A new Queen song, when it features the voice of Freddie Mercury, is an event. And Queen have just released one, a song called Face it Alone.
Culled from the 1989 sessions that produced the album, The Miracle that was released early the following year, it's a slight track in someways, but a powerful and significant one in others.
By 1989, Freddie knew of his illness, as did the rest of the band. There were very few who did. More than anything else, this reality changed the nature of the band from one of four distinct individuals passionately committed to a common goal to one of an almost singular entity. For the first time in their history, songs were not credited to the person who primarily wrote it but to the collective. The album cover morphs their faces into one, an eerily effective way to make the point, and triumph in digital manipulation for its time.
The Miracle is a somewhat divisive Queen album amongst fans. Some see it as one of their weakest efforts, whilst there are others, like myself, who thinks the opposite. Not only is full of remarkable songs, but actually contains some of Freddie's finest vocal performances. Not only were the ravages of his illness not yet significantly compromising his health or remotely affecting his voice (as it clearly does on Innuendo), but he'd just finished recording the album, Barcelona, with the opera star, Montserrat Caballe, one of the finest sopranos in history, and one of Freddie's true idols. He learned a good deal from her about vocal control, and it's very much evident throughout the album.
There are songs that obliquely reflect on the mortality of Mercury, but it's hardly laden with autobiography. Face it Alone, however, shows where the album might have gone. On this song, Mercury bravely an incontrovertibly stares down the barrel, looking unsentimentally at the battle ahead. I would imagine that at the time, the band would have wavered on the grounds that it revealed too much; speculation about Mercury's health was continuing to grow, and he wanted the world to play no part it.
It's very sad song, but at the same time, affirming and beautiful. You can hear Mercury grieving defiantly in every vocal nuance, grieving for the life he'd no doubt expected. He holds notes, bends them with his beautifully frayed vibrato one minute, and then sustains them as tautly as wire, letting them burn. Falsetto inflections quiver, and in key moments, that roar that only he could summon pours forth in all its power. Face it ALL alone. Daunted, yes, but steeled. As ready has he's going to get.
The band have largely, wisely stayed out of his way. The kick drum is muffled, echoed and amplified. The bass is very, very low. Brian May's solo - there has to be a solo - is harmonised yet muted. A lament.
And that's what this song is, really. A lament. The closest thing to it in Queen's canon is Who Wants To Live Forever, but this is less bombastic, less thunderous, and in a sense, much more sincere. When May wrote Who Wants to Live Forever, he did so just after watching a rough cut of the film, Highlander, in preparation for the band to produce its soundtrack. In contrast, the band wrote Face it Alone knowing one of them was dying.
Yes, it is arguably underdeveloped and unfinished, salvaged from a demo after years of unsuccessful attempts. But a pencil sketch can still be considered complete, even if an oil painting was planned and never completed. Freddie does not sing this like he's going through the motions; he sings like a man who's going through its words.
I've loved - genuinely loved - Queen since I was a boy. Especially Mercury's voice. Paul Buchanan, the lead singer of the English band, The Blue Nile, once opined that he could live in the opening bars of Marvin Gaye's Inner City Blues. I understand the sentiment. I could live in the held notes of Freddie, because they are perfection.
Hearing Freddie Mercury sing something you've not heard him sing before is a thing of personal significance for all who love his music, because it adds an another hue to an inner aural and emotional world that you've been creating and revisiting for decades. We have another little piece of Mercury.
Because of Freddie, millions of people don't face things alone.
It's wonderful to be reminded of that.