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His voice is one of the most distinctive in pop history and now the words Freddie Mercury sang are to be given the rock star treatment in a lyric book that will also include unreleased songs and alternative versions of Queen anthems.
A Life in Lyrics will feature abandoned verses for Bohemian Rhapsody and drafts of Don’t Stop Me Now. The material, taken from Mercury’s personal notebooks, has been released by Mary Austin, the singer’s former fiancee and closest friend.
Mercury died in 1991, leaving his house and possessions to Austin, along with his entire creative archive spanning the early days of Queen to the end of his solo career.
Austin said: “In early 2023, in the midst of cataloguing the contents of Garden Lodge, this wonderful home Freddie had left to me, I began to leaf through the papers my family and I had collected together from where they had lain, undisturbed and unseen, in the house for over 30 years.”
She found working drafts of Mercury’s lyrics on loose sheets of paper and in plain notebooks that “entirely belied the wonders within”.
Austin believes Mercury’s handwritten notes offer “a window into his brilliant, creative mind” and , for her, “stirred up many memories from decades past, of conversations, occasions and emotions”.
“I hope that by sharing his manuscripts now, contextualised with fresh insights and a sprinkling of vignettes of our lives together, I will illuminate the remarkable creative force of my dear friend for the enjoyment of everyone he continues to delight and inspire, even after all these years,” she added.
Mercury and Austin met in 1969 and he proposed to her on Christmas Day, 1973. They broke off their engagement three years later and remained lifelong friends. The singer had relationships with men and women and described himself as bisexual.
Mercury was diagnosed with Aids in 1987 and died of bronchial pneumonia, aged 45, in 1991. Austin inherited about half of his estimated £9m estate.
A Life in Lyrics, which will be illustrated with images from Mercury’s personal archive, is scheduled for release by HarperCollins on 1 September next year, a few days before the singer would have celebrated his 80th birthday.
Last month, another book about Mercury claimed to shed light on an unknown chapter in his life. Love, Freddie by Lesley-Ann Jones alleges that the singer had a secret daughter, unknown to even his closest friends. The book has divided fans and the people who were closest to Mercury.
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It claims that the child, now a 48-year-old woman referred to only as “B”, was conceived during a fling between Mercury and the wife of a close friend in 1976.
“Freddie Mercury was and is my father,” B states in a handwritten letter, reproduced in the book. “We had a very close and loving relationship from the moment I was born and throughout the final 15 years of his life. He adored me and was devoted to me.”
Little is known about B, other than her age and the fact she is a medical professional working in Europe. She claimed Mercury entrusted her with 17 journals that cover the final years of his life, which Jones said are “the closest thing to a Freddie Mercury autobiography that the world will ever know”.
Austin, however, said she did not know about a secret child. “The truth is that I am simply not the guardian of such a secret,” she said. “I’ve never known of any child, or of any diaries. If Freddie had indeed had a child without me knowing anything about it, that would be astonishing to me.”
