Llama Drama: how Michael Jackson’s pet derailed a legendary Freddie Mercury collab
Forty years after the release of Freddie Mercury’s only solo album, Mr. Bad Guy, a hilarious behind-the-scenes story has resurfaced about why the Queen frontman walked away from a collaboration with Michael Jackson.
According to bassist Jo Burt, who worked on Mercury’s album, the two icons had planned to record together in 1983—but things went south when Jackson brought his pet llama, Louie, into the studio.
“I think Freddie sort of took umbrage to that,” Burt told the New York Post.
The abandoned sessions left three unreleased duets—’Victory,’ ‘State of Shock,’ and ‘There Must Be More to Life Than This’—on the cutting room floor.
Queen’s manager, Jim ‘Miami’ Beach, later recalled Mercury’s frantic phone call from Jackson’s Encino home studio: “Miami, dear, can you get over here? You’ve got to get me out of here, I’m recording with a llama!”
Jackson, known for his menagerie of exotic pets—including Bubbles the chimp and tigers Thriller and Sabu—clearly didn’t win over Mercury.
The Queen legend went on to deliver his iconic Live Aid performance in 1985 before his tragic death in 1991, leaving fans to wonder what could have been if not for that fateful llama interruption.
