Benson Boone has welcomed Brian May onto his stage for the third time, with the Queen guitarist a special guest at his recent show in Birmingham, UK.

The pair first linked up for a rendition of Queen’s operatic masterpiece, Bohemian Rhapsody, at Coachella last year. While that set was met with a surprisingly muted reaction from that crowd, the American singer-songwriter hasn’t let that deter him from playing with his hero once more, having invited him to his London show last November, too.

Judging by the seismic cheers ringing around the 16,000 capacity Utilita Arena, and considering May is on home soil, it looks like May's cameo turned up the heat this time.

May stuck around for the entirety of Boone’s three-song encore, tearing through We Will Rock You, We Are the Champions, and a gospel choir-backed version of the American’s biggest hit, Beautiful Things.

As the crowd claps along to We Will Rock You – it's illegal not to – the distinctive growl of the Red Special is heard long before we see May, and he gets a hero's reception as he rises from the depths of the stage, one arm held aloft. The smile on his face, as he wrings out the final notes of the guitar solo, says it all.

For May, who suffered a minor stroke in 2024, live outings have become a rarity as he takes his time to recuperate. Another night with Boone was just the spot to grease his wheels.

“Thanks, Benson Boone, dear friend,” he writes on Instagram. “I needed that! And thanks, good people of Birmingham – you were so deafening when I came, on I couldn't hear myself! You gave Mr. Boone the appreciation he so richly deserves. One of the best gigs I've ever been involved in. Epic.”

May later posted a snap of the pair backstage, seemingly in deep conversation, with the Red Special sitting on Boone’s lap.

“Not all my precious moments with Mr. Boone were on stage,” the caption reads. “Beautiful things indeed. Go, safe buddy.”

May’s Red Special has been in the news a lot lately, first with May gifting a custom-made left-handed version to his best friend and fellow guitar hero, Tony Iommi, and then later when Steve Vai added his signature flair to the guitar’s recipe with a stunning reimagining.

Steve Vai has paid tribute to Brian May, after finally getting his hands on his eye-catching reimagining of the Queen legend’s iconic Red Special guitar.

May famously built his Red Special with his father, but for his own radical take on the famed build, Vai went down a different route. He linked up with the UK-based Guyton Guitars for a truly radical variant, which included “Steve specified woods, electronics, and scale length.”

May's original electric guitar has been treated to several spin-offs over the years, including a fundraising pink model and, more recently, Tony Iommi received an exquisitely made left-handed version.

However, Vai and Guyton have gone all-out with theirs, which boasts a quilted maple top and an intricately carved custom pickguard, alongside a host of other Vai-isms. It’s left the For the Love of God shredder in a reflective mood.

“In the 1970s, when I was a kid trying to figure out how to play anything in tune, Brian May was one of my absolute heroes,” he says in an emotional Instagram post. “His tone and touch oozed rock and roll class, the songs he wrote, and the notes he chose dug deep into my psyche and helped shape a future fantasy image of myself in my mind.

“But his Red Special was not just a guitar to me, it was a mythical object, an alchemical wand built by a young genius and his dad. I studied every photo and rumor I could find. That guitar planted the seed that maybe someday I could build my own, which thankfully never happened, due to a total lack of expertise.”

Drafting in Guyton, then, proved to be a masterstroke from Vai, who is now able to honor his hero in the right way. It's an apt full-circle moment for Vai, arriving years after a rather memorable meeting with the British virtuoso.

“At 20 years old, I moved to L.A. and started working with Frank Zappa,” Vai continues. “One night, I walk into the Rainbow Bar and Grill and see Brian just standing there. I thought I was hallucinating.

“Brian was incredibly kind to this unknown kid and then did the unthinkable: he invited me to a Queen rehearsal at Zoetrope. Sitting in a room with the entire band was already unreal enough, but then I saw the Red Special… time definitely slowed down.”

Vai was given the guitar to play. “It was heaven,” he reflects. Then, years after Vai sat in on that Queen rehearsal, May was the musical director at a guitar legends concert in Seville, Spain – and Vai was on the bill.

“Brian told me the story about a young guitarist he once let play his guitar at rehearsal,” Vai adds. “A kid who was in town working with Zappa and who played amazingly well. I let him tell me the whole story and then said, ‘Brian, that was me.’ This stands as one of the most satisfying full-circle twists the universe has offered me.”

Vai says he’s “truly humbled” to own the ‘Green Red Special,’ calling it “beyond beautiful,” crafted with a “devotion made tangible.” It’s certainly living up to its special billing.

It might not be the only high-end Red Special that we see in 2026, either. Gibson – to whom May signed in 2024 before releasing a signature 12-string acoustic last year – could be planning to release Murphy Lab-aged replicas.

Brian May has gifted Tony Iommi a custom-made replica of his iconic Red Special guitar – and it has two unique features.

May famously crafted the electric guitar with his father, and the DIY home build has been his partner in crime throughout his entire career.

Alongside a Vox AC30 and a treble booster – two gear picks inspired by Rory Gallagher – the Red Special was pivotal in creating May's one-of-a-kind guitar tone, and now his fellow-Gibson endorsee and close friend has gotten his own small chapter in the guitar’s history books.

“Huge thanks to my best friend, Brian May, and master builder Andrew Guyton [of Guyton Guitars] for this incredible left-handed Red Special replica,” Iommi writes on Instagram. “Andrew personally delivered it last week – a true gift from Brian, two years in the making. Christmas came early!”

The guitar is built to the exact vintage construction of May’s original, save for the left-handed configuration and one other key tweak – its neck has been shaped to match that of Iommi’s iconic Jaydee Old Boy SG.

The rest, from its built-in treble booster, vintage-style pots, and replica pickups, are just as May would have it. Maybe it’ll feature on Iommi's long-awaited solo album.

May, who has remained loyal to his Red Special over the years, surprised the guitar community when he signed with Gibson last year. And yes, that means that Gibson-made Murphy Lab Red Specials are very much on the cards, but a signature 12-string acoustic has been the only official collaborative launch so far.

May and Iommi share a close friendship, having first met in the early ‘70s. Last year, they sat down to talk riffs and jam Black Sabbath’s Paranoid together – even though May knew it was “sacrilege” to play along.

Meanwhile, Steve Vai enlisted the help of Guyton for a tasteful reimagining of the Red Special, and fans have been going mad for it.

A Warwick bass once owned by The Who’s late, great John Entwistle has tripled in value ahead of its auction after wood grain analysis revealed its links to another British rock icon.

The 1986 Warwick Buzzard was initially estimated to sell for £10,000 (approx $13,000), though its value later rose to £40K (approx $52,300) after “a painstaking exercise in matching the pattern of the wood grain” uncovered its extra-illustrious past.

Precise grain-matching has confirmed that it’s the very same bass played by Queen’s John Deacon in the video for the band’s 1986 single, Friends Will Be Friends, and during their Montreux Pop performance in 1986.

It’s believed to have been loaned to Deacon, after which the bass returned to Entwistle’s sizable collection by the time of his death in 2002.

“The wood grain of a guitar is like a fingerprint, so thank goodness the bass wasn’t painted,” says Gardiner Houlgate’s Luke Hobbs. “If it had been, the current owners probably wouldn’t have been able to prove the connection to Queen.”

The guitar was auctioned off for £3,500 (approx $4,600) in 2003 by Sotheby’s, but the connection between the two massive bands hadn’t been made. If it reaches its £40K estimate, its value would have inflated by 1,042%.

Entwistle's signature bass was designed in collaboration with Warwick in the mid-1980s. It features a wild X-like shape and a pretty sizable headstock, designed to resemble a buzzard’s beak.

This particular bass is a prototype of the Buzzard made in 1986, with the serial number #005, four EMG pickups, and that all-important natural finish. Entwistle had partnered with the German firm after pivoting away from his Rickenbacker 4001.

The bass became a regular feature during Entwistle’s final years with the band. Deacon, it turns out, was also privy to its kind of magic.

This doubly prestigious bass will be auctioned by Gardiner Houlgate on Tuesday, December 2. It will also be available for public viewing ahead of its second sale.

Visit Gardiner Houlgate for more information.

Its price tag falls way short of the most expensive bass auctions, with Billy Wyman's Fender Mustang, which sold for $384,000 in 2020, and Paul McCartney's $496,100 Yamaha BB-1200, auctioned off a year later, topping the pile. The most expensive guitars sold at auction sit comfortably ahead of those.

Aside from their famous collaboration with David Bowie, Queen were a pretty closed shop when it came to recording with guest stars, especially guitarists. Yet prog rock hero Steve Howe bucked that trend in the early 1990s, contributing to a collaboration that has gone under the radar in the band’s folklore.

Howe, of Yes and Asia fame, has had a storied career outside of his band work. He was a guitarist for hire in the '60s, playing on a multitude of EMI recordings, and he and bandmate Rick Wakeman later played on Lou Reed's self-titled record in 1972.

But, discussing his guest spots with Prog, it's his spontaneous contributions to Queen's Innuendo that stand out.

“I was in a restaurant in Montreux and bumped into one of Queen’s techs,” he explains. “He said, ‘Steve, come down to the studio – the lads would love to see you.’”

The band rolled the red carpet out for Howe, and it sounds like they had a guest spot in mind before he arrived at the band-owned Mountain Studios. It wasn't Howe's first trip to the studios, either. He'd recorded Going for the One with Yes there in the late 70s. David Bowie, AC/DC, and Iggy Pop have also recorded there.

“When I got down there, they’d set up the studio for me,” he reveals. “They played me the whole album, and it was stunning, and they said, ‘How about playing on Innuendo? Play like [Spanish flamenco guitarist] Paco De Lucía; just run around and go nuts.’ So I did!”

The song, another slice of proto-prog pomp from the British rock giants, was born out of a jam session involving Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon in 1989. Mercury was said to be upstairs at the time, and latched onto the song's Kashmir-like groove to turn it into a song. Howe's playing provided the finishing touch, and the song later topped the UK charts.

Speaking to the Official International Queen Fan Club magazine in 2021, Howe shed more light on the session and the surprise instrument he used to record.

“Brian had three Gibson Chet Atkins guitars. [They're] brilliant inventions as they sound so much like classical guitar,” he says. “I played all three of Brian’s and liked one a bit more than the other two, so that’s what I played on the record.”

He also reveals that the solo was completely improvised, ultimately spliced together from three separate takes.

“Spontaneity and improvisation can very much be the spirit of music itself,” he says. “I had no time with Innuendo to be concerned about what to do, and that can sometimes be easier than being premeditated. Wonderful things can happen that way, and that’s how it turned out on Innuendo.”

Meanwhile, Brian May has revealed how influential Rory Gallagher was in helping him find his sound, and discussed the time Jimi Hendrix schooled him in how to use a Marshall amp.

When I caught up with Sir Brian May recently to chat about his fabulous Gibson SJ-200 12-string, he said to me, “We go back a long way, don’t we?” I reminded him that it was, in fact, 40 years since we first met. I had gone to interview him at Queen’s offices in London all those years ago and, needless to say, I was terribly nervous.

At the time he was the biggest star I’d ever met, and he’d stipulated to my boss – who’d arranged the interview when they’d met at some event or other – that “the interviewer mustn’t be late, as I have another appointment that day”.

As a stickler for punctuality myself, I allotted a good hour or so longer than the time it would take me to get from my home in Essex down to West London. All was going well until the A12 came to a halt at Brentwood. And it stayed that way for more than two hours. Tragically, there’d been a terrible pile-up.

In 1985, mobile phones were not the all-pervasive monsters they are today. I certainly didn’t have one, and looking around, no-one else seemed to, either.

I was in the middle of a blocked dual carriageway and couldn’t leave the car to find a phone box. Panic set in and all I could do was wait. I turned to my A-to-Z and plotted a route across town. But even once the traffic had got moving I had to keep pulling over to check that I was on the correct route. It was getting later and later…

Don't stop me now

I finally arrived at the Queen office almost an hour late. I parked my car half on the pavement outside and dashed in, expecting a deserved tirade. I gasped my profuse apologies, but Brian couldn’t have been calmer.

“You’d better move your car, though, or you’ll get a ticket,” he said. This I did, and found my way back, now well over an hour behind schedule. Now, although I was a lover of Queen’s music and a huge fan of Brian’s playing, I didn’t know every little detail about him as a person; for instance, the fact that he wore white clogs…

Well, guess who also favored exactly the same footwear, and had done since working for Gibson in Holland? Brian beckoned me to follow him up the wooden steps to the room where the interview was to take place, and it was then that I spotted them. My heart sank!

“Oh no, he’s going to think of me as some sad copycat fanboy,” I said to myself as we clattered loudly up to the first floor.

Sitting there in the room was a huge flight case. Brian lifted its lid, said something like, “Here’s the beast,” and gestured for me to pick it up, which I duly did. Having primed my Sony Walkman with a fresh BASF C90 cassette, I pressed ‘record’ and off we went. The interview went well. Brian couldn’t have been more forthcoming.

When we finished I loaded the guitar back into its case and we went downstairs, where together we chose the feature’s pictures and cover shot from a filing cabinet full of transparencies. We chatted some more, I bade my farewells, located my vehicle, and started back to the Guitarist office in Cambridge.

I slotted the cassette into my car’s stereo as I always did, to check that it had come out okay. Luckily, it had, but to my utter horror I heard myself noodling all the way through our chat. On Brian’s own guitar! How humiliating.

It must have been subconscious nerves as I’d never normally be so disrespectful. So not only the clogs, now this, too. Would he ever speak to me again? Luckily he did, and it was so nice to catch up with him and hear how proud he is of his new Gibson.

I’ve never asked Brian about the clogs incident, nor me playing non-stop through our first interview. He’s certainly never mentioned it and quite possibly never even noticed it, either, but I still get the chills whenever I remember. Got any star-related embarrassments to report? Do share and I’ll see you next time.

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

It’s bewildering that Gibson never gave its big-bodied super-jumbo the 12-string treatment and offered it in its regular line-up.

The company did create the occasional special based around the concept, but in reality left the door open for Guild to fill the 12-string jumbo hole with its F-512 – a big, bold beast beloved of players as diverse as John Denver and David Gilmour.

And indeed the subject behind this month’s Wishlist, who used one (and in earlier days an Ovation Pacemaker 12-string) for his solo spot with Queen, performing the spine-tingling Love Of My Life.

Brian May is already using his new guitar live and loving it: “I used the Guild for a long time, but I have to admit to favouritism now – because this is it!” he says.

Brian and Gibson spec’d the instrument between them, the company deciding on the timbers and Brian stipulating personal design elements. So we find AAA Indian rosewood for back and sides, matching fingerboard and moustache bridge with 60s-style agoya shell inlays, AAA Sitka spruce top, and a neck of AAA flamed maple.

Other classy appointments include a walnut ‘stinger’ on the headstock’s rear, 12 gold-plated mini Grover tuners, bone nut and bridge saddle. The guitar also comes equipped with Fishman’s Matrix preamp with undersaddle piezo pickup and soundhole-mounted volume and tone controls.

Where things become more personalised is in the aesthetics department. Look to the headstock, fingerboard inlays and pickguard, and you’ll find some very special ornamentation – all designed by Brian himself.

The elongated headstock is the perfect setting for Brian’s ubiquitous ‘eight-pointed star’ logo, inlaid in iridescent agoya shell and mirrored along the fingerboard.

But the pièce de résistance is the pickguard, where the usual floral pattern is replaced by a design reflecting Brian’s other love, that of astronomy. It’s both elegant and rather touching since pride of place, perhaps unsurprisingly, is given to Mercury.

Could you have imagined that the company that made J-200s for Elvis, Bob Dylan and Jimmy Page would offer to build you one – a special one at that?

“It was beyond my wildest dreams, and I so wish my dad had been around to see it because he would have been so happy and so proud. I mean, even touching one of those things back then was a dream.

“You’d go into a guitar store and if you didn’t have any money, and it was obvious that you didn’t have any money, people wouldn’t let you touch anything. They made you feel so unwelcome. And that’s why I love what Gibson has done with the Garage in London; they encourage kids to come in and look and play and make a noise.”

The Brian May SJ-200 has a rosewood body like the earliest examples and not maple, as later ones would be. Was this decision based on historical factors or for sonic reasons?

“Ah, now you’re asking me technical questions that I probably can’t answer! I’m more of an instinctive player and, while, of course, it was a bit about Elvis, for me it was more of an Everly Brothers thing.

“They were such a huge influence on me, not only because of the harmonies but also because of the way they played their guitars. They had ‘12 strings’ because they played two acoustics.”

And Phil had his in regular tuning while Don was tuned to open G, which gave them an even broader, more spacial sound.

“Ah, I didn’t know that. That explains Wake Up Little Susie with that opening riff. I was playing it last night, funnily enough, and I’ve got this guitar with the bottom E tuned down to D, which is such a glorious sound. It’s a gorgeous instrument. And it’s friendly, too. It’s easy to play; your fingers just fall in the right places and it doesn’t hurt you.”

We can see you playing a prototype of the guitar on Love Of My Life during 2022’s Rhapsody Tour at The O2. It certainly sounds fantastic live.

“Well, the guitar has quickly become an old friend. And that’s a very lovely moment as it’s a ‘me and the audience’ thing. I hardly have to sing at all. I just play and they sing – and, of course, at the end Freddie kind of ‘comes back’.”

The strings are configured like a Rickenbacker, with the thicker of each octave pair uppermost.

“Yes, I strung it that way because I pick the strings upwards. And Love Of My Life is a good example because if you pick upwards you want the finger to hit the high string, the melody note, first.”

The planetary motif pickguard and eight-pointed star inlays are tasteful touches, especially as Mercury takes pride of place.

“Well, Freddie is always with me. He was like a brother, and now I have a Mercury on my guitar, too, which makes me very happy.”

Were the fingerboard inlays influenced by the stars on the Gibson Everly Brothers jumbos?

“Indirectly. Gibson offered that to me at first, but I said I’d rather have my cosmic stars. They said, ‘We can’t promise anything because it’s very tricky cutting the shell.’ But after a few weeks, they said, ‘We’ve done it, just wait until you see it!’”

We were pleasantly surprised at the price tag here compared with other artist models that have been around £15k. So will Gibson make a Standard model available?

No news from Montana as yet. Whatever happens, it’s clear from Brian’s enthusiasm that he and his fabulous SJ-200 are meant for one another. In fact, one could say the stars have aligned!

• The Gibson Custom Shop Brian May SJ-200 12-String is available now, priced $7,999/£6,899. See Gibson for more details.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Nuno Bettencourt has looked back on Extreme’s heartfelt act of rebellion during 1992’s Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at London’s Wembley Stadium – and he has no regrets.

For the event, Bettencourt says the performing artists – which included Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, and Def Leppard – were strictly prohibited from playing Queen material during their rapid-fire sets. But Bettencourt had other ideas.

Taking place on April 20, 1992, in front of 72,000 fans – and countless more watching at home – the show was organized in the wake of Mercury's passing to raise awareness of AIDS, the disease that took the singer's life.

After Metallica delivered a rousing opening salvo – playing Enter Sandman, Sad But True, and Nothing Else Matters – Brian May introduced Extreme, deeply begrudging what was about to happen.

“Not only was it one of the greatest concerts of my life to be a part of,” Bettencourt wrote on Instagram, “but when Brian May walked out to introduce us and said, ‘More than any other group on the planet, this next band knew what Freddie and Queen were all about,’ normally I’d take the humble approach, but that statement was 1000% spot on.

“On that day, we wanted to make sure that not only true Queen fans in that stadium and watching around the world knew what Freddie meant to us – but more importantly, that Freddie, watching down from the heavens, one of the greatest composers and rock and roll singers of all time, knew what he meant to us.”

Shunning their own material, the band launched into a Queen medley that included mega-hits Bohemian Rhapsody, Keep Yourself Alive, and Stone Cold Crazy, capped off with Bettencourt and vocalist Gary Cherone’s intimate rendition of More Than Words.

Most of the songs they played were later performed again by Queen with guest vocalists including James Hetfield, Roger Daltrey, and Seal. But Extreme’s tribute would have its consequences.

“Yes, we got into a lot of trouble for performing all Queen music instead of Extreme songs, as no artist was allowed to perform Queen till the all-star jam,” Bettencourt continues. “But it was fucking worth it because we needed to let everyone know how much impact Freddie had on us and celebrate the music of Queen that shaped and changed our lives.

“The only way to do that was to risk performing a Queen medley for the first time. Not very smart in front of Queen, Bowie, Elton [John], Guns [N’ Roses], Metallica, and the immense talent that was there side-stage. But we knew that would be the only way to rock the house that Queen built: Wembley Stadium.

“Having survived it, I can tell you that Freddie was in that building, ’cause the shivers and lightning shooting right through me during every second of that set was something, till this day, I’ve never felt again.”

“Thank you to all the Queen fans at Wembley that day for allowing us to entertain you. It was an honor, a privilege. A gift we’ll cherish forever.”

Speaking about the show with Kylie Olsson in 2021, Bettencourt revealed that Brian May had begged the band not to go off-piste.

“We wanted to tell Brian, and when we told him, it was the first and last time I've ever argued with him. He was upset that we weren't doing us, that we were doing Queen. He was like, 'I want you guys to celebrate all these bands here.' He was so adamant about us not doing it, 'Please do what you guys do' – we weren't even doing More Than Words [at the time].

“He finally said, 'Look, this is your slot, you guys do what you want to do.' He wasn't very happy with it, but he gave us the blessing, and we went up, and we don't regret it, it was amazing, it was what those fans wanted to hear, I believe.”

In related news, May recently revealed the Freddie Mercury tribute that lives in his very first Gibson signature guitar, and made one of his first public appearances since he suffered a stroke last year when he joined Benson Boone for a run-through of Bohemian Rhapsody at Coachella.

Each year, surprise collabs prove to be a key part of Coachella’s festivities. Pop superstar Benson Boone continued that tradition by tapping Brian May for a firework-laced finale to his festival set, which included a romp through Bohemian Rhapsody.

The American singer-songwriter has shot to fame in double-quick time and, was placed just below Lady Gaga – who would later rock a Suhr Custom Classic T for her performance – and Missy Elliot on the bill. However, he was evidently determined to make the most of his time on the world’s most famous festival stage – and the Queen electric guitar legend was to be his trump card.

Dressed in a white and blue jumpsuit and very regal cape that gave more than a whiff of Freddie Mercury, Boone began the cover playing a grand piano – which he then front-flipped off as May and his Red Special guitar soon rose out of the stage high above him in time for his guitar solo.

But not everyone in the crowd was as excited as Boone for the collab, with his flip getting a louder cheer than his fevered shout of “Brian May everybody!”

May stayed on for the show's closing number, Boone's chart-smashing hit Beautiful Things, which was given an altogether riffier sound. May had teased the performance on Instagram earlier in the day, posting a picture of Boone’s scheduled slot saying “Who's gonna be there tonight? This guy will shake the world.”

Afterward, Boone took to TikTok to make light of the underwhelming response May, a hero in the singer’s eyes, received on the night. He called Brian May an “absolute legend” and championed the “cultural impact he has had on the world”, but an apparent generational divide in the crowd meant the cameo fell slightly flat.

Returning to social media the next day, May clearly loved every second of his spot, saying: “I'm still reeling from last night at Coachella. Thanks to all of you folks who made it feel so special… this particular way of concluding Bohemian Rhapsody will be hard to beat in the years to come! I'm awestruck.”

This was one of May’s first major shows since suffering a minor stroke last year.

Elsewhere, Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong donned an SG Junior for his guest appearance during the Go-Go's afternoon showpiece, powering through their 1984 anthem Head Over Heels. An excitable Armstrong exclaimed, “Holy shit, I’m playing with the Go-Gos,” before hurtling into the song’s first verse.

Lady Gaga's Suhr-fuelled headline performance, meanwhile, came hot on the heels of her latest album, Mayhem, for which she's cited Nine Inch Nails as a surprise influence. Her guitar choice was likely inspired by her band member's employment of the brand, with Gaga reuniting with long-time guitarist Tim Stewart earlier this year.

Some additional guitar goodness came courtesy of Beabadoobee and LISA, whose own set was filled with some sensational solos.

Last year’s big Coachella collab shock came when Nile Rodgers and his trusty Stratocaster joined K-pop sensation Le Sserafim, while AP Dhillon's guitar-smashing antics caused controversy, leading Guitar World to ponder whether smashing instruments was still deemed cool or not.

Queen pair Brian May and Roger Taylor have spoken about the “injustice” of one of the band’s biggest money-spinning hits, with the drummer labeling some of May’s comments about his guitar playing as “slightly arrogant”.

The British rock icons were a band full of superlative songwriters, with Brian May and Roger Taylor responsible for mammoth hits like We Will Rock You, Tie Your Mother Down, and Stone Cold Crazy. Speaking in the latest issue of Mojo, May and Taylor discuss the tongue-in-cheek hit that became a “sticking point” for the quartet.

While writing for 1975's A Night at the Opera, Taylor began to sow the first seeds for what would become I'm in Love with My Car, even if May wasn't initially impressed.

“Brian was like, ‘Is this a joke?’” Taylor remembers. “I said, ‘Look at all those people out washing their cars on a Sunday morning, lavishing attention on them – they probably love their cars more than they love their wives.’ It’s a valid lyric I think, but kind of tongue in cheek, too, obviously… cars and girls – what else is there?”

Strangely, Taylor’s autophile anthem was picked to be the B-side for what would soon become their mega-selling hit single, Bohemian Rhapsody. A scene in the band’s 2018 biopic, also called Bohemian Rhapsody, plays into what quickly established itself as a running joke within Queen’s ranks that centered on the song’s unlikely success.

“There was a lot of truth in that,” May admits. “We were aware of the injustice of I’m in Love With My Car making as much money as Bohemian Rhapsody. It was a real sticking point for the band and it’s good we got through it. I think our sense of humor saved us.”

The conversation then takes a step back to look at the broader picture of their songwriting contributions to Queen’s hit-filled discography. Taylor may be a drummer by trade, but he is also a guitarist and offered plenty of songwriting heavy lifting in that respect.

“I think Roger would say to you that it’s very simplistic with him,” May had mused. “He thinks in barre chords on the whole. My contribution would be to come in and make the melodies work better. It’s a humble task but that’s what I’ve done on Roger’s songs – add a bit of color.”

That, however, isn’t as Taylor sees it.

“I’d take issue with quite a lot of that,” he retorts. “It’s a little bit, OK, so you’ve got a piano – now I’m going to come in and tune it. I don’t only think in barre chords, that’s a slightly arrogant statement to make. Brian’s a perfectionist and he will chase down the detail, but that didn’t mean I was going to let him fuck up my songs!”

In related Brian May news, the guitarist has highlighted the subtle but heartfelt tribute to Freddie Mercury that can be found on his new Gibson signature guitar and revealed how his flirtations with Marshall amps were extremely short-lived after being embarrassed by Jimi Hendrix.

He's also spoken about his recovery from the stroke he suffered last year, and explained how Rory Gallagher was pivotal in shaping his now-iconic guitar tone.

Olly Pearson – an 11-year-old guitar player from Wrexham, Wales – recently stunned Britain's Got Talent with a white-hot medley of classic rock bangers and tricky solos as he won over the judges’ hearts.

Wielding what appears to be a Patrick James Eggle guitar for his solo audition, Pearson's age-belying talents make for a heart-warming spectacle.

As Pearson explains, he started learning the electric guitar at the age of seven, and cites AC/DC's Angus Young as his favorite guitar player. For his audition, though, he drew upon the works of a few other guitar greats, who help him steal the show.

To a warm cheer from the crowd, he storms into a reverb-bolstered Highway to Hell, giving it the Young shuffle as he nails the riff, before delivering a very literal take on Van Halen's Jump fretwork workout and capping his performance off with a screaming take on Brian May's Don't Stop Me Now solo.

He even had the confidence to get up in the judge's faces at one point, having arrived well prepared with a wireless guitar system.

“I dream to become the best guitarist in the world,” Pearson had said before showing the judges, and an enthusiastic crowd, what talents he possesses. It’s a skillset that bodes very well for the future.

“Oh my god, Olly. Literally, a star is born. I have never, ever seen anything like that in my life,” said a shocked Amanda Holden, while fellow judge Simon Cowell offered him perhaps the highest praise he could: “You already have your own distinct sound, which normally people take decades [to find]. You’re that good! That was brilliant.”

