Freddie Mercury Solo Album To Be Reissued

1988's Barcelona was Freddie's final album and it was recorded with opera star Montserrat Caballé for the 1992 Olympic Games.

Now the album is to be re-released as a brand new 2CD/DVD edition on 2 September, which would have been Freddie's 66th birthday.

The album has been overhauled with a full orchestra score replacing the keyboards which appeared on the original record.

Stuart Morley, the MD of the current West End musical, We Will Rock You, has overseen the new production. He says that he "Basically listened to the album over and over in short sections and noting down the harmonic structure, lead orchestral lines and instrumental voicings along with the vocal lines.

"I then proceeded to expand into making a full orchestral score (with a 2B pencil, ruler and erases –the old fashioned way) working at the piano and constantly referring back to the original recordings to make sure the work I was doing remained faithful to Freddie and Mike Moran’s original intentions."

Meanwhile, actor and lifelong Queen fan Rhys Thomas is producing and directing a brand new documentary about Freddie.

The Great Pretender looks at the life of one of rock's greatest stars, and it features a wealth of unseen footage. 

The extensive archive footage is drawn from rare interviews with Freddie, concerts, video shoots and personal material, much of it being seen for the first time, along with newly filmed contributions from fellow Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor, Queen manager Jim Beach, soprano Montserrat Caballé, composers David Arnold and Mike Moran, lyricist Tim Rice, comedian and lifelong fan Matt Lucas and many more.

Amongst the unseen clips in 'The Great Pretender' are Freddie and Rod Stewart singing their demo for 'Take Another Piece of My Heart', an unreleased song from 1984, a snippet of the unreleased Michael Jackson / Freddie Mercury collaboration 'There Must Be More To Life Than This', and Freddie with the Royal Ballet 1979 ' never seen in full before.

On top of this, the film has a huge number of outtakes from the video shoots for 'I Want To Break Free', 'One Vision', 'Days of Our Lives', 'I Want It All', 'A Kind Of Magic', 'Princes of the Universe', 'Living on My Own', Born To Love You', 'Great Pretender', 'Made In Heaven', and 'Who Wants to Live Forever'. 

The film is released on DVD and Blu Ray on 24 September, and will no doubt appear on TV at around the same time.