Freddie's Final Vocal Confirmed (?)

The Telegraph article states the following - do we now take this as final word on the subject?:

"For years, fans have argued about which was Freddie’s last song, with members of the band and studio engineers contradicting each other. Now, The Telegraph can disclose, the mystery has been solved. The dates were not always written down, but after searching through the labels on old boxes of reel to reel tape, Mr Shirley-Smith says it was definitely Mother Love, recorded between May 13 and 16 1991"

Playing 'Devil's Advocate' here, but there will be an argument that this statement is correct for his last vocal on material currently released, but is there anything to say he stayed in Montreux after that and may therefore have recorded more that has yet to see the light of day?

Can open...worms everywhere....

Indeed Togg! :-)

My first reaction is that Justin Shirley-Smith is basing his 'fact' purely on the dates written on the tape box; my memory is that there is a track sheet shown by David Richards in footage from the sessions that has a date of 22 May 1991 on for Mother Love - this does not necessarily mean vocals were recorded up to that date, but if the the tape box label is going to be used the sole arbitor of truth here, surely the track sheet could be argued for in the same way?!?

So Mother Love was the last song with vocals Freddie and it was recorded between 13-16 May 1991. Freddie was the last time in the studio half a year before his death...?

Peter Freestone always says it was a month before his death? Although saying that Peter could be getting confused...on a radio documentary entitled 'The Last Days of Freddie Mercury', he said he completed FOUR complete tracks in 1991...surely he means three?

This is a strange situation

I would imagine that the missing last verse, which BM sang would point to it being the last song. But being unfinished doesn't necessarily mean last. It is a very emotive song, the story that it was Freddies last vocal adds to that. The mix up of dates proves the date it was worked on, but as cmsdrums points out, we don't know who was there on any of those dates and what they were recording.

Justin's no less reliable than David, Brian, Phoebe, etc. But he's also no more reliable than David, Brian, Phoebe, etc.

AFAIC, May 1991 could've easily been Freddie's very last session, or maybe he recorded some stuff after that. Nothing's been categorically confirmed or denied IMO.

Maybe he recorded vocal tracks for Mother Love on May '91 then in the following months he only went in Switzerland to stay in his brand new house and occasionally went in the studio only for the post-production phase of this particular song (or songs recorded in 1991) up 'till October of the same year, as he wasn't able to sing as he wanted. So sad... :( Of course these are only assumptions, no-one really knows the truth except a small circle of people like David Richards, Shirley-Smith, Peter Freestone, Bri, Rog & maybe John but even in this case so much time has passed and people tend to forget, even things so crucial and significant as this. So they rely on the date reported on the labels of reel to reel tape old boxes but anything could've happened in those final 5 months...

I have to agree that if he was unable to finish Mother Love, it's unlikely that he went back to record anything else afterwards. That pretty much confirms a rough time for it. It's feasible that Raffy's hypothesis above is correct, however - he may have been going into the studio towards November for post-production, perhaps even supervisory purposes. So ALL accounts could, in-fact, be correct one way or another. Still confusing, but I think we may as well take it that the last vocals were May '91. UNLESS there's a box marked for a much later month that's yet to be found, and he did actually finish the track. Doubt it, but worms definitely still wriggling lol.

I don't buy it that the last vocals were recorded in May 1991. Freddie was getting sicker between May-November 1991 but he regularly visited Montreux during this timeframe.

”We were in Switzerland Just 3 weeks before. Of course he was sick, but he felt good enough to go there. He even was working in the studio”
Excerpt From: Lesley-Ann Jones.

I am guessing myself that the last vocals for Mother Love were not recorded in May 1991, but perhaps even up to/including November 1991.

Btw: The date on the box could not mean the starting date of the initial session? I mean, I would assume that the date means when they put on the reel and first started to record (remember these are multitrack tapes)

maybe session to Mother Love began in May 1991?

[QUOTE] [b]TRS-Romania wrote:[/b]
I am guessing myself that the last vocals for Mother Love were not recorded in May 1991, but perhaps even up to/including November 1991. [/QUOTE]

Phoebie said that Freddie could barely talk by October 1991. As Sebastian said elsewhere (perhaps on QOL), his last vocals could have been in May 1991, but he could have continued to fly out there periodically to add some bits to songs, like keyboards or piano.

Or maybe he just never recorded anything in the last six months of his life ... I'm merely stating they're all viable possibilities.

Recording's a tricky business, especially under special circumstances such as having a weakening terminally ill AIDS patient who can't go to the recording room and has to be tracked from the control room.

For all we know, Freddie's very last session could've been an underwhelming two-minute attempt at a vocal or piano, then saying 'I'm not feeling well,' and being taken back to his place.

Or maybe, his very last recording was indeed a Hollywood-esque masterpiece, where Brian was conveniently present, and the very last time he sang was exactly what we hear on his very last 'Mother Love' verse (the one after the middle-eight).

Either way, it doesn't change (to me) the perception of Freddie as an extraordinary musician; but of course, the more they portray the whole last session as a scene from a dramatic film, the more fans they gather, the more they sell, the more they stay in the public eye.

http://www.srf.ch/news/panorama/freddie-sagte-zu-mir-du-musst-mich-aufnehmen

JSS interview from this Monday