A Kind of Magic

Queen made their twelfth album on the momentum of their Live Aid triumph of July 1985. It began with Highlander: director Russell Mulcahy commissioned a handful of songs, and the band were so taken with the first twenty minutes of rough footage that more followed. The album sets those songs beside new ones as a Queen album rather than a soundtrack. It was recorded between September 1985 and April 1986 at the Town House in London, Musicland in Munich and Mountain Studios in Montreux, with production split track by track between Queen with Mack and Queen with David Richards. The first single, "One Vision", was inspired by Live Aid and is credited to Queen as a band. It came out in November 1985, six months ahead of the album, and was also used in the film Iron Eagle. Roger Taylor's title song grew from a line in the film, "It's a kind of magic", and the album version differs markedly from the film's. Brian May wrote "Who Wants to Live Forever" on the drive home from the first assembly of the film, moved by the death of the hero's beloved Heather, and arranged its orchestra with Michael Kamen. May's "Gimme the Prize (Kurgan's Theme)" and Taylor's "Don't Lose Your Head", with incidental vocals by Joan Armatrading, also come out of the story, and the video for Freddie Mercury's "Princes of the Universe" has Christopher Lambert's sword duelling with Mercury's microphone stand. EMI released the album in Britain in June 1986. It entered the chart at No. 1 and went double platinum there, though it reached only No. 46 in the United States. "One Vision" reached No. 7 in Britain, "A Kind of Magic" No. 3, Mercury and John Deacon's "Friends Will Be Friends" No. 14 and "Who Wants to Live Forever" No. 24. The Magic Tour began straight after the release and closed at Knebworth Park on 9 August 1986, the last time the four played on stage together. In Japan the album came out in June 1986 and reached No. 25; the current Japanese CD is the SHM-CD UICY-15094.