A Yamaha grand from a Munich basement studio has spent the past week standing in a hotel lobby off Oxford Street. It goes to the saleroom at the start of October, and until then anyone can walk in and look at it for nothing.
Musicland was a basement studio in Munich, and for most of the 1970s and 80s it was where you went to make a record without anyone watching. Queen spent a great deal of time there. So did Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, the Rolling Stones, Donna Summer and Leonard Cohen. The house instrument was a Yamaha C3 grand, and all of them played it.
Freddie Mercury played it more than most. He wrote at it while putting together his solo material, worked out Crazy Little Thing Called Love on it, and it sat in the room through the sessions for The Game, Hot Space and The Works. That piano is now in the lobby of The Cumberland at Marble Arch, and it stays there until 27 September.
Why it’s in a hotel
Propstore is selling it on 1 and 2 October, with an estimate of £200,000 to £400,000. The seller is Reinhold Mack, the German producer who made those Munich records with Queen, along with his son, who is named Freddie because Mercury was his godfather. Their 82 lots amount to the largest body of Queen material to reach the market since Mercury’s own possessions were sold in 2023.
The piano is the headline, but not the most affecting thing in the collection. That would be the AKG C414 EB that recorded Mercury’s lead and backing vocals at Musicland, still with its original Sennheiser bag and red XLR cable, estimated at £40,000 to £80,000. Or the two handwritten lyric drafts from Mr Bad Guy, his 1985 solo album, both carrying lines and alternate verses that never made it onto the finished record.
What you can see, and when
There are two separate things happening here and the difference matters.
The piano has been in the lobby since 15 September and stays until the 27th. Nothing to book, nothing to pay, no timed entry.
Then, from 24 to 27 September, the hotel gives over space to a free exhibition of more than 70 highlight lots from the wider sale, which runs to over 800 pieces in all. Oasis, John Lennon, Michael Jackson and the Sex Pistols are in it, alongside a Noel Gallagher Telemaster, a 1963 Gretsch that belonged to Jonny Greenwood and a prototype Gibson acoustic made for Elvis Presley. Entry is free, but reserve a slot rather than turning up cold.
If you want to make a night of it, the hotel’s SOUND bar has put on a Mercury tribute cocktail for the duration, and you are a five-minute walk from the Marylebone pubs if you would rather drink somewhere with a bit more age on it. It is also worth knowing what you are standing on: the ground immediately outside the hotel is where the Tyburn gallows stood for six hundred years.
The London x London Take: We are usually sceptical of memorabilia-as-attraction, which tends to mean a guitar in a vitrine and a laminated card telling you to be impressed. This is different, and the reason is that the object is not famous for having been owned. It is famous for having been used, by a startling number of people, in a room where the records were actually made. It is also the rare piece of free London culture with a genuine deadline attached: on 1 October it sells into a private collection and in all likelihood nobody sees it again. Go midweek when the lobby is quieter, and when the fuller exhibition opens on the 24th, give the lyric sheets more time than the piano. The crossings-out are where the person is.
Need to know
- What: Freddie Mercury’s Musicland piano, then Propstore’s Music Live Auction exhibition
- Where: The Cumberland, Great Cumberland Place, Marble Arch, London W1H 7DL
- When: Piano in the lobby, 15 to 27 September. Exhibition of 70+ lots, 24 to 27 September
- Price: Free
- Booking: Free tickets for the exhibition via Eventbrite
- Nearest station: Marble Arch
- Auction: 1 and 2 October, Propstore
