I agree that Queen’s work on Highlander is too often overlooked. Queen seemed to be in decline when the movie was made. They were signed to
Hollywood Records at the time, a spin-off of Disney’s Hollywood Pictures, a more “adult” branch of Disney, I believe run by the very mature Harvey Weinstein. He tapped Queen to do Highlander’s soundtrack. What they delivered is one of the reasons why I love this movie. You picked the poignant Who Wants To Live Forever?, (not for nothing, a paraphrase of a key line in Conan The Barbarian, “Do you want to live forever?,” uttered twice by Valaria, Queen of Thieves) which plays when an immortal Conner sees his very aged wife and love of his life, Bess. I picked the explosive live, anthemic version of A Kind of Magic. I bet what we would both like to hear is the full recording Queen did of New York, New York, of which we only get a snippet in Highlander, when the Kurgan is car-jacking the elderly couple. Frank Sinatra was Freddy Mercury’s role model. I would love to hear the full recording of that song, complete with Queen instrumentals.
reply
share