Roger Taylor says Queen won't release an album of lost Freddie Mercury demos

Queen drummer Roger Taylor has ruled out the possibility that they will release a new album of old demos featuring their late singer Freddie Mercury.

Guitarist Brian May had previously revealed that he was going through the band's old material with Taylor to compile a selection of unreleased tracks for an LP, but the drummer has now said that no such album will be released as there "isn't enough" material.

Taylor told Ultimate Classic Rock magazine about the possibility of a new album: "I've got to tell you, there won't be an album. There's just not enough and the last thing I want to do is have a sort of barrel-scraping exercise."

Taylor did confirm that the band will release a series of duets that Mercury recorded with Michael Jackson next year.

He said of this: "There's a couple of great tracks that Freddie recorded with Michael Jackson that Brian and I are working on and they are good. So at some point they will surface I think when we feel it's a good moment. I don't really want to ride any sort of wave there. So that's an interesting thing, but that will be probably later some point next year."

Brian May suggests he is working on a new Queen album featuring Freddie Mercury's vocals

A number of duets recorded by Freddie Mercury and Michael Jackson could now become part of a new Queen album, Brian May has claimed.

Earlier this year it wasreported that around three tracks Mercury and Jackson recorded in 1983 will be made available to fans. Speaking in July, Queen guitarist Brian May said there will be, "something for folks to hear" in two months time.

However, in an interview recorded earlier this month (September) with iHeart Radio, May revealed that an album in the style of the 1995 Queen album 'Made In Heaven', pieced together after Mercury's death in 1991, could be in the pipeline. "We thought we'd exhausted everything that was around and could be worked on, but since then a number of things have come to light from various sources that we'd just plain forgotten about, including the stuff with Freddie and Michael Jackson," said May. "Just a couple of weeks ago, we thought: Maybe we shouldn't be just working on bits and pieces? Maybe we should be heading towards an album? It just might be."

Mercury and Jackson worked together 30 years ago in California but failed to release anything substantial as they could not secure time to record further tracks.