Queen continues to celebrate the release of a box set dedicated to their 1973 self-titled debut album, and in the latest edition of Queen The Greatest, guitarist Brian May is taking a deep dive into the album’s artwork.
In the clip, May shares the DIY challenges they faced in coming up with the art for the release, especially after he thought their then-unknown frontman Freddie Mercury should be on the cover in a very specific way.
“I had this premonition that Freddie was special and he was going to be our icon. So, I thought it would be nice just to have Freddie as a symbol, like the figurehead on a Viking ship,” May shares.
Because this was before the time of Photoshop, to make that happen May had to physically slice a photo of Mercury in a spotlight onto a ship.
“And that was basically the cover and everyone liked it,” he says. “Freddie had designed this lovely special font for Queen. So, we said, ‘OK, we’ll go with that.’”
The back of the album was also difficult, as May had to cut and paste together a collage of photos of the band. He noted, “We had this idea that we could kind of portray our lives on the back of the record.”
All these original and unique details are captured in the new Queen 1 box set, although they’ve been recreated, as May puts it, at “slightly higher quality” using modern technology.
“I thought, we’ve recreated the whole album soundwise, so let’s recreate it visually as well,” he says.
The Queen I box set, out now, is comprised of 63 tracks with 43 brand-new mixes, as well as alternative takes, demos and rare live tracks.
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