Drafts of other Queen hits and photos from singer’s private archive will also feature in A Life in Lyrics
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.”
