“He Was Music”

Reinhold Mack, the celebrated German record producer who worked with Queen, Electric Light Orchestra, The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, vividly remembers the first time he met Queen’s frontman, Freddie Mercury. They bonded over drinks in a Munich beer garden. Mack, as he is known, went on to become the Grammy-nominated producer for Queen’s albums The Game, Flash Gordon, Hot Space and The Works, and Mercury’s solo album Mr Bad Guy. “I remember our first meeting in 1980 very well,” Mack, 70, tells uDiscover Music in an exclusive interview. “I was working with Gary Moore in Los Angeles and was told Queen would be in Musicland Studios, in Munich, and might need me. I bought a plane ticket and went to Munich. When I met Freddie, he said, ‘What are you doing here?’ I told him I had heard there might be a good chance Queen wanted to work with me. He said not really, because the band were coming off a Japanese tour and only had two more weeks to spend outside the UK. ‘Anyway,’ he suddenly said, ‘I hear they have these wonderful beer gardens.’ It was early summertime and we knew it was very nice outside, so we headed to the Chinese Tower for a couple of beers.