The Queen Studio Collection Special Edition Vinyl Box Set: Below are quotes taken from the book that accompanies the forthcoming release. New quotes will be added as we move towards the release date on September 25th.

Click here to order your copy / Read the full press release here.

Made In Heaven - Brian May: “It was a long journey and it was a much bigger job than anyone realised. The object was to make an album that sounded like there were four guys in a studio. We knew that if we achieved that, then no one would ask any questions, and that’s almost what happened. We started off with just scraps of tape. It was a huge job, two years of my life finding a way of developing the songs, but at the same time using the limited input we had from Freddie. Sometimes there was a complete first take vocal, while other times there were no more than three or four lines. It was a labour of love for me, working through the night perhaps on just one line.”

'Innuendo' - Roger Taylor : “Freddie knew his time was limited and he really wanted to work and keep going. He felt that was the best way for him to keep his spirits up, and he wanted to leave as much as possible, and we certainly agreed. So we backed him up right to the hilt. I think Innuendo was really made very much on borrowed time and I still believe it to be a tremendously underrated album. It’s much better than a lot of the other albums we made I think. For The Miracle, Freddie wasn’t that well, but he wasn’t that ill, and that was more of an effort, a bit of a long album to make. With Innuendo he really wasn’t very well and I think there are some extraordinary performances on that one. I find it a very strong album all the way through. It’s quite emotional.”

'The Miracle' - Brian May: “With The Miracle, we left our egos outside the studio door and worked together as a real band - something that wasn’t always the case with Queen.”

'A Kind Of Magic'- John Deacon: “Working as a group on a film is not easy because there’s only so much room to put songs together with atmospheric music. It’s difficult to get songs into films as a lyrical thing, unless it’s some sort of modem film where you just use contemporary music going along in the background. Highlander was nothing like that. It’s a complex film, full of ideas which are quite difficult to convey.”

'The Works' - John Deacon: “We were disappointed with Hot Space, so we talked about how we were going to attack the next album. We decided to go more towards the things people actually associated with Queen.”

'Hot Space' - Freddie Mercury: “Now most of you know that we’ve got some new sounds out in the last week. We’re gonna do a few songs in the funk/black category - whatever you call it. That doesn’t mean we’ve lost our rock’n’roll feel, okay! I mean it’s only a bloody record! People get so excited about these things. We just want to try out a few new sounds…”

'Flash Gordon' - Roger Taylor: “We’ve been offered quite a few films, but Flash Gordon was something which Brian and I were quite attracted to because of its sci-fi 30s connotations. The album was totally under our control and it was our idea to put dialogue on the album. That wasn’t the original idea. We thought we’d use little snippets to give some idea of what was happening in the film and some atmosphere of the story.”

'News Of The World' - Brian May: “Apart from each having contributed two tracks to the album, Roger and John have been much more involved, in the playing. Roger sings and plays rhythm guitar on some of his cuts (Sheer Heart Attack and Fight From The Inside) which makes sense, because he had a better idea of how he wanted it to go. John plays acoustic guitar on one of his as well (Who Needs You). I played maracas on it. While we may not do it that way on stage, in the studio that makes more sense.”

'A Day At The Races' - Brian May: “I wish in some ways that we had put A Night At The Opera and A Day At The Races out together, because the material for both of them was more or less written at the same time and corresponds to a similar period in our development. I regard the two albums as completely parallel, and the fact that one came out after the other is a shame, because it was looked on as a follow-up, whereas really it was sort of an extension of the first one.”

'A Night At The Opera' - Freddie Mercury: “There were a lot of things we wanted to do on Queen II and Sheer Heart Attack, but there wasn’t space enough. With Opera there was. Guitar-wise and with vocals we did things we’ve never done before. Nothing was out of bounds.”

'Sheer Heart Attack' - Roger Taylor: "We really got there on Sheer Heart Attack. It’s got a lot of fire and it’s slightly more streamlined. It holds together very well and it’s much more concise. It’s very varied and dynamic. The different sounds were pleasing. With the second album I think we sort of did everything we could possibly think of doing, to the point of almost over-complicating things. I think we were starting to refine things down by this album, and actually Sheer Heart Attack is still one of my own personal favourites. I think it stands up as well as anything we’ve ever done really. Maybe other albums sold more, but for me it’s a very clear statement. That was the first time we found a sort of unified, slightly stripped down direction.”

'Queen II' - Brian May: “When Queen II came out it didn’t connect with everyone. A lot of people thought we’d forsaken rock music. They said: ‘Why don’t you play things like Liar and Keep Yourself Alive. All we could say was, give it another listen, it’s there, but it’s all layered, it’s a new approach. Nowadays people say: ‘Why don’t you play like Queen II? A lot of our close fans think that, and I still like that album a lot. It’s not perfect, it has the imperfections of youth and the excesses of youth, but I think that was our biggest single step ever."

'Queen' - John Deacon: “Quite a lot of the songs on that first album were songs we’d had for a long while, that we just used to play together, like Keep Yourself Alive, Liar and Great King Rat. So we just went in and recorded them. And there were one or two numbers where we were getting interested in doing things in the studio. My Fairy King was a number Freddie wrote which we built up in the studio. Whereas other numbers were essentially live songs, basically just the track with some backing vocals and over the top guitar solos added, and that was it.”