Aranya Doloi
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If you’re a Queen fan, especially a Freddie Mercury fan and think you know all his songs, well you’re in for a surprise. Because the Queen frontman’s legacy continues to grow, even after his death. On June 20th, a dramatic, previously unheard song of Freddie Mercury, now titled ‘Time Waits For No One’ has premiered on BBC radio 2, after a decade-long search for this lost vocal performance.
The track was recorded in 1986 as part of the soundtrack of a new British musical Time, which featured Sir Laurence Olivier and British pop icon Cliff Richard and was written by his friend Dave Clark. However, the recording was in typical ‘80s style and was covered in 96 layers of vocal and instrumental tracks. And now Clark has stripped off the song down to the way he originally heard it- only Mercury’s voice followed by piano played by Mike Moran. Mercury’s voice comes back to life in this track as he starts smooth and scrunches and consorts into rougher sounds. Even the lyrics are particularly heart touching, especially lines like ‘Time, waits for nobody, We’ve got to build this world together, Or we’ll have no more future at all, Because time – it waits for nobody’. Hearing Freddie sing them again is powerful, indeed.
Along with the newly released version, Clark and his team has also put together a new video to accompany the single. After working through negatives from the original video shoot at the Dominion Theatre in London, Clark could finally put together a new video version for ‘Time Waits For No One’. The world thanks Dave Clark for this bare-bones rendition that turns a spotlight on the raw emotion of Mercury’s vocal.