It's not the first time an 11-year-old mini shredder has made a mark on the BGT stage. In 2023, Harry Churchill put his name on the map with two mesmerizing showcases. First, he donned an Epiphone Les Paul for an awe-inspiring Queen medley before delivering a Marty McFly-flavored tapping masterclass in the semi-final.

That came after a 62-year-old Grandpa honored the spirit of Eddie Van Halen with a viral incendiary audition the year before.

Across the pond, Maya Neelakantan wowed America's Got Talent judges last year. Her audition later resulted in her jamming onstage with Testament and Alex Skolnick, being gifted one of Jeff Hanneman's guitars by the late guitarist's wife, and meeting Jason Becker.

Meanwhile, another 11-year-old, Aanika Pai, left ex-Megadeth shredder Kiko Loureiro shell-shocked after she used his gear for a fiery impromptu solo at his guitar camp.

These youthful talents might leave some players feeling a little old and useless – this writer included – but it’s safe to say that the future of shred is in very safe and talented hands.

Half a century later, when discussing the road to Queen’s self-titled 1973 debut album with Brian May, it’s necessary to suspend your disbelief. Imagine, if you can, a time when the classic line-up of May, Freddie Mercury, John Deacon and Roger Taylor were not multi-platinum national treasures.

A time, in fact, when they were penniless nobodies, typically found bottom of the bill at a sweatbox club, being ushered from record label offices or facing tough questions from parents convinced these four bright boys were burning their futures for an impossible dream.

Appearing on our Zoom call in a halo of grey curls, May can smile about it now, knowing what lay ahead. In spring ’72, the band cut their first chink in the industry’s formerly impenetrable armour as they were granted nocturnal recording sessions at the famed Trident Studios.

And with precisely nothing to lose, the music flooded out, with the visceral gallop of Keep Yourself Alive leading them across the gamut of soul-metal (Doing Alright), proto-prog (My Fairy King), acoustic percussive tapping (The Night Comes Down), even flashes of flamenco (Great King Rat).

The first Queen record is a head-scratcher, though. Selling modestly on release, for 51 years, it has been the closest thing this all-conquering band had to a curio, its tracklisting unfamiliar to fans who know every note of, say, A Night At The Opera or The Works.

In that same period, the band, too, had an uneasy relationship with their opening gambit, frustrated by the album’s dry, distant sound. It’s a thorn plucked in style, however, by the new Queen I boxset: a paving slab-sized vinyl/CD package whose remastered and expanded treatment finally reveals these songs as sunken treasures to rank among the band’s very best.

If there is one final, jarring aspect of discussing May’s distant youth, it is the 77-year-old’s recent brush with mortality. In late August of 2024, the guitarist was set to conduct this interview when he suffered a minor stroke that left him temporarily unable to use his left arm.

With customary kindness, May rescheduled when his health mercifully returned, and our first question had to be how this great friend of the magazine is bearing up.

Your stroke must have been frightening. Did you wonder whether you’d play guitar again – or was that the least of your worries at the time?

“It went through my mind. When I suddenly couldn’t control this left arm, it was quite scary. I had no idea what was going on. I phoned my doctor and she said, ‘Okay, I think you’re having a minor stroke. Dial 999, get in the ambulance and I’ll see you there.’

“But even at the worst time, although I couldn’t control where the arm was, I could control my fingers. So I thought, ‘I’m probably not really in danger.’ I’m all right now. I’m just taking it slow.”

The first Queen album is largely a story of struggle, isn’t it?

“It was very tough. And I sometimes wonder if that helped to shape us because everything was a fight. It was a fight to get into a studio. It was a fight to get our own way – and we didn’t, entirely, because we were just boys and everyone else was more powerful. It was a fight to get it released – and then it got completely slaughtered by the music press.

“But later I learned we weren’t the only people being hit by those destructive arrows. In fact, that’s one thing that cheered me up. I remember they gave Led Zeppelin a bad review, and I just thought, ‘Well, Jesus Christ, if they don’t understand that [throws up his hands]…’”

Likewise, every label rejected your demo recorded at De Lane Lea Studios?

“Nobody bit. Not one record company wanted it. Some of them said, ‘Come back in a few years, we’ll talk to you then.’ Again, it strengthens your resolve. You look inside yourself and you think, ‘No, actually, I do believe in this.’ Very early on, as soon as we had John, we really felt we had the power.”

Perhaps it’s no surprise your father didn’t approve of your musical career. But could he really complain, given that he helped you build the Red Special?

“Well, you wouldn’t think he could complain – but he did! He liked helping me with my hobby, but when the hobby became my career, he was very unhappy. I think he also felt he’d sacrificed a lot of his own life to enable me to take my education so far.

“Me giving that up was the worst thing he could imagine. So it was hard for him. It took a long time to sort that out. It only got sorted when I flew him to Madison Square Garden on Concorde, sat him down and said, ‘Okay dad, what do you think?’ A great moment. I think we all need that approval from our parents, don’t we?”

The early ’70s was the golden era of blues-rock. And Queen were definitely not that.

“There were a lot of people staring at their feet on stage. I don’t know if that made it easier or harder to break through. We just knew what we wanted to be. It was very arrogant of us, but we had big dreams.

“We wanted to give people the experience we’d felt watching The Who at Regent Street Polytechnic. They were an hour late, and when they finally got on stage, it was like an earthquake.

“We wanted to give people that same intake of breath. The sound, the lights, the performance, the clothing, the drama – give them everything we had. And, yes, it was very different from the mood of the day. It also wasn’t glam-rock. That was going on at the same time and it’s very much about the glitter or whatever. Which we weren’t.”

As a live band, could you have competed with Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin?

“Well, we had to. There’s videos from the early days and I think we were pretty good. Very early on, we arrived at this view that being a live act was not the same as the studio. Actually, it was simpler because there’s only four of us on stage and no overdubs. It took me a long time to feel confident about being the only guitar on stage.

“I always felt like I needed a rhythm guitar. But, gradually, I got into this habit of playing lead and rhythm at the same time – and I realised that nobody noticed the lack of it. So we had enough. You could fashion that live performance to make people feel they’d heard an orchestra.”

It was while recording Queen’s demo that you first tracked a three-part solo. How did that feel?

“Amazing. That was in my head long before I could actually make it happen. It goes right back to hearing Jeff Beck on Hi Ho Silver Lining, where he double-tracks his lead. I never asked him about it, but he goes into a two-part harmony – probably accidentally – halfway through. And I realised it would be possible to build up whole panoramas of orchestral sounds but with guitars. So I had this vision that the solo for Keep Yourself Alive could be this three-part sequence. But to actually make it happen was a great moment.

“Okay, there was one predecessor, when I did a two-part harmony on Earth, a single we did as Smile. But the three-part harmony is the big deal. Because things suddenly get colourful if you use three parts in creative ways.

“Not just parallel 3rds and 5ths, which is an easy trap to fall into; I never wanted to do that. I always wanted the tensions and colours of dissonance and counterpoint. Everything that an orchestral arranger needs to know, you have to get in your head if you’re going to do something that endures.”

Eventually, the sessions proper began at Trident. How was the atmosphere?

“We were pretty jolly. This was an amazing opportunity, and we were all leaving our supposed careers behind. In a sense, we were aware we were leaving our families and friends behind as well. Because once you put a foot on that road, it takes you a long way from everything you know. But we had each other and our belief that we were doing something special that nobody else could do. We had that insane optimism.

“Through the years, there’s been times when there was tension from trying to paint on the same canvas. You’re feeling sidelined, your baby is being neglected or whatever. But in the case of the first album, that hasn’t happened yet. We’re just thrilled to be there.

“So on the ‘Sessions’ CD in this boxset, you hear snatches of us baiting each other, having a laugh. But you can also tell we’re serious about what we’re doing. We get frustrated when it’s not right, when we can’t get the blend or things aren’t in time. Making that album was an amazing exploratory process. It’s like giving a sculptor his first bit of clay and saying, ‘Here you go.’”

Could you immediately relax as a studio player or did that take time?

“There’s a definite learning process. I remember finding that with the backing tracks you could immerse yourself and let go fairly quickly. Overdubbing is actually harder to keep the spontaneity. Because you’re standing there with your headphones on. Your guitar is revved up. And you’re waiting for your moment.

“It feels unnatural. But I got into this little trick where I fooled myself into thinking I was playing live, and when the moment hit, I was on stage and there were people out there watching.”

How would you describe yourself as a guitarist back then?

“I’m surprised, looking back, how complete I was. I don’t think I can play that much better now than I could then. It had all happened in the teenage years. It’s quite a hothouse, where I came from. Richmond and Twickenham is where The Yardbirds and Rolling Stones came from.

“I had lots of mates to play with and there was fierce competition. You know, ‘Have you heard this latest solo? How did Hank Marvin do that? Can you do that?’ So I learned quickly, and maybe you do when you’ve got that amount of passion and hunger in your body.”

Would you play anything differently if you were tracking that debut album now?

“Actually, no. We’re rebuilding the sound on the boxset. But we didn’t feel the urge to change any of the performances. It would be different, but it wouldn’t necessarily be better. I honestly wouldn’t change a note – and we didn’t.”

That was the first run-out for your homemade Red Special. Wasn’t there pressure to use a standard production model?

“Not at the time. I remember, much later, when we did Crazy Little Thing Called Love, I said, ‘I want a James Burton atmosphere on the solo, so I’m going to make my guitar sound like a Telecaster.’ And the producer, Reinhold Mack, who’s a dour old sod, said, ‘Well, why don’t you just play one?’ But that’s probably the only time in my whole career when I’ve given way.

“The Red Special held up surprisingly well. I did have doubts in the early days because I knew it sounded different from what everybody else was using. It was different from a Strat: it’s warmer. It’s different from a Gibson: it’s got more top-end. It’s got a very wide sound.

“But hearing it back through the speakers was thrilling. Everyone had told us, ‘Nah, it’s never going to work.’ But hearing that stuff coming back, we thought, ‘We can conquer the world.’ We weren’t a modest lot [laughs]. But that self-belief has to be there. It has to be the source of your power.”

“You know, the Red Special was designed to make that kind of noise. We wanted it to sing. We wanted it to feed back. That’s why it’s got the acoustic pockets in the body. I still don’t know if it was all thanks to our design or luck, but it just made that sound. Still does.”

Were the other elements of your classic rig – the AC30 and Dallas Rangemaster treble booster – already in place?

“Yes. That was there from the moment I saw Rory Gallagher and managed to stay behind at The Marquee when everyone had gone home. I asked him, ‘Rory, how do you get that sound?’ And he said, ‘Well, it’s easy, I have the AC30 and this little box, and I turn it up and it sings for me.’

“The next day, I went to a guitar shop and found two secondhand AC30s for £30 each. I found a treble booster. And that did it. I plugged in with my guitar, turned all the way up and it just melted my stomach. That’s my sound. And it’s different from Rory’s. His is much more bright.”

You came up in the era of the Marshall amp stack. Did that never call to you?

“It did – but it was a false call! I remember, we played one show at Olympia. Top of the bill was Jimi Hendrix and everybody essentially played through the same gear. So I plugged into a Marshall stack with my guitar and treble booster. Turned it all the way up – and it sounded so awful. I could hardly play. I didn’t know what to do.

“It sounded like an angry wasp. It didn’t have any depth or articulation, I couldn’t play chords. It was a really hard experience for me.

“After we’d played, I stayed behind backstage and I looked through between the amps as Jimi came on stage, plugged into that same amp – and it sounded like cataclysm.

“I think he had some kind of voodoo magic, but he made that amp sound like an orchestra. And for me, it just didn’t work. So I never got on with Marshalls. I knew Jim Marshall and got on with him very well, but I could never quite tell him, ‘Sorry, I can’t quite get to grips with your amps…’”

How did Roy Thomas Baker record your guitars?

“Roy was a brilliant technician, but his head was in a completely different place from us. He’d been recording things like Get It On, when he’d plugged Marc Bolan’s guitar directly into the desk. So it had no ambience whatsoever. You have no natural amp sound, no compression or smooth distortion. All you have is the direct sound of the guitar, and if you turn it up a lot, it distorts the electronics in the desk – which is a nasty sound, I would say.

“So this was the complete opposite of the way I wanted my guitar to be recorded. I wanted it to have the sound of the amp and the room. So we had a bit of a fight. To be fair, Roy and I had a long relationship where we evolved really good ways of recording guitars.

“But in those days, it was such a rush. And Roy was under pressure to get that ‘Trident sound’, which was very clean, guitars all tight – and it wasn’t what we wanted, but that’s what we got because of pressure from above. The Sheffield brothers [Norman and Barry] wanted it to sound like an album that had the signature sound of Trident Studios. And we wanted to sound like Queen.”

What are your own favourite guitar moments?

“I love My Fairy King. We were experimenting with backwards stuff and I used to get the guys to turn the tape over and give me a cassette I could take home, so I was ready when we came into the studio.

“Keep Yourself Alive was supposed to be ironic, a reaction to the idea that life was just about keeping yourself alive. But I discovered it’s hard to be ironic in a rock song. It came out sounding jolly. And in the end I didn’t fight it because people got a lift from it, so why not?

“That riff goes all the way back. I remember playing it on acoustic at parties, late at night, when people are sitting around. And I remember being surprised that people were impressed because I was a loner and didn’t very often play to people. I remember everyone surrounding me going, ‘Wow, we’ve never seen that before.’”

What’s happening at the start of The Night Comes Down?

“That was played on a very unorthodox guitar. It’s a little acoustic that had belonged to my best friend at school, Dave Dilloway, who drilled holes all over it to put pickups on. So it looked a mess. I put my own bridge on and made it lower and lower until eventually the strings were buzzing on the frets.

“But I thought, ‘Well, I actually like this, it sounds like a sitar.’ So I designed the bridge with all sorts of junk, like needles and pins, to make each string buzz. It’s a guitar that no-one else would take seriously, but it made that particular noise on The Night Comes Down. I’m tapping it and making it buzz, and John is playing in unison with me. When it comes to the chorus, that’s me doing Mantovani’s strings with guitars.”

Big rockstars always say the most exciting moment is that first breakthrough. Is that how Queen I felt?

“Yes. And thanks for calling me a big rockstar. I’m still a kid! I haven’t changed since those days. But it’s a good question. And the moment we felt it was that first Imperial College gig after the album was released. I’d been on the entertainments committee at Imperial College. We booked Hendrix to play in that big Union Hall, and I remember thinking, if we ever did anything like that, it would be incredible.

“Three years later, we’d booked it out, and from being a band that everybody walked past, suddenly we had an audience who actually wanted to hear what we did. Instead of people who grudgingly listened but really they’d rather hear us play covers – they were shouting out for our songs. That was an extraordinary moment. I remember that thought in my head: ‘There is a boulder rolling here…’”

• Queen I is out now via EMI.

Brian May unveiled his rather luxurious Gibson SJ-200 12-string acoustic signature guitar last month, and the instrument came fitted with a subtle, wholesome tribute to the late Freddie Mercury that you might have missed.

The Queen guitarist was, in a surprise move, unveiled as a Gibson signature artist last year as he helped cut the ribbon of the Gibson Garage store in London alongside Jimmy Page and Tony Iommi.

The partnership has led to talk of a Gibson-made Red Special, which May hopes will happen, but in the meantime, the 12-string represents his first creative venture with the historic firm.

“The 12-string I was accustomed to wasn’t performing,” May previously recalled of his signature's origin story. “Gibson kindly said, ‘We’ll make you something special.’”

While the SJ-200 stands out by reversing the order of the octave and regular acoustic guitar strings to suit May's strumming style, it also features a subtle but classy nod to Freddie Mercury, the iconic frontman with whom he and Queen took over the world.

Discussing the guitar in an extended video during which he muses on his love for both art and astronomy, May revealed how his Mercury tribute comes via his namesake planet, which has been etched onto its beautiful pickguard art.

“I believe that the best science is done artistically, and the best art is done with a knowledge of the universe. Look at the science of this guitar,” he purrs. “Look how much technology and craftsmanship has gone into this.

“They were able to put the universe here in some figurative way, and look what's right here in the middle: The planet Mercury. That's a little nod to a friend of mine.

“Freddie's always with me,” he continues, “because he was like a brother. The relationships in Queen lasted longer than any of our marriages. It was a big, big thing. We still carry Queen around with us, even though we don't have Freddie. But I have a Mercury on the guitar now, which makes me very happy.”

Since Mercury's passing, May has performed Love of My Life solo (with the help of old footage of the vocalist) with a 12-string guitar as a tribute to the singer, and so it's fitting that his new guitar will carry his spirit into the band's future live performances.

“Love of my Life was written by Freddie on a piano,” he says of the song. “I played harp on it, and in the intro a Japanese Koto.

“We wanted to play it live on stage. I picked up a 12-string and found that I could make it sing with Freddie quite easily, but probably even more importantly than that, it became a staple feature of our set. We would always quit the bombast, come down very small, and just Freddie and I would play together. It was always a lovely feeling.

“When we lost Freddie, I wanted to play Love of my Life just the way we used to, so it became an audience thing where they all sing it and I hardly need to sing it at all. It just seemed right to involve Freddie.”

The acoustic guitar's release comes after May admitted he had originally wanted a rhythm guitarist in Queen and how Jimi Hendrix put an abrupt end to his experiments with Marshall amps. His career has been underpinned by his love of Vox AC30 amps, a gear recommendation he got from none other than Rory Gallagher.

After announcing their unexpected partnership early last year, Gibson and Brian May have unveiled their first collaborative signature guitar creation – and it’s not a Murphy Lab Red Special.

Instead, the legendary Queen guitarist has been honored with a 12-string SJ-200 acoustic guitar.

When May and Gibson first confirmed they would be working together, many speculated that the partnership would lead to Custom Shop (and maybe even Epiphone) recreations of the iconic Red Special.

Hype was further fanned when May himself revealed to Guitar World that reissues of the DIY guitar he made with his father were indeed on the cards, but it seems we’ll have to wait a little longer for a Gibson Red Special.

For their first drop, the pair have instead prioritized a 12-string SJ-200, which was designed specifically for May after he required one for tour. However, it’s quite unlike your standard 12-string – not only are 12-string SJ-200s exceptionally uncommon, this particular example has also been altered to suit May’s personal strumming style.

As May explains in a press release, his signature SJ-200 flips the 12-string script on its head by reversing the order of the octave and regular acoustic guitar strings.

“The idea for this guitar came when I needed a 12-String on tour, and the one I was accustomed to wasn’t performing right on stage,” May explains. “The guys at Gibson very kindly said, ‘We’ll make you something special that you can use on the tours.’

“One of the things I asked for was for the octaves to be placed around the other way from where it is normally done, because I like to pick upwards and hear the top notes when I’m playing. I like to hear the high octave coming through as then I can play tunes on it.”

A bevy of top-notch tonewoods form the foundation of May’s first Gibson, with AAA rosewood back and sides lining up alongside an AAA Sitka spruce top that boasts an elegant Vintage Sunburst finish.

Elsewhere, there’s a rosewood fingerboard with agoya shell eight-point star inlays, a planetary themed pickguard designed by May, and gold Grover Mini Rotomatic tuners, as well as a solid rosewood moustache bridge, walnut stringer and Fishman Matrix electronics.

All in all, it’s a very pretty SJ-200 indeed, but as May is quick to point out, it’s also a display of refined acoustic guitar engineering. The decision to reverse-mount the strings – so the thicker-gauge strings are on top of the thinner octaves – is a small but influential decision that will have a huge impact on its tone and playability.

As Gibson puts it, it lends itself to “a distinctive sound that’s unlike other Gibson 12-String acoustic models”.

May, unsurprisingly, is impressed: “If you look at this guitar, the beauty of it, and the beauty of the sound, and look at the science in this guitar, look how much technology and craftsmanship has gone into this guitar.

“Gibson was able to put the universe on it in a figurative way and the planet Mercury is here, and that is a little nod to a friend of mine that is always with me.”

“As a trailblazing sound pioneer, trendsetter, and one of the most influential musicians of all time, it’s an absolute privilege to be collaborating with Sir Brian May,” says Cesar Gueikian, CEO of Gibson, of the new release.

“Brian’s impact on music and culture is second to none and was a transformational influence on my personal music journey. We are deeply honored that Brian has trusted Gibson with this SJ-200 12-string guitar, and we are excited to finally bring it to music lovers around the world.”

Only 100 of these 12-string SJ-200s will be made, and they’ll be available for $7,999 via the Gibson Garages in Nashville and London, and on the Gibson website.

Head over to Gibson to find out more.

While Queen would go on to become one of history's most enduring live powerhouses (who can forget their Live Aid performance at Wembley Stadium?), Brian May recently revealed that he initially felt insecure about being the only guitarist in the band, and even campaigned for the inclusion of a rhythm guitarist in the band’s early days.

“There’s videos from the early days and I think we were pretty good,” he tells Guitarist. “Very early on, we arrived at this view that being a live act was not the same as the studio. Actually, it was simpler because there’s only four of us on stage and no overdubs.

“It took me a long time to feel confident about being the only guitar on stage. I always felt like I needed a rhythm guitar. But, gradually, I got into this habit of playing lead and rhythm at the same time – and I realized that nobody noticed the lack of it. So we had enough. You could fashion that live performance to make people feel they’d heard an orchestra.”

May's wish did come true in the mid-'80s, when Queen added Spike Edney to their touring lineup for the European leg of 1984's The Works tour.

While primarily a keyboardist, Edney contributed rhythm guitar to various tracks and continued playing with Queen at almost every show until the band stopped touring in 1986.

He later resumed his role, even joining May in The Brian May Band and returning as keyboardist for the Queen + Adam Lambert tours. In fact, he can be spotted supporting May on rhythm guitar during Hammer to Fall in Queen's Live at Wembley Stadium and Hungarian Rhapsody concert films.

Another rhythm guitarist May had the pleasure of adding to his lineup? Jamie Moses – who became Queen’s second guitarist from 1998 through 2009, as well as playing in The Brian May Band.

Speaking to Guitar World about how Edney played a role in him managing to clinch the highly coveted role, Moses said, “I met him at the Freddie Mercury tribute at Wembley while I was playing with Bob Geldof. My old mate, Spike Edney – who still plays keyboards with Queen – said, ‘Come on, we’ll introduce you to Brian…’ Within six months, he put the Brian May Band together; Spike called me up and I got the gig.”

And last but not least, Freddie Mercury himself did occasionally experiment with guitar. “He was very good on the guitar, very unorthodox – all downstrokes,” relayed May in a 2019 Guitar World interview. “He wrote the riff for Ogre Battle [from 1974’s Queen II].

“I used to play it with up- and downstrokes, but he was all downstrokes. Imagine how fast his right hand was moving! He played the rhythm on Crazy Little Thing Called Love [1979]. I wanted to sound as good as Freddie did on that record, which was damn good!”

For more from May, plus new interviews with Eric Johnson and Rosanne Cash, pick up issue 521 of Guitarist at Magazines Direct.

Certain elements of Brian May’s gear are imprinted in the consciousness of guitar players. The Red Special is, of course, as inextricably linked to May as his halo of curls. His devotion to the Vox AC30 comes in at a close second.

Now, more than half a century after the release of Queen's self-titled 1973 debut – and with the recent reissue of the Queen I box set, a reworked version of the album that started it all – May looks back on those early days and tips his cap to the legendary guitarist who converted him into a Vox disciple.

“[The AC30 and Dallas Rangemaster treble booster] was there from the moment I saw Rory Gallagher,” May tells Guitarist. “I managed to stay behind at [legendary London venue] The Marquee when everyone had gone home.

“I asked him, ‘Rory, how do you get that sound?’ And he said, ‘Well, it’s easy, I have the AC30 and this little box, and I turn it up and it sings for me.’ The next day, I went to a guitar shop and found two secondhand AC30s for £30 each.

“I found a treble booster. I plugged in with my guitar, turned all the way up and it just melted my stomach. That’s my sound. And it’s different from Rory’s. His is much more bright.”

In an interview for the film What's Going On - Taste Live At The Isle Of Wight [below], May discusses the same meeting – and how he would watch Gallagher and his band Taste on a near weekly basis during the latter’s residency at the London club in the late ’60s.

“We were boys and we hung around and hid when The Marquee was at turning-out time and then we strolled over as if we ought to be there...” remembers May.

“He was incredibly patient. He was packing up his own gear – that’s the kind of man he was... and he had the grace to speak to us. He didn’t go, ‘Get out of here!’”

Later in the Guitarist interview, May reveals that he also experimented with Fender Strats and Gibson Les Pauls during that period – and even recalls one ill-fated gig in which he tried running through a Marshall stack.

“I plugged into a Marshall stack with my guitar and treble booster, turned it all the way up – and it sounded so awful. I could hardly play,” May tells Guitarist.

“I didn’t know what to do. It sounded like an angry wasp. It didn’t have any depth or articulation, I couldn’t play chords. It was a really hard experience for me.”

May notes with good humor that the night’s headliner – Jimi Hendrix – did not suffer from the same issues with the Marshall.

For more from May, plus new interviews with Eric Johnson and Rosanne Cash, pick up issue 521 of Guitarist at Magazines Direct.

Brian May has opened up on his recent health scare, which briefly left him fearing he’d be unable to play the guitar again.

In September last year, the Queen electric guitar hero revealed he was recovering after suffering a “minor stroke”, and at the time said there was some concern over whether he’d be able to pick up the Red Special again after he lost control of one of his arms.

In the new issue of Guitarist, May issued an update on his health, and said he was “all right now”, even if he did have those initial fears.

“It went through my mind,” May responds, when asked if he thought he might never play the guitar again.

“When I suddenly couldn’t control this left arm, it was quite scary,” he continues. “I had no idea what was going on. I phoned my doctor and she said, ‘Okay, I think you’re having a minor stroke. Dial 999, get in the ambulance and I’ll see you there.’”

However, while the thought of a future without guitar playing momentarily played on his mind, May was never really in any doubt he’d pick up his six-string again as he could still move his digits.

“Even at the worst time, although I couldn’t control where the arm was, I could control my fingers.” explains May. “So I thought, ‘I’m probably not really in danger.’ I’m all right now. I’m just taking it slow.”

It is, of course, a positive update. Although May did his best to allay fan fears at the time, hearing the guitar virtuoso admit he’d lost control of his arm was still alarming.

“I'm here to bring you some good news: the good news is that I can play guitar after the events of the last few days,” he said in the clip last September.

“I say this because it was in some doubt because that little health hiccup that I mentioned happened about a week ago, and what they called it was a 'minor stroke.'

“All of a sudden out of the blue I didn’t have any control of this arm, so it’s a little scary. I had the most fantastic care and attention from Frimley Hospital.”

Elsewhere in his Guitarist interview, May recalls the one time he experimented with a Marshall stack – which he says “sounded awful”, only for one Jimi Hendrix to step after him...

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Guitarist, which also features interviews with Eric Johnson, Rosanne Cash, and Andy Timmons.

Brian May and the Vox AC30 guitar amp: it's like peanut butter and jelly, bread and butter, baseball and hot dogs. That and, of course, his trademark Red Special electric guitar, and you have one of the most iconic player/instrument/amp combos in rock.

That's not to say, though, that May arrived at that setup straight away.

In Queen's early days, May didn't have a backup Red Special on hand, leading him to have to turn to Strats and Les Pauls – neither of which he ever clicked with – on occasion.

Having gotten his real start in the rock guitar world in the early '70s, May was also absolutely surrounded by Marshall stacks, which were seen as both a necessity in the nascent arena rock circuit – which didn't really exist until the late '60s – and a weapon in the loudness war of sorts that was fast developing between the biggest bands of the period.

Asked by Guitarist in a recent interview if he was ever tempted to follow his contemporaries down the Marshall road, May replied in the affirmative, vividly recalling the night he experimented with a fabled Marshall stack.

“We played one show at Olympia [in London]. Top of the bill was Jimi Hendrix and everybody essentially played through the same gear,” the guitarist recalled. “So I plugged into a Marshall stack with my guitar and treble booster. Turned it all the way up – and it sounded so awful. I could hardly play.

“I didn’t know what to do. It sounded like an angry wasp. It didn’t have any depth or articulation, I couldn’t play chords. It was a really hard experience for me.”

