Made In Heaven (Solo: Mr Bad Guy/barcelona/bonus - Freddie Mercury)

Member Name: The Solid Grey

Product:	Solo: Mr Bad Guy/barcelona/bonus - Freddie Mercury
Date:	17/11/01 (671 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Everything Freddie did solo

Disadvantages: Expensive

Just to begin with, this is the Ten CD, Two DVD version of the solo collection, that comes in a very nice large hardback book, the other more popular version is the 3 CD set with selected tracks form this version (which is also a whole lot cheaper).

When I first heard about this collection I was overjoyed, I’ve been a Queen fan for several years, in fact, and sadly, just after Freddie Mercury died. Its interesting to note that I haven’t met a person who hasn’t liked their music, which is probably why Queen are so successful. I have to say that anytime I hear their music I fall in love with it all over again, there is a certain something about it, that makes you feel so good inside (well it does me anyway).

So as the natural progression goes, I started to buy their solo stuff as well, not that there is that much of it about; unlike some bands, the members of Queen grew to respect each other, and they all had an equal footing within the group, they all wrote, played and sang (John Deacon though, only ever backing, (if that)), and each has written a major hit.

As for Freddie, most of his solo work was done in the mid eighties to the early nineties. As it was Freddie was forced to stop touring with Queen due to illness, and so used the time to do some solo stuff while he could, he also worked on Queen albums, and sadly he died on the 24th November 1991.

Freddie has a fantastic voice and is a fantastic singer, his on stage presents is awesome, and he was a prolific song writer and great musician. If there was anybody I’d would want to be, it’d probably be him.

This collection costs around £125.00, which disappointed me a lot because I’d never get it, but I allowed my wife to persuade me to let her get it for me, for Christmas, we ordered it over the Internet, otherwise I think you have to ask the shop if they could get it for you, or make do with the cheaper 3 CD version.

The
Freddie Mercury Solo Collection
This Consists of,

Freddie’s three solo albums,
Mr Bad Guy
The Great Pretender
Barcelona

Two Singles Collections
1973 - 1985
1986 - 1993

The Instrumentals
Three Rarities CD’s
The David Wigg Interviews CD

The DVD’s are,
The Video Collection
The Untold Story

And it all comes in a very nice hard back book.

The CD’s
The solo albums are brilliant in themselves, lets face it you all must of heard ‘Living On My Own’ and ‘Barcelona’, two great examples of his solo work. Although I say three solo albums, ones solo, ones with Monserrat Caballe, and the thirds a best of (the American version, the British being The Freddie Mercury Album). So there’s not a lot, the best of has some tracks that aren’t on the other albums, which is why its here, some of his songs also turned up on a Queen album, reworked, which together utilised the last work that Queen were working on.

The Singles Collections, are nice too, they mostly consist of Extended, Single and Re-mix versions of his singles, as well as none album B-sides, the nicest part is the fact that his first single from 1973 is included, ‘I Can Hear Music’ by Larry Lurex.

The Rarities are probably the best part of the collection, much like the Beatles anthologies and such that come out now, these three CD’s contain a lot of tracks that you can only get in this package, including early takes, demo’s, re-mixes, alternative versions, tracks that never made it, music that he did with other people, and one of the best pieces (but not sounding that good), is a live performance of when he was in a band called Ibex , singing ‘Rain’ by the Beatles. So there is plenty of stuff that you want to listen to, to see how the songs developed, hear the early demo’s and to hear ‘new&
#8217; songs, being the ones that were never finished.

The Instrumentals are mostly instrumental versions from the Barcelona album, although there are a couple of instrumentals of other songs.

The Interviews are ones with David Wigg stretching from 1979 to 1987. Not great in themselves, but still.

The DVD’s
The Video Collection, the videos are ones from his singles, eleven altogether, again its nice to see. To have them is nice, on DVD is great.

The Untold Story is a documentary, it has been shown on TV, but this version is almost twice as long and its very informative. It tells of Freddie’s life from his early years in Zanzibar, to his later years in England, one thing is that it almost completely leaves out Queen, but if I wanted to know about Queen, I’d watch a Queen documentary. This is however, very interesting and told me things I never knew. Also on this DVD is the Freddie Mercury Photographic Exhibition, which you can view on you PC (if you have a DVD ROM drive)

The Book
The 120 page hard back book comes in a slip case, and the CD’s/DVD’s are inside the covers. The book itself gives you all the information of the music on the CD’s/DVD’s, which is great (details I love). There is a piece of writing about Freddie and the rest of the book is made up of lots of very nice photo’s, taken at various time of Freddie’s life.

Having this Collection is great, it looks great and its a really nice thing to own, as any boxed set of something you like is, this though, is exceptional, its been put together very lovingly and is really worth the price, unlike some quickly thrown together sets.

Quibbles?, well having the CD’s and DVD’s in the book and not having a case for themselves, meaning to listen to them you have to get them out of the book first and have to look in the book for the track listing as well, is a little troublesom
e, and the fact that I have two of the albums anyway.................... but really I love it.

Being a Queen completist, I’m now a Freddie Mercury completist, because this seems to have all his work apart from Queen on it, so if you really like Queen you’ve got to get this, its fantastic.

The Solid Grey

Summary: