22 May, 1989
It had been a long wait, one described by Queen as “an extended sabbatical”. But today The Miracle, the band’s 16th album, finally arrived, three years on from their previous studio offering, A Kind Of Magic. And this time around, things were going to be different… the band would not be touring to promote it.
The true reason why would not surface for some time, but in the interim lead singer Freddie Mercury explained, “I wanted to change the cycle of world tour, album, world tour, etc. Maybe we will tour, but it will be for different reasons. I’ve personally had it with these bombastic tights and staging effects. I don’t think a 42-year-old man should be running around in a leotard any more.”
Regardless, EMI shifted into high gear to promote the album. BPI chairman Tony Wadsworth, back then general manager of the Parlophone label, recalls, “There were special editions, teaser tapes for journalists, a huge poster campaign, and so on. This wasn’t to compensate for any uncertainty but because this was one of our superstar acts and we were very much in the era of the ‘pull out all stops’ marketing campaign. The CD was in the ascendant and we were several years away from the advent of online piracy.”
Part of the campaign included an hour-long Radio 1 interview with Mike Read set for Easter Bank Holiday Monday. All four band members participated, Brian May taking time to explain his personal absence from the Queen scene. ”I did Anita’s [Dobson, his wife] album, which I think is musically very good. Then I produced the Bad News [spoof] album which was very significant in its way. I also found myself playing with Black Sabbath, jamming with Def Leppard and people like that. Which I’ve enjoyed. I’ve done a lot of producing, but I prefer to play.”
“I just want to be a boring old fart.”
Freddie Mercury
So why didn’t the band want to tour?
”I just want to be a boring old fart,” claimed Mercury, who admitted that the others did want to continue touring. “I’m the one who doesn’t want to do it.” Asked if the other three band members hated him for his decision, Mercury railed: “I don’t give a damn, actually, what they think, it’s just that I don’t want to do it.”
Behind his customary devil-may-care insouciance, Freddie was, of course, concealing a far graver truth. At some point in the preceding few years he had contracted HIV. But with his health problems a well-kept secret among the group, friends and management, tabloid speculation aside, the outside world was unaware. “Aside from the lack of touring, it all seemed very much business as usual,” says Tony Wadsworth. “I was invited to the video shoots for I Want It All, and for Breakthru where I remember Fred in an extremely effervescent mood, serving vodka on ice in an improvised dressing room set up in a railway carriage on set. They were very welcoming and hospitable to the people from the label who worked with them, but with the benefit of hindsight, you can see the ranks were subtly closed to protect Freddie.”
The album duly went to Number 1 in Britain, and scored highly across Europe and the world – it was business as usual, then. “I recall that the band was deeply unfashionable at the time,” says Wadsworth, “and they seemed to take pride in that fact. The Melody Maker review of the album described it as being ‘One more for the furry dice brigade’…”
The band had more important matters to attend to. Freddie’s hard rocking, ruminative song Was It Worth It – which closed the original vinyl version of the album – even asked the ultimate question, and drew its own conclusions: “Living breathing rock’n’roll, this never ending fight/Was it all worth it?… Yes, it was a worthwhile experience, ha ha ha!”
Despite Freddie’s illness, Queen would manage one more triumph, with 1991’s Innuendo.
“(It was) remarkable… the band seemed to pull even closer together,” says Wadsworth, “and Freddie’s creativity and the power of his voice increased in leaps and bounds, even as it became clear that he was getting frailer by the day.” Had The Miracle been Queen’s last, though, it would have been a worthy swan song.