For the first time ever, after four decades, a previously unreleased version of “Time,” recorded in 1986 by Freddie Mercury for the concept album of the hit musical of the same name, has finally emerged after two years of work by the globally successful musician, songwriter and producer Dave Clark, a long-time friend of Freddie’s, using the song’s full title, “Time Waits For No One.”
The track is set for release via UMe on June 20, 2019, along with a powerful and deeply moving new video. Listen to the song HERE
“Time Waits For No One” shows Freddie Mercury at his most compelling; a completely stripped-down performance, accompanied by just a piano, showcasing one of music’s most beloved and show-stopping voices.
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The Story Behind The Song…
“Time” was the brainchild of Dave Clark, former leader of the hugely successful multi-million selling group The Dave Clark Five, and one of the UK’s most prolific and celebrated musicians, songwriters and producers. Time, the West End musical, which opened at London’s Dominion Theatre in April 1986, merged sci-fi, rock music and ahead-of-its-time special effects and multimedia. With a cast including Sir Laurence Olivier and Cliff Richard, it broke box records and played to over a million people during its two-year run.
For the show’s multi-million selling star-studded concept album, Dave had a song in mind for Freddie (“In My Defence”), and despite industry naysayers claiming he wouldn’t do it, Freddie agreed to fly to London from his then home in Munich, Germany, to record the song at Abbey Road Studios in October 1985. Of Dave’s minimal band of four session musicians, Mike Moran, who had never met Freddie, was introduced on piano having known Dave for many years; such was the subsequent relationship born with Freddie that Mike went on to write “Barcelona” with the Queen frontman years later. The “Time” session was recorded in a haze of late nights and fueled by “fabulous food, vodka and Cristal Champagne,” courtesy of Freddie’s personal chef Joe Fanelli.
Dave Clark further recalls of the recording session: “We got on great…if I didn’t like something I’d say, and vice versa…we were both aiming for the same thing: to make something special.”
When asked by Freddie if he had anything else, Dave replied with an affirmative, offering the musical’s title track, “Time.” In January 1986, they returned to Abbey Road Studios with a group of amazingly talented musicians to record the song. Dave wrote the song with John Christie, unbeknownst to them at the time at how the words ‘Time waits for no one’ would be so relevant today. Starting off as a rhythm track, the session recorded 48 tracks of backing vocals (Freddie plus John Christie and Peter Straker), 2 x 24 track tapes locked together – which had never been done before for that amount of backing vocals at Abbey Road – and the final version of “Time” comprising of a huge production of 96 tracks.
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The video for the song was filmed in three hours on a Tuesday at the Dominion Theatre and was quickly wrapped to allow the musical to prepare for that evening’s performance – it had opened earlier that month with Freddie attending opening night. Worried about capturing the full performance, it was a 4-camera shoot, which was cut together quickly in order to turn it around for that week’s broadcast of the UK’s hit music TV program “Top of the Pops.” Going straight to video, not the original 35mm film it was shot in, the song was released on May 6 of that year, and the original footage was consigned to the vaults.
4 Decades on…96 Tracks to 1
Dave Clark had always remembered that performance of Freddie Mercury at Abbey Road Studios from 1986. The original had sold millions, and in his own words “worked.” But the feeling he had during the original rehearsal, experiencing “goosebumps,” hadn’t dissipated over the decades, and he wanted to hear this original recording – just Freddie on vocals and Mike Moran on piano. After much searching through the vaults to find the version without all the backing vocals, he finally retrieved it from his tape archive in the spring of 2018.
Bringing in original keyboardist Mike Moran to record a new piano track, restoring the huge potential of this historical performance at the latter’s studio in Buckinghamshire, Dave, firmly believing “the impossible was possible,” eventually produced the performance he had longed to revive – stripping back the 96 track version to a version with just one: Freddie Mercury.
But the audio needed a visual and Dave didn’t want to just cut old footage together. He had the negatives from the 4-camera shoot and the unprocessed film which was being stored for a time at Rank Laboratories in Pinewood but returned to Dave after his 2014 documentary Glad All Over: The Dave Clark Five and Beyond. A four-day lockdown in a special facility to pore through the negatives with his editor led to the discovery and production of this visual masterpiece, a perfect representation of Freddie’s “magic performance…he tasted every word.”
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“Time Waits For No One’’ is a tribute to the musical force of Freddie Mercury; the performance, the drama, the vocal range, and after four decades waiting in the wings, is finally out for new and old fans alike; a stunning eulogy to the Queen frontman, produced and directed by one of his closest friends.
The Canadian actor, director, screenwriter and producer Xavier Dolan will be the President of the Un Certain Regard Jury of the 77th Festival de Cannes. He will be joined by French-Senegalese screenwriter and director Maïmouna Doucouré, Moroccan director, screenwriter and producer Asmae El Moudir, German-Luxembourg actress Vicky Krieps, and American film critic, director, and writer Todd McCarthy. They will be in charge of awarding prizes for the Un Certain Regard section, which showcases art and discovery films by young auteurs.
This year, 18 films have been selected, including 8 first films. The 2023 Un Certain Regard top prize went to director Molly Manning Walker’s debut feature How to Have Sex.
When the light breaks by Rúnar Rúnarsson will open the Un Certain Regard section on Wednesday May 15, 2024.
