Queen in Montreux in 1986: Brian May, Roger Taylor, Freddie Mercury and John Deacon, on the first floor of the Montreux Palace, now the breakfast room, facing Lake Geneva and the Alps.
It was in Montreux that Queen truly settled. Won over while recording the album “Jazz” in 1978, the band bought Mountain Studios (housed in the Casino) the following year and made it their home base: seven albums were born there between 1978 and 1995, from “Jazz” to “Made in Heaven”. It was here, in 1981, that the hit “Under Pressure” emerged from an improvised session with David Bowie. After Freddie Mercury’s death, the three surviving members completed “Made in Heaven” in Montreux, choosing for its cover the singer’s statue silhouetted against Lake Geneva at dusk. Today, the exhibition Queen: The Studio Experience brings those years back to life in the original studio, while the neighbouring tribute wall is endlessly covered with messages from fans all over the world.
Queen & Mountain Studios: twenty years on the shores of Lake Geneva
Discovering Montreux
Queen arrived in Montreux in the summer of 1978 to finish the album “Jazz” at Mountain Studios. David Bowie, who had settled above Blonay in 1976, would record “Lodger” in that same studio a few months later.
In 1978, a garden party brought the band together in the grounds of the Hôtel Eden au Lac, by the lake. The photographer Peter Hince caught them there, relaxed, between the park and the quay.
In the summer of 1978, Queen were recording the album “Jazz” at Mountain Studios, set inside the Casino by the lake. On 19 July, the eighteenth stage of the Tour de France ran from Morzine to Lausanne along Lake Geneva: the riders passed along the quay in Montreux, and the band broke off the sessions for a moment to watch the race.
According to Lucien Muller, who shows fans around the town with his Freddie Tours, it was this that gave Freddie Mercury the idea for “Bicycle Race” (watson.ch ↗, Ralf Meile, 17 July 2024). The guide notes that several versions circulate, some placing the singer on the balcony of the Montreux Palace, and that no one can say for certain where or how the idea came to him.
The song came out in October 1978, as a double A-side single with “Fat Bottomed Girls”. Many heard in it an ode to freedom, others a play on words; the single was certified gold in the United Kingdom and platinum in the United States.
The video, for its part, caused a stir. It was filmed at the Wimbledon greyhound stadium in London, where sixty-five naked young women rode a bicycle race. When the company that had hired out the bicycles learned what had happened, it demanded enough to replace every saddle (Le Messager ↗, 5 March 2022).
The video’s promotional poster, shot at the Wimbledon greyhound stadium (1978).The “Bicycle Race” video (1978).
Mountain Studios
Founded in 1975 by Anita Kerr and Alex Grob inside the Casino de Montreux, Mountain Studios was designed by engineer Tom Hidley and fitted with a Neve 8048 console. It was among the first studios in the world to synchronise two 24-track recorders, 48 tracks in total. The Casino housing it had just been rebuilt: on 4 December 1971, a flare fired during a Frank Zappa concert had set the old building ablaze, a fire Deep Purple immortalised in “Smoke on the Water”.
On 15 July 1979, Queen bought the studio and made it their home base. Engineer David Richards became its mainstay: he joined Mountain Studios when it opened, was chief engineer by the age of 21, bought the place in 1993, and co-produced the band’s last four albums, “A Kind of Magic” (1986), “The Miracle” (1989), “Innuendo” (1991) and “Made in Heaven” (1995).
David Richards, Roger Taylor and Freddie Mercury at Mountain Studios, inside the Casino de Montreux (1988).
David Richards remembered their first meeting, during the “Jazz” sessions run with engineer Roy Thomas Baker: “The very first time I met them was when they came to make the Jazz album here. That was when they decided to buy the studio as well, so I suddenly became under new employment. I had new bosses: Queen.”
Seven albums recorded (at least partly) in Montreux
Seven Queen albums bear the mark of Montreux, in whole or in part: “Jazz” (1978), “Hot Space” (1982), “The Works” (1984), “A Kind of Magic” (1986), “The Miracle” (1989), “Innuendo” (1991) and “Made in Heaven” (1995).