Naturally, as May observed, Mr. James Marshall Hendrix seemed a bit more at home with that particular sonic weapon.

“After we’d played, I stayed behind backstage and I looked through between the amps as Jimi came on stage, plugged into that same amp – and it sounded like a cataclysm,” May recalled.

To read the full interview with May – in which the guitarist discusses the new Queen I boxset, poverty, parental disapproval, and the Red Special’s first run-out – pick up a copy of the new issue of Guitarist at Magazines Direct.

For Chris Shiflett, joining the Foo Fighters in 1999 quickly turned into a whirlwind adventure.

Within 48 hours of becoming the band’s second guitarist, he found himself guitar shopping with Dave Grohl’s Amex, and not long after that, he was sharing stages with some huge names.

More recently, that’s included jamming Hot For Teacher with Wolfgang Van Halen, but when Shiflett was asked who his most memorable stage-sharers have been in an upcoming chat with Guitar World, a few key names stood out above the rest.

“When we played at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Paul McCartney came out and we did a song with him,” he reflects. “I remember really specifically prepping myself to stay in the moment, look around, breathe deep, take it all in, look at your bandmates, look at Paul McCartney, look at your family right over there.

“And of course, when you start doing that, you start playing the song wrong. So there you go!”

Macca wasn't the only artist to have made an impression on Shiflett. Elsewhere in his GW chat, he also singles out Brian May as a particularly influential collaborator.

“Guitar-wise, Brian May would be a big one,” he says. “That was when I first joined Foo Fighters. We played at Brixton Academy not too long after that and that was the first time I experienced Brian coming out and playing a song with us.

“All of a sudden you’re standing next to that dude and you’re like, ‘It’s Brian May! That sounds like Brian May!’”

May had joined the band for their encore that evening, digging into two Queen tracks – We Will Rock You and Now I'm Here – with Roger Taylor also starring behind the drum kit. What Shiflett heard coming from May’s Red Special guitar taught him a valuable lesson.

“I love when you play with some of these folks and it reminds you of how much of it is in the hands,” Shiflett goes on. “It’s who they are, it’s how they play and it’s that tone.”

Shiflett has just dropped a stunning signature 'Cleaver' Telecaster Deluxe with Fender. The guitar has been “road-tested, kicked around, and X-rayed” to meet the guitarist’s exacting specs.

He’s also recently took a divebomb-friendly custom-built Superstrat on tour with him for the Foo’s latest shows, having gotten the idea from Richie Sambora.

Keep your eyes on GW for the full interview, which includes an in-depth look at his new Tele, essential gear, and the impact his Shred With Shifty podcast has had on his playing.

Queen I, the legendary band's 1973 debut, presented a band full of ambition and genre-hopping ideas, offering a sneak peek into what would become a legendary career.

Fast-forward to 2024, and Queen has now unveiled a reworked version of the album that started it all, in the form of an opulent six-CD, one-LP deluxe box set – including alternative takes, live recordings, demos, and revamped guitar parts.

“Every instrument has been re-examined from the bottom up,” Brian May tells MOJO. “The guitars were originally recorded very dry, so we’ve remedied that. I remember my dad saying, ‘There’s no ambience, Brian. I don’t feel like I’m in the room with you playing next to me.’

“But we weren’t in a position to lay down the law, and we felt that if we stepped out of line we would lose the opportunity altogether.”

May goes on to say that while producer Roy Thomas Baker did a great job given the circumstances, he found himself in a difficult position, wedged between the “young hopefuls” and a “management company [Trident Audio Productions] who saw us as a can of beans.”

The guitarist clarifies that he isn’t saying the original version was bad; rather, “it just wasn’t what we dreamed of.” He reveals that both Freddie Mercury and John Deacon were quite unhappy with some parts and were “conscious” of an important piece of their past that “seemed like it couldn’t be fixed.”

The reworked version doesn't take away the magic of the original, but as May stresses, it amplifies it.

“All the performances are exactly as they originally appeared in 1973, but every instrument has been revisited to produce the ‘live’ ambient sounds we would have liked to use originally,” he writes on his official website. “The result is ‘Queen’ as it would have sounded with today’s knowledge and technology – a first.”

In other Brian May news, the Queen guitarist recently endorsed The Last Dinner Party's Emily Roberts, referring to the band as “the new British Rock Royalty”.

Queen I is now available from the official Queen store.

From the second Jamie Moses laid hands on a cheap Silvertone guitar, a life in the music industry became his only aim in life.

“You’ve got to make it work. You’ve got to have ambition,” he tells Guitar World. “Today it’s a completely different setup – kids don’t play in pubs for next to nothing and spend the whole night sweating to work their way up, which is a real shame. They’re missing out.”

After putting in his hours, he secured a gig with The Animals’ Eric Burdon in the late ’80s, even though he felt his style wasn’t a match, before hooking up with Brian May’s solo band in the early ’90s.

That morphed into his gig as Queen’s second guitarist from 1998 through 2009. Moses has since played Mike and the Mechanics, Broken English and others, and with his own band, Los Pacaminos.

Asked what’s kept him around, Moses says: “There’s a million guitar players and a lot of them are better than me. But not every guitar player can sing. If you can, that’s one less person to hire, one less wage, one less hotel and one less flight. It’s a no-brainer. If you can do that, it’s important.”

How has being a self-taught guitarist impacted your journey?

“In around 1965, when I was 10, all you could do was watch others play, listen to them and steal from them! You’d watch their wrists and licks and think, ‘I’ll give that a while and stick it into something else.’”

When did guitar go from a hobby to a legitimate career path?

“I saw the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, and there was just something about those guys holding those guitars, enjoying each other’s company, having a laugh and making great music. I had to do it – I just had to.

“I couldn’t see myself doing anything else. A career counselor at school said, ‘What if that doesn’t work out?’ I said, ‘It’s got to work out because that’s what I’m going to do.’ He said, ‘Yes… but let’s imagine that it doesn’t…’ I said, ‘I can’t do that.’”

You never considered giving up even when it got hard?

“There were loads of those moments. But you can’t give into those; you’ve got to put that aside and keep going. I had friends who said, ‘I’m going to get a part-time job to see me through; that’ll give me some money to pursue music.’ Many of them stopped being musicians because they relied on that income to keep bodies and souls together.”

How did you jump from playing on air force bases to kicking off your freelance career in the UK?

“When my dad retired from the US Air Force, the family moved back to England, where my mother was from. The Melody Maker music paper had loads of classifieds; I’d look every week to see if anybody needed a guitar player and worked my way up from there.”

One of your earliest gigs with The Animals’ Eric Burdon. What was that experience like?

“Eric is a special soul, almost like a father figure to me, being the big Animals fan I am. To work in that band was such an honor. But I’ve got to say, back then, in the ’80s, me and the rest of the band were not suited for his style. He needed an old-style bluesy, R&B kind of band.

“We were very ’80s; I had an Aria and an Ibanez, the Tom Scholz Rockman and four or five rack-mount units. Just terrible, awful! The ’80s never suited Eric. What he’s doing now is truer to his roots.”

You hooked up with Brian May in the early ’90s. How did that happen?

“I met him at the Freddie Mercury tribute at Wembley while I was playing with Bob Geldof. My old mate, Spike Edney – who still plays keyboards with Queen – said, ‘Come on, we’ll introduce you to Brian…’ Within six months, he put the Brian May Band together; Spike called me up and I got the gig.

“It was a fun thing. We did a world tour with Guns N’ Roses, opening for them. That was eventful – as you can imagine! I hung out with Slash quite a bit. I remember going out for a Mexican meal with him and his wife at the time. We were going up to his place after the restaurant, and he’d had a couple of drinks and was driving.

“His wife grabbed hold of the steering wheel because he was heading toward a canyon! Me and Spike were in the back seat going, ‘Nooooo!’ We ended up at his house, and that went on till four in the morning or something. Steve Lukather turned up and fell in the front door, which was hilarious. Luke is a very good friend now.”

The gig with Brian’s solo band gave way to Queen + Paul Rodgers. Did you need to alter your rig to accommodate the iconic Queen sound?

“When I auditioned with Brian for his band, I had this amp called the Fender 75, which was a combo. I had two of them and and old Strat that I still use. Brian said, ‘What a great guitar sound you’ve got!’

“Once we got to doing the Queen thing, I used that for a little while. One day Brian said, ‘How would you feel about using one of my Brian May guitars? Like a copy of mine?’ I said, ‘Yeah, sure,’ and I ended up doing that.

“I found it harder to use and control because all the switches and knobs are in a weird place. But Brian said, ‘I’ll get one made for you – just tell them if you want anything different.’ I got it, and Brian came to soundcheck and said, ‘Is that the new guitar?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘What’s that knob for?’

“I had an extra knob by the bridge in the same place a Strat volume knob would be, so I could use it with my little finger and make the sort of violin sounds. I said, ‘It’s a volume knob.’ He said, ‘Great idea. I should put mine there now!’ But he was just humoring me – he didn’t change anything.

“I did that because the volume knob on his guitar is near the jack socket, and it’s very difficult for me to keep adjusting it from there. But there were big discussions on the Queen tour: ‘Jamie’s guitar has got a third knob; what’s that one do?’

“When they modified my guitar, the one that was the volume knob, they left it on there. So, I put a little label on it that says ‘DFA,’ which stands for ‘Does Fuck All!’”

Did you gain a greater appreciation for Brian after playing alongside him?

“Oh, he’s staggeringly good and so creative. There is nobody else as individual as him. He’s unique, and he even built his guitar from scratch. The whole sound of it, the way it goes through the treble booster, is as unusual and fantastic as it gets. Playing next to him was such an honor.”

Is there a piece of advice Brian gave you that you’ve carried onward?

“He didn’t really hand out advice. But I’ve gotta say he was very generous with me. What I took away from it is: be yourself, be true to yourself, stick to whatever you say, and play as loud as you want or need to because that’s how the greats do it. That’s how Brian does it.”

Since leaving Queen, how has your rig evolved?

“I tried a Kemper, but I realized I’d need a degree in astrophysics to make it work! I went back to my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, which works, and I use it for just about everything. Other than that, it’s whatever is appropriate for the gig. It’s easy to look at the gig and think, ‘Ah, I know what’ll work here.’”

Where do you go from here?

“I’ve got some gigs with my group Los Pacaminos, which is a thing with Paul Young that I’ve done for 32 years. I’ve another thing called Jamie and the Falcons, which is a party band. We’ve done parties for the ’Stones, Tina Turner, Paul McCartney and everybody, really.

“Then, I’ve got my SAS band with Spike Edney. We’ve got some stuff coming up before Christmas. It’s an all-star band; maybe we’ll have Roger Taylor and people like that. And I’ve got a Christmas album coming. It’s taken me three years, but I’ve done all of it and am really proud of it. It’ll be available on iTunes and wherever you get your music nowadays.”

• Moses’ album Crimbo With Jimbo – Christmas From Jamie’s House will be released in November. Check out Jamie Moses’ website for details and tour dates.

Queen guitarist Brian May has returned to the stage despite being “low on energy” following a recent minor stroke that temporarily affected mobility in his arm.

Last Saturday, he participated in the Red Special Convention in Reading, UK, and treated attendees to a special performance on his trusty Red Special, playing through a VOX AC30.

“Me at the Red Special Convention out west of London Town on Saturday. Never been before. Wasn't too sure about going this time because I've been really low on energy – but so glad I did,” he posted on Instagram.

“Thanks so much guys - you gave me so much love and a huge boost of confidence. Here I am explaining why I love VOX AC30's so much... showing what happens when you gradually turn up the input level - and a sharp glitter becomes a throaty roar - but without ever losing clarity.”

The 77-year-old guitarist also revealed this was the first time he'd picked up his guitar in two months – seemingly a first for May, who has been touring consistently for over 50 years.

Speaking about his physical health in relation to his touring schedule, May told Guitar World earlier this year: “I am [full of energy] when I’m on stage. I take my training seriously now physically. I think Roger and I are playing together probably better than ever, which is great. We don’t always get on, but we always play together great.”

This year alone, May wrapped up the Queen + Adam Lambert Rhapsody Tour in Japan, guested with Andrea Bocelli in Italy, and performed at Starmus VII Festival in Bratislava, Slovakia, which included a stellar performance with electronic, ambient, and new-age pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre.

On December 27, 1969, just a few days before the dawn of the new decade, the music world witnessed an extraordinary changing of the guard as Led Zeppelin II reached Number 1 on the Billboard charts, dethroning the Beatles’ final full-on studio effort, Abbey Road.

After hearing Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant proclaim “I’m gonna give you every inch of my love” on their hit, Whole Lotta Love, the Beatles probably realized their days of singing sweet harmonies in an octopus’s garden were numbered.

And if the cover of Abbey Road is any evidence, the Fab Four apparently saw no other choice but to immediately vacate their recording studio and march, single file, into the streets of London, never to be heard from again.

Zeppelin would go on to dominate the sound and psyche of the ’70s. Their first four albums created templates for almost everything that was to follow in the next decade, including riff rock (Whole Lotta Love), heavy metal (Immigrant Song), prog (Dazed and Confused), power balladry (Stairway to Heaven), arena blooze (The Lemon Song), glam (Black Dog) and country rock (Bron-Yr-Aur-Stomp).

They even paved the way for late-’70s punk and the first Van Halen album. Guitarist Johnny Ramone once confessed that he honed his pioneering punk-rock skills by playing Zeppelin’s Communication Breakdown repeatedly. And Edward Van Halen told Guitar World in 2008 that, “I think I got the idea of tapping [while] watching Jimmy Page do his Heartbreaker solo back in 1971.”

But perhaps Led Zeppelin’s most important contribution to the ’70s was their fierce, uncompromising attitude. The band revolutionized the music industry when they negotiated their game-changing record deal with Atlantic Records that allowed guitarist Jimmy Page to produce their albums without any label interference. Additionally, the group retained control of all jacket artwork, press ads, publicity pictures and anything else related to their image.

As Page explained, “I wanted artistic control in a vise grip, because I knew exactly what I wanted to do.”

And what Zeppelin wanted to do was… everything and anything! They had this crazy notion that musicians should have the artistic freedom to play what they want — and that their fans might enjoy it. As it turned out, people did indeed love their wild experimentalism, and so did the record companies, who discovered they could make a ton of cash by allowing the band to have their own way.

Zeppelin’s example opened the floodgates to an intensely creative era that ushered in dozens of astonishing new genres of music, all played on adventurous FM radio stations.

Just a tiny sampling of the albums released in ’70s is enough to make any guitar nerd choke on their Ernie Balls – The Dark Side of the Moon, Sticky Fingers, Hotel California, Marquee Moon, Night at the Opera, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Van Halen, Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols, Machine Head – the mind boggles.

Given the vast scope of music made during the ’70s, trying to sum up guitar playing in the era is like attempting to solve a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded while riding a roller coaster in sequined bell-bottoms. It’s damn difficult! But let’s give it a shot…

The rise of heavy metal

You could argue that heavy metal was forged in the Sixties by bands like Cream, Jimi Hendrix, the Jeff Beck Group and, of course, Led Zeppelin. But you’d be wrong.

Sure, those bands started the ball rolling by chugging power chords through big-ass 100-watt Marshalls, but most of what they were playing was just amplified blues mixed with a bit o’ weird hippie psychedelia.

To make real heavy metal – 100 percent certified heavy metal – they were missing two ingredients: the devil… and Tony Iommi.

Hailing from the sooty factory town of Birmingham, England, Black Sabbath, featuring guitarist Iommi, along with vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward, set the world ablaze in 1970 with two groundbreaking albums, Black Sabbath and Paranoid. Their ominous riffs and occult-inspired lyrics on anthems like Iron Man, The Wizard and Electric Funeral would inspire thousands of bands, including Judas Priest, Van Halen, Slayer, Metallica and Ghost.

Given their preoccupation with the supernatural, it’s no surprise that their backstory reads like something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales… but a whole lot grimmer. On the day Iommi was quitting his sheet metal factory job to become a full-time musician, catastrophe struck – he lost the tips of the middle and ring fingers of his right hand in a gruesome industrial accident.

A machine press came down and caught his fingers, and when he recoiled, the ends were ripped right off! (If there was ever a sentence that deserved an exclamation mark, it’s that one.)

However, Iommi wasn’t going to let a little thing like a couple of severed fingers stop him from playing guitar. Resourcefully, he used his machine-shop skills to custom-make special fingertip pads out of plastic and leather. Then, to make his guitar easier to play, he set his instrument’s action as low as it could go and detuned his strings to lessen the tension even further.

To Iommi’s surprise, when he plugged in his guitar into his Laney amp and cranked up his Dallas Rangemaster overdrive pedal, those elements coalesced into a deep, gut-rattling sound unlike anyone had heard before.

As Iommi later observed, “Some people believe the accident invented heavy metal, and it probably did. It helped me invent a new kind of music – a new sound and different style of playing.” He probably should’ve added, “But kids, don’t try this at home…”

Southern Harmony

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, so while Black Sabbath were busy serving up doom and gloom in U.K. in 1970, the Allman Brothers Band were spreading good vibes and magic ’shrooms throughout the southern United States.

Formed in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1969, the Allman Brothers Band migrated to Macon, Georgia, where they began building a reputation for their incredible live shows that combined elements of rock, blues, jazz and country music into memorable songs and explosive improvisations.

Their exciting smorgasbord of influences was unlike anything audiences had ever heard, but what really made the six-piece band unique were the soaring, harmonized twin lead guitars of Duane Allman and Dickey Betts.

Traditionally, when you had two guitarists in a rock band, one played rhythm and the other played lead. Betts and Allman threw that playbook out the window, trading leads and orchestrating tight harmony parts similar to the way jazz horn sections worked together.

The concept wasn’t completely new. Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck briefly experimented with the idea when they were both in the Yardbirds in 1966, but Allman and Betts elevated their two-guitar attack into a brilliant artform – one that would influence and shape dozens of Southern bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet, the Outlaws, 38 Special and the Marshall Tucker Band throughout the ’70s.

It helped that both Allman and Betts were terrific musicians with distinct sounds and approaches to their instruments. Allman brought a new level of virtuosity and aggression to the electric slide guitar that remains influential today, while Betts added a sophisticated sense of composition and melody to the duo.

Their landmark live album, At Fillmore East, released in July 1971, sent shockwaves through the guitar community. It not only changed the way blues and metal guitarists thought about two-guitar bands and improvisation, but it also influenced the sound of country music in ways that can be felt today.

The Allmans were primarily a U.S. phenomenon, but British blues rock legend Eric Clapton took notice. After seeing the Allmans play in Miami, Clapton was so blown away by Duane’s slide technique, he invited him to play an equal role on Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, one of the greatest albums of the ’70s and one of the most exciting blues rock albums of all time.

“The Allman Brothers were unbelievable,” Clapton told journalist Sam Hare. “Duane and Dickey Betts were in such harmony. Their playing was very strong and well thought out. When Duane came to the studio [to play on Layla], I was so taken with him that I started ignoring my own band.

“I just tried to keep thinking of songs we’d both know so we could duet. We’d play blues standards like Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out and Key to the Highway. All these things were just really vehicles so we could play – just excuses to jam with one another.”

Tragically, on October 29, 1971, Duane Allman, then 24, was killed in a motorcycle accident. But despite the loss, the band miraculously carried on, recording their most commercially successful album, Brothers and Sisters.

Without Duane, guitarist Betts flourished, his sunburst Les Paul planting the seeds for modern country artists like Chris Stapleton, Eric Church, Lucinda Williams and the Zac Brown Band, all of whom have covered Allman songs in more recent years.

Just say Yes to prog rock

They say the best comedy is based on the truth, and that certainly goes for the one guitar joke that everybody knows:

Q: How many guitarists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: One to screw it in and another dozen to say, “I could do that.”

Guitarists have always been competitive, and that was certainly true in the ’70s. It was no longer enough to write great songs and look good – you also had to have serious chops.

Musicians playing under the banner of “progressive rock” or simply “prog” turned technique into a religion, and the result was some of the strangest and most ambitious music to ever grace the Billboard Top 20 charts. The most interesting prog bands were King Crimson, ELP, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Rush, Kansas, U.K. and Gentle Giant, but it was Yes who were the most commercially successful exponents.

Each member of Yes was an exceptional musician. Singer Jon Anderson – with his sweet tenor – had one of the most distinctive voices in rock; and virtuoso keyboardist Rick Wakeman – who wore sequined capes on stage – was flashy both visually and technically.

But the real star of the group was guitarist Steve Howe. Howe thrilled audiences by playing in a formidable assortment of styles on an astonishing array of electric, acoustic and steel guitars… often during the same song. Some critics accused him of being excessive, but for the most part, he was tasteful and generous, allowing his Yes compatriots to shine and take turns in the spotlight as evidenced by the band’s biggest hit, Roundabout.

During the band’s heyday, which lasted throughout the ’70s, his work on The Yes Album (1971), Fragile (1971), Close to the Edge (1972), Tales from Topographic Oceans (1973) and Relayer (1974) opened huge doors for guitar players looking to expand the techniques and colors they could use within a rock context.

Howe experimented with flamenco, Chet Atkins-style fingerpicking, classical harmonies and exotic chord voicings while shredding some of the speediest, harmonically advanced soloing ever heard on a rock album.

He was an amazing technician, but his lead playing also had an appealingly jagged edge that always kept the music rooted in rock ’n’ roll, no matter how complex it got.

Howe pushed the boundaries of popular music about as hard as any musician in the Seventies, and he did much of this on electric f-hole guitars like the Gibson ES-175, which was more associated with jazz players.

“The decision to buy the ES-175 set me on a course,” Howe said. “I didn’t consider myself to be someone who played solid bodied guitars at the time. It’s helped me to forge an identity as a guitarist with a full sound that isn’t reliant on distortion or tremolo or other gadgets.”

He was so dominant in the ’70s that he won “Best Overall Guitarist” in Guitar Player magazine an unprecedented five years in a row, influencing players as diverse as Alex Lifeson (Rush), John Petrucci (Dream Theater) and John Frusciante (Red Hot Chili Peppers). But unlike Jimmy Page or Eddie Van Halen, few people attempted to sound like him, probably because it was so difficult to do.

His lasting impact has been more about his grand concept than his style. He is the guy you can thank for introducing the idea of owning dozens of guitars for different colors and sounds. So, the next time anybody gives you shit for buying yet another Les Paul Junior or Epiphone Casino, just blame it on Steve.

Lighting the fusion

Guitarists like Howe, Frank Zappa, Tommy Bolin and Jeff Beck shaped the sound and style of Seventies rock by incorporating elements of jazz into their arsenal of licks. But just as significant were a new crop of young jazz players who started experimenting with the volume and aggression heard in rock music.

Guitarist Larry Coryell, sometimes called the “godfather of jazz-rock fusion” summed it up when he said, “We loved [jazz trumpeter] Miles Davis – but we also loved the Rolling Stones.”

Starting in the early ’70s, a gang of extraordinarily gifted young jazz shredders like Coryell, Pat Metheny, Al Di Meola and John Scofield scared the bejeezus out of rock’s greatest players with their command of the electric guitar. But the jazz shredder who made the most impact was the fast and furious John McLaughlin, who played a double-neck Gibson EDS-1275 through a 100-watt Marshall amp “in meltdown mode.”

Starting his career as a session musician in England, McLaughlin moved to the U.S. in the late ’60s, where he played with jazz drummer Tony Williams’ group Lifetime.

He then performed with the legendary Miles Davis on several pioneering electric jazz fusion albums, most notably In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson. But it was his work in the ferocious Mahavishnu Orchestra that made him a superstar in the rock world.

The five-piece Mahavishnu Orchestra combined elements of metal, jazz, funk and Indian classical music into their compositions, which they performed at lightning tempos. As Guitar World once put it, the band left you feeling as if they “were always on the very edge of exploding into a thousand pieces, so far did they push and extend themselves and each other.”

Guitar legend Jeff Beck was particularly floored. “Things took a funny turn for me in the early ’70s,” Beck recalled. “But it all turned out well after hearing John McLaughlin play on Miles Davis’ Jack Johnson album and with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Every musician I knew was raving about him, and I thought, ‘I’ll have some of that.’ The mastery of his playing was unequaled.”

Soon after hearing McLaughlin, Beck turned down a spot in the Rolling Stones and began experimenting with his own jazz-rock band. He was warned that playing fusion was commercial suicide, but ironically, it resulted in his most commercially successful album, Blow by Blow, released in 1975.

In the early ’70s, the radical Mahavishnu Orchestra recorded two brilliant studio albums, The Inner Mounting Flame and Birds of Fire, and performed more than 500 shows, playing unlikely bills with straight-up rockers like Aerosmith, Blue Öyster Cult and the Eagles.

While many rock audiences were confused by their weird, explosive music, others were intrigued, catapulting 1973’s Birds of Fire to Number 15 in the Billboard charts. However, just as it looked as though they were about to achieve the impossible by bringing avant-garde, freak-out jazz to the masses, they imploded.

“It was fantastic that we had popularity, but I think we had too much success too quickly,” McLaughlin said. “The band ended very acrimoniously, and that upsets me to this day. I have great relationships with all the musicians I worked with. Except that bloody band.”

Despite their brief lifespan, Mahavishnu left a lasting mark. Not only did they influence classic rockers like Beck and Carlos Santana, but their albums have also inspired current avant-garde heroes like Guthrie Govan, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (the Mars Volta) and Ben Weinman (Dillinger Escape Plan), proving that musical boundaries are meant to be shattered.

Glam bam, thank you, ma'am

While it was exciting that bands like the Allman Brothers and Yes were stretching the boundaries of popular music with their technical skills, many musicians were less than enthusiastic about prog. It was too damn complicated, and besides, who was going to piss off parents, disrupt social norms and have fun while looking cool? It didn’t take long to find out.

The answer came slinking out of Phoenix, Arizona, in 1971 when the Alice Cooper Band rose to fame with the hit single I’m Eighteen. Featuring a male singer with a woman’s name, the five-piece group were notorious for their theatrical stage shows, androgynous outfits and playing loud, obnoxious rock.

Boring old farts called them “degenerates,” but the press referred to them as “glam rock,” and it wasn’t long before the glitter craze took off, especially in England where David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars, T. Rex, Slade and Queen became mega-stars.

Glam was primarily about “the look,” but the bands also shared a common approach to their music. Unlike the progressive movement, glam rockers kept their songs tight, danceable and catchy. Instrumentally, their tunes were often powered by chunky heavy metal guitars and short, memorable guitar solos.

Mick Ronson, the iconic blond guitarist for David Bowie’s Spiders from Mars band, made no bones about being more interested in composing great riffs than diddling around with weird scales or playing 30 different guitars. Ronson believed if you wanted to play like John Coltrane or Mozart, go fuckin’ do it – but leave rock ’n’ roll out of it.

He had a point. It didn’t mean Ronno was a primitive musician. In fact, he was quite sophisticated. In addition to providing killer guitar parts to memorable rockers like Bowie’s Suffragette City, Panic in Detroit and Jean Genie, he was also a deft arranger, composing the dramatic orchestral parts on Bowie’s 1972 glam rock classic, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

One sterling example of his artistry can be heard on the album’s classic, Moonage Daydream. He begins the song with a couple thunderous power chords, then slowly layers parts on his blonde 1968 Gibson Les Paul Custom through a half-cocked wah-wah pedal, until the song reaches a soaring, spiraling conclusion of ascending strings and tape-delay guitar.

While his parts aren’t particularly difficult to play, they are beautifully constructed, executed, and perfect for the song. In other words, totally rock and roll.

Ronson’s smart, economical playing (and glittering stage outfits!) helped create the template, not only for glam rock in the Seventies, but also Eighties hair metal. Ozzy Osbourne guitarists Randy Rhoads worshipped Ronson, meticulously imitating his look and use of a blonde Les Paul.

“Randy was a big fan,” said his brother, Kelle Rhoads. “That’s where his obsession with polka dots came from. He saw Mick Ronson with polka dot knee pads and Randy took it to another level.”

However, it would be wrong to imply that Ronson was the only influential glam guitarist in the ’70s. There were plenty of others including Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls, Marc Bolan of T. Rex and Glen Buxton of the Alice Cooper Band. But perhaps the most famous and fairest of them all was Queen’s tall and elegant Brian May.