XAVIER DOLAN – President Actor, director, screenwriter, producer Canada
An actor since the age of four, Xavier Dolan directed and starred in his first feature film, I killed my mother, which was a big hit at the Directors’ Fortnight in 2009. This was followed by Heartbeats and Laurence Anyways, presented at the Festival de Cannes in 2010 and 2012 at Un Certain Regard, where they were enthusiastically received. In 2013, Tom at the Farm was screened at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize. With Mommy, he is awarded several prizes, including the Prix du Jury at the 2014 Festival de Cannes and the César for Best Foreign Film. Grand Prize winner at the 2016 Festival de Cannes with It’s only the end of the World, he returns to Competition with Matthias & Maxime in 2019. After a few notable roles with other filmmakers, such as his performance in Xavier Giannoli’s Lost Illusions in 2021, for which he was nominated for a César for Best Supporting Actor, in 2022 he directed the series The Night Logan woke up. Xavier Dolan was a member of the Jury in 2015, and now chairs the Un Certain Regard Jury.
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MAÏMOUNA DOUCOURÉ Screenwriter, director France, Senegal
Her first professional short film, Maman(s), was selected for nearly 200 festivals around the world and won more than 60 awards, including the Jury Prize at Sundance, the Best Film Award in Toronto and the 2017 César for Best Short Film. In 2019, Maïmouna Doucouré receives the Gold Fellowship Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures. Released in 2020, Cuties, her first feature film, wins the Best Director Award at Sundance and a Special Mention from the International Generation Jury in Berlin. The film’s lead actress, Fathia Youssouf, won the César for Best Actress. Her second feature-length film, Hawa, produced in 2022 with Prime Vidéo, was also presented in Toronto. Maïmouna Doucouré is currently working on her next feature film about the legendary Joséphine Baker.
ASMAE EL MOUDIR Director, screenwriter, producer Morocco
Asmae El Moudir studied cinema at the Moroccan University and at La Fémis in Paris. She has directed several award winning short films. She completed her Al Jazeera television documentary, The Postcard, in 2020. The Mother of all Lies is her first independent documentary feature premiered at the 2023 Festival de Cannes where it won the Un Certain Regard Directing Prize. The film also won the Golden Eye for Best Documentary. The film is screened at Toronto, Sundance, Melbourne, Busan, Karlovy Vary as well as many festivals around the world and won more than 25 awards. Asmae El Moudir is nominated for the PGA Award and the Film Independent Spirit Award for Best Doc. Most recently, she won the IDA Award (International Documentary Association) for Best Director. The Mother of All Lies was also shortlisted in the international features section of the Oscars 2024.
An international actress who works in French, English and German, Vicky Krieps has appeared in Joe Wright’s Hannah (2011), Philippe Claudel’s Before the Winter Chill(2013), Anton Corbijn’s A most wanted Man(2014), Ingo Haeb’s The Chambermaid Lynn(2015), Raoul Peck’s The Young Karl Marx(2017), and starred alongside Daniel Day Lewis in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread(2017). In 2021, she defended two films selected for the Festival de Cannes, Mia Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island in Competition and Mathieu Amalric’s Hold me tight. The following year, she returned with two young German and Austrian directors in the Un Certain Regard section: Emily Atef’s More than Ever and Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage, which won her the Un Certain Regard Jury’s Best Actress Award in 2022. She will soon be seen in Viggo Mortensen’s The Dead Don’t Hurt and Hot Milkby Rebecca Lenkiewicz.
TODD MCCARTHY Film critic, director, writer United States
Todd McCarthy is a Cannes veteran – his first was in 1970 – who for decades covered the Festival for Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. Among his books are the definitive biography “Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood”, “Kings of the Bs: Working Within the Hollywood System” and “Fast Women” about female race car drivers. He won an Emmy Award for his documentary Preston Sturges: The Rise and Fall of a Hollywood Genius and is currently working on a project set in Hollywood just after World War II.
Do LaB kicked off its return to Coachella Weekend Two on Friday, April 19 with a couple standout surprise performances and a full lineup of electronic and crossover talent. Check out highlights from the first day of Weekend Two at the Do LaB stage below.
Prolific French DJ and hitmaker DJ Snake performed a special hip-hop set as the headlining surprise guest of the night.
Versatile trap and hip-hop influenced fan favorite TroyBoi performed as the other Do LaB surprise set of the night.
Additional previously announced day one programming featured acts like Juelz, HoneyLiv, CocoRosie, Alleycvt, Yung Singh, and more.
Stay tuned for notifications on announcements, surprise sets, and more by visiting the link here. Set times for the remainder of the weekend can be found here, along with more general info on Do LaB in the press release here. Additional photo selects from each day can be found here (photographer name listed in file name for photo credits).
The Do LaB stage at Coachella provides a preview of the brand’s flagship boutique festival, Lightning in a Bottle. The five day Lightning in a Bottle experience fuses a top tier musical lineup, immersive art installations, cause-driven educational programming, and a variety of yoga and movement programming within a sprawling lakeside venue in beautiful Buena Vista Lake, California.
Taking place over Memorial Day Weekend on May 22-27, LIB 2024’s musical programming highlights include Skrillex, Labrinth, Lane 8, James Blake, M.I.A., Skream, Tycho, ISOxo, Tipper, Fatboy Slim, CloZee, Nora En Pure, Bob Moses, Honey Dijon, Damian Lazarus, and several more.
More info on LIB can be found on their website here and in the official press release here, along with the media application here.