How Freddie Mercury Refused to Allow HIV to Derail His Art

25 years ago Queen released ‘Innuendo,’ a return to form that held a powerful secret

Cuepoint
Published in
11 min readFeb 1, 2016

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For Queen, 1991 began rather auspiciously. At the time, the band was marking its 20th anniversary in a career that saw many of its peers from the 1970s arena-rock era come and go. Queen had also signed a new U.S. deal with the emerging Disney-owned Hollywood Records that not only included the release of the band’s upcoming album but also the reissue of its back catalogue. Having already conquered the rest of the world, Queen seemed poised for a comeback in America, where the band’s popularity flagged during most of the 1980s, after the triumphs of “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and “Another One Bites the Dust.”

But the hoopla was tempered by a much more serious matter that only the band and those close to them knew: Queen’s irrepressible singer Freddie Mercury was ailing after testing HIV-positive sometime in the late 80s. Fiercely keeping his illness a secret from the media and the public, Mercury pressed ahead in making as much music as possible while he was still alive. The result was Innuendo, Queen’s 14th studio album and first released on February 4, 1991. It’s mostly known today as being the last Queen record released during Mercury’s lifetime before he died from AIDS later that year on November 24. Co-produced by Queen and David Richards, Innuendo was considered a back-to-basics return to form for the group after a string of mostly pop-oriented albums during the previous decade. With real-life melodrama involved, the fact that Innuendo was even made at all was somewhat amazing.

In retrospect, there were signs of something unusual within Queen — Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon — when it decided not to tour behind The Miracle album in 1989.This was after all a band that had always hit the road to promote a new record. With his signature thick mustache shaved off, the usually robust Mercury looked gaunt in some of the group’s promotional videos for The Miracle and public appearances. His physical condition drew speculation from the U.K. tabloid…

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