Freddie Mercury | Autograph manuscript lyrics of songs for the album Jazz, c.1978

Freddie Mercury

Autograph manuscript working lyrics of songs for the album Jazz, comprising:

i) 'Mustapha', one page of draft lyrics here entitled "Mustapha Ibrahim", green fibretip, A4 lined paper

ii) 'Jealousy', seven page of draft fragmentary lyrics, heavily revised and showing the development of the song, one page also with drafts of an abandoned song ("Baby I like it"), in black, blue, red and green ballpoint and fibre-tip, text on rectos only, three leaves of lined A4 paper and four leaves of plain notepaper (200 x 126mm) 

iii) 'Let Me Entertain You', nine pages of draft fragmentary lyrics, heavily revised and showing the development of the song, in blue, green, red and black ballpoint and fibretip, text on rectos only, four leaves of lined A4 paper, five leaves of plain notepaper (one leaf 270 x 170mm, the rest 200 x 126mm)

iv) six pages of further fragmentary lyrics (on five leaves) from a pad of plain notepaper, with blank sheets of the same notepaper, altogether 19 leaves; also with one page of further fragments on the verso of a used envelope addressed to Mary Austin and postmarked 16 April 1978

v) six pages with draft album track lists, some with track timings, on four leaves of plain notepaper (200 x 170mm) and one leaf of squared paper (147 x 110mm)

vi) Photocopy of lyrics to 'Dreamer's Ball' in the hand of Brian May

Altogether 43 leaves, c.1978

EXTENSIVE WORKING MANUSCRIPTS FOR FREDDIE MERCURY'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO ONE OF QUEEN'S MOST SUCCESSFUL ALBUMS. The songs for Jazz were written at a time when Queen was still maintaining a punishing schedule of touring and recording. They finished recording News of the World in September 1977 then in November-December toured America, followed by a European tour in April-May 1978, but they were back in the recording studio to begin work on Jazz in July 1978. The majority of these songs were therefore presumably written between tours or after the band assembled for rehearsals.

These are mostly early drafts, with the songs then being written into a notebook that was probably used by Freddie Mercury in the studio (lot 54). This group of loose leaves includes extensive drafts of ‘Let Me Entertain You’, a celebration of Queen’s live performances, including rejected verses (such as ”Infect you / And Inject you with a little bit of style”). The extended drafts both here and in the notebook show that Freddie brimmed with ideas for the song, but he appears to have struggled to bring it into shape. The group also includes extensive drafts for the ballad piano-based ‘Jealousy’. Freddie Mercury himself explained how he wrote ‘Mustapha’: "I got a few choice words, key words which I built around, but the rest of it is just gibberish [...] I thought I'd just come up with all these guttural noises and I think it worked much better than me trying to be authentic." (Freddie Mercury: A Life, in his Own Words, p.85). Those key words (“Mustapha Ibrahim Tell me where have you been Allah Allah … will pray for you”) are found amongst these drafts. 'Mustapha' is inspired by the Muslim call to prayer. Mercury claimed to have written it "because there's so many Arabs in London", but the Adhan will have been far more prominent as a sound of his childhood in Stone Town, Zanzibar. 

This lot also includes notes with suggested running orders (including a song 'Don't Say No', presumably a working title for 'In Only Seven Days'). Jazz was produced by Roy Thomas Baker in his last collaboration with the band, and he mixed the album to give it a crisp less bombastic sound, influenced by the New Wave bands that were then fresh to the music industry. The band were touring the USA when the album was released, and the launch party in New Orleans on Halloween was of epic proportions, even by the standards of Queen, especially after Freddie asked that the city's wilder street life be invited to join the party. Some of the stories about this party are no doubt apocryphal - "The one about the dwarfs and the bald heads and the cocaine is not true" (Roger Taylor) - but $200,000 bought you quite a party in the 1970s.

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