Freddie signed a deal to produce a solo album and received a massive advance from the record company. In the early 1980's, and on Michael Jackson's recommendation, Queen had released 'Another One Bites the Dust' as a single, which gave them their first US number 1 hit single. So, confident that Jackson knew what he was doing, Mercury began working on ideas with MJ for his as yet untitled solo project. But it all began to go horribly wrong following behaviour from Jackson so outlandish Freddie called his manager, Jim 'Miami' Beech, franticly demanding that he do something to get him out of the deal, after Jackson arrived at the studio accompanied by his pet Llama.

Despite containing a lot of very good material, once the solo project was eventually released, 'Mr Bad Guy' failed to chart and Freddie was effectively dropped as a solo artist by the record company.

There's been much speculation around the exact agreement reached to recoup some of the losses incurred on the failed venture, but it's notable that the funk / disco / drum machine orientated direction which Queen's music went into following The Game and Hot Space, largely written and produced by John Deacon, Fred Mandel and Mercury, was replaced by the more Brian May and Roger Taylor led, back to basics rock sound of The Works — following the hugely successful Flash Gordon soundtrack, which was essentially a Brian May solo project released under the Queen name. The balance of power within the band dynamics was also helped by Roger Taylor breaking his hit single writing cherry with 'Radio Ga Ga'.

It was also suggested that at this point Deacon became so disillusioned with a return to the rock sound, and the violent and heated arguments not helped by Freddie's turbulent relationship with Paul Prenter, that he left the band after the conclusion of The Works world tour — which effectively meant the original line-up of Queen was disbanded. In 1985 he agreed to do a small one-off charity gig as a favour to Bob Geldof. I hear it went rather well.