Queen have become so ubiquitous in our modern music culture that it’s easy to forget that in the ’70s they were originally a huge part of the same glam movement that spawned Bowie and the likes of Roxy Music and Sweet. But it might also be because Queen didn’t really sound like anybody else, and that was primarily due to May’s unique approach to playing and recording.

Far more ambitious than his fashionable contemporaries, his multi-layered guitar orchestrations on songs like Killer Queen and Bohemian Rhapsody ventured perilously close to being “prog.”

But May also knew how to boogie and always balanced his excesses with some good old-fashioned hard rock, as on We Will Rock You, Stone Cold Crazy and Keep Yourself Alive. Yes, Brian May could go over the top, but with Queen, he also knew when to kick royal ass – even while wearing flowing silk blouses and crushed velvet trousers.

Never mind the bollocks here's punk

Given how disheveled the typical punk rock musicians appeared with their ripped-up jeans and spiky hair, it was almost comical how much in they had in common with their glam rock counterparts. The Clash, Dead Boys and the Sex Pistols also believed that rock music should sound gritty, dangerous and close to the streets.

Punk guitarists didn’t just dislike progressive rock – they actively hated it. They were repulsed by what they perceived as the bourgeoisie snobbery of bands like Yes and Genesis. As for the Mahavishnu Orchestra… they couldn’t even pronounce it.

Punk musicians wanted to return rock and roll to its “everyman” fundamentals, so that anyone wanting to master three chords could take the stage and become a star. No one represented this attitude more singularly than the Ramones, a raucous four-piece juggernaut from New York City.

All members of the Ramones looked the same (shaggy hair with bangs), wore the same clothes (jeans, leather jackets and Converse All-Stars) and even shared the same surname.

Their songs all sorta sounded similar and their lyrics were hilariously moronic with titles like I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend and Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue. From a guitar perspective, it was the same story: every song consisted of an interchangeable series of power chords played with the same jack-hammer downstrokes by Johnny Ramone on his cheap Mosrite guitar.

On paper the Ramones sounded stupid and one-dimensional – and they were – but it’s also what made them great. They say the hardest thing about making great art is deciding on a direction and sticking with it. If that’s true, then the Ramones were the Picassos of punk.

They did one thing, and they did it incredibly well, and in concert, the band was as direct and as powerful as a locomotive. (I was tossed around so much during an out-of-control Ramones show that I lost one of my shoes after the third song and never saw it again.)

When the band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, it was said that their first album, Ramones (1976), saved rock from becoming “bloated and narcissistic.” While that’s not completely true – there was certainly plenty of bloat and narcissism to go around – they did provide a compelling alternative.

AOR in the USA

Punk wasn’t for everyone. But neither was metal, Southern rock, glam or any of the junk we’ve been talking about. That was the great thing about the ’70s. A lot of the music was kinda weird or extreme in some way. Even the biggest bands were odd when you really examined them closely.

The Wall by Pink Floyd was psychotic. Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin was fantastic, but totally wacky. And let’s not even get started on progressive bands like King Crimson and Jethro Tull.

Was there anything that was normal in the ’70s? Well, yes, there was plenty of meat and potatoes to be had. About halfway through the decade, many of the FM stations that were adventurous during the early part of the ’70s discovered they could grab more listeners and sell more advertising if the music they played was a little shorter and a bit more conventional. The stations shifted gears, and so did many rock bands who discovered they could sell more records if they did the same.

Suddenly, bands that appealed to more mainstream tastes started popping up like toadstools in Pennsylvania. Some called it “pop metal,” but most referred to it as Album Oriented Rock or AOR.

Platinum-selling bands like Foreigner, Journey, Boston, Styx, Eagles, REO Speedwagon, Steve Miller Band, Kiss, Toto, Pat Benatar, Kansas, Heart, Triumph, Bad Company and Fleetwood Mac were not particular innovative, but they wrote catchy songs that sounded great in the car.

While that might sound like an insult, it isn’t. Much of the music was very good and featured incredibly skilled guitarists like Neal Schon, Joe Walsh, Rick Nielsen, Ace Frehley, Steve Lukather and Gary Richrath, among others.

Now mix a bit of AOR with some Led Zeppelin, a bit of Pink Floyd and the more accessible “hits” of some of the more adventurous bands we’ve mentioned, and there you have the ’70s in a nutshell.

But wait… wait, wait, wait. What about Van fuckin’ Halen? Weren’t they part of the ’70s?

Well, the truth is – and this is highly classified information – that even though Van Halen’s first two albums came out in 1978 and 1979, they did not belong to the ’70s – they belonged to the ’80s. It was all a big mistake.

Eddie Van Halen insisted on arriving two years early, so he could gently guide guitarists to the next decade, where he would rule like a king for the next 10 years.

But you gotta promise not to tell anyone! If you do, I’ll deny everything. You know, conspiracy theorists, they’re all 5150…

Jamie Moses cut his teeth performing Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, and James Brown on Air Force bases, as well as on radio and TV, all by the tender age of 13. After a stint with The Animals’ Eric Burdon in the late '80s, Moses' hard-fought hours led to a golden opportunity with Brian May, where he played second fiddle to the Queen guitarist in his solo band.

This gig morphed into an 11-year stint touring with Queen – an experience that solidified his reputation as an in-demand guitar player. However, touring with May meant adjusting his rig – specifically, his axe of choice.

“Funny thing is when I auditioned with Brian for his band, I had this amp called the Fender 75, which was a combo. I had two of those, and Brian said, ‘What a great guitar sound you’ve got.’ I had an old Strat, which I still use, and he loved the sound,” Moses says in an upcoming Guitar World interview.

“Once we got to doing the Queen thing, I used that for a little while, and one day, I could see that Brian was thinking about something, and he said, ‘How would you feel about using one of my Brian May guitars? Like a copy of mine?’ I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ And I ended up doing that.”

Switching from a Strat to a Red Special replica came with its challenges. “I find them harder to use and control because all the switches and knobs are in a weird place,” he explains.

However, May was cognizant of Moses' preferences and suggested he could get a custom one made especially for him.

“He said, ‘Just tell them if you want anything different.’ I got it, and Brian came to soundcheck and said, ‘Is that the new guitar?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘What’s that knob for?’”

Moses had modified the Red Special replica so that it had an extra knob by the bridge in the same place a Strat volume knob would be. He did this so that he could control it using his pinkie and “make the sort of violin sounds.”

Earlier this year, the Queen guitar icon was announced as the newest member of the Gibson family, a move that led May to confirm that Gibson-built Red Specials are on the cards.

Guitar World's full interview with Jamie Moses will be published next month.

Brian May has confirmed he is doing “okay” after he recently suffered a minor stroke.

The legendary Queen electric guitar player quietly dropped the news of his recent health scare in a post on social media. In the video, May said his ability to play guitar was initially “in some doubt”, but he has since been able to pick up his Red Special.

“I'm here to bring you some good news: the good news is that I can play guitar after the events of the last few days,” he says in the clip.

“I say this because it was in some doubt because that little health hiccup that I mentioned happened about a week ago, and what they called it was a 'minor stroke,'” May continues.

“All of a sudden out of the blue I didn’t have any control of this arm, so it’s a little scary. I had the most fantastic care and attention from Frimley Hospital.

“I didn't want to say anything at the time because I didn’t want anything surrounding [me]. I really don't want sympathy. Please don’t do that because it will clutter up my inbox. The good news is I’m okay, just doing what I'm told, which is basically nothing.”

At the time of writing, May isn’t scheduled to go on the road with Queen + Adam Lambert before the end of the year, having seemingly already finished his concert commitments for 2024.

And it's been a relatively busy year for May. After completing the Rhapsody Tour in February, May has been racking up his cameo credits with a number of high-profile guest appearances.

Over the past few months, May joined Jean-Michel Jarre for a “challenging” virtuosic collaboration, and linked up with The Offspring to perform Queen’s Stone Cold Crazy.

In guitar news, May also surprise-announced he’d joined the Gibson family, and confirmed that Gibson-built Red Special guitars could become a reality.

Visit Brian May’s Instagram account for updates.

His tone is unmistakable, his solos are breathtaking and his influence is boundless. Even if somehow, some way, you’ve managed to make it this far without knowing his name, undoubtedly, Brian May’s music – most likely with Queen – has been a part of your life.

With his trusty, self-built Red Special guitar in hand and a sixpence between his fingers, May – beside Freddie Mercury, his partner in crime – charged through soaring guitar solos and melodic riffs soaked through cuts like We Will Rock You, Bohemian Rhapsody and Hammer to Fall.

Mercury has been gone since 1991, but that hasn’t stopped May from championing the music that Queen created. Since 2011, he’s toured the world as Queen + Adam Lambert with Queen’s original drummer, Roger Taylor, plus vocalist Adam Lambert, the 2009 American Idol runner-up who was tasked with upholding a legacy that was impossible to replicate.

“Freddie would love it,” May says. “I often wish Freddie was around and could share the joy of putting these shows together. But Freddie is with us; he makes little appearances in the shows. So he’s always in there, and I think it should be that way. He’s part of what we built together all those years and will always be massively important.”

Having just finished another slate of mega-shows, you’d assume May would opt for some downtime, but in February – to the surprise of many – he turned up at the grand opening of the Gibson Garage London (aka, “The Ultimate Guitar Experience,” a place where visitors can “try out a guitar, take a lesson, learn about Gibson’s history or see a live show”).

Why, you ask? At the very least, for some hobnobbing with fellow legends Jimmy Page and Tony Iommi; beyond that, we do know May will have a new Gibson guitar coming out in early 2025 – but we’ll just have to wait for the details.

Anyway, mega-tours, top-notch hobnobbing and Gibson collaborations are great, but after more than 50 years in the business, the thing that really brings a smile to May’s face is family.

“I’ve just had a Red Special made for a dear relative,” he says. “When I got it and I opened the box, I thought, ‘Oh, geez, I really don’t want to give this away. I want to keep this.’ But I will give it away. I don’t think I’m ruining the surprise by saying this, but my grandson said he wanted a Brian May guitar for his birthday. He knew the exact specifications he wanted, so I got our guys to make him something super-special.

“He’s taken the bit between his teeth and really wants it,” he adds. “He’s marching down that road without being pushed by anyone. It’s great to see that passion coming out in somebody so young who has got my blood in his veins.”

You were at the grand opening of the Gibson Garage London with Jimmy Page and Tony Iommi. What are your thoughts on that event?

“It was great. It was a really nice opportunity to socialize because none of us do much socializing. You might imagine we do, but we kind of have separate lives. It was good to see them, and the Gibson Garage is great. Some people were saying, 'Well, what the hell are you doing at Gibson? You’ve got your own guitar company.' But actually, I have a great relationship with [Gibson] now.”

I think a lot of people were thinking you might do something with the Red Special associated with the Custom Shop or the Murphy Lab.

“It’s not out of the question. We have spoken about such things, and it would be lovely to have an edition of the Brian May guitar based in the States. After all, that’s where I started with Guild. Guild made the first Brian May models, and then I went with Burns in [the U.K.]. And then things changed, and I just wanted to do it myself. Now we have our own Brian May Guitars company here, but to have the facility to have some made in the States would be wonderful.”

People will always associate you with the Red Special, but as I recall, you did use a Flying V and a Les Paul Deluxe as backups in the '80s.

“I was thinking everybody had forgotten that. But you haven’t! [Laughs] I had a Les Paul Deluxe for a long time; it’s a long story, but sort of a rich sugar daddy of a fan gave it to me. I used it for a while.

“It was a beautiful instrument, but it was never quite right for my gear. So eventually, [since] I always felt I wasn’t deserving of having been the recipient of it for nothing, and having received it for nothing, I gave it away. It now has a nice home, a secret home with somebody else.”

Did you use those guitars on any notable recordings?

“No, I don’t think I’ve ever used anything but my own, with one exception – the Telecaster I used for the solo on Crazy Little Thing Called Love, which is really a James Burton tribute. [The Red Special] makes that kind of sound, you know?

“With all the switching I invented for the guitar, you can have any combination of pickups, and there’s one combination that really sounds like a Telecaster. So we were in the studio [Musicland Studios] with [Reinhold] Mack in Munich, and I’m about to do this solo, which I hear in my head as James Burton.

“And I said, ‘You know, I can make this guitar sound like a Telecaster,’ and Mack, being a very ‘doer’ German producer, says, ‘If you want it to sound like a Telecaster, why don’t you use a Telecaster?’ And I went, ‘Fair point.’ Roger [Taylor] just happened to have one, so I used Roger’s Tele, which was a very early Telecaster. I think that’s the only time I’ve used anything but my electric.”

You mentioned the Guild and Burns renditions of the Red Special, and now you’ve got the ones you make yourself. Of all the reproductions, which do you feel is the most faithful to your original guitar?

“The ultimate you can get now is what we call the [BMG] Super. It’s all made by hand, and it costs a lot more because of that. But on this model, you get everything I put on mine, including my self-designed tremolo. Usually, we use other people’s tremolos, which are really good these days, but the one I designed is a bit special.

“With the Super, you get that same design of trem, which rocks on a knife edge, which at that time was revolutionary. Everything else is done custom; my neck is thicker than normal, so you get everything. It’s an exact replica of my guitar, [and it’s] as close as you could possibly get. If I close my eyes with the Super, I don’t know that it’s not my guitar.”

Going back to the ’70s, as the Red Special has ridden along with you, what were some of the things you’ve had to do to keep it up to par?

“It’s been surprisingly resilient; I’ve never re-fretted it, which everyone is shocked to hear. The only fret I’ve ever replaced is the zero fret. And it was designed to be replaced because I knew it was going to wear. That’s where the strings rub when the term’s working, so I think I’ve replaced that twice in its whole history. But not a single fret has been replaced.

“There’s been a little bit of a touch-up to the black surface of the fingerboard. And it’s not an ebony fingerboard; it’s because I couldn’t find ebony when I was building the guitar. I wanted it to be ebony, but it’s multi-layers of Rustins Plastic Coating. Some of those wore through at certain points, so we’ve touched those up.

“We have touched up the body, and it’s mainly Andrew Guyton who’s done that. Although the first repairs were done by Greg Fryer; he also made three replicas, which are fabulous. I still have two of them. Unfortunately, the other one’s gone somewhere; I don’t know where that is. We called them George, Paul and John. [Laughs]”

Which of the two do you still have?

“I have George and Paul. John is out there someplace, I think, because that’s the one Greg kept. So, the neck of the guitar, I’ve never touched; it has lots of layers of plastic coating on [it], and it’s the same as it always was. There’s matchsticks in there with stain on them to fill up the worm holes because it had some dead wood worm in it.

“But it’s never been touched since the day I finished it. It’s worn incredibly well. The tremolo is exactly as it was, with no replacements ever. I replaced a few little rollers; that was an invention of mine.

“Nobody had really dealt with the fact that when you work a tremolo up and down, it scrapes the strings over the bridge. I think somebody had designed a loose bridge, but really, you want each string to be able to move separately because they all move different amounts.”

What did the process of coming up with that look like?

“I made this little assembly – with grooves in the top – out of a piece of mild steel. Then I machined the shiny little rollers to sit in the grooves so the strings could go over the rollers. I think a few people have done that since, but everybody says, ‘Why didn’t you patent it?’ And I go, ‘Well, life’s too short.’

“Patents are a pain in the neck. If you take out a patent, it costs money and takes a lot of time and effort. Then you’ve got to protect your patent, go around the world policing it, and it’s a real pain in the neck. I’ve tried it elsewhere. It’s really not the way you want to spend your life. All my inventions in the guitar are out there for everybody to enjoy.”

You undeniably have one of the most idiosyncratic guitar tones of all time.

“Oh, well, that’s very kind of you to say.”

Some of it is the Red Special, but surely a lot comes from the fingers. What did the evolution of your gear look like in terms of harnessing that tone?

“The truth is, it hasn’t changed very much – except to make it more robust. Talking about amps, I love the [Vox] AC30 sound; to me, it’s perfect. The moment I first plugged into an AC30 with a treble booster, I knew that was me. That was my voice. That was my sound. The only problem with them has been that they’re not very road-worthy, so you have to keep on top of them, maintenance-wise.”

How do you go about keeping up with them?

“The ones I use now have been completely rebuilt. They started off as classic; they come from the ’70s, but they’ve been rebuilt inside, or hard-wired, and [are] very robust and [have] a lot of ventilation.

“You have to ventilate the valves, or they get too hot, and then performance suffers and eventually they peg out. The guy who does it for me now is a genius. He’s really rebuilt all my AC30s, so they have all the original character, but I think you could probably drop them from a plane and they’d still work. [Laughs]”

Have you gotten much into effect pedals, or is it mostly just the Red Special into the AC30?

“It’s very simple, my rig, except that I’ve always had a stereo chorus built in. That was sort of, again, a dream from when I was a young boy; I realized that if you get a chorus, and you get this lovely, broad effect, if you turn it up, the components of the chorus, the pitch-shifted ones, interfere with the original signal, and it all becomes distortion and you lose your breadth.

“Very early on in our career, I found a machine that provides those phase shifts, and it has two separate outputs. One I put to the left side, one to the right side. And those separate outputs have separate amps, so if they go into distortion, they’re completely separate. They don’t interfere with each other; you don’t get the inter-modulation effect, which is so ugly.

“So, you get your breadth; in fact, the breadth gets more and more as you go into distortions. And that’s just kind of my sound, the stereo sound. The middle is straight through, the left is one pitch shift, and the right is the other pitch shift. It’s a very gentle pitch shift, but just enough to give it breadth. That’s how I hear my guitar in my head; it’s always stereo, and it maintains its width when you turn it up full.”

As a tube amp devotee, would you ever consider using an amp modeler?

“I’ve tried modelers, and there are some very good ones now. There’s a great simulator; it’s a pedal [Catalinbread Galileo] that really does a very good job of simulating my sound. But, of course, there’s nothing quite like the original when it comes down to it. In the heat of the battle, all those tiny little peculiarities count, and when I’m at top level and top volume, there’s nothing quite like those amps.

“They have a personality of their own, and I couldn’t swap it for anything. And I wouldn’t like to be on stage with the amps someplace else; I need my amps to interact with my guitar – physically, in the air – and interact with me because I feel it in my body as well. I don’t think I could do the modeling thing live on stage.”

Many people’s introductions to the tone we’ve been talking about came through The Works, Queen’s 1984 album, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. It was a bit more guitar-forward than Queen’s early ’80s albums.

“With me, it always starts off with a burst of activity, belief and inspiration. And thinking, ‘Ah, this is gonna change the world.’ And it’s usually followed by a period of complete insecurity, thinking, ‘Oh, no, this is rubbish. This is never gonna work. Everyone’s gonna, you know, my band’s gonna hate it.’ And then working through it.”

Was it that way for a track like Hammer to Fall, for example?

“I think that’s true of Hammer to Fall because I came upon this riff, [and] I thought, 'This is great. I can do anything with this; this is just what I want to hear when I put my guitar on. This is what the audience is gonna want to hear…' And then I got into the studio and played it to the guys, and they went, ‘Yeah, okay.’ It wasn’t like, ‘We love it!’ And then I got back in and worked on the song.

“That one came fairly easily; I had the idea for the lyric pretty early on, but I had to build it up and build it up to the point where I could play it to them as an almost-finished song. And then they got it; they went, ‘Oh, yeah. Okay, we like this. This is going to be great.’ It takes a bit of belief, I think, to get from the first riff to the point where you’re happy with the result.”

Oscillating between confidence and discomfort is something I think a lot of creative people can relate to.

“I think it’s common to a lot of people – that moment when you spring it on your people around you, and you’re looking at their faces, and you feel very insecure in the moment. When I sing a song to someone, it’s always nerve-racking for me, no matter who it is. If they’ve never heard it before, I get all kinds of insecure. You just have to get over that.

“Freddie [Mercury] was always great. I used to sing stuff to him, and he was always very encouraging. Of course, I was generally writing for him. I was conscious that I had to write something that would work for him, not just for me. And generally, he would take hold of it very quickly.

“In many cases, I’d say, ‘Oh, yes, yes, yes, I can do this, darling. Just give me a chance; just put me in there, and I’ll do this.’ [Freddie] was always very upfront; he had an amazing amount of drive, optimism and energy. He was very helpful with my insecurities – and he kind of chose me as his guitarist in the early days.

“Even when Freddie was nothing and nobody, he was Jimi Hendrix in his mind. And I enabled him to have that at his fingertips. He always said, 'You can do anything anyone can do, Brian. You can do this for me.' That sounds like I’m making him out as big-headed, but he wasn’t; it was just this enthusiasm of, ‘We can do this together. We can be the best thing in the world.’”

Freddie’s voice is iconic, but your guitars were almost like a second vocalist because of how distinct your tone is.

“I always saw my guitar as a voice. I was looking for that voice in the early days; I was inspired by those people who first made the guitar speak, like James Burton and, of course, Hendrix and Steve Cropper.

“Those guys, to me, are still the bedrock. They’re the beginning of that kind of expressive playing that comes from country, blues and something inside, which was new. I’ve just had the pleasure of working on a record for Steve Cropper. Do you want to hear the story?”

Let’s hear it!

“My old friend [composer/producer] Jon Tiven has loads of Grammys; I mean… my mantelpiece is not decorated with Grammys, but his is. He’s produced lots of really nice blues records, and he has a very instinctive, light touch. He said I needed to make a guest appearance on the Steve Cropper record.

“I went, ‘I’d love to. Steve Cropper’s a hero of mine, but I’m incredibly busy. I’m not feeling very energetic, and I’m too stressed. Too much stress. Apologies, but I don’t think I can do it right now.’

“That was my email to Jon. Jon emailed me back and said, ‘Okay, I’ve used your email to write the song, and it’s called Too Much Stress. So now, you have to play on this.’ I just smiled and went, ‘Okay.’

“He wrote all the lyrics from my email, and his singer, Roger, sang it and very graciously said, ‘Let’s split the vocals.’ So, I sing it as a duet with him and play some guitar on it. Billy Gibbons also played some guitar on it, so we shared the soloing. It’s become an inspiring project from something that started off as just a whisper. That’s the kind of stuff I love in my life – when things just grow out of a momentary conversation.”

You’ve just given us some insight into what piques your interest, inspiration-wise. But since you’ve been at it for so long and have an established sound, it is difficult to keep from feeling repetitive.

“If you do a lot of touring, it’s incredibly productive in some ways, but it can hold you back from having that freedom. I have been feeling that a little bit. I’m not 35 anymore; I’m 76, and you have a certain amount of energy. If you use it all up by touring, your spontaneous creation side tends to suffer.

“I have been feeling that. This project came as a welcomed beacon to me like, 'Okay, this stuff is still here. You can still go in the studio and create spontaneously; it still happens.' I found that influential in the way I feel right now.”

You still seem filled with energy and have done an incredible job of keeping Queen’s legacy alive.

“I am when I’m on stage. I can do it, and I have the physical capability. I train; I work on that. And I take my training seriously now physically. I think Roger and I are playing together probably better than ever, which is great. We don’t always get on, but we always play together great. [Laughs] We’ve both grown up and mellowed over the years, so we don’t fight as much as we used to, but there’s definitely that chemistry.

“I’ve been proud of the way we’re playing, but I’m wary of it becoming too much of a formula. I’m always aware of that. I like the freedom to evolve, and sometimes, I’ve been questioning whether we still have that. But yeah, I’ve been proud of the shows – especially production; I think our team is amazing. Those shows are way beyond anything we could do in the early days.”

Which of your classic solos are the most difficult to undertake on stage?

“It’s all difficult, really! I think it’s all difficult when you think about treading that fine line between giving people what they want to hear in terms of recognizability and keeping it fresh. So, the little changes that you make consciously and unconsciously need to be there or you become a fossil. [Laughs] I’m always treading that line.”

Do some songs require more nuance than others?

“Some of them have to be reproduced pretty closely, like the Bohemian Rhapsody solo. That isn’t particularly difficult for me, [but] strangely enough, the riffs in that song are quite difficult. They’re not the kind of places your fingers naturally go to play those riffs in Bb and Ab, which are the keys that Freddie liked to play in.

“That stuff never gets easier for me, playing the heavy-riffing thing in Bohemian Rhapsody. You have to keep the energy going; you can’t get too studied about it. But at the same time, you have to hit the right notes, and, as I say, [they] don’t fall naturally under the fingers. I’ve got to keep a watch on that.

“There are all sorts of things that might not be the things you expect. You know, on Another One Bites the Dust, I didn’t play the rhythm; John [Deacon] played that. He played it on a Stratocaster, I think. He was very much influenced by the punk guitarists, which I’m not so much. So for me to get the feel he got on the record is quite hard.”

How do you approach something like that?

“I approach it from different directions, with different pickup combinations. And with a pick, without the pick, but it’s never quite what John did. I’m always conscious of that, so I told myself, ‘I can’t be John. I can just be me, and I’ll be me [in] the best way I can.’ But that’s not easy.

“It’s not an easy groove for me to hit, especially as you have to hit the ground at 100mph, do it for three minutes and then stop. It’s not something I can organically fit into my playing. People might be surprised; they might think that’s the easy bit, but it’s really not [easy] to do that rhythm. I find it takes an application of mind and body.”

Are there any young players out there today who have caught your ear?

“The young people to me are people like Nuno [Bettencourt]. [Laughs] I know he’s not young anymore, but boy, he’s beyond belief. I know he’s influenced by me; he’s kind enough to say so, but he’s very influenced by Eddie Van Halen, as should be the case. He always pays wonderful tributes to Ed, and he has that magic in his fingers that Ed had, I think.

“Nuno, to me, is just stratospheric in the way he plays. These are the people I adore, really. And if I were that kind of person, I would be deeply jealous because I can’t do that shit. [Laughs] But I’m not, because I just love it; I love seeing him do it… I’m awestruck by all sorts of people I see on the internet.

“I’m on Instagram and there’s so many kids out there that are just beyond belief in terms of technique. They start where we left off, and I couldn’t even go there. I couldn’t even begin to emulate the stuff they do… Ah, and I should mention my friend Arielle.”

She’s incredible.

“She’s an extraordinary technician who doesn’t let technique hold her down. She’s very expressive, very free and old-school in many ways. She loves analog recording; she loves the old tubes and stuff. She’s a beautiful player. Her tone is magnificent.

“And there’s still this thing in every business where women are slightly undervalued. It’s changing, thank God, but she’s experienced people not quite taking her as seriously as they would have. But she’s an awesome player.”

Do you have any other old favorites?

“For me, my favorites are still, I suppose… I think the generation that kind of follows mine is other people who moved me the most. That’s why I’m so into Nuno. Steve Lukather is an awesome player, beyond belief. I look at him and think, ‘How do you do that?’ He has so many influences.

“His ability when he moves into the jazz area is phenomenal. But he’s a rock player through and through, and his technique is indescribable. I don’t know if he’s on people’s list of the world’s greatest guitarists, but to me, he’s unforgettable and a model of what a guitar player should be.

“I should also mention Paul Crook. He took such loving care of our dear friend Meat Loaf. I have great admiration for Paul, not only for his amazing fireworks guitars but also for taking over the production of those albums and absolutely maximizing whatever power Meat had left, who was fighting a hard battle.”

What’s a parting piece of advice for young guitarists?

“Believe more. Smile, be confident and don’t apologize for anything. Just be proud of being yourself, the best you can be. I spent too much time being nervous, uncertain and worried that I wasn’t good enough.

“Be confident, even if you don’t feel it right down in the deepest part of your soul. Play as if it’s there; build on that belief that you put inside yourself that you are good enough – that wherever you are, you’re what it takes.”

Brian May has confirmed that a Gibson Custom Shop/Murphy Lab recreation of his iconic Red Special electric guitar is firmly on the table.

In February, at the grand opening of the Gibson Garage UK, the Queen legend was surprise-announced as a new member of the Gibson family. 

The news swiftly led to intense speculation over what this meant not only for May himself, but also what the move meant for the Red Special.

May’s iconic six-string sidepiece has been a mainstay for his entire musical career. The rock veteran has remained fiercely loyal to the guitar he first built with his father all those years ago, and for the past 20 years has been selling mass-produced versions of it under his own brand, Brian May Guitars.

At the time of the Gibson Garage UK opening, Guitar World theorized the new partnership could usher in a new breed of Red Special replicas – an awe-inspiring, meticulous tonal and visual recreation of the guitar fashioned under the watchful eye of the Gibson Custom Shop and Murphy Lab.

