Freddie Mercury - The Unknown Song - Jim Hutton's Tape (What song is it?)

It's a long shot but it might be Send in the Clowns.

Pretty sure it's "Body Language 2". Sadly, Freddie considered we weren't ready and never completed it.


By the way, the tape came from John S. Stuart, who purchased it from Jim Hutton himself. I wonder why he would sell such a precious item.

Is there any chatter on this tape to prove it to be genuine ?

Something tells me none of this is Freddie playing. Not to mention the piano is very out of tune - I doubt Freddie would've let his piano go out of tune like this.

The bathtub footage makes me feel extremely awkward

Yeah, I've tried that. I also tried to run Send In The Clowns and Well Tempered Clavier through as well - and the big apps don't recognise those either! 

On the other side "Send In The Clowns" makes me think of Vangelis (RIP) piano parts for Blade Runner (Ridley Scott) (Rachel's theme for instance). Something simple and humble, ethereal a-la Erik Satie. Pure magic.

There was always a yoko cassetterecorder on the baby grant piano at Logan Place....

by the way, to my knowledge it's Phoebe who plays the piano in those tracks.... not Freddie. Freddie had a different style.

I have an other recording of Phoebe playing, the style is similar.

I had no idea Phoebe played piano! For years I assumed that if it wasn’t Freddie it would’ve been Mike Moran.

I also remember that besides John Lennon who recorded with an open mike next to his upright piano at the Dakota in the mid-seventies all his home piano demos, Bo Harwood did the same when John Cassavetes asked him to play piano instead of guitar for his movie "A Woman Under Influence" in order to record the soundtrack. The same way of recording piano was used by Bo Harwood (open mike next to an upright or grand piano); this was intended for the demos, but John Cassavetes like these piano demos so much that they used Bo Harwood piano demos rather than recording it on studio (money and time were involved, so it was also cheaper to mix it directly into the movie).

The thing is that on both of these home piano demos recorded that way, you can hear foot stomping, chats, humming...
I can not imagine Freddie not humming while playing, or not hearing a bit of chats at the beginning of the tape or being impatient because he struggles with a chord.
These are clearly early home demos to develop the melody (you can tell it with the "unreleased song")

On the other hand, piano demo instrumentals without chats foot stomping or humming turned out to be legit : the example I have are some piano demos recorded by Prince in 1982 (not sure of the date but I have these piano demos). And they turned out to be genuine despite they are pure instrumental with no singing at all or humming. Some other piano demos surfaced with Prince singing; some are still bootlegged and not released like the piano demo Spike Lee used for the piano  the end of his movie "BlacKkKlansman".

Back to the "Send In The Clown" melody, this reminds me some Puccini melodies which would be roughly transposed on piano.
I remember that for "Modern Times" Charlie Chaplin wanted to compose a Puccini-like melody and it turned out to be "Smile" (theme). At the time they were no lyrics at all; they were written later when the song became a hit first sung by Nat King Cole.
This does not sound by Puccini; this is a pure gem; Chaplin was a genius; but the arrangement are Puccini-like.

I agree, the "value" of the artist does not imply that he has a complete home studio recording at home.
John Lennon was often described as perfectionist in studio during the Beatles era (Strawberry Fields Forever, etc...) but during the Dakota years he used an open mike next to his upright piano; and use a Sony stereo recorder tape; even not a multitrack recording (which John Lennon could afford; he even did not use a 4 tracks recording)
Thus when he wanted to do some overdubs, he altered the previous tape by playing it and recording over it.
Thus, the paradox was that he has a "limited" imperfect way of recording home demos (piano or guitar) but spend a lot of time to finish his unreleased songs by adding layers of overdubs.
Lennon stopped to work more on a home demos when he considered that the song was finished with complete lyrics.
Too bad that he kept because he wanted to release "Double Fantasy" first, (half of the songs being recorded by Yoko), most of his piano-material songs (Grow Old With Me, etc...) were not attempted in studio by the band (just some snippets like "Gone From This Place" (another unreleased song) because he was so impatient and excited to be in studio again with the band in August 1979.

In the meantime Paul McCartney recorded McCartney II album at a home studio. Nowdays the sound achieved here, is considered as low-fi, and hype.

Pete Townshend used a home studio (with multitrack) and play all instruments (including bass) and his demos of "Tommy", "Who's Next" or "Quadrophenia" are really some polished demos; to the point that you have the feeling that a virtuoso bass player like The Ox aka John Entwistle has not much room to improvise when Pete came with such polished home studio songs.

David Gilmour used some rudimentary material (well, that would be considered like this) for this pre-The Wall home demos (like his demo of Comfortably Numb), same for Roger Waters home demos; whereas Pink Floyd is considered as a perfectionist band.

Thus, the way of recording home demos does not depend on the money an artist can spend to buy some multitrack recording and built his own home studio.
Prince did that, but John Lennon or a lot had the demos, but they did not care about having a state-of-the-art or their Xanadu home-studio.
I don't think that's a matter of humility, perhaps they always recorded like this (like John Lennon used to) and consider home as the place to record "rude home demos" and studio to record the album.
All the artists described above are considered as perfectionist; thus it's not a matter of laziness; just their way to compose at home.

It's odd and funny to consider that these days, we can get a 4 tracks recording or record with our computer with far more tracks than the Beatles album were recorded (4 tracks for Sgt Pepper's for instance).

Thus, I tend to consider than having "limited"/restricted technical material is not a barrier to creativity.