Few musicians have had as fundamental an impact on the world of pop culture as Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury.
Enjoying tremendous success in both their solo careers and in their individual bands (Mercury in Queen, Jackson in The Jackson Five), Mercury and Jackson forever changed the way audiences listened to pop music, shaping the industry as a whole in the latter days of the 20th century.
While each musician partnered with many different collaborators over the years, the two musical legends never managed to sit down and record an entire project together. Rather, the closest the two ever came to working together took the form of three unsuccessful duets recorded in the mid 1980s.
Why exactly was the partnership unsuccessful? According to Mercury’s bass player on the album Mr. Bad Guy, the two icons apparently clashed over Jackson inviting his pet llama into the studio’s recording booth.
As reported in The New York Post, Mercury took a brief sabbatical from Queen in 1983 to more fully explore his own artistic endeavors. After hitting it off with his prominent contemporary Jackson, Mercury and the King of Pop attempted to record three duets at Jackson’s residence in Encino, California.
While working on recordings for “Victory,” “State of Shock” and “There Must Be More to Life Than This,” though, Mercury allegedly started to express frustration at Jackson’s strange antics, including an unwelcome intrusion from his beloved llama.
“I think the last straw was when Michael brought his pet llama into the studio,” bassist Jo Burt told The Post. “I think Freddie sort of took umbrage to that.”
Previously, the failed collaboration had been hinted at in 2012’s documentary, Freddie Mercury: The Great Pretender. In it, Queen’s manager Jim “Miami” Beach recalled a conversation he had with Mercury over his working relationship with Jackson.
“Mercury rang me and said, ‘Miami, dear, can you get over here? You’ve got to get me out of here, I’m recording with a llama,'” Beach said in the documentary.