Gibson’s credentials for doing the job are evident. Over the years, the Custom Shop and Murphy Lab have recreated Kirk Hammett’s Greeny Les Paul, Jimmy Page’s EDS-1275 double-neck, and Jason Isbell’s 'Red Eye', to name a few.

Well, as May reveals in the new issue of Guitar World, such theories are correct, and a Murphy Lab Red Special could indeed become a reality.

“It’s not out of the question,” May responds when asked about the replica. “We have spoken about such things, and it would be lovely to have an edition of the Brian May guitar based in the States. After all, that’s where I started with Guild. 

“Guild made the first Brian May models, and then I went with Burns in [the UK]. And then things changed, and I just wanted to do it myself. Now we have our own Brian May Guitars company here, but to have the facility to have some made in the States would be wonderful.”

As May mentions, he did previously work with Guild and Burns to build licensed replicas of the Red Special, but it’s been more than two decades since a Red Special outside of the BMG umbrella was launched.

Now, it seems as though May is readying for another high-end replica that could go one step beyond the current crop of BMG models, and give guitar fans the most realistic recreation of the original Red Special to have ever been built.

“The Gibson Garage is great,” May continues of his grand unveiling. “Some people were saying, ‘Well, what the hell are you doing at Gibson? You’ve got your own guitar company.’ But actually, I have a great relationship with [Gibson] now.”

Since the first part of the theory is coming to fruition, just how far can we expect the Gibson/May partnership to go? If Gibson stays true to its trickle-down release schedule, it's possible a standard USA version may arrive shortly after.

Head over to Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Guitar World, which features the full interview with Brian May.

Brian May has made another special appearance at Slovakia's STARMUS festival, following his “challenging” collaboration with Jean-Michel Jarre last week. This time, he joined punk rock legends The Offspring for a special performance of Gone Away and Queen's Stone Cold Crazy.

The audience was treated to an orchestral arrangement of the band's 1997 hit Gone Away, which accompanied Dexter Holland's solo vocals. Midway through the song, the rest of the band, along with May, joined Holland on stage. As expected, the Queen guitarist put his own spin on the song's original guitar solo, with a little help from his trusty Red Special.

In the video recorded by fans, Holland is seen saying: “Brian, so nice of you to join us. So nice [of you] to hop in on this one! What a treat." The Offspring plus May then went on to perform Queen's Stone Cold Crazy from the 1974 album Sheer Heart Attack.

“OFFSPRINGMANIA !!!! I am so happy !!! If it never gets any better than the dressing-room run-through we just did, it will STILL be one of the most joyous moments of my ol' life !!! STARMUS and Bratislava are in for a treat,” posted Brian May.

In an interview with Total Guitar, May revealed how Stone Cold Crazy, known for its punk-rock drumming and quasi-thrash metal sensibilities, came about and unexpectedly gave birth to a new subgenre.

“Freddie had written the lyrics with his old band, and the original riff was very different – it sounded like the riff in Tear It Up [from 1984 album The Works]. So that original version of Stone Cold Crazy sounded like a lot of other things which were around at the time.

“But I thought: these lyrics are kind of frenetic, so the music should be frenetic as well. So I put this riff on it, which people are telling me is the birth of thrash metal or something! I don’t know about that. But was unusual at the time to play at that pace.”

The Offspring now join the ranks of punk and metal bands that have covered Stone Cold Crazy. Metallica famously covered the song, plus a few expletives, for Elektra Records' 1990 compilation album, and later used it as Enter Sandman's B-side, subsequently winning a Grammy.

Two years later, James Hetfield performed the song at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium, with Queen and Tony Iommi.

On Sunday, Brian May and Jean-Michel Jarre dazzled audiences with a surprise collaboration at Bridge from the Future, the opening concert of the seventh edition of STARMUS Festival in Bratislava, Slovakia. 

More than 100,000 people attended the free concert and witnessed the Queen guitarist and Jarre interpret Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony, as well as newly-adapted works Bratislava Time and Rendez-vous Bratislava. 

Before the concert, May expressed how anxious he felt and how challenging the rehearsals were in a public Instagram post:

“I've put a lot of passion and work into preparing this little adventure ... but this is not easy for an old soldier like me. In fact it's probably one of the most challenging things I've taken on for a long time.

“I felt very dissatisfied with what I came up with at last night's dress rehearsal - so doing a lot of rethinking today while we all wait for showtime to come around. Why do I spend all these precious days away from home? Pursuing ... what? And self-doubt rears its scary head to the point where I wonder who the Hell I think I am. 

“These are the kind of thoughts which beset performers, probably especially at my time of life. This is the inner reality. But I'm also conscious I'm incredibly lucky to have an opportunity like this - to work in a completely unfamiliar environment with an extraordinarily talented man with his highly skilled team. Among it all I'm very grateful.”

For this special occasion, May brandished his Red Special and delivered his signature soaring guitar solos, complemented by Jarre's backing band, the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, and a 19-piece chorus from the Slovak Philharmonic Choir. 

After the show, May expressed his relief that the performance was well received and gratitude for the experience, “I'm lost for words this morning ... but found this informal clip - from an iPhone in the audience I guess - and it looks like we kinda hit it OK !!! Thanks to all last night who came and rocked!”

It's not the first time Brian May – one of the greatest rock guitarists of all time – has conceded he has difficulty playing a part.

In an interview with Total Guitar earlier this year, he revealed he still finds the Bohemian Rhapsody riff difficult to perform – and points the blame at “riffmeister” Freddie Mercury.

Queen formed in 1970 and, once joined by John Deacon in February 1971, they began to progress into the juggernaut we know today. Two of Mr Deacon’s best known basslines, Under Pressure and Another One Bites The Dust, can be found in our 40 best basslines of all time poll, at numbers 30 and 7 respectively.

With a powerful blend of pop, prog, and pomp, Queen are renowned for a metal-meets-vaudeville songwriting and performance style. But that wasn't the case prior to 1974, when the group's third album, Sheer Heart Attack, introduced the young quartet's masterful songwriting capabilities through Killer Queen, the first of several huge international hits. 

Soon after, rock fans worldwide would place guitarist Brian May and singer/pianist Freddie Mercury among rock royalty – but what about bassist John Deacon and drummer Roger Taylor? According to one expert, they were among the best in the business.

“Roger is absolutely the musical instigator of that band,” said bassist Danny Miranda, who toured with Queen + Paul Rodgers in 2005, stepping in for the retired and reclusive Deacon, while former Free and Bad Company singer Rodgers filled in for Mercury, who died in 1992. 

“Roger dictates the feels and the tempos, and he's a powerhouse – probably the loudest drummer I've ever played with.”

As for Deacon? “Grossly underrated. His bass parts are like little stories, yet he never gets in anyone's way. With all the guitars and vocals going on, he finds the spaces and plays basically what he wants. He's loose. fluid, and quite busy at times, but I can't find one song where he stepped on the vocal or guitar parts.”

Miranda, whose resumé includes an appearance on the 2005 Queen + Paul Rodgers live album, Return of the Champions, knows Deacon’s parts extremely well, since he also played with the Las Vegas production of We Will Rock You, a cosmic play based around Queen's music.

Speaking to Bass Player, he described Killer Queen as a mini-masterpiece. “They get in so much information within a few minutes. There's very little guitar in the beginning, but the song grows dynamically with the guitar getting more prominent and the bass opening up in the second verse, Its like you're reading a book that gradually gets to the good part.”

Killer Queen is in 12/8 – like 4/4, but with a triplet feel – and it begins with Deacon laying out as steady piano chords accompany the first two lines of the first verse. Then, with a luscious P-Bass tone and a tasty pentatonic fill, Deacon ushers in the band as the verse phrasing accelerates. 

For the next four bars it's a quarter-note walking feel with careful attention to note duration. “That's what I took the most time on – the length of these notes," said Miranda, explaining how he reproduced Deacon's feel. “The verses have to breathe. If a note sustains too much or too little, it changes the feel.”

You can revisit Deacon's isolated bassline below.

Bar 11 momentarily cuts the count in half, with Deacon's fill leading to the three-bar pre-chorus, where he outlines Mercury's tidy chord progression with root notes in a two-feel. The clipped G and F, on the second half of bar 14, leads nicely into the asymmetrical eight-bar chorus, with its five-plus-three phrasing. 

Bar 18's four-beat walk-up leads to a mini-climax in the next bar, with Deacon reaching high to catch the unison rhythm. Deacon sits out for nearly the first two bars of the guitar interlude. 

“That space creates an incredible crater,” said Miranda. “So when the bass comes back in it's like a punch in the face. Nobody does this anymore; everyone's afraid to stop playing. But I think it's ballsy as hell, because everybody's going to pay attention to the next thing you play.”

In this case it's a steep, two-octave slide from a high F on the G string to low F on the E string, then working back up melodically to a held high C at the start of the second verse. “Deacon plays very staccato at times, almost like a McCartney vibe, which enables him to play a bit more busy under Brian's sustained chords.” 

After hanging back with sustained notes at the top of the verse, Deacon enters the fray with the same pentatonic fill as in bar 6, then goes back into the walking feel. Miranda says Deacon's upper-register fill in bar 38 is his favorite part. 

“Who would think of playing that, and then afterward not continuing to play that busy? He just makes a statement in those two bars and gets back to laying it down. It makes you want to follow the bouncing ball of the bass.”

At the end of the second chorus, Deacon plays the chorus-ending riff in double-stop 5ths, though he doesn't do it the first or third time through. “He's not one to do something cool and repeat it.” 

Following the second chorus, check out the question-and-answer hits with the drums. Deacon's interplay with Roger Taylor marks the song's dynamic climax. Miranda emphasizes the importance of focusing on the feel and placement of the bass in the song. 

“The piano is the core, but it's not very big-sounding, and there's quite a busy vocal, too. Deacon was very careful about where the bass lies and the kind of space it takes up, how it breathes against the snare, and when to open up.” 

He's also quick to compare Deacon to his other great bass hero, Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones. “Much like JPJ, Deacon was surrounded by monster musicians, but really cut a niche for himself. He's very much a support instrument, but in a way that opens up sonic barriers to make everyone else shine.”

With Brian May recently gracing Total Guitar with the ultimate in-depth retrospective on the Queen catalog, we took the opportunity to poll some of the biggest names in guitar for their favourite track from the British rock royalty.

Enter Kirk Hammett, Metallica’s effervescent lead guitarist… And while Metallica have covered Stone Cold Crazy, that’s not what he chose. Hammett went to 1980’s The Game, and a deep cut that May himself explains was a paean to a Munich disco the band used to spend some time in. If it worked in the Sugar Shack, then the song worked just fine.

“When Queen music came on it didn’t work so well, it didn’t inspire people to get up and go nuts on the dancefloor, whereas a lot of other things did – songs that had a lot more space in them,” May told Total Guitar.

“What I tried to do was make it the kind of track which was going to work in the Sugar Shack. That’s totally what it was about, which was to get girls excited and make boys want to get up and go nuts with them on the dance floor there. So it’s very spacious. The song doesn’t have the usual kind of rhythm build-up. It’s just the riff – bass, drums, guitar.”

So there you go. Which track was May talking about, Hammett’s favorite? Take it away, Kirk…

“Dragon Attack. Urgh! I love that song!” he enthuses. “Brian’s guitar sounds so overly saturated on that song, more so than other songs. It’s like he walked over to his fucking tone booth and just turned it up to 11.”

“Brian May has just such a wide reach. He’s like David Gilmour. Both of those guys have such a wide, wide reach. They can play extremely just like beautiful! Or, man, they can just fucking make you cry with their guitar solos, and the sense of melody that both David Gilmour and Brian May have is incredible, man.

“It’s voice-like. Voice-like! And both those guys do an extremely great job of doing their singing through their guitar. It is hard to be specific because everything they have done is so great.”

Brian May is feeling good. “A little tired,” he smiles, “but very happy.” On a cold winter afternoon, the legendary guitarist is talking to Total Guitar from his home in Surrey, a few days after the North American leg of Queen + Adam Lambert’s Rhapsody tour ended with another sold-out date at the BMO Stadium in Los Angeles. 

“Everyone in the States has been saying that this show is the best we’ve ever done with Adam,” he says. “So it’s a great result. Wonderful!”

Certainly, the Rhapsody tour – which reaches Japan this month – is a huge production with spectacular state-of-the-art visual effects. “I’ve always loved to make a show a real event,” Brian says.

But it’s the music, of course, that continues to draw huge audiences for this tour across the globe – all of those great songs that Queen recorded with Freddie Mercury from the early ’70s until the singer’s death on November 24, 1991.

In a lengthy conversation with TG, Brian discusses the creation – and his role specifically – in many of the biggest hit songs and landmark tracks in Queen’s career. Ten of these songs featured in the setlist from that recent show in LA: Killer Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody, Love Of My Life, We Are The Champions, Don’t Stop Me Now, We Will Rock You, Another One Bites The Dust, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Under Pressure and A Kind Of Magic. 

One is a hit that Brian wrote with his tongue-in-cheek – the OTT movie theme Flash. Another has great poignancy as one of the last Queen songs released in Freddie Mercury’s lifetime – These Are The Days Of Our Lives. 

And finally, there is a fan-favourite deep cut from 1980, Dragon Attack, picked out for TG by one of Brian’s greatest admirers, Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett.

As Kirk tells us: “I love Queen. I love all of it. I love all the stuff that everyone else loves. I especially love that song Dragon Attack.”

But before we get to that, we’re going all the way back to the 1970s, beginning with the hit single that defined Queen as one of the most inventive and original rock groups of that era…

Killer Queen

On the 1974 single that gave Queen their first taste of international success, Brian’s solo is exquisite – starting with some bluesy minor bends lower down the neck before the motif repeats higher up and swells into harmonised layers, adding depth in similar ways to the vocals in The Beatles’ early hit Please Please Me. 

Similar usages of harmonisation can be found in 1961 track Pasadena by ’60s trad-jazz revivalists The Temperance Seven, and the cascading strings typified by Anglo-Italian conductor Annunzio Paolo Mantovani. As Brian has noted, it’s as if “the three voices of guitars are all doing little tunes of their own”.

Can you talk me through the process of writing and recording the guitar solo in Killer Queen?

“Well, I love the track. I think it’s one of Freddie’s most perfect creations. The story behind it is that I was in hospital. We’d come back from a tour in America and I got very sick with hepatitis, so when the other guys went into the studio to start making the Sheer Heart Attack album I was in hospital, with lots of complications. While I was there they brought a tape of Killer Queen in for me. They’d already laid down the piano, bass and drums, and they’d started putting some backing vocals on. 

“I had loads of time to sit and think – to figure out where I wanted the solo to be and develop the idea in my mind. And what we ended up with is a solo that has lots of different parts. So it’s not just playing a verse, it’s being part of the arrangement and leading into a verse. 

“I could kind of hear it in my head, and that’s always a good sign for me. I don’t like to go into the studio with no ideas. I like to have a clear idea of where I’m going. The main solo has three parts, three guitars. I could hear that solo in my head and I wanted to do this kind of bells thing…”

Bells?

“I call it bells. I don’t know what other people would call it, but it’s when you play a note on one instrument and then it carries on but the next note comes in from another instrument and makes a harmony with it while it’s still going. And then another one. It’s like a peal of bells where the sounds add up in sequence. And really I got it from listening to things like the Mantovani piece Charmaine [see above] in my childhood, where he does exactly that – a dissonant harmony. 

“I know for a fact that The Beatles were influenced by that as well, because they did something similar in Please Please Me. It’s not quite the same thing, but it’s like adding instruments in to make the dissonance and the harmony. 

“I should be talking about the Temperance Seven and a song called Pasadena. The three lead instruments, which I think is a trumpet, clarinet and trombone, they do this bells thing. And I was always inspired by it. I always wanted to do it, and that was the opportunity.

“In the third section of that solo, that chiming bells effect is enhanced with stereo panning. So if you’re listening, particularly in headphones, you get that feeling of things happening in stereo.

“Yeah, we were always into stereo. We were influenced by The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, where they actually painted pictures in stereo. And of course, we were able to start where The Beatles left off in a way, because we had much more up to date gear, and we had a lot more tracks to play with. So we went with those influences, but we were able to take things a lot further.”

Bohemian Rhapsody

Freddie Mercury’s masterpiece is a six-minute suite of world-conquering brilliance. And in its climactic hard rock section, the riff, written by Mercury on piano, feels quite unnatural when transposed onto guitar. 

It starts on the sixth fret of the A-string and climbs back up from the third fret of the low E in a way that implies G Phrygian, the third mode of Eb major. Towards the end of the idea, the original opening note moves up a tone and the same shape repeats, the A note on the sixth string suggesting a key change into A Phrygian, the third mode of F major.

In previous interviews with Total Guitar you’ve spoken about the guitar solo in Bohemian Rhapsody, but let’s talk now about that song’s end section, in which the band really rocks out. It was Freddie’s song, so did he have all of it planned out, or was that rock section worked out with you?

“It was more Freddie’s idea. Freddie had that riff in his head and he played it on the piano, which is quite difficult because he plays in octaves. I just worked off that and slightly adapted it to the way a guitar needs to play it. 

“And I was able to do a lot of interesting stuff with sounds because in Bohemian Rhapsody, I pretty much use every sound that my guitar can create with different pickup combinations. So even during the course of those riffs, the sound is changing because there are different guitars coming in with different pickups selections. 

“But it’s funny – Freddie was a good riffmeister, really! That riff for Ogre Battle [from 1974’s Queen II], a lot of people think that’s mine, but that came out of Freddie’s head. So he had very good ‘heavy’ sensibilities. He was a devotee of Jimi Hendrix. People think he was just concerned with the lighter stuff but it’s not true. He did enjoy the heavy stuff, too.”

The Bohemian Rhapsody riff in particular doesn’t sound very guitaristic in an obvious sense…

“No. It’s not a riff that a guitarist would naturally play. And that’s a double-edged sword. It’s difficult for the guitar to get a hold of it, but once you have got hold of it, it’s very unusual. And to be honest, I still don’t find it easy! 

“I can play it at home okay, but in the heat of the battle, if you like, when we’re playing it live, and there’s huge adrenaline, it’s the climax of the show and that riff comes along, it’s not the easiest thing to play. 

“I’m excited and I’ve got to keep the passion, but I’ve got to keep a part of my brain cool just to handle where the fingers have to go because it isn’t natural. It’s one of the most unnatural riffs to play you could possibly imagine. But that’s that is the joy of it, really, because it’s so unusual.”

Yeah, I have learned it myself in the past… 

“It involves a lot of stretching of the fingers, doesn’t it?”

It does, and it’s definitely very complex. I probably should have guessed that it was a Freddie thing because it’s just so un-guitar-y in that respect. 

“Yeah, well, Freddie had a habit of writing an Eb and Ab, and so it was always a challenge for me to find places on the guitar to make that work. But it obviously contributed a lot to the way I developed as a player. It was a good thing, even if it was… strange!”

Love Of My Life

The original recording of Mercury’s beautiful ballad on the 1975 album A Night At The Opera features May on harp and, of course, his Red Special, which was used for the sustaining string-like notes that are introduced halfway in, as well as the harmonised leads in F major that arrive shortly after. 

Later, a different version was rearranged for 12-string acoustic and transposed minor 3rd down. This version featured on 1979’s Live Killers, and due to the song’s popularity with South American audiences it was released as a single and became a huge hit in Argentina and Brazil.

How did you go about turning this song from a piano arrangement to the acoustic guitar arrangement that you perform live?

“That happened very quickly with just me and Freddie. It was obvious that we couldn’t do the arrangement on the record because it’s so complex. It’s not just the piano, it’s got harp and all sorts of lovely backing. And it’s got a whole orchestra of guitar. So we couldn’t do it live that way. I don’t know whose idea it was, but Freddie and I thought we would just try and do it as the two of us with an acoustic guitar. 

“So I just started playing it. I think it’s even in a different key. I played it the way it was easy to play on an acoustic and it was just thrown together in a few minutes, to be honest. The song became so enormously successful in South America that we eventually put it out as a single in that style. But you can tell it’s enormously simplified from the way it is on the record.”

The guitar part is quite sophisticated. It doesn’t feel like a simple strummed three- or five-chord vamp, as it were. 

“No, you’re right. It’s not strummed, it’s picked. And I suppose I was trying, in my mind, to do what the piano did on the record – in my own way. And it grew. It gradually grew into something which stood up on its own. And that guitar solo in the middle, I don’t even know where that came from, to be honest. It just kind of grew out of the atmosphere of doing that thing live.”

We Are The Champions

Two of Queen’s greatest songs are inextricably linked – May’s We Will Rock You and Mercury’s We Are The Champions, released as a double A-side single in 1977, and often paired for live performances. Brian’s guitar work in We Are The Champions has more of an overdub feel – especially as there’s no dedicated solo section. 

Instead, May duels against Mercury’s vocals basing himself around the first position of D minor pentatonic at the 10th fret in order to imply F major. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book for playing in major keys – shifting down three frets and playing the relative minor shape instead.

There’s plenty of guitar playing in this song. But was a breakout solo ever considered or discussed? A melodic break-type solo? Do you think it could have worked? 

“No, it was never discussed. But what was discussed was that Freddie wanted the guitar to be fighting with the voice towards the end. It’s a strange story. I’d done the rhythm part for that, and sort of forgotten about it. And then I think we were in Wessex studios. And it came quite quickly to the time when we were going to mix it, and I suddenly thought, I haven’t really thought about this, there’s not really any lead guitar on there. 

“And I came back into the studio on the morning of the mix, and basically redid most of it, because I could hear it much more clearly in my head. And I put in those answering pieces, the lead guitar responses to Freddie’s vocal, particularly at the end. Also, again, those little bell chimes-type things in the second verse, because I’d sketched it but it wasn’t clear. 

“So I redid all that. And Freddie came back in and said, ‘Oh, I like what you’ve done with the guitar at the end. I want to make sure we mix it so the guitar is fighting with the vocal at every point at the end. It should be a battle!’ 

“And Freddie, when we were mixing it, had his hand on the guitar fader. Now, this is unusual, because usually he’s got his fingers on the vocal and I’ve got my fingers on the guitar. But he said, ‘No, I want to handle the guitar. I want to push that guitar to make sure it fights with the vocal.’ So that’s the way it was done. 

“So that song doesn’t have a solo as such, and I don’t think it’s ever needed one. And the problem would be live. Once you started soloing extensively, the bottom would drop out of it. And I can do a lot with bluff on the night. I can make people think there’s still a rhythm guitar there. But not for very long…”

Don’t Stop Me Now

It is not a particularly guitar-driven song – but that all changes two-thirds of the way in, during the solo section. As with We Are The Champions, the song is in the key of F major, but the leads are performed three frets down using its relative minor D. 

As for the warm but ever-so-slightly quacky tone, it’s most likely May was using his neck and middle pickups together with both set in phase – the Red Special with independent on/off sliders for each pickup, doubled by phase selectors underneath, giving him 27 different combinations in total, as well as more control via the volume and tone knobs.

Can you tell us how this song’s solo came together?

“Yes, it’s quite funny. Freddie saw it very much as a piano song, a la Elton John, really. Powerhouse piano, powerhouse vocal, and that’s it. So I played lots of rhythm guitar on it, and Freddie still said, ‘No, no, no, no – it’s a piano song!’ That was a bit disappointing, but he did say, ‘Well, it does need a solo. I need you to take over the vocal.’ 

“Which is what the way we thought about things. I said, ‘Okay, give me a verse and let me see what I can do.’ And again, being in the studio and hearing it evolve, I could sort of hear the solo in my head before I actually picked up the guitar to do it. As very often with me, it’s a kind of little diversion. It’s a counter melody. 

“It’s not the actual tune of the verse. But it’s something which goes with it, a sort of counterpoint, and it’s something I could sing. And it was just a question of transferring it to a guitar. It’s very simple. And I sometimes feel a bit apologetic about it. But I do notice that when it’s played in the dancehall, it gets a reaction from people in the solo and it steps up the energy quite a bit, even from a song that’s got high energy, so I’m happy with it the way it is.”

It must be one of Queen’s most popular songs. 

“It is now. It wasn’t in the beginning. It was a sleeper and it grew. And worldwide now, it’s a massive Queen song.”

It’s certainly one of those solos that takes the song to a whole new place, but why do you feel, as you say, apologetic for it? 

“Well, it’s a little too typical, perhaps? Maybe that’s why I feel kind of apologetic. But the funny thing is, I’ve had years and years to live with it, and every time the solo comes up live, I think, well, actually I can’t do much better than that! So I tend to play it more or less as it is on the record – with little variations. But it just works as a as a counter melody for the for the main melody.”

As a listener, it does seem like the ear draws you in to that melody. You kind of want to hear it once you know the song. 

“That’s what I feel. I feel like the audience is singing along to it, and it would be disappointing to them if I didn’t play it!”

We Will Rock You

In its original form, Brian’s monumental anthem is arguably Queen at their most minimalistic – with no melodic information to accompany the vocals until its final 30 seconds. 

First the guitarist rings out some feedback (an E note, to be precise) and then strikes a C powerchord before introducing some ideas in open position A that recur an octave up around the 14th fret. May then juxtaposes an D/A shape against the straight major chord, adding melodies using the higher strings – almost as if he’s playing rhythm and lead at the same time. 

The faster, guitar-driven version which opens 1979’s Live Killers omits this outro section and reimagines the song in E minor.

I’d like to talk about the live version of We Will Rock You that features on the Live Killers album as the opening track. It’s fast and furious and almost punky in its attack.

“That came about because of trying to visualise the openings and closings of a Queen show. That’s always something I’ve been very involved in. It’s one of the areas that inspires me. I like to create an event. And, of course, you play a lot of songs during the course of an evening, but the opening of the show is an event, and the closing of the show is also something that’s going to stick in people’s mind. So it’s always fascinated me, I’ve always been drawn to it. 

“So, [the fast version] came about from thinking about how we could start the show. At this point, We Will Rock You already featured at the end of the show, but I thought, what would the audience be like if we started the show with We Will Rock You? And if we start the show with We Will Rock You, how do we go about it? Basically, they want to rock; they want to just rock out at that point. And so I could hear in my head a fast version of We Will Rock You – a sort of all-out punky-type version, as you say. And it happened very quickly. 

“We just tried it out and it worked in rehearsal, and that became the opening of the show for that period. It worked out great. Much later, we did an adaptation of it for the We Will Rock You musical; that’s what plays when the actors come forward and take their bows, and it worked out very well. And from time to time we just fancy playing it fast. And sometimes we have other people that fancy playing it. 

“Dave Grohl is very fond of it, so we did that with him at the Taylor Hawkins tribute show. It’s just an easy thing to play. It’s got a lot of slog in it. It’s got a lot of energy and power. And not too much thought! And it’s something which is… just, there. And it’s always a nice place to go.”

Another One Bites The Dust

Bassist John Deacon – affectionately referred to as Deacy – wrote a handful of the band’s biggest hits, including this Chic-influenced track from Queen’s 1980 album The Game. 

What’s more, it was Deacon who played the funk rhythm guitar on this track, with Brian contributing rock licks. For the rhythm guitar parts, Deacon played an E minor chord rooted on the seventh fret of the fifth string, an A minor rooted on the seventh fret of the fourth string and another variant of same the chord in fifth position, sliding up from a fret down at the end of the phrase.

Am I right in thinking that this song is influenced by Chic and Nile Rodgers?

“Yeah, this track is very much John Deacon world. That’s what he was into. He was much more into funk than we were, and he brought that into our workings. It’s very Deacy and it’s very much influenced by Nile Rodgers.”

So as a Deacy song, how influential was he in the whole arrangement? How much did he tell you what to play in this song?

“Well, I don’t think I was in it at all to start off with! Because he’s hell bent on getting what he wants. So it’s his rhythm guitar playing – it’s not mine. That very funky style, that’s John. Oh yeah. And he wanted Roger to have a sort of disco-type sound. And it’s all done on a loop, so Roger reluctantly put loads of tape on his drums and played very stiff, and Deacy made a loop out of it. So it starts to be unnatural at that point. It’s a damn good loop, though, and it’s beautiful. And Deacy did the bass, Deacy did the rhythm. 