Montreux was above all a place of work and of life for Queen. Their two public appearances in town, in 1984 and 1986, both took place at the Golden Rose, a television festival that no longer exists today.
In 2022, while preparing a reissue of “The Miracle”, Queen’s archive team came upon a forgotten track from the 1988 sessions, partly held at Mountain Studios: “Face It Alone”, carried by Freddie’s voice. Released on 13 October 2022, it was the singer’s first unreleased song to appear in eight years. Roger Taylor called it “a little gem we’d kind of forgotten about”, and Brian May “something beautiful and touching”. The video, directed by Simon Lupton, recreates the Mountain Studios in Montreux.
“Face It Alone”, recovered from the 1988 sessions and released in 2022.
1978Jazz
1982Hot Space
1984The Works
1986A Kind of Magic
1989The Miracle
1991Innuendo
1995Made in Heaven
“Under Pressure”, with David Bowie
In the summer of 1981 Queen were working at Mountain Studios. David Bowie, then living on the Riviera, dropped by. The visit turned into a working session, and the session into a collective improvisation.
Claude Nobs told another version of the evening: a barbecue at his chalets, a suggestion around midnight that they go down to the studio, and the musicians coming back up two hours later with the song. Both accounts agree on the essential point — nothing was planned.
John Deacon’s bass line, four notes and a silence, is one of the most recognisable in rock, and it was recorded in Montreux. Bowie and Freddie Mercury answer each other on vocals, each pushing the other.
The single came out on 26 October 1981 and went to the top of the British charts. It would appear on “Hot Space” (1982). It is the only track Queen and David Bowie ever signed together.
On stage, Queen played it without him. The version filmed at the Montreal Forum in November 1981 is the one most often seen again: Freddie Mercury handles both vocal parts alone.
“Under Pressure” by Queen, at the Montreal Forum, November 1981.
Queen at the Golden Rose festival, 1984
It is often forgotten that Montreux long hosted a second major event: the Golden Rose, a television and light-entertainment festival whose pop strand drew international stars every spring. Queen came twice, in 1984 and again in 1986.
On 12 May 1984, at the Petit Palais, the band performed four tracks from their album “The Works”: “Radio Ga Ga”, “Tear It Up”, “It’s A Hard Life” and “I Want To Break Free”.
Queen on the Golden Rose stage, 12 May 1984, performing four tracks from “The Works”.
It was not a concert in the strict sense: the set was mimed, as television practice then required. The footage was reused in 2003 on the compilation “Greatest Video Hits 2”.
Queen at the Montreux Golden Rose, in 1984.
Queen at the Golden Rose festival, 1986
Two years later, on 11 May 1986, Queen returned for the third edition of the Golden Rose rock strand, this time at the Casino de Montreux.
Queen at the Montreux Golden Rose, in 1986.
The band performed four songs: “One Vision”, “A Kind of Magic”, “Friends Will Be Friends” and “Hammer to Fall”. That day Freddie Mercury wore his famous “Gold’s Gym” vest.
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The full Queen line-up on the Golden Rose stage: Brian May, John Deacon, Roger Taylor and Freddie Mercury, in front of the band’s crest.
The press reception aboard the “Italie”
The day before that stage appearance, on 10 May 1986, the band had received the international press aboard the “Italie”, a 1908 boat chartered by their manager Jim Beach, for a cruise on Lake Geneva. The party was held around the new album, “A Kind of Magic”.
Among the guests were Mark O’Toole of Frankie Goes To Hollywood and the singer Belouis Some. The day left many photographs behind, and it is one of the rare occasions when Queen appeared at such length in public in Montreux.
To create a stir, performers from the Hungaria cabaret had mingled with the guests before undressing at the agreed moment; the next day the international press talked only of this “incident”. The anecdote is told by Vicky Vocat, who witnessed it.
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Freddie Mercury aboard the “Italie”, during Queen’s press reception (10 May 1986).
Freddie Mercury’s final months
Freddie Mercury owned an apartment in Montreux, in Territet. But it was at Mountain Studios, inside the Casino, that he recorded his very last vocal take, in May 1991, a few months before his death on 24 November 1991.
