Recommendations of the Editorial team
Shortly before Christmas, the London media is excited. As the Daily Mail newspaper and others report, Queen guitarist Brian May has announced that he will release a previously unreleased song before Christmas.
The track “Not For Sale” was recorded more than 50 years ago, but was left off the second Queen album at the time. The song celebrated its premiere yesterday, December 22nd, in a Christmas show hosted by May on the digital radio station “Planet Rock”. Decades after its creation, the “secret song” by Queen has now seen the light of day for the first time.
May presented the piece with the working title “Not for Sale (Polar Bear)” as a small gift to the fans of the legendary rock band.
Originally intended for “Queen II”.
The title was originally intended for the album “Queen II”, which was released in 1974 and is considered by connoisseurs to be one of the band’s most stylistically ambitious works. Ultimately, the song didn’t make it onto the final tracklist and disappeared into the archive. “A song with a long history – but as far as I know no one has heard this version,” May explained at the end of the hour-long broadcast.
According to May, the recording at the time was an early version that had not yet been fully developed. In the early years of Queen, a lot of things were created experimentally, some things never exceeded the status of “work in progress”. “Not for Sale (Polar Bear)”, which is to be officially released as part of a planned new edition of “Queen II”, also comes from this phase.
He justified the fact that May presented the title on the radio with personal curiosity: he wanted to find out how the piece would be received today. For him, the fans’ reactions are part of the creative process, says the guitarist, who is considered the custodian of the Queen’s treasure through his diverse activities.
Queen’s legacy lives on
As is well known, Queen were founded in London in 1970. With frontman Freddie Mercury, guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor and bassist John Deacon, they influenced several generations with songs like “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “We Are the Champions” and “Don’t Stop Me Now”.
The band has sold around 300 million records worldwide. Freddie Mercury died in 1991 as a result of AIDS. Since 2012, Queen has performed regularly with US singer Adam Lambert as lead singer. Brian May and Roger Taylor continue to be actively involved in touring and releasing – and at the same time bring their own musical heritage to light with discoveries like “Not for Sale (Polar Bear)”.