“He worked with Freddie on the vocal. Deacy didn’t sing, so he would tell Freddie what the words were, and play the tune on the guitar. You can imagine it was quite a strange process. Freddie absolutely adored it. He just stepped into it with a vengeance. And he sang it until he bled! He was forcing himself to get those high notes and he loved it. Freddie really was such a driving force.”

“Because, to be honest, it wasn’t going down very well with the rest of us. You know, Roger actually didn’t want to have it on the album, didn’t like it. It was much too funky and not enough rock for him. I was a bit on the fence. I kind of enjoyed it. But it obviously wasn’t the rock that I would have been creating. And I remember saying, ‘Look, it needs a little bit of something a bit more dirty on it.’ 

“So I started playing these little bits of the more grungy guitar. I don’t think the word ‘grungy’ existed in those days. But the distorted guitar is obviously me, and that punctuates it and gives it another dimension, takes it to a slightly more rocky place. 

“I remember Michael Jackson hearing it and saying, ‘That’s where I want to be. That’s what I want to do.’ And I think his whole album which followed [Thriller] was deeply influenced by Another One Bites The Dust and the fact that it straddled funk and rock. Michael came to the same place from a different direction. Very interesting!”

Do you remember what guitar John played? Did he play your guitar?

“Not my guitar, no. It was a Strat, I think. I’m pretty sure of that.”

It’s funny – it doesn’t sound quintessentially Strat-y.

“I suppose it doesn’t. Well, you can ask him – if you can get hold of him! You know, my memory is telling me it was a brand new Strat. At least that’s the way I remember it. I think I can remember him playing it. It’s not my style. 

“And when we do it live, that’s one of the more difficult things I have to do. And I have to not try too hard, because it has to roll off the wrist in a very natural way. And you have to get the sound exactly right. It can’t be too burned out or it doesn’t work. It can’t be too turned down or that doesn’t work either. It’s tricky to get that sort of real clean funky sound. It comes and goes with me. Sometimes I just do it my way. 

“Sometimes I veer back more to the way of John’s playing. I always think about John when I’m playing it – always. I can’t be John, you know, nobody can be someone else. So I do it my way. And I can edge it up into being a little bit more dirty in some of the some of the parts where I’m playing with Adam. I enjoy doing it with Adam, he brings something different to it. 

“And the song, it’s actually still evolving, which is quite something after all these years. So every time we do it, it gets a little bit of a different drift. And I enjoy it a lot more these days. Because we have made it our own I suppose. It’s quite heavy. And we do it early in the set at the moment, which is quite adventurous. It’s in the sort of rock part of the set, which in the beginning you never would have thought. 

“That song is a very important part of the Queen canon. It’s perhaps our biggest song ever in terms of sales. I’m not sure, but it must be close.”

Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Written by Mercury in 10 minutes while he was lounging in a bath at the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Munich, Crazy Little Thing Called Love was a tribute-of-sorts to early rockers Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard. 

By the singer’s own admission, the restriction that came from his limited knowledge of the fretboard and chord shapes is what helped him write “a good song, I think”. Brian complimented its lazy D Mixolydian feel with ad-libs inspired by Elvis Presley’s guitarist James Burton. It’s a rare example of him recording an electric that wasn’t his Red Special, and there is more of a twang to his lines than usual.

Famously, you didn’t use the Red Special on this song. What guitar did you use?

“It’s Roger’s. And I think it’s actually a [Fender] Broadcaster. I think it was one of those early sort of [Telecaster] prototypes, which they called a Broadcaster. I could be wrong, because Roger had a lot of those very rare guitars, and he just happened to have this one in the studio. I was actually going to do it on my guitar, because maybe if I set it to just the bridge pickup it sounds a lot like a Telecaster. 

“I remember saying to Mack, our producer, ‘I want to make this sound like James Burton. This is a pastiche of rock ’n’ roll. James Burton is my hero. This is a James Burton solo and it should sound like a Telecaster.’ And Mack looked at me quizzically and said, ‘Well, if you want it to sound like a Telecaster, why don’t you play a Telecaster?’ I thought, ‘Okay!’, and Roger just happened to have this other guitar, so I picked it up, and it yes, it had the right sound, obviously. The perfect sound. 

“And I think I did it through a Fender amp rather than my usual Voxes. So, yeah, that’s the sound, and it worked out great.”

Flash

Unlike anything Queen had recorded before, there’s a prog rock intensity to this May-penned theme for 1980 space adventure movie Flash Gordon. The piece features vocals from both Mercury and May, with drummer Roger Taylor providing the higher harmonies.

As well as the usual fretwork on his Red Special, Brian was also responsible for all the piano work (an Imperial Bösendorfer Grand Piano with 97 keys instead of 88) and synths (performed on the Oberheim OB-X that he plays in the music video) – all of which layer together and combine into a retro-futuristic symphony that perfectly encapsulates the daredevil sci-fi spirit of the movie.

Flash is an interesting song. It almost sounds like a Freddie song, because it’s so flamboyant. Was there a brief for this? Take us through the writing process… 

“I was so immersed in the Flash Gordon project. I always loved that kind of ’50s science fiction stuff anyway, and I was very aware that the way that the film was evolving was very comic book. It was very tongue in cheek. Very retro. Mike Hodges, the director, handled it that way in a very clever approach, I think. 

“Strangely enough, Mike didn’t see eye to eye with the producer of the film, Dino De Laurentiis, who was the guiding force behind the whole thing. Dino saw it more as a serious epic, but it was Mike who said, ‘No, you can’t do that. It’s got to have this element of fun and slightly taking the mickey out of itself.’

“In the end, Mike won, and some of what I was trying to do with this track is to do a comic book in sound. That’s exactly what it is. And it’s slightly exaggerated. It’s sort of little over-heroic, if you like. But it’s fun and it’s colourful. 

“But there is also a little undercurrent of something deeper in the lyrics: ‘Just a man/With a man’s courage.’ That, to me, is what gives it its heart and soul, because there is something rather lovable about the character of Flash Gordon. He’s so innocent. And there’s this love affair going through the film as well, and I think you really warm to him as a character, even though he’s unreal, he’s a comic book character. 

“So that’s what I tried to put in the song. And I wanted to make it something that people would just grab ahold of very easily, and I could hear [the vocal shout] ‘Flash!’ very quickly in my head. So it was just a question of realising it in the studio. I had a lot of fun with it.”

And when you had the song finished, did Dino De Laurentiis like it?

“Well, when we’d made all the tracks in demo form, having seen the rushes of the film, we had a session with Dino and Mike Hodges, all of us in Trident studios playing back what we done for the film. And Dino sat there with a face like iron. Like, ‘I’m not sure if I like this?’ And the last thing we played was Flash and he went, ‘Yes, it’s very good, but it’s not for my film.’

“That was a mortal blow for me. I thought, ‘I didn’t encapsulate what the film needed.’ But Mike took me aside and said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll sort him out. He will love it!’ And the conclusion of the story is when we had the premiere of the film. Dino came over to me and said, ‘Thank you for what you did for my film. It’s beautiful!’ So that was nice.”

It perfectly encapsulates the vibe of the film.

“Yeah, I’m very proud of it. It is very fluffy, but I’m proud of it because within my brief, within the genre, I think it does fit perfectly.”

Under Pressure

Two of the biggest acts in rock music collaborated to produce a worldwide smash hit, giving Queen their second number one single and David Bowie his third. 

Under Pressure came from an impromptu jam at the Queen-owned Mountain facility in Montreux. The verses have May ringing out his open D against notes on the higher strings, followed by thicker-sounding open G and A7 shapes and overdriven chords from halfway in.

The main bassline was sampled by Vanilla Ice for 1990 hit Ice Ice Baby – the first hip-hop single to top the US chart – although Queen and Bowie were not credited until after its success.

It’s an unusual song in Queen’s canon. Obviously, David Bowie featured, and it feels very much composed around the two vocalists. So how did you feel your part was played in that? What did you contribute to the song?

“Well, it was a very complex process. And of course, it’s the four of us plus David Bowie, who is a very persuasive force. And it was put together completely off the cuff. And David brought this technique in where everyone would go in and sing the way they felt the song should go without thinking about it. And without listening to each other. And then there was a whole system of going through and picking out the bits that you liked from different people’s vocals. So that’s how the vocals were put together. 

“And David, in the end, wanted to be the guiding force as regards lyrics, and he ended up writing all those lyrics, with not much from us. And it was all done spontaneously in the studio very late at night after we had a meal and a lot of drinks. And it was a pretty heavy backing track. 

“When it gets to ‘Why can’t we give love’, we were all working on it together, and it sounded like The Who. It sounded massively chord-driven. And I was beaming because I liked The Who. I remember saying to David, ‘Oh, it sounds like The Who, doesn’t it?’ He says, ‘Yeah, well it’s not going to sound like The Who by the time I’ve finished with it!’ You know, in a joking kind of way. But he didn’t want it to be that way.” 

“It was very difficult to mix because we all had different ideas of how it should be mixed. I think it’s probably the only time in my career I bowed out, because I knew it was going to be a fight. So basically it was Freddie and David fighting it out in the studio with the mix. 

“And what happened in the mix was that most of that heavy guitar was lost. And even the main riff, I played that electric, pretty much in the sort of arpeggiated style which I do live now. But that never made it into the mix. What they used was the acoustic bits which were done first as a sort of demo. 

I never liked it, to be honest, the way it was mixed. But I do recognise that it works. It’s a point of view, and it’s done very well. And people love it. So we play it quite a bit different live, as you probably noticed, it is a lot heavier and I think it benefits from it. I mean, David was an awesome creative force. But you can’t have too many awesome creative forces in the same room. It starts to get very difficult! Something has to give.”

You might say that in some respects it doesn’t even sound all that much like a Queen song. You know, as you say, in the sound of the overall mix. 

“Yeah, if I’d mixed it, it would have sounded very different. And maybe it wouldn’t have been a hit. Who knows?”

It’s surprising to hear you say that it was so improvised. 

“Oh, completely improvised! There was no prior writing whatsoever. The only thing we had was the bass riff. We started off before dinner, and John had this nice bass riff, and when we came back there was a dispute. 

“We said, ‘Let’s try and build on that nice bass riff.’ But no one could remember how it had gone – least of all Deacy, who’d had more to drink that most of us! So there was a lot of discussion, and I remember David stepping in at one point and saying, ‘No, no, it wasn’t like that – it was like this!’ And so to this day, I don’t know if that riff the same one that we had before dinner, but it’s the one that ended up on the record!”

A Kind Of Magic

The third single from the album of the same name was penned by Roger Taylor for 1986 fantasy action film Highlander, with many references to the film in its lyrics. 

Its standout guitar parts include the same kind of chord motif heard in We Will Rock You, once again played around the 14th fret, and the faster licks in A Mixolydian and A major heard near the end of the song.

A Kind Of Magic was the album that followed Queen’s legendary show-stealing performance at Live Aid in 1985, and it was the sound of a band full of confidence and creativity.

A Kind Of Magic is quite a shreddy song with some really fast licks towards the end. Can you give some tips as to how you’d approach playing them?

“I don’t usually play them these days! I just like to go off and do my own thing, really. It’s an opportunity to have some fun with it. And if I was actually going to play those licks, it would be like being in a straitjacket because they’re difficult to play and I would be worried about my fingers being in the right place – and I don’t enjoy that! 

“I’d much prefer to just do what comes into my head. And that’s one of the places in the show these days where I have no idea what I’m going to play when I get to that solo. And I like it to be that way, so it can go anywhere. 

“I also have an extra weapon, which is the rocket I use. You know, we fire rockets during this song. I fire the rocket. It’s a childish toy, but it means that I can fire rockets in the air exactly the way I always dreamed of doing it when we made the video for that song.”

“The video has the guitar with fireworks coming out of the top of it, and I always thought would it be great to do that live. Well, we could do that now! Yes, it is childish, but it gives me such a lot of pleasure. And I can do it whenever I want. It’s a surprise for the audience. And the solo builds itself around that. 

“So, those are the little peaks where the rockets come out. And I kind of fill in the gaps and try to lead the audience towards wondering what’s going to happen next. I have a lot of fun with it really. 

“To me, it’s a lot better than kind of showing off and doing the fast stuff. There is a little bit of fast stuff still in it, but it’s basically playing with the audience. That’s what I like to do at that point.”

So do you have some special modification to one of your guitars? 

“Yes, there’s one particular guitar which has it all built into it – or built on to it, I should say. It’s a lot of fun, and the audience love it. Sometimes the simple tricks are the best. Like the mirrorball. Everybody loves a mirrorball. Which we use in the solo for I Want To Break Free. It gets a huge round of applause, and they’re not applauding me – they’re applauding the mirrorball!”

These Are The Days Of Our Lives

In this beautiful synth-driven ballad, written by Roger Taylor, the lyrics reflected on the band’s shared experiences early on and the love that brought them together. The video was filmed in black and white, with a frail-looking Freddie Mercury at the very final stages of his life. 

Although the use of rhythm guitar in this track is fairly sparse, there are some incredibly melancholic lead lines from May halfway in – starting in A natural minor and then phrases in D minor which repeat a whole tone up in E minor – and more passages wrapped around Mercury’s vocals towards the end.

Let’s talk about the solo in there. I love the tone, the delay effects…

“Well, it’s a very delicate song and I was aware it had to be a very delicate solo. I started experimenting with the delays live, so it’s not like we put an effect on the solo afterwards – I was playing using those effects to make little harmonies, as I’ve fairly frequently done, but this was a very different atmosphere from anything we’ve ever done before. 

“And those little arpeggiated runs, I did very quickly as an experiment. But as soon as I’d done it, I liked it. That’s the second part of the solo that I’m talking about. I remember sitting with Freddie and him going, ‘Oh, yeah. That’s nice. You know, when you get that together it’ll be quite good!’ And I thought, I actually don’t want to change it. I said to him, ‘I quite like it the way it is.’ And he came around, eventually; he liked it too. 

“Of course, it’s Roger’s track, so Roger is going to have the ultimate say as to whether it goes on or not, and he liked it so that’s the way we kept it. And that guitar is woven into the whole song. It’s not just in the solo. It does little duets with a vocal all the way through. It’s quite delicately woven, that song, and I love it. I think it’s probably Roger’s best song ever. It’s a beautiful song.”

Are you mixing up picking and fingerpicking in this song?

“It’s not fingerpicking, actually. It’s just very delicately played with a pick, mainly. I wasn’t so much into using my fingers in those days. But the solo is; oh, yes, you’re right. I am doing it with the soft part of my fingers. I beg your pardon. You’re right. I’d forgotten!”

Dragon Attack

This powerful deep cut from 1980 album The Game is another example of Queen taking influence from the funk sounds that were popular at the time. But it’s more rock than disco – sounding almost like the kind of riff Thin Lizzy would have come up with in the mid-to-late ’70s, in this case built around the D minor pentatonic scale. 

Breaking down the solo in his 1983 Starlicks instructional video, Brian explained how “with that particular screaming tone setting and also by hitting the string with your pick and the thumb, you can get those octave harmonics coming out, which gives it a bit more tension and screams a little more.”

Kirk Hammett tells us that Dragon Attack is his favourite Queen song. I’d love to get your reflections on it…

“Well, I love it too! It’s got such an amazing feel. We were in that funk place, but this one has a real kind of rock-funk feel. And again, it started off very spontaneously, me playing along with Deacy. And, probably, it was more Deacy’s riff than mine, to be honest. But I took hold of it and built it into the song that it became. 

“It came out of spontaneity, and it came out of, I think, wanting to play the kind of music which was inspiring us when we would go down to the rock disco after work in Munich every night.” 

“We used to go to a place called the Sugar Shack, and it was definitely a sort of rock club, a rock dance club, if you like. And generally they would play Queen music, but when Queen music came on it didn’t work so well, it didn’t inspire people to get up and go nuts on the dancefloor, whereas a lot of other things did – songs that had a lot more space in them. 

“So what I tried to do with Dragon Attack was make it the kind of track which was going to work in the Sugar Shack. That’s totally what it was about, which was to get girls excited and make boys want to get up and go nuts with them on the dance floor there. So it’s very spacious. 

“The song doesn’t have the usual kind of rhythm build-up. It’s just the riff – bass, drums, guitar. Very open, very stark. And the lyric also comes from the Sugar Shack, if you want to know what that’s about?”

Who wouldn’t? 

“The dragons are in the sugar shack. It’s about that strange twilight world where you stay till the lights come on in the morning, and you come out and it’s dawn! It was a pretty wild time for us, and that’s what I attempted to put in the song. It’s all about us and the way things were, and the sort of sexy side of the peripherals of rock. That track was designed to be uniquely a dance track. So you have Another One Bites The Dust and Dragon Attack which are both big departures from the way Queen had come up. 

“I remember touring after we finished the record, and American radio picked up on those songs just like that. We never expected they would. We thought they would want just the rock tracks. But they picked up on that stuff and it was all over! Every time we got into a limo or car or a restaurant or whatever, they wouldn’t be playing those tracks. 

“And it’s interesting – it was the same time as The Rolling Stones put out Miss You, which is also very funky; very different for them. Rock was becoming funky for a while. And it worked! 

“A lot of people said that [Queen’s 1982 album] Hot Space didn’t work, but it actually did. It brought people to a new place. And it gave birth to Michael Jackson doing his incredible stuff – and later, Michael Jackson inviting Slash to play on a track with him. All that sort of stuff. It was that fusion of funk and rock which I think lives with us to this day.“ 

The Gibson Garage London – the guitar giant’s first flagship store outside of the US – officially opened its doors today, accompanied by two longtime champions of the brand, Jimmy Page (who announced his own multi-guitar partnership at the event) and Black Sabbath legend Tony Iommi.

But standing between them was someone less associated with Gibson headstocks: Brian May.

“We are so proud to have him in our Gibson family,” enthused Gibson President and CEO Cesar Gueikian. “From a little band called Queen… Brian May!”

For us grizzled guitar journos, the curly-haired virtuoso’s entrance was a surprise, to say the least. The Queen icon is rarely seen without the Red Special, the guitar he built with his father – and he’s been selling mass-produced versions of it under his own brand, Brian May Guitars, for 20 years.

(Yes, history buffs will note that May did play a Chet Atkins SE nylon-string back in the ’80s, while a Flying V and Les Paul Deluxe acted as backup electrics, but given that’s not exactly common knowledge, we don’t think that’s what ushered him into Gibson’s inner circle.)

So what does this all mean? Try as we might, Gibson reps were tight-lipped about what their relationship with May had in store. But we have our theories.

As of 2004, Brian May Guitars manufactures mid-priced, sub-$1,000 versions of May’s trademark instrument, assembled in South Korea and produced under the watchful eye of May’s longtime tech Pete Malandrone and House Music’s Barry Moorhouse. They come in a wide variety of colors, with idiosyncratic pickup switching faithful to the Queen icon’s original.

But what BMG doesn’t do is build the kind of awe-inspiring, meticulous replicas that the Gibson Custom Shop and Murphy Lab are known for. And wouldn’t that be a smart idea?

We know May has had slavish Red Special recreations built in the past for the Bohemian Rhapsody biopic, but those were very much not-for-sale. If Tom Murphy and co can lend their considerable talents to reproducing every nook and cranny of one of the electric guitar’s most truly unique instruments… well, that’s very big news indeed.

May is no stranger to partnering with other firms, of course – he has licensed his guitar designs to Guild and Burns in the past. But it’s been over two decades since he last released a guitar that wasn’t under the Brian May Guitars banner.

We’d wager May’s old buddy – and jamming partner – Tony Iommi had something to do with the new partnership, having worked with Gueikian and Gibson on the ‘Monkey’ 1964 SG Special replica back in 2020. May was clearly impressed with the results.

But assuming a replica is on the cards, what could be next? Given Gibson’s trickle-down release schedule – known as ‘anchoring’ in the biz – we might reasonably expect a USA-built Red Special in the coming years.

But surely an Epiphone version would compete with May’s own brand? We’re fascinated to see what the partnership has in store. Watch this space…

For more on the Gibson Garage London, including what makes it quite unlike any other guitar store, check out our exclusive behind-the-scenes coverage.

Nearly half a century on from its initial release Bohemian Rhapsody remains one of the ultimate examples of an irresistibly head-banging electric guitar riff – not to mention a go-to sing-along song and a staple at parties, weddings and, not least, Queen sets. Yet Brian May says that after all these years, he still finds its iconic heavy riffs a challenge to play – and blames Freddie Mercury for their hand-aching complexity.

The six-minute cinematic whirlwind of a track, from the 1975 album, A Night at the Opera, was actually penned by Mercury on piano. However, transferring the riffs for its climatic hard rock section onto the guitar proved to be a harder process and resulted in a riff that May still struggles to wrap his fingers around today.

In a new interview with Total Guitar, he details how Mercury’s tendency to play in octaves made playing it on his beloved Red Special a stark challenge, dubbing it “the most unnatural riff to play you could possibly imagine.”

“It’s not a riff that a guitarist would naturally play. And that’s a double-edged sword,” May explains. 

“It’s difficult for the guitar to get a hold of it, but once you have got hold of it, it’s very unusual. And to be honest, I still don’t find it easy! I can play it at home okay, but in the heat of the battle, when we’re playing it live, and there’s huge adrenaline, it’s the climax of the show and that riff comes along, it’s not the easiest thing to play.

“I’m excited and I’ve got to keep the passion,” he continues, “but I’ve got to keep a part of my brain cool just to handle where the fingers have to go because it isn’t natural. But that’s that is the joy of it, really, because it’s so unusual.”

The Queen man is the cover star for the new issue of Total Guitar and his exploits across the operatic powerhouse track make up a large chunk of the conversation.

“Freddie had that riff in his head and he played it on the piano, which is quite difficult because he plays in octaves,” May says of its creation. “I just worked off that and slightly adapted it to the way a guitar needs to play it.”

The track’s winding eccentricity meant May could tap into the full tonal diversity of his Red Special.

“I was able to do a lot of interesting stuff with sounds because in Bohemian Rhapsody, I pretty much use every sound that my guitar can create with different pickup combinations,” he says. 

“So even during the course of those riffs, the sound is changing because there are different guitars coming in with different pickups selections.”

However, the track isn’t the only instance of Mercury bashing out heavy riffs on the piano for May to play. He adds that the relationship between piano and guitar made for some brilliant heavy moments, but it often came at the behest of the guitarist’s fingers.

“Freddie had a habit of writing an Eb and Ab,” the guitarist says. “So it was always a challenge for me to find places on the guitar to make that work. But it obviously contributed a lot to the way I developed as a player. It was a good thing, even if it was... strange!

“But it’s funny - Freddie was a good riffmeister, really! That riff for Ogre Battle [from 1974’s Queen II], a lot of people think that’s mine, but that came out of Freddie’s head. So he had very good ‘heavy’ sensibilities. He was a devotee of Jimi Hendrix. People think he was just concerned with the lighter stuff but it’s not true. He did enjoy the heavy stuff, too.”

On the topic of heavy riffs, May’s chat with Total Guitar also went on to discuss Queen’s iconic collaboration with David Bowie, Under Pressure. Released at a time when both artists were at the height of their powers, May revealed his vision for the track was a lot more guitar-centric.

“It was very difficult… because we all had different ideas of how it should be mixed,” says May. “I think it’s probably the only time in my career I bowed out, because I knew it was going to be a fight.”

To read TG’s full interview with May - which sees the British guitar icon offering fresh insights into the creation of many huge Queen hits, including We are the Champions, Don’t Stop Me Now, Another One Bites the Dust and, of course, Bohemian Rhapsody, head to our in-depth feature.

Queen and Davie Bowie’s 1981 collaboration, Under Pressure, is regarded as one of the most successful cameo pairings of the decade. It propelled both acts further into the commercial stratosphere at a time when Bowie was about to dominate stadiums with his latest reinvention, Let’s Dance, and Queen were at the full height of their majestic rock pomp. 

As a result, Under Pressure topped the charts in several countries, became an essential inclusion in the greatest hits compilations of both acts, arrived right in time for MTV’s launch and then, less than 10 years later, provided a bed for Vanilla Ice to, er, rock the mic like a vandal. 

However, in a new interview with Total Guitar, Brian May reveals that the track was initially much more guitar heavy and he’s never liked the resulting mix of the song – the outcome, he says, of the somewhat fraught clash of the “awesome creative forces” of Freddie Mercury and Bowie.

“It was all done spontaneously in the studio very late at night after we had a meal and a lot of drinks,” recalls May. “And it was a pretty heavy backing track. When it gets to ‘Why can’t we give love’, we were all working on it together, and it sounded like The Who. It sounded massively chord-driven. 

“And I was beaming because I liked The Who. I remember saying to David, ‘Oh, it sounds like The Who, doesn’t it?’ He says, ‘Yeah, well it’s not going to sound like The Who by the time I’ve finished with it!’ You know, in a joking kind of way. But he didn’t want it to be that way.”

As such, the classic guitar band sound that had been fleshed out in May’s mind and on tape soon evaporated, as Bowie’s input dragged the song in another direction.

“It was very difficult… because we all had different ideas of how it should be mixed,” says May.

“I think it’s probably the only time in my career I bowed out, because I knew it was going to be a fight. So basically it was Freddie and David fighting it out in the studio with the mix. And what happened in the mix was that most of that heavy guitar was lost.

“And even the main riff, I played that electric, pretty much in the sort of arpeggiated style which I do live now. But that never made it into the mix. What they used was the acoustic bits which were done first as a sort of demo.”

The idea of a heavy guitar mix of Under Pressure, complete with a big central riff is an appealing proposition, but it was not to be when it came to the final production. 

Since then, May has learned to live with the results, for the most part…

“I never liked it, to be honest, the way it was mixed,” May tells Total Guitar. “But I do recognise that it works. It’s a point of view, and it’s done very well. And people love it. So we play it quite a bit different live, as you probably noticed, it is a lot heavier and I think it benefits from it. 

“I mean, David was an awesome creative force. But you can’t have too many awesome creative forces in the same room. It starts to get very difficult! Something has to give.”

Brian May Guitars has refreshed the Queen guitarist’s bespoke signature guitar with a Hot Pink finish so vivid it makes John Mayer’s Roxy Pink Silver Sky look like Charcoal Burst. 

That BMG has unveiled a limited-edition Special with a finish so bright it might well be visible from space does seems apt. At least there is some sort of cosmic logic at play that this Day-Glo guitar should come from a company headed by a man with a doctorate in astrophysics.

But the inspiration for this has to be altogether more earthly, tapping into a pop-cultural moment in which Greta Gerwig’s Barbie became the year’s highest-grossing movie. That said, if we are talking guitars and Barbie, Black is the finish that comes to mind – wasn’t Ryan Gosling as Ken playing a Jerry Cantrell acoustic in the movie?

Of course, the Red Special – at least its descendants in today’s BMG Special lineup – has not always been red. The Antique Cherry finish that we most commonly associate with the unique electric guitar that Queen’s Brian May made at home with his father back in the ‘60s has been refinished in Silver Sparkle, White, 3-Tone Sunburst, Jubilee Gold, Windemere Blue… There have been custom art editions and it has even been left unfinished with the natural grain of mahogany taking center stage. Hot Pink is a new one.

What’s underneath the Hot Pink on this BMG Special LE? Well, it’s the same chambered mahogany body that makes the BMG Special such a lightweight proposition, typically weighing in at a lower-back friendly 7lbs. You’ve got a 24” scale guitar with a glued-in mahogany neck.

There are a trio of Tri-Sonic-style pickups, the arcane but brilliant six-switch pickup system, a Wilkinson WVP 2-point knife-edge tremolo with brass saddles supplies the wobble, while the Macassar ebony fingerboard seats 24 medium jumbo frets. 

The finish is high-gloss poly which makes the color pop. We can’t make jokes about it putting the matte into Mattel finish because this, sadly, isn’t an official tie-in, but even after the Barbie fever breaks there’s definitely a sort of hot new-romantic appeal about dressing this unique and iconic ‘60s design in high-viz.

Will this radical look catch on? Well, pink has always been a strong look in the world of electric guitar. We have the aforementioned Roxy Pink of Mayer’s Silver Sky. Jeff Beck reached for a pink Jackson Soloist in the ‘80s – exactly the sort of fit and finish you need when teaming up with Tina Turner on Private Dancer.

More recently, Steve Vai’s affordable JEM Jr. looks the bee’s knees in Neon Pink. Ditto, the EVH Wolfgang. And if we take some of the heat out of it then the Shell Pink that has graced many a Fender and Squier guitar always turns heads.

List price for the Hot Pink BMG Special LE is £895, $999 approx. For more details, head over to Brian May Guitars. Wear shades.

If you’re talking signature guitar tones, we’d wager there’s none more instantly recognisable than that of Brian May. Ever since Queen’s debut album five decades ago, a whole industry has grown up around ‘that sound’, with guitars, amps and effects all vying for the attention of hordes of Queen enthusiasts who want to replicate it. 

Aside from the ‘Red Special’, May’s unique homemade guitar, the other main component is, of course, the Vox AC30, which May plugs into via a variety of treble boosters. 

Now there’s a special Brian May signature version of Vox’s highly portable MV50 mini amp head, which includes a built-in treble booster circuit by Knight Audio Technologies, one of the most well-known Queen equipment specialists, with Sir Brian himself among its customers.

Introduced back in 2017, Vox’s typically innovative MV50 was one of the first guitar amps to capitalise on the small size and weight of Class D amplification, combined with a clever valve substitute called the Nutube 6P1. 

Developed by Vox’s parent company Korg, the Nutube is a twin triode using vacuum fluorescent display tech to amplify audio just like a regular 12AX7 but in a more compact and less power-hungry package. The result is highly authentic valve‑like tone with enough power for any gig, from a head that’s no larger than many stompboxes. 

The MV50-BM edition has been designed in collaboration with May himself and features an eye-catching ‘Red Special’ paint job that’s been carried over to the matching BC108 speaker cabinet, available as a Limited Edition Set, with other Brian May goodies to sweeten the deal.

The MV50-BM sounds very similar to the regular AC version until you kick the integrated KAT treble booster into action. We’ve said before that the standard MV50 AC model does an uncanny job of replicating a full-size AC30 but doesn’t quite get the heavier compressed Brian May tones.

The KAT treble boost is the missing link that makes this possible, and with everything on 10, it’s pretty much instant Queen at Wembley and nearly as loud, besides looking the part, too.

You can buy the MV50-BM signature head on its own, but we think the smart money will be heading for this Limited Edition Set, which includes the matching BC108 cab, plus postcards and a keychain. Most importantly, though, if your daily practice routine starts with We Will Rock You, this is the sound.

Specs

• PRICE: $399 / £419
• ORIGIN: Vietnam
• TYPE: Hybrid valve/solid-state preamp, Class D power amp
• OUTPUT: 50W RMS into 4ohms or 25W RMS into 8ohms
• DIMENSIONS: 135mm (w) x 100mm (d) x 75mm (h) 
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 0.5/1
• CABINET: Steel
• CHANNELS: 1
• CONTROLS: Gain, tone, master volume. Treble boost on/off, standby on/off, eco mode on/off, output impedance switch and flat/deep EQ switch
• FOOTSWITCH: None
• ADDITIONAL FEATURES: Built-in Knight Audio Technologies treble booster, speaker-emulated phones/line out
• OPTIONS: Available as a head on its own for $249/£259, or as part of a Limited Edition Set with matching BC108 cab
• CONTACT: Vox Amps

From the homemade electric guitar to the treble-boosted AC30s to the old sixpence-piece he uses as a pick, Brian May’s tone is quite literally the stuff books are written about. So, imagine if you could distil all of that into a tiny headphone amp and mini-cab. That’s exactly what Vox did when it set about creating the latest in its long-running line of amPlugs.

You’ve probably seen these before – the amPlug plugs directly into your guitar with a swivelling jack, loaded with controls and a headphone socket for the most portable practice possible. Now, Vox’s amPlug has been issued as a signature Brian May edition and it comes in two guises. 

First is the lone amPlug Brian May ($/£59), but perhaps of more interest to Queen fans will be the amPlug Set Brian May Limited Edition, which is what we have here. The set bags you the same amPlug plus a matching red mini-cab boasting a three-inch speaker and pumping out two watts of power.

The amPlug itself is surprisingly packed with features: it’s got two channels (one ‘standard’ AC30 channel and one ‘treble-boosted’); a trio of effects (delay, phaser and chorus) and an onboard drum machine. The latter hosts a number of – let’s be honest – fairly dated-sounding, albeit useful drum patterns, but there’s a needle in the haystack courtesy of the stomps and claps from We Will Rock You. 

If you’ve ever tried a battery-powered mini-amp before, you’ll know the results can vary. With our amPlug hooked up to the cabinet (it mounts in the top and there’s a mini-jack cable included), we’d say this sits on the clearer end of the tones this type of amp produces.

Channel one goes from a plucky clean, up to a smooth crunch sound, while holding down the power button switches to the higher-gain treble-boosted mode.

At the top end of its gain and volume spectrum things become waspy, but roll it back a bit and we’re back to classic overdrive territory. The effects are fun, with only the intensity and delay tempo tweakable, but they definitely give a moreish flavour of Brian’s tones. 

So will you be ousting your ‘big amps’ in favour of this? It’s doubtful. But as a good-sounding practice amp with heaps of collectable appeal, this is a lot of fun. We can’t help noticing the price jump between a regular amPlug and cab and this set, but we assume that royalty comes with some royalties. Just don’t take it on the roof.

Specs

• PRICE: $/£149
• TYPE: Headphone/mini-practice amp
• CHANNELS: Two
• CONTROLS: Power, tap-tempo, gain, tone, volume, effect select/rhythm select switch
• EFFECTS: Delay, phaser chorus
• CONNECTIVITY: Input jack attached) headphone out, aux-in
• POWER: AAA batteries (x2), 9V PP3 (cab)
• CONTACT: Vox

Would you want the world to see a video of you at 11 playing electric guitar?

Even if you were to answer that question in the affirmative, you probably didn't sound as good at that age as 11-year-old Britain's Got Talent contestant Harry Churchill did during his recent audition for the popular show. 

Wielding an Epiphone Les Paul, Churchill shook off some (understandable) early nerves and took on a medley of Brian May's guitar parts from the Queen catalog, including the Bohemian Rhapsody and We Will Rock You solos. 

Even more impressive, though, Churchill put on a heck of a show while doing so, wowing the studio crowd at one climactic point with some behind-the-head shredding, executed while standing directly in front of the show's judges no less.

Even the notoriously difficult-to-impress Simon Cowell had nothing but kind words for the youngster. "That was a great, great, great audition," he told Churchill, before voting with the show's other three judges to move the young guitarist on to the next round of the competition.

The Britain's Got Talent judges weren't the only significant figures who had praise for Churchill, though. More still came recently from Brian May himself, who shared a clip of the young guitarist's performance to his followers on social media.

"Harry rocks!" the Queen guitar legend wrote of Churchill on Instagram. "Had to post this – congratulations Harry Churchill on smashing it tonight on Britain's Got Talent! Go kill’ em!"

Churchill's electrifying performance is far from the first time that Queen lead guitar theatrics have made their way onto a major televised competition show.

Back in 2009, May and Queen drummer Roger Taylor performed a dramatic version of We Are the Champions on American Idol, with that year's American Idol winner, Kris Allen, and the season's runner-up, Adam Lambert, on vocals. In 2012, May and Taylor performed on the show again, shortly before they began regularly performing with Lambert on vocals as Queen + Adam Lambert.

In 2011, the BBC produced a documentary centered on Vox Amps, and their impact on the history of rock music.

Titled Vox Pop: How Dartford Powered the British Beat Boom, the film features a number of the brand's most famous users, among them Queen electric guitar hero Brian May.

In one particularly killer segment of the film, May picks up his Red Special signature guitar and – surrounded by an awe-inspiring stack of his favored Vox AC30 guitar amps – shows presenter Iain Lee exactly how the AC30's rich, creamy distortion underpins his guitar sound. 

At one point, May unpacks the tone of his Bohemian Rhapsody solo (which, in 2020, was voted the greatest guitar solo of all time by Guitar World readers.)

For the Bohemian Rhapsody solo, the Red Special's neck and middle pickups, May explains, are "set against each other". He then shows Lee what he means by playing, unaccompanied, the first few bars of the solo. 

Lee can't keep a smile off his face during the display of lead prowess, turning – in a wonderful bit of television – to the cameras and grinning from ear to ear in what was surely one of those 'this job has some decent perks!' moments. 

You can see the magical moment beginning at around the 1:35 mark below. 

After Lee thanks May for the quick-fire performance, the latter explains, "The amp kinda brings it out. The whole system brings out those high harmonics, so it sounds an octave higher than it really is."

May was originally inspired to purchase an AC30 by one of his own heroes, blues guitar legend Rory Gallagher.

“It’s all about Vox AC30s and the treble booster – which was all inspired by Rory Gallagher," May told Guitar World in a 2021 interview centered around the creation of Bohemian Rhapsody. "There’s really very little else on my guitar. There are no effects boxes as a rule. I used delays and stuff, but the fundamental tone that you hear is the guitar and the treble booster and the AC30. And the AC30 gives it that incredible throat, which is variable.

“The more you turn it up the more it goes into saturation. It doesn’t distort that much, and you’re still in the position at about nine and a half where you can still play chords and they still sound like chords. It doesn’t sound like a big fart [laughs].

“So it’s a unique thing and we know why that is now," the Queen guitarist continued, "because the AC30 is fundamentally a class A amplifier, and because of the way the valves are used, they’re biased half way up, they don’t distort until you drive them very, very hard, and then they go smoothly into that distortion. So that’s the whole thing. I get so used to that being the way that the guitar speaks, I take it for granted.“

Just this week, ahead of NAMM 2023, May joined forces with Vox to make that legendary sound “accessible to all” with the introduction of the Vox amPlug Brian May and MV50.

The former is a headphone amp that's modeled after a cranked AC30 signal chain, and features a Treble Booster setting and three onboard effects – Brighton Rock delay, phaser and chorus.

The latter, meanwhile, is based on Vox MV50 circuitry and AC30 tone, and sports Vox's Nutube technology and a Knight Audio Technologies treble booster for a closer approximation of May's tone.

For more info on the amps, visit Vox's website.

NAMM 2023: Vox has teamed up with electric guitar legend Sir Brian May for two signature guitar amps, both of which promise to deliver the Queen icon’s historic tone in tiny packages.

Few guitar/gear combos are as iconic as the Red Special and the Vox AC30, and it's these classic amp tones that Vox has sought to provide with its latest signature offering. Specifically, as May puts it, the amps aim to bring “the sounds you make in a stadium show into your living room”.

There are two amps on tap: the amPlug Brian May guitar headphone amp and the Nutube technology-loaded MV50 Brian May. Unsurprisingly, the former is all about tones at standard headphone level, modeled after a cranked AC30 signal chain and featuring a Treble Booster setting.

The amPlug also offers three onboard effects – Brighton Rock delay, phaser and chorus – and comes loaded with a range of backing rhythms, including the stomps and claps of We Will Rock You, for home practice and jams.

An accompanying mini cab is also available – finished in an identical Red Special-inspired colorway and carrying Brian May’s signature – for low-level headphone-less practice.

Arguably the more intriguing amp of the drop, though, is the MV50, which offers Vox’s downsized Nutube technology in an effort to produce authentic tube tone.

Specifically, the MV50 is based on the MV50 circuitry and AC30 tone, but also offers a Knight Audio Technologies treble booster for a more May-esque tone. Apparently, despite its humble size, the tone of the MV50 is so spot on that May boldly said he’d take it on future tours to see how it “shapes up”.

Highlights include a 50-watt output, connectivity for hooking up to a cab, and speaker emulation in the line out, all of which means it should stack up as a suitable gigging companion and would certainly do the job recording direct in the studio.

“It's perfect for any smaller show, and if you want to put a mic in front of it, it'll do for your big gigs as well,” Mayer said of the MV50. “I wouldn't mind going on some future stadium gig and seeing how this shapes up.”

Of the wider set of amps, May added, “I want people to be able to get the sounds you make in a stadium show into your living room, and these products achieve that. I hope that people find them inspiring.”

Each amp comes as a standalone unit, or in a special limited-edition set that includes the matching speaker cab, as well as a keychain and postcards. 

Price-wise, the amPlug Brian May is available for $59/£54 as a standalone unit or $/£149 as a set, while the MV50 can be purchased on its own or as part of a wider package for $249/£259 or $399/£419, respectively.

Visit Vox for more info.

A new year brings another landmark in the life of one of the greatest guitar players of them all. “50 years,” Brian May says with a smile and brief pause as he takes it all in. “It really is amazing when you think about it.”

Half a century ago, the release of Queen’s debut album was the beginning of an extraordinary journey for Brian and the three other founding members of the group: drummer Roger Taylor, bassist John Deacon and singer Freddie Mercury. 

That first album, titled simply Queen, was not a success, peaking at number 24 on the UK chart. But by the end of 1975 they had their first global smash hit with Mercury’s operatic rock masterpiece Bohemian Rhapsody, which held the number one spot in the UK for nine weeks, with a groundbreaking video that was years ahead of the MTV revolution. And from there, world domination soon followed.

Queen’s stats are astonishing. More than 300 million record sales worldwide, including six million of their 1981 collection Greatest Hits, making it the biggest selling album of all time in the UK. More than one billion streams of Bohemian Rhapsody on Spotify alone. But those numbers are only a part of the story. 

The music made by the original line-up of Queen between 1973 and 1991 was dazzlingly creative, and as wide-ranging as it was far-reaching, encompassing everything from heavy rock to disco, gospel, funk and synth-pop. 

The big hits came from every member of the band: Mercury with Killer Queen, We Are The Champions and Crazy Little Thing Called Love as well as Bohemian Rhapsody; Taylor with Radio Ga Ga and A Kind Of Magic; Deacon with Another One Bites The Dust and I Want To Break Free: May with We Will Rock You, Fat Bottomed Girls, Flash and I Want It All. 

And as a live act, with Mercury a hugely charismatic frontman, Queen were the masters of stadium rock, as they proved in 1985 when they stole the show at the biggest music event in history, Live Aid.

In November 1991, the death of Freddie Mercury at the age of 45 was the end of Queen. Or so it seemed. In the following year, memorial concert staged at Wembley Stadium, the scene of Freddie’s greatest moment at Live Aid, saw May, Taylor and Deacon performing Queen’s classic songs with an all-star cast including David Bowie, Elton John, Robert Plant, George Michael and members of Guns N’ Roses, Def Leppard and Metallica. 

Soon after, John Deacon retired. But for Brian May and Roger Taylor there was, over time, a shared belief that Queen was unfinished business. Between 2005 and 2009, they worked with ex-Free and Bad Company singer Paul Rodgers, performing live and recording an album, The Cosmos Rocks, billed as Queen + Paul Rodgers. And in 2011, they enlisted Californian singer Adam Lambert, a runner-up in talent show American Idol, to front a first tour as Queen + Adam Lambert. 

Another huge success came in 2018 with the movie Bohemian Rhapsody. Described as a ‘biographical musical drama film’, and starring Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury, it grossed over $900 million. And with each successive tour, Queen + Adam Lambert have played sold-out shows all across the world. The Rhapsody Tour, which wrapped last summer, included no less than 10 dates at London’s O2 Arena.

So it is that after 50 years, Queen’s music remains as popular as it ever was. To mark this anniversary, Brian May is speaking to TG from his home in Surrey, where he sits in a surprisingly small and sparsely furnished office room. 

In a lengthy conversation, he talks primarily about the songs he wrote for Queen, from Keep Yourself Alive, the powerful opening track on the band’s debut album, through to The Show Must Go On, the poignant grand finale from Innuendo, the last Queen album of Freddie Mercury’s lifetime.

Brian’s gear is well documented. The homemade Red Special guitar and the AC-30 combo amp have been his trusted tools in the vast majority of recordings from his long career. As he said last year, in a separate TG interview: “I’m so lucky that my guitar and amp have such a wide range of possibilities.”

So in this new interview, the focus is on his development as a player, the key influences that shaped him, his education in the techniques of recording and production, his approach to live performance, and the art of songwriting in all those classic he created - channelling Led Zeppelin in Now I’m Here, inventing thrash metal with Stone Cold Crazy, matching the epic scale of Bohemian Rhapsody with The Prophet’s Song, and composing the mother of all rock anthems in We Will Rock You.

And he begins by taking us all the way back to that first Queen album...

In the year of ’73...

As the four members of Queen prepared to go into the studio to record the band’s debut album, what kind of guitar player were you aiming to be?

“What a great question! It was a combination of all the things that were in my head, starting from when I was a kid and listening to the birth of rock ’n’ roll on my headphones - in my bed, hidden under the covers. And then there was everything that came in the late 60s. So it’s a combination of Buddy Holly, James Burton, Hank Marvin, and then Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck and Pete Townshend. All the people who are still my heroes.

“When I look back on it, I don’t think I could have been born at a better time. As kids we were so lucky to have grown up in that period when things were bursting through and all the boundaries were being broken. 

“When I first heard Little Richard, it was a moment of shock, but there was also the joy of realising that people could actually sing that way – they could scream their emotions, as opposed to being a smoothed-out crooner or whatever. It wasn’t just singing tunes anymore. It was singing your passion, your anger, your love and your pain.

“It was such a different world before rock ’n’ roll, and both Freddie and I had a lot of influences from what came before, the jazz stuff like Glenn Miller and The Temperance Seven. So when we were growing up, those influences were in us as well as the emerging rock ’n’ roll, and that gave us a perspective that almost nobody has these days.”

The first album

Queen’s debut album was co-produced by the band with Roy Thomas Baker and John Anthony, and recorded at Trident Studios in London, with additional material from earlier sessions at another London studio, De Lane Lea. What did you learn from that whole experience?

“Our major frustration was the sound of that first album, which we were never happy with. We were thrown into the studio and into a system which regarded itself as state of the art. Trident Studios were very emergent as a force in the world. And they thought they had it down. 

“But the Trident sound was very dead. It was the opposite of what we were aiming for. So Roger’s drums would be in a little cubicle, and all the drums would have tape on them. They’d all be dead and down. I remember saying to Roy Thomas Baker, ‘This isn’t really the sound we want, Roy.’ And he said, ‘Don’t worry, we can fix it all in the mix.’ Which of course is not the best way, is it? And I think we all knew: it ain’t going to happen!

“Strangely enough, the demos we’d made at De Lane Lea Studios in Wembley were closer to what we dreamed of – you know, nice open drum sounds and ambience on the guitar and everything. That’s much more the way we wanted it to go. So that’s the major frustration with the first album. 

“But there were other frustrations. Roy was doing a great job of kicking us into shape, but it didn’t really sit very well with our way of playing. His idea of getting on track was do it again and again. And again. And again. And again! So there’s no mistakes. But of course, by the time you’ve done that, you’ve lost all your enthusiasm for it. And it kind of shows. 

“Much later we evolved these techniques of keeping ourselves fresh – particularly with The Game album [1980], where if the backing track sounded good, and you make a mistake, you’d just drop in on it. Then we said, ‘Why didn’t we do that before?’ And it was because people told us it couldn’t be done. But with those backing tracks on the first album, they got a bit tiresome. And I think you can hear it in some cases.”

How happy were you with the guitar sounds on the album?

“That was a bit of a fight as well, because people had discovered multi tracking, and there was this feeling that everything ought to be multitrack. So you play a solo, and the first thing people say is, ‘Oh, do you want to double track that?’ And maybe you do. But maybe you don’t – because sometimes you want to hear the personality, the attack, and the feeling in the moment when you do that one track. 

“So there was an awful lot of overdubs on that first album, which I would say now was unnecessary, and perhaps made it a bit more stiff than it otherwise would have been. Having said that, I think the songs are very representative of where we were at the time. 

“We were evolving. We had our heroes, as people always do. Anyone who tells you that they create in a vacuum is not telling the truth, because you have to create according to what you’ve grown up with. And I’ll mention Buddy Holly again, because he was such a big influence on me. That’s what got me excited in the beginning, I guess. But you can hear in the first album that we’re finding our style.”

Despite its difficult birth, are you proud of that album?

“Oh, I love it! It encapsulates what we were at the time, and it’s a declaration of where we were going. It’s very emotionally-based and quite raw. But it’s got a lot of melody and sh*tloads of harmonies. We were starting to flex our muscles. We were painting those colours with vocals and with guitars. It’s got all sorts of experimentation, which defines how free we wanted to be.

“There’s one song, The Night Comes Down, where we’re doing something which people told us we couldn’t do. People in those days used to say, ‘You can’t mix electric guitar with acoustic guitar.’ Nowadays that sounds pretty funny, but it was a belief that people around studios had, you know? 

“They would say the electric guitar is too loud for the acoustic and I went, ‘Come on!’ It’s just a question of balancing in the mix. So with The Night Comes Down, it’s based on acoustic guitar, my old beautiful old acoustic. But the guitar harmonies are all electric. And that was a beginning, sort of like a demonstration: ‘Yes, we can do this, we can make our own rules!’ So, yes, I like that first album, because it does define us. Absolutely.”

Keep yourself alive

As the first track on the first album, Keep Yourself Alive was effectively the band’s mission statement. Was this also an important statement for you personally as a guitarist?

“Keep Yourself Alive, you could write a book about in itself. It’s got the first multitracked solo that I ever did. And I am happy with it. It’s a song written by a boy who’s becoming a man. It was meant to be ironic, but I discovered that irony isn’t an easy thing to put into music, because people don’t tend to connect with it. They tend to take it at face value. 

“Keep Yourself Alive wasn’t meant to be jolly. The message was meant to be: if keeping yourself alive is all there is, then what is life? That’s kind of where I’m coming from. But people took it as something very joyful. And to be honest, I haven’t fought that, because it’s kind of nice. It seems to give people an uplift. All songs evolve after they’ve been made, not just before they’ve been made, and that’s one of them, I think.”

With this being such an important song, did you work that little bit harder in the recording and mixing of it?

“I’ll tell the whole story. We first put the song down in those demos that I told you about at De Lane Lea, and I was very happy with it. But of course we needed to re-record it for the album, and you know, when you’re trying to recreate something, it’s never quite the same. I never felt that the album version had the original ebullience that we got when we were first putting it down. But we worked on it very diligently. 

“A lot of the multi tracking rhythm parts that we put in, I took off, but we couldn’t mix it. We had Roy Baker, who is an absolutely first class engineer, and was quite experienced by that time. He’s the guy who did All Right Now for Free. We had John Anthony, who had great ears as a producer. And then we had the four of us who are very precocious boys. And between all of us, we couldn’t mix it. It just never sounded quite right. 

“But then, one night, I happened to be left alone with the guy who was making the tea, and just becoming an assistant engineer – Mike Stone. I said, ‘Should we just have a go?’ Because that’s the way it worked in those days. For guys like Mike it was an apprenticeship. They would sign on as tea boys and at night times they’d go in and work the desk and learn their trade. Well, he stepped up at that moment! 

“The two of us worked through the night and produced a mix of Keep Yourself Alive which suddenly everyone was happy with. So that’s quite a story and that was part of Mike Stone’s blossoming. He became the most incredible producer and engineer. He worked with us on A Night At The Opera and A Day At The Races, We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions. Mike became a very treasured member of our family. 

So I do like that mix of Keep Yourself Alive. Really, the stuff we had in Trident Studios was incredibly primitive. We only had left, centre and right for a start when you’re mixing, and you can hear that. Pan pots weren’t invented, basically. You’re mixing to three buses, and there’s very limited outboard gear, so the phasing isn’t some machine, it’s real – you feed out your signal into a Revox in one corner, and you feed the tape over here to another Revox. I’m talking about the delays. 

But all that phasing is real – real tape phasing. But apart from that, there isn’t much in the way of outboard gear. There’s very primitive echo chamber like a plate which sits over behind the wall someplace. So, limited capabilities of the gear. But we had a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of will to make this thing sound epic.”

The second album and their first hit

You returned to Trident Studios to make Queen II, and retained the services of Roy Thomas Baker, who worked as Queen’s co-producer on three more albums in the 70s. After the difficulties with the first album, what was your approach second time around?

“I remember saying to Roy as we were going back in: ‘We don’t want it to sound like that first album. We want to sound like we’re in a room and it’s live and real. We have to get rid of all that tape and get rid of the cubicles. And we’ll put the drums in the middle of the room, so we hear the room.’ 

“In that respect, my dad was a great influence. He introduced me to the word ‘ambience.’ He said that’s what was missing on the first album. And that ambience is the world. The noise you’re making can seem very small. You hear a snare drum, it’s very tight and dry. There’s no character to it, really. But you step back, and you hear it in the room, and suddenly you hear a whole universe!”

Like the first album, Queen II was very much a guitar-driven heavy rock record.

“Yes. We used to go on these package tours to places like Luxembourg and Belgium with groups who were popular at the time - Showaddywaddy, the Rubettes and Geordie, who of course had Brian Johnson [later of AC/DC] as the singer. We also opened for Slade, and we were the new boys. 

“We were the young band who hadn’t had any hits, and all of these guys that had hits. So we felt a bit humble. But all those guys looked at us and said, ‘We’ve heard your stuff, and you’re not pop, you’re not glam – you’re a rock group. You’re something which we wish we were.’ Now that was a real shock to us. We didn’t realise that people were already regarding us as something special.”

And it was a track from Queen II that gave you that first hit, when Freddie’s song Seven Seas Of Rhye reached number 10 in the UK.

“Well, you know, of course, that Seven Seas Of Rhye was the last track on the first album, in embryo – a sort of statement that something’s coming. But yes, the finished version was the first hit. Not that big, but the first hit.”

Seven Seas Of Rhye is also quite unconventional for a hit single. It’s not verse/chorus/verse, and it’s got those little instrumental key changes in there. Were you surprised when it made the charts?

“I think it’s fair to say we were surprised because we’d never had a hit up to that point, and until then it seemed impossible. But with Seven Seas Of Rhye, we worked at it very consciously. We’d thought with Keep Yourself Alive: this is going to be on the radio, it’s going to be our first hit. But on the whole, people at radio didn’t play it. We said, ‘Why are you not playing our record?’ They said, ‘Well, it takes too long to happen – the intro is too long.’ 

“We didn’t get into the verse until 30 seconds or whatever, and for a hit single everything needs to grab you quickly. So we said, ‘Right, our next single will deliver what you people are asking for!’ In other words, everything will happen in the first five seconds, and with Seven Seas Of Rhye it does. It’s like the kitchen sink is in there – a little piano and wham, bang, harmonies, guitar harmonies, massive drum fills – everything! So it was designed to knock people dead in the first few seconds on the radio, and it worked. People went, ‘Okay, yeah, we’ll play that.’ 

“Your hits were all about radio in those days and very little else. So yes, it was designed that way. But at the same time, we were not compromising on the content of the song. It’s very rock. It’s not very pop, and as you say, there’s all kinds of little intricate changes in there. It’s quite a composition, really. And it was quite interactive between the four of us.

“Freddie decided he didn’t want to say it was written by anyone else but him, which is fair enough, because he wrote the lyrics. But it was a very co-operative thing in those days. And I do feel proud of it. I think it’s a good rock pop creation. 

“And it got us to that first rung of the ladder. Suddenly, we were an act that people would consider putting on the radio. And we liked it because we hadn’t compromised, because it wasn’t just a kind of soft pop song. It was something also that we could take on the road and be proud of.”

And really, the magic of that song is in those key changes. They have an uplifting quality.

“Exactly. It’s a journey. We wanted to take people off into the stratosphere. It’s always been that way with us. We were inspired by our heroes to do that, and I put The Who way up top of that list. Pete Townshend is the master of mood change, a master of the suspended chord. I owe so much to him.”

Brighton Rock

The third album, Sheer Heart Attack, from 1974, is widely viewed as the band’s first classic and the first quintessential Queen album. And the opening track, Brighton Rock, is one of your most defining songs as a guitar player. It’s an explosion of excitement – and of course, the delay effect is in there. It’s said that this song was written around the time of Queen II, but was held back for Sheer Heart Attack. What was the reason for that?

“It was a slow burner, that song. It took shape gradually. And the solo stuff originated in a different place. When we were out on tour with Mott The Hoople, I played the beginnings of that solo in the song Son And Daughter, which is on the first album. 

“And I built my own delays – I modified some Echoplexes and built long rails for them so I could produce those long delays. They were frighteningly unstable. They weren’t roadworthy. So it was touch and go where they would work every night. And they didn’t work every night! 

“I would experiment at that point with the delays, and got the idea of building up harmonies and counterpoint with the delays. It became an obsession, which actually is still there. I still find I’m sort of obsessed with this kind of stuff. These days, the delays are done digitally very easily. 

“But there’s a certain charm about the old tape delays. They didn’t have a certain sound, because I started off with one delay, and then realised that if I had another delay of the same length, I could get three-part harmonies, and that’s when I got really excited!”

When did you switch to the to the double delay?

“I don’t remember exactly, but I think soon after the first album. As soon as we were out on tour – seriously on tour – I had the two delays.”

So it’s fair to say that people have never really heard Brighton Rock without the two delays?

“No, probably not. It’s just one on the album version. But by the time we get to [1975 album] A Night At The Opera, it’s a staple thing. There’s a lot of it in that album, and we’re doing it with the vocals as well in The Prophet’s Song – getting Freddie in there with the same kind of gear and encouraging him to experiment as well.”

Now I'm Here

In addition to Brighton Rock, the Sheer Heart Attack album has another of your signature songs in Now I’m Here – powered by those long, winding riffs, in which there’s an echo of Led Zeppelin’s Black Dog...

“I owe a lot to Jimmy Page, of course – the master of the riff, and the master of getting lost deliberately in time signatures. I think that song was inspired, definitely, by the spirit of Zeppelin. All those wonderful things that are happening when Bonzo [Zeppelin drummer John Bonham] is throwing in things which sound like they’re in a different time signature – that stuff has always fascinated me. 

“Those guys were not far ahead of us in age, but the first time we heard Zeppelin, we thought, ‘Oh, my God, this is where we’re trying to get to, and they’re already there!’ So in a sense, there were times when we felt like we’d missed the boat – like we wouldn’t be able to get our stuff out there. But our vision was slightly different from Zeppelin, musically. It’s more harmonic and melodic, I suppose. 

“But I would never be ashamed to say that Zeppelin were a huge influence on us, not just musically, but also in the way they handled themselves in the business, without compromising. The way they handled their image, the integrity, the way they built their stage show – so many things. I suppose between Zeppelin and The Beatles and The Who, you would see where we came from. That was the kind of platform that we bounced off.”

Stone Cold Crazy

And yet another landmark track from Sheer Heart Attack is Stone Cold Crazy, a song so fast and heavy that Metallica’s version of it made perfect sense. Is this the definitive example of Queen at their heaviest?

“I think so. Stone Cold Crazy goes back a long way. It was one of the first songs we ever played together, so it’s interesting that it never made it onto a record until the third album. That’s quite unusual, isn’t it? I think we were playing Stone Cold Crazy in our very first gigs. 

“Freddie had written the lyrics with his old band, and the original riff was very different – it sounded like the riff in Tear It Up [from 1984 album The Works]. So that original version of Stone Cold Crazy sounded like a lot of other things which were around at the time, with quite an easygoing riff. It didn’t have much pace to it. 

“But I thought: these lyrics are kind of frenetic, so the music should be frenetic as well. So I put this riff on it, which people are telling me is the birth of thrash metal or something! I don’t know about that. But was unusual at the time to play at that pace.

“That song was a bit of fun, really. I don’t think we regarded it as that serious, which is perhaps why it never made it onto an album until number three. But it’s nice and heavy. I still remember going in to do the definitive version of it, and it was faster than ever – we just went for it! There’s a lot of adrenaline: let’s go for it! It really does burn. And I liked the sounds that we had in place by that time. 

“Stone Cold Crazy is a good example of us recording in a live atmosphere but in the studio. And we started to have it down by that point. Once you get a grip on that kind of stuff, you can fool yourself into thinking it’s live when you’re in the studio. So it doesn’t sound calculated – it sounds real and spontaneous. And we captured it. I think that’s all one take. It’s not like messing around doing take after take. We just did it. I’d say that’s when we started to master the studio.”

The Prophet's Song

On the most iconic Queen album, A Night At The Opera, there is a clear parallel between two grandiose, multi‑movement songs: Freddie’s epic, Bohemian Rhapsody, and your epic, The Prophet’s Song. And it’s evident that The Prophet’s Song is one of yours, because it really rocks.

“To be honest, I always regard it as a bit of a shame that The Prophet’s Song got eclipsed – because Bohemian Rhapsody was always going to eclipse everything. So with The Prophet’s Song, it’s kind of a light that got hidden under a bushel. But the positive is that it’s a deep side of Queen, which people get into when they start exploring. It’s a nice thing for them to discover and get excited about. But yes, you’re right, those two songs were kind of parallel.”

Tie Your Mother Down

When it comes to ballsy rock ’n’ roll songs, there is nothing in the Queen catalogue as ballsy and rock ’n’ roll as Tie Your Mother Down, the opening track from the 1976 album A Day At The Races. What do you remember about writing that one?

“I wrote the riff on a volcanic mountaintop in Tenerife. Really. And I thought, what am I going to do with this? And all I could hear in my head was Tie Your Mother Down, which didn’t seem like a reasonable kind of song title. I remember bringing it back to the boys and saying, ‘I’ve got this riff’, which they all liked. 

“When they asked what the song was about, I said, ‘All I’ve got is this title – Tie Your Mother Down – which obviously we can’t use.’ And Freddie said, ‘What do you mean, we can’t use it? Yes we can!’ 

“And I started to think, okay, this is a song about growing up and being frustrated with your parents. And it’s got a sense of humour to it. And it was quite quick to write those lyrics, which I’m quite proud of, because at that point I was still a boy, not quite a man. And that song is the cry of a boy’s frustration.”

It’s a song that feels very free in the performance...

“Yeah, there’s a Rory Gallagher influence there – in the way I’m snapping those strings like that. And I loved Rory. Perhaps I should have mentioned him earlier, because he was a fantastic influence on me. What a wonderful guy he was, in every way.”

We Will Rock You

In 1977, the year of punk rock, Queen responded with News Of The World, an album of shorter, punchier songs – We Will Rock You the shortest and punchiest of all. It is, undeniably, the greatest rock anthem of all time. How did you create something so simple and effective?

“The song was born one night in Bingley Hall in the Midlands. We were a group which was doing quite well, we had a good following, and we had this thing where people insisted on singing along to our songs. And I think we were quite irritated by it!”

Seriously? Why?

“Because we thought: ‘People, just listen. We’re working really hard, so bloody well listen!’ But they were unstoppable. And this particular night, they sang every word to every song, which was rather novel in those days. I mean, I went to a Zeppelin concert and I don’t remember people singing along to Communication Breakdown or whatever they were playing. 

“When Zeppelin played, they listened. They banged their heads, and they listened. And I thought about our concerts: why don’t you buggers listen instead of singing? Anyway, that night at Bingley Hall, we came off stage and we all looked at each other in amazement, because all that singing from the audience was so extreme. 

“And I said to Freddie, ‘Maybe, instead of fighting this, we should be encouraging it. Maybe we should be harnessing this kind of energy which seems to be happening.’ And we all agreed that this was something really interesting that we should experiment with – letting the audience be a bigger part of the show. 

“I thought, what can you ask an audience to do if that audience is all crammed in together? There’s not much they can do except stamp their feet and clap their hands, but they can also sing. And if they can chant, what would they chant? And with that, I could hear it in my head: ‘We will, we will rock you!’ 

“I was hoping that this would become something which would catch on. We would have a song which would be led by the audience. So that’s why there’s no drums on there – just the stamping and clapping that the four of us did. Very luckily, we found bits of an old drum riser lying around in the studio in Wessex in North London, which was perfect to stamp on. 

“And with the help of Mike Stone, I evolved a whole business of multi-tracking with various prime delays to make it sound huge, but not echoey. There’s no echo on that. So it sounds like you’re in the middle of a thousand people stamping and clapping. Then we put other stuff on it. 

“Now, I was very nervous about this, because it seemed like it was kind of over-simplistic, maybe. And I wasn’t sure if it was going to sound like a proper song. But as soon as I heard Freddie singing it, I started to be more confident, because he sounded like a kind of rabble-rouser. It sounded like he was going to encourage the audience to do this stuff. And so it was all aimed towards getting the audience involved. It was aimed towards the live situation. And somehow it worked.”

Did the rest of the band share your belief in this song?

“I remember Roger had severe misgivings about it. And he certainly didn’t want to put it at the beginning of the album. He said, ‘No radio station is ever going to play this! It doesn’t sound like a rock song.’ But I fought that corner. And generally I didn’t win those arguments, but this time I won. So that was the beginning of the album. 

“And it was also my thought that we should weld We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions together as a couple. And that worked out very well – partly because those songs both have the same end in mind, they’re both enveloping the audience and involving the audience, treating the audience inclusively – and partly because it just made such sense musically. It just worked so well. 

“So that was the beginning of the album, and that was the single – the two tracks together. It was number four in America, a big hit all over, really. And this whole thing changed our lives radically. Because from that point on, we stuck to that resolution – we became a band that encouraged participation. And that’s not the way we started off, but it became a great thing. 

“It probably sounds all very obvious now, because everybody gets the audience to clap and sing along, but that’s not the way rock ’n’ roll was in those days. And I think it was a great bolt out of heaven. Looking back, it’s a no brainer – but at the time it was a radical departure.”

In that sense, would you say that without We Will Rock You there would have been no Radio Ga Ga?

“Yeah. And no many things. So many things. And of course, you never know how people are going to react to a song. But you can hope.”

And the guitar solo in We Will Rock You – what was your thinking there?

“I don’t think it was planned. I just wanted to rock! But I did want to break that boundary as well - because everybody puts guitar solos in the middle of the song, and I didn’t want to do that. I wanted this song to happen with the audience, and that would then lead me to the stage, so the guitar solo would be the climax of the song. 

“That was pretty unusual at the time, and I can’t actually think of another song that does that. So that was deliberate. And that little riff that’s in the middle there, I guess it must have been in my head someplace. But when I went in there to play that piece of guitar, I don’t think I actually had a plan. 

“We’d played and played through the song and I tried to visualise myself on stage: what would people want to hear, and what would I want to feel like? And I played for a few minutes, and we just picked the bits that we liked.”

Live Aid

It was billed as The Greatest Show On Earth and a ‘global jukebox’, and Queen delivered on both counts. The band’s allotted 20-minute set was cleverly structured for maximum impact, beginning with an abridged Bohemian Rhapsody and climaxing with We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions. And with Freddie at his peak, this was arguably the greatest performance of the band’s career. But at Live Aid it was an unorthodox setup, with a fast turnaround for each act. So did that make it stressful?

“It was kind of the Wild West, because no one had ever done it before. Bob Geldof [Boomtown Rats singer and co-creator of Live Aid] insisted that it was going to be possible, but a lot of people told him it couldn’t be done - that you couldn’t get bands on and off quickly enough. There really wasn’t a precedent for Live Aid. So yes, we were stressed, but there was so much joy and excitement that overrode everything. 

“It was a glorious day, a beautiful sunny day. For the opening ceremony we arrived at Wembley Stadium in a helicopter, which was very exciting for us young boys, and when we watched Status Quo open the show with Rockin’ All Over The World, I was sitting in the royal box with Prince Charles and Princess Diana. It was incredible. I mean, Princess Diana had a lot to do with that - she sort of made rock ’n’ roll okay for royalty. It seemed like a new world. 

“Right after the ceremony I flew off again in the helicopter to Barnes [in south London] and went to a fair with my kids. And everywhere I walked in the fairground, there were radios on and you could hear Live Aid evolving. So I remember having that incredible excitement in my stomach thinking, ‘God, we’re going to be back there soon doing it’. And when we went back there, yes, there were a lot of nerves, a lot of adrenaline...”

It’s widely agreed that Queen stole that particular show, of course.

“Well, we didn’t go there to do that. We went there to do our bit. I think the whole thing was very pure and genuine. Nobody was trying to capitalise on it. Everyone was there because they were inspired by Bob Geldof in his quest to solve the world’s hunger problems. Nobody had ever done that before, so we all wanted to help. And of course, nobody wanted to wake up the next morning and think that they hadn’t been a part of it.”

What was going through your mind during those 20 minutes at Live Aid? Did you have a sense that this would be a defining moment for Queen?

“I didn’t think when we came off that it was our best performance or anything like that. I was conscious that it was a bit ragged. And I mean, one-offs always are, there’s always bits that you love and bits that you hate.

“This wasn’t something that we’d done on stage time after time. It was a set specially put together for that occasion. And when you watch it now, it’s not without its tense moments. The end of Hammer To Fall is very questionable, you know? But nobody cared – because the adrenaline that was flowing in Freddie was pretty magnificent. 

“He, and also the rest of us, benefited from the fact that we had played stadiums before, and very few artists who were there that day had. We’d been to South America and done these incredible gigs in stadiums in Argentina and Brazil. So we had a measure of what it takes to play to 100,000 people rather than a theatre or an arena.

“Freddie, when you watch him now, he looks so full of confidence. And he is. He knows he can do it. He knows that we’ve already done this thing of involving the audience. He knows that he can get the audience on his side, in spite of the fact that nobody had bought tickets to see us. We weren’t on the bill when people bought all those tickets. So that was a step into the unknown. But I don’t think Freddie ever had any doubts.”

And when you’re performing with a singer with so much power, and such a command of the stage, is there something in your mind about how you have to play to back him up? How to play to that level?

“I don’t know. You see, we kind of grew up together very quickly. And we interacted from the beginning. And it was a very natural, organic kind of relationship, but I wasn’t consciously trying to back him up. If I was trying to do anything, it was to be the right foil. 

“We were very interactive. You know, Freddie would be very conscious of me on stage, and I would be very conscious of him - in a musical sense, and also a physical sense. Being on stage is a very physical thing. You have a kind of an awareness of each other, and it’s in the placing and the body language and the channels of energy that reach the audience. So we were very much in harmony, without even trying. 

“We were a machine which worked. And that applies to the whole band. Everybody has their place. And it just evolved in a way which you couldn’t have put together. It couldn’t have been manufactured. It just evolved. Fortunately, we were the right people to be together at the right time.”

One Vision

The first Queen song released after Live Aid has a triumphant air to it. There is a sense in One Vision that the band has a new energy. Was that the feeling when it was written?

“It was us going back into the studio and enjoying ourselves feeling very free. We also had a film crew in there with us, which actually changed the chemistry quite a bit. I think we were very conscious of the film crew. And when you see that footage, you can tell it’s hard for us to be as relaxed and normal as we otherwise would have been. 

“Nevertheless, you see the song taking shape. It’s built around a lyric of Roger’s, which is basically about Martin Luther King, and he also took that idea into A Kind Of Magic [the title track from the band’s 1986 album]. The lyrics in the two songs are similar. So that was our starting point, but it changed when we evolved the lyrics as we went along.

“One Vision was a nice way of flexing our muscles, I guess, and finding a new place. We were back in Musicland [studios in Munich], which was very fertile for us creatively. It didn’t do a lot for our private lives, because we all went off the rails in Munich. But creatively, it was always very good. And it was fun. 

“And again, you asked me about this earlier – with One Vision we’re imagining it on stage from the beginning. We’re imagining how this is going to be live, how it’s going to be something that the audience will get into. And we’re sort of designing it as an epic. 

“But we couldn’t resist sending it up at the end by singing ‘fried chicken’. It’s nice to have that other side to things, because we always took our work very seriously, but we didn’t take ourselves too seriously. We didn’t allow each other to take ourselves too seriously!”

The Show Must Go On

The Innuendo album was Freddie’s last act. And in the album’s final track there is so much emotion. Can you describe how this song was created, and how you worked with Freddie through such a dark time?

“By now, of course, we’re in a very different place, where Freddie knows that his time is probably running out. Nobody knows for sure. We are also aware of it. And he’s determined that we will carry on. Business as normal. We will go in the studio, and we will forget everything and just be us creating. And it was a great vibe in the studio. 

“Fred was very positive in how he managed it. I don’t really know how. Nevertheless, he wasn’t able to be there that much, because physically he was already suffering, and he had to go for his treatments. You never knew when he was going to come back at that time. 

“So with The Show Must Go On, I think I listened to Roger and John putting something down and something triggered in my head - this sort of circular riff. After a few days I did a demo of it, with no real words at that point. Then I played it to Freddie, and I said, I have this title, The Show Must Go On, but maybe that’s too corny.

“I said to him, ‘Do you think that’s going to work? He said, ‘Absolutely! It will work. Why don’t we just pursue that?’ And I had a fantastic afternoon with him, just working through that first verse, looking for lyrics and trying to figure out what it was all going to mean. 

“Songs are never about just one thing. The Show Must Go On was about a clown who was suffering inside but still had to paint his smile and make everybody jolly. That’s what the song was about. There was no mention of the fact that this might be some sort of allegory about Freddie himself. But I think it was unspoken that we both knew what we were writing. Really it’s about Freddie.

“We had enough lyrics for that first verse, and Freddie said, ‘I’ll come back as soon as I can.’ He didn’t come back for a long time. But the song developed in my head. I started to think, well, maybe he isn’t going to come back. And at the same time, I couldn’t stop myself. 

“For some reason, there was an energy coming into me. And I was writing something which I knew was good and I hoped he was going to be able to sing eventually. So I mapped it all out. And that first verse, I split up into two bits, and wrote the verses around what we’d done together. 

“Basically, I wrote the whole song around that little fragment which Freddie and I put together. I woke up one morning with this image of butterflies in my head, and I thought I would love to hear Freddie sing: ‘My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies.’ 

“I thought: this is Freddie. And he’s not going to write it for himself, because he wasn’t going to thrust himself forward in that way, you know? But I can write it for him. I wanted to put those words in his mouth. And it was a gift from God. I don’t even know where those lyrics came from. 

“So I presented it all to him the next time he turned up in the studio, and by that time he was suffering a lot. He could hardly stand. I played him some of the demo, with me singing, which went incredibly high and was very difficult.

“In the past, Freddie was always shouting at me, like, ‘It’s too fucking high! You’re making me ruin my beautiful voice!’ So I thought he was going to shout at me this time. But he just heard it and said, ‘I’ll fucking do that. Don’t worry.’ So he downed a couple of vodkas, neat, then propped himself up on the desk and worked his way through singing all of that song. And it was amazing. 

“I think he did three or four takes, and he absolutely smashed that vocal. It’s like he reached into a place that even he’d never got to before. I remember saying to Freddie, ‘I don’t want you to hurt yourself. You know, don’t force yourself to do this if it’s not going to feel good.’ But he said, ‘I’ll fucking do it, Brian!’ And he did. And it was beautiful. I think it’s one of his finest performances of all time. It’s incredible.”

Queen + Adam Lambert

And so, 50 years on from the first Queen album, the story continues. You’ve said before that you feel that Freddie would have loved the way Adam sings those old songs...

“I’ve heard a billion voices in my life, and I’ve never heard a voice like Adam’s. Time and time again, I can picture Freddie saying, ‘You bastard!’ Because Adam’s range is ridiculous, isn’t it? And so often, I’ve found myself wishing that Freddie and Adam could have gotten together, because they would have had the greatest time. They’re so similar in some ways, personally and musically.”

Could there ever be a new Queen album with Adam?

“Well, we have been in the studio. We did knock a few ideas around in the middle of one of those tours. But it just never quite reached the place where we felt it was going to be right. So we haven’t pursued it so far. That’s all I can tell you. 

“So I really don’t know. But I think there’s a bit of a barrier there. I think if people see Queen on a record label, they still want it to be Freddie singing. It could be Jesus Christ on it, but they’d still want Freddie, and I don’t blame people for that. There are people on Instagram who get annoyed with me: ‘Why are you still carrying on without Freddie?’ And I go, ‘Don’t tell me what to do! I do what I feel that I should be doing.’

“There are people who feel like we shouldn’t even be going on stage without Freddie. But I think that would have been very sad, and it’s not what Freddie would have wanted either. He would have wanted us to continue developing. And of course, because we are continuing and developing, it keeps that legacy alive. 

“You know, I often have this conversation with Freddie’s sister, Kash. She gets those questions as well: ‘Why are they doing this without Freddie?’ And she completely gets what we’re doing. She says, ‘This is what Freddie would have wanted. He would not want have wanted his songs or the band’s songs to become museum pieces. He would have wanted them to live.’ And that’s what we’re doing. We make the Queen legacy live. Absolutely. 

“The last tour we did was fantastic. Probably the biggest arena tour we’ve ever done, and the most exciting in terms of all the shows being sold out and the energy in those audiences. The thing is, people want live music. They need live music. And we’re happy to go on supplying it as long as we can. As long as I’m alive, I’ll be there!”

Ever since The Sugarhill Gang first stitched together Rapper’s Delight, the sampling of other people’s records has been a source of constant creativity. “The way that we used to make records was this,” says Sugar Hill bassist, Doug Wimbish. “On Fridays we would go to the club and check out how the crowd responded to a bassline or a riff, which could have been from wherever, it didn’t matter. 

“On Monday we’d go in the studio and cut it – the rappers had already been writing their ideas, and so they already had a concept by the time they came into the studio. At one point there were two studios, and we were cutting at both: one up the hill and one down the hill about a mile from each other.”

While you could probably write a book about Rapper’s Delight, which was taken from Good Times by Chic, it was the tip of the iceberg: countless other hits have re-tooled classic basslines and made them new again. Here are 10 of our favorites.

Sugar Hill Gang – ‘Rapper’s Delight’ (1979)

The Sugarhill Gang stormed their way into the chart in 1979 with this landmark single, which was lifted almost entirely from Chic’s‘ Good Times. Bernard Edwards’ original bassline was a favourite of DJs who played at the block parties where rap got its start, which would eventually lead to the Sugarhill Gang freestyling over the tune live before recording it for Rapper’s Delight.

Eric B. & Rakim - Paid In Full (1987)

First popularized by Eric B. & Rakim back in 1987, the original bassline from Don't Look Any Further by Dennis Edwards – and played by Nathan East – continues to be put to good use by rap and hip hop artists, including Snoop Dogg, who repurposed elements of the track in 2002 for his own remake of Paid in Full.

A Tribe Called Quest – Can I Kick It? (1990)

In 1990 A Tribe Called Quest reworked the bass part from Lou Reed’s 1972 Walk on the Wild Side. Can I Kick It? is actually built around a handful of different samples, but the sliding bass part, originally played by Herbie Flowers, is the most recognisable. Despite getting permission from Reed to use the sample, he demanded 100 per cent of the royalties, to which the group agreed.

Deee-Lite – Groove Is in the Heart (1990)

Groove is in the Heart is a patchwork quilt of different samples, from the drum track of Vernon Burch’s Get Up to Herbie Hancock’s infectious bassline from Bring Down The Birds. Parliament-Funkadelic bassist Bootsy Collins also provided guest vocals. The original bassline was played by Ron Carter and appears on Hancock's 1966 album, Blow-Up.

Vanilla Ice - Ice Ice Baby (1990)

John Deacon's unmistakable bassline from Queen’s 1981 hit Under Pressure is one of the most iconic intros in music history. Subsequently, Rapper Vanilla Ice found himself in hot water when he lifted it for his breakout single Ice Ice Baby. The track was eventually co-credited to the band and their collaborator David Bowie. 

Massive Attack - Safe From Harm (1991)

The the bass-and-drums groove behind Massive's Safe from Harm is a direct grab from Stratus from Billy Cobham's 1973 album Spectrum. What’s interesting when comparing the two, is how much of Cobham’s improvised jazziness gets discarded by Massive Attack, who instead focus on Lee Sklar’s driving bassline.

Jay-Z feat. Foxy Brown - Ain't No Nigga (1996)

The second single from the American rapper Jay-Z's first album borrows a sizeable chunk of the bass-led groove from Seven Minutes of Funk by Richmond Virginia one hit wonders The Whole Darn Family. The original bassline – originally played by Woudy Hughes – has been the backdrop to tracks by EPMD, The Alkaholiks and many more.

The Chemical Brothers ­– Block Rockin’ Beats (1997)

A rhythmic instrumental track by The Chemical Brothers, Block Rockin’ Beats leans on lots of samples, but the most noticeable are Bernard Purdie’s galloping drums and the wild bassline courtesy of Wilton Felder’s original from The Well’s Gone Dry by The Crusaders, from their 1974 album Southern Comfort.

Eminem – My Name Is (1999)

The opening few bars of Eminem’s breakout hit is unmistakably recognizable from Labi Siffre's I Got The... , which was also sampled by Jay Z for The Streets is Watching. Check out Dave Peacock's bass groove at 02:09 on the original. Dr. Dre and Eminem reportedly finished My Name Is, in around an hour. 

J. Cole (Feat. Kendrick Lamar) – Forbidden Fruit (2013)

Forbidden Fruit features the bassline and organ sample from Ronnie Foster’s Mystic Brew, which gained a cult following in the 80s following the emergence of acid jazz. Sampled a total of 22 times, Electric Relaxation by A Tribe Called Quest is another standout example.

Brian May and Jimmy Page are some of England’s greatest guitar exports, and are part of an elite cohort of British six-string heroes who will go down in history as the country’s finest and most innovative musicians.

Now, May has come out to pay tribute to his guitar-playing peer, labeling the Les Paul-wielding Led Zeppelin warrior as “the master of the riff, and the master of getting lost deliberately in time signatures”.

Not only that, in a new interview with Total Guitar, the Red Special mastermind took the opportunity to highlight the wider impact the heavy metal icons had on Queen – both in a musical sense and from an industry perspective.

When asked about the loose sonic similarities between Queen’s Now I’m Here and Led Zep’s Black Dog, May reflected that the song – lifted from 1974’s Sheer Heart Attack – was directly inspired by the “spirit of Zeppelin”.

“I owe a lot to Jimmy Page, of course – the master of the riff, and the master of getting lost deliberately in time signatures,” May reflected. “I think that song was inspired, definitely, by the spirit of Zeppelin.” 

He continued, “All those wonderful things that are happening when Bonzo [Zeppelin drummer John Bonham] is throwing in things which sound like they’re in a different time signature – that stuff has always fascinated me.” 

Elsewhere in the interview, May said the band looked up to Led Zeppelin on matters outside of music, reflecting that they had conquered vision that Queen were also striving to capture at the time.

“Those guys were not far ahead of us in age,” May went on to say, “but the first time we heard Zeppelin, we thought, ‘Oh, my God, this is where we’re trying to get to, and they’re already there!’ 

“So in a sense, there were times when we felt like we’d missed the boat,” he continued. “Like we wouldn’t be able to get our stuff out there. But our vision was slightly different from Zeppelin, musically. 

“It’s more harmonic and melodic, I suppose. But I would never be ashamed to say that Zeppelin were a huge influence on us, not just musically, but also in the way they handled themselves in the business, without compromising. 

“The way they handled their image, the integrity, the way they built their stage show – so many things. I suppose between Zeppelin and The Beatles and The Who, you would see where we came from. That was the kind of platform that we bounced off.”

May’s sprawling interview with Total Guitar saw the six-string icon look back over his whole Queen career – and touched upon the one time May broke a golden guitar recording rule during the tracking of the band’s debut album.

Said rule involved mixing both electric guitar and acoustic guitar parts at once – a recording process that, according to May, was frowned upon years ago.

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Total Guitar, which features the ultimate Brian May interview.

Throughout their illustrious career, Queen have penned some of the world’s most enduring rock music, but they didn’t do so without bending the rules and questioning conventional approaches to writing and recording along the way.

As guitarist Brian May explains in a sprawling new interview with Total Guitar, once upon a time – around the time of the band’s 1973 self-titled debut – it was taboo to blend both electric guitar and acoustic guitar in the same song. But in spite of what he was told, that’s exactly what May did on the album’s sixth track, The Night Comes Down.

“[On The Night Comes Down], we’re doing something which people told us we couldn’t do,” he recalls. “People in those days used to say, ‘You can’t mix electric guitar with acoustic guitar.’ Nowadays that sounds pretty funny, but it was a belief that people around studios had, you know?

“They would say the electric guitar is too loud for the acoustic and I went, ‘Come on!’ It’s just a question of balancing in the mix. So with The Night Comes Down, it’s based on acoustic guitar, my beautiful old acoustic. But the guitar harmonies are all electric. And that was a beginning, sort of like a demonstration: ‘Yes we can do this, we can make our own rules!’”