A plaque set into the floor still marks the exact spot in the former studio today.
Queen in Montreux, away from the studio
Away from the studio, Queen lived in Montreux as if at home. The band rented the Duck House, a lakeside villa in Clarens whose little boathouse appears on the cover of “Made in Heaven”. Up in the hills, Claude Nobs welcomed the musicians to his chalets.
Queen at the Duck House, the lakeside villa in Clarens (1979).“A Winter’s Tale”, written in Montreux: Queen’s official video, a montage of the town under the snow.
The band had its regular tables. It dined often at La Rouvenaz, where Freddie sat at table 19, went at least twice a week during the sessions to Denis Martin’s, then in Yvorne, and enjoyed the rösti of the La Bavaria brasserie, right by the studio. To unwind, Queen pushed open the door of Funky Claude's Bar at the Montreux Palace, then called Harry’s Bar. The bar’s manager, Tania Gauger, told the story of those nights in a 2007 interview (Montreux Celebration ↗): the band arrived after recording, between midnight and one in the morning, and the evening sometimes carried on at her home, over spaghetti that Roger Taylor asked for at four in the morning.
Queen kept the studio until early 1993, then sold it to David Richards, their long-standing sound engineer. The studio itself moved out in 2003, for renovation work. On Richards’s death, in December 2013, the place was reborn in another form.
On 2 December 2013, World AIDS Day, Brian May and Roger Taylor opened “Queen: The Studio Experience”, a free exhibition benefiting the Mercury Phoenix Trust. It was entrusted to the band’s official archivist Greg Brooks, designed by Marmalade London, and made possible by the Fondation du Casino Barrière de Montreux, in the very walls where the studio had begun (Mercury Phoenix Trust ↗).
The original rooms were faithfully recreated there. You come across handwritten lyrics, the members’ own instruments and costumes, and tape boxes that still sometimes bear a track’s original title before it changed.
The heart of the exhibition is the control room. You can see the microphone Freddie used for his last vocals, sit in the chair he worked in then, and take control of David Richards’s desk to build your own mix of a “Made in Heaven” track: keep only the piano and backing vocals, or Freddie’s voice alone. A plaque on the floor marks the exact spot where he stood.
Outside, the original wall and door fill up with visitors’ messages, who are invited to sign them: this is the Queen Tribute Wall. That is what the film below recounts.
“Queen Rocks Montreux”: the band, the studio and the town.
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The exhibition space, set up in the original studio: album display cases and, on the floor, the “Jazz” artwork.
The boarding point for the CGN’s Belle Époque boats. Nothing took place on the landing stage itself: it was on board that Queen hosted the press in 1986 and B.B. King played a concert in 2006.
The building around which the whole musical history of Montreux revolves: burned down in 1971, rebuilt, it houses Queen’s studio and saw the festival born.
The pontoon in front of the Casino, where the Rolling Stones and later Queen posed.
Music recorded in Montreux
1978
Jazz
The first Queen album recorded partly in Montreux, with “Don’t Stop Me Now” and “Fat Bottomed Girls”. Won over, the band bought the studio the following year.
1981
Under Pressure, Queen & David Bowie
Born of an improvised session at Mountain Studios in 1981, this historic duet between Queen and David Bowie, two legends intimately tied to Montreux, became a worldwide number one.
1995
Made in Heaven
Queen’s final album, completed at Mountain Studios around Freddie Mercury’s last vocal sessions in Montreux. Its cover shows the singer’s statue facing Lake Geneva. The circle is complete.
1995
A Winter’s Tale
One of Freddie Mercury’s very last songs, written while gazing at Lake Geneva and the Dents-du-Midi from his Territet apartment, and recorded at Mountain Studios during the “Made in Heaven” sessions.
2022
Face It Alone
Rediscovered in 2022 in the archives of “The Miracle” sessions (1988-1989), this unreleased song carried by Freddie Mercury’s voice moved the whole world on its release in October 2022, more than thirty years after it was recorded. Its official video puts Montreux centre stage, from the lake to Freddie’s statue.
