FREDDIE MERCURY’S posthumous appearance on Queen’s 1995
Made In Heaven
album brought everything full-circle in more ways than one. The singer’s final recording was Mother Love, a poignant co-write with May in which he sings, “I’ve walked too long in this lonely lane.” Among other things, the song’s sound-collage coda taps a July 1986 Wembley Stadium recording of Mercury’s famed “Ay-oh!” call-and-response shtick, and a few seconds of Larry Lurex And The Voles From Venus’s 1972 recording of Gerry Goffin and Carole King’s Goin’ Back.
Larry Lurex was actually Mercury, singing on the B-side of a cover of The Ronettes’ I Can Hear Music. Not released until 1973, the single was a pet project of Robin Geoffrey Cable, a little-known but capable producer who had gently press-ganged three-quarters of Queen into service. They were lounging around waiting for late-night session time to become available at Soho’s Trident Studios, and Cable got them to make a decent fist of Phil Spector’s wall of sound. The Voles included Brian May and Roger Taylor, but not John Deacon, who was absent that day. Drawing inspiration from the prevailing glam band argot, Cable’s pseudonymous credit for Queen was coined to avoid any confusion as the band prepared to release their long overdue debut,
Queen I
.
“I think Robin also suggested the name ‘Terry Tinkle’ for Freddie,” recalls Taylor today. The drummer’s chief memory of the Larry Lurex recordings is of “lots of session guys with acoustic guitars, because Robin wanted that Spector-ish thing – lots of layers. I think we got £15 each, which we were probably quite grateful for at the time.” Engineered by key Queen collaborator Mike Stone, the single was credited only to Larry Lurex when released on both EMI and US label Anthem. At the time of writing you can buy an EMI copy on Discogs for £78.99.