Most of the time, in a story about an artist struggling to finish a song, it's a classic case of writer's block getting in the way of their creativity.

Sometimes it's a dispute between bandmates or a simple confusion about what way a track should sound. But all of these things seem petty and unimportant when, for Freddie Mercury, it was a matter of life or death.

There are very few stories about Mercury ever really struggling creatively. Instead, stories about Queen tend to be more along the lines of songs being written quickly within 15 minutes or so, tumbling out of their creative brains and being built, quickly, into the epic production they existed as on record.

Mercury was an artist through and through in that at every turn, he seemed to be there and ready with a new idea. It kept the band evolving, and also kept them brave, as not only did Mercury have the ideas, but he was willing to fight for them, just as the band fought for their record label to believe in 'Bohemian Rhapsody' after their initial push back against the strange and long song. Knowing it was something special from the start, Mercury would not only have the beautiful, bold ideas but rally behind them too.

So when Brian May recalled a time when the singer struggled to finish a song, it wasn't an occasion where he was feeling uninspired. Instead, it was a time when his own body was fighting against him. In the mid-1980s, the singer began getting hounded with questions about his health. As the AIDS epidemic made the news daily, and the death toll was swiftly rising, Mercury became a target for a media storm.

While in public, he claimed he was "perfectly fit and healthy", the reality was different. Mercury was diagnosed in 1987, but still denied it in the press, and it took him until 1989 to confide the news in his bandmates.

When he did, they obviously worried about him and wanted him to be well. Their priorities switched to protecting and helping their singer, but Mercury's stayed the same as ever. "He just kept saying, 'Write me more. Write me stuff. I want to just sing this and do it, and when I am gone, you can finish it off,'" May recalled, as Mercury simply wanted to keep going.

"He loved being in the studio, and I think right up to the end that was his greatest escape," May said of the final years. Even when his body was shutting down, he wanted to keep working for as long as his voice could manage, as the guitarist remembered, "He was singing vocals when he couldn't even stand. He'd prop himself up against the desk, knock a couple of vodkas down and go for it."

In particular, one of their last songs together was proof of that resilience, even if Mercury couldn't make it through. "The very last time we ever did that, me and him was singing 'Mother Love', which is one of my favourite tracks on Made In Heaven," May remembered. "He never finished that. He said, "Oh, Brian, I can't do any more. I'm dying here.'"

Always with a sense of humour and a desire to keep creative, May said of the singer, "He never seemed to let it get him down."