reflected in the waters of Lake Geneva, and recorded the vocals in one perfect, dreamy and psychedelic take. The official song portion of the album concluded with the explosive, rhythmic Reprise version of "It's a Beautiful Day", in which Taylor incorporated a quote from the band's classic song "Seven Seas of Rhye", before the music fades to the sound of a gong. On the CD and streaming editions, the band members and producer Richards added a hidden, experimental, twenty-two-and-a-half-minute ambient instrumental piece called "Untitled", also known to fans as "Track 13", a cosmic, soaring journey that musically depicts Mercury's soul ascending to the heavens.
The iconic album cover, designed by the band's long-time designer Richard Gray, commemorates Mercury's eternal connection to Montreux. On the front of the cover, painted in the blue and turquoise tones of a peaceful twilight on Lake Geneva, stands a bronze statue of Mercury, sculpted by Czech artist Irena Sedlecká, with his back to the viewer, his fist raised to the sky in his famous victory pose and his gaze fixed on the still waters, while the three remaining band members are photographed on the back of the cover looking out at that same horizon.
Released on November 6, 1995, under the Parlophone label in the UK and Hollywood Records in North America, "Made in Heaven" became an unprecedented global phenomenon. The album shot straight to number one in the UK charts and on the charts of dozens of other countries, reaching five platinum albums in the UK alone and selling over twenty million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling studio album in "Queen"'s history. For bassist John Deacon, who experienced the loss of Mercury most severely and always claimed that there was no replacement for the late vocalist, the album marked the end of his professional career before his retirement from the music world in 1997. "Made in Heaven" stands the test of time not only as a glorious epilogue to one of the greatest rock bands in history, but as an eternal testament to the power of music to conquer death and transform unimaginable human pain into a work of celestial art.
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