And I don’t know how many times I’ve played it, but it always pulls something out of you. I’d say my favourite Freddie song to play is We Are The Champions – still. Another favourite is The Miracle, which has an incredible lightness to it. 'I remember him coming into the studio and saying: “I’ve got this idea… just give me a few minutes.” Then he brought it to life. He could obviously hear it all in his head, although he didn’t have any musical instruments with him. One of the last songs he wrote, A Winter’s Tale, was written purely sat looking out on the mountains from the other side of Lake Geneva. It could be any experience a skate on the pond. Freddie mainly used the piano for songwriting, but there were times when he’d get inspiration when he wasn’t around his instrument. 'But there are exceptions, where he’d get the song in one bite. Occasionally Freddie would write fast, but a lot of the time he’d go home and scheme and scheme, and come back with stuff written all over a pad of his dad’s notepaper. We were very conscious that we had to reach inside ourselves to keep up. 'It was a major factor in pushing us onwards. 'There was huge songwriting competition in Queen, no doubt about it,' remembered Brian May. I think the talent was innate, but he dug deep inside himself and forced it out. I always called him ‘the man who invented himself’. But then he’d come up with a Killer Queen or, later on, lots of simple things like Crazy Little Thing. 'When you write songs that complex, you have to work hard at it, and it did involve a lot of head-scratching.

When he wrote The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, on the second album, he was crossing sections of six-part harmonies, and I thought: 'Bloody hell, that is tricky stuff.' Then there’s The March Of The Black Queen, which is almost like prog-rock, and so outrageously complicated that I can’t even remember the arrangement myself. 'I’d say it was Freddie’s actual musicality which was the cleverest thing of all, the notes, and his harmonic structure was quite brilliant. We had fun coming up with daft things, all those ridiculous phrases. Queen fans will be able to bid on handwritten notes, song drafts, costumes, and paintings once owned by Freddie Mercury when a collection of about 1,500 personal items from the late music icons.

Some lyrics we wrote together, like I’m Going Slightly Mad, which was funny. He was having a good time, and that was very much a cri de coeur. Actually, at the bottom of it all was just a genius songwriter. But it’s when you delve deeper that you really get his musicality. 'It doesn’t frustrate me, because I’m just pleased he’s remembered. 'Everybody gets so mixed up with all the other sides: the flash, the sexual ambiguity, the showmanship, the voice…,' Roger Taylor told Classic Rock in 2011.

Freddie mercury last words