On June 20, 2019, a previously unreleased recording of "Time" sung by Freddie Mercury premiered on YouTube. Thirty-four years ago in 1985, English drummer Dave Clark asked Mercury to record "In My Defence" for a concept album based on Clark's sci-fi/rock musical Time. Mercury's session at London's Abbey Road Studios went so well that he was hungry for more. He asked Clark, "Have you got any other songs?"
"I said, 'Well, I have got the title track.' And that was called 'Time.' I played it to him. He was totally committed, which is where this all came from. He was amazing," Clark recalled to Yahoo! Entertainment. On January 1986, Mercury returned to Abbey Road to record "Time," still "buzzing" off the success of his iconic Live Aid performance, as Clark puts it.
"Before any musicians came in, it was just Freddie and [session musician Mike Moran playing] piano. He sang, and it gave me goosebumps. Nobody was there. It was just amazing... And the end result, with all the musicians and production, ended up at 96 tracks," Clark said.
In the end, however, Clark couldn't get Mercury's solo recording out of his mind and spent decades trying to find the original track. After years of digging through his archives, in 2018 Clark finally unearthed the first recording with just Mercury's vocals and Moran's piano. Clark initially hesitated to share the track with the world because, at the time, the publicity campaign for the 2018 biopic Bohemian Rhapsody was in full force. Clark decided to wait an entire year to allow the track to get the attention it deserves. Now, for the first time ever, the track is released under the song's full title, "Time Waits for No One," and Freddie Mercury's legacy lives on.
