Freddie Mercury’s Debut Solo Album ‘Mr Bad Guy’ Gets Special Vinyl Reissue For 40th Anniversary
The reissue will be available on 180g translucent green vinyl and on picture disc LP.
“Mr Bad Guy? That’s Me!” sang Freddie Mercury on his debut solo album, Mr Bad Guy. 40 years later, that record is being celebrated with a new vinyl reissue. The reissue, due for release on December 5th, will be available on both 180g translucent green vinyl and on picture disc LP.
Originally released in April 1985, Mr Bad Guy was Mercury’s first album away from the group he had co-founded 15 years earlier. “I had a lot of ideas bursting to get out and there were a lot of musical territories I wanted to explore which I really couldn’t do within Queen,” he shared at the time. Mr Bad Guy was inspired by the dance pop club scene Mercury was personally immersed in, and showed listeners a different side of the singer from Queen’s arena-driven sounds.
Mr Bad Guy was recorded over a period of several months at Munich’s Musicland Studio, where Queen had made their most recent albums. It was co-produced by Mercury and Reinhold Mack, who had worked with the group since their 1980 hit The Game. The album reached Number 6 in the UK album charts and produced four singles: “I Was Born To Love You,” “Made In Heaven,” “Living On My Own,” and “Love Me Like There’s No Tomorrow.”
The new vinyl reissue features a mix of the album by Queen’s longtime sound team of Justin Shirley-Smith and Joshua J Macrae. “We went back to the original multi-track tapes,” shares Shirley-Smith. “The idea wasn’t to try to make it sound like they would make it now, it was to make it sound like it would have then if they’d had better technology and more time. And of course, it’s a massive honour to work on anything Freddie did, and we always treat it with the utmost respect.”
Reflecting on the album, Freddie once shared: “I put my heart and soul into Mr Bad Guy and I think it’s a very natural album. It had some very moving ballads – things to do with sadness and pain, but at the same time there were some very frivolous and tongue-in-cheek songs, because that is my nature. I think the songs on that album reflect the state of my life, a diverse selection of moods and a whole spectrum of what my life was.”
Order the 40th anniversary of Freddie Mercury’s Mr Bad Guy now.
