Forty years ago, 15 years into Queen’s bombastic career , Freddie Mercury released his debut solo album, Mr Bad Guy . “Personally, I think he was trying to make his own version of Thriller ,” says Justin Shirley-Smith, Queen’s long-time sound engineer. “Along the same lines stylistically, and certainly he would have wanted it to be as successful. It comes a couple of years after, and looking at the covers, I get the sense there’s an echo there, that expression and angle of the face.”

It was not as successful as Thriller – what is? – peaking at number six in the UK album chart and selling around 100,000 copies, some way behind the millions he was used to shifting with Queen. But four decades on, Mr Bad Guy is a timestamp of an intriguing period of Mercury’s life, and indeed a

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