Innuendo

Innuendo was recorded at Metropolis Studios in London and Mountain Studios in Montreux between March 1989 and November 1990, again produced by Queen and David Richards. Richards has recalled setting the band up in the Montreux casino hall, linked to the studio by 54 microphone lines, where one song grew straight out of an improvisation. The writing was again credited to the whole band, except "All God's People", begun by Freddie Mercury with Mike Moran during his 1988 Barcelona sessions; Moran also plays keyboards on it. The flamenco-style guitar in the title track is Steve Howe of Yes, invited in by chance while visiting Montreux in 1990: he played one of Brian May's Gibson Chet Atkins guitars for about three takes before dinner, and the best moments were then edited together with Richards. Few people knew how ill Mercury was, and the four pulled together to support him. May has recalled that by the final sessions Mercury could barely stand, yet Roger Taylor remembers it, oddly enough, as a happy album to make. "The Show Must Go On" was worked up by Mercury and May together: May demoed its highest line in falsetto, and Mercury downed a couple of vodkas and sang it at full voice. The cover was made by the band and Richard Gray from "A Juggler of Universes", a drawing by the nineteenth-century French artist Grandville that Taylor had found in a book. Parlophone released the album in Britain on 4 February 1991, and a week later it followed the title single to No. 1. Hollywood Records, the band's new American label, issued it that February (No. 30), and Toshiba EMI's Japanese edition had appeared on 30 January, peaking at No. 17 on the Oricon chart. The singles included "Innuendo", "I'm Going Slightly Mad", "Headlong" and "The Show Must Go On"; after Mercury's death, "These Are the Days of Our Lives" went to No. 1 in Britain as a double A-side with "Bohemian Rhapsody". Innuendo was the last album released in his lifetime; the vocals he recorded afterwards became Made in Heaven four years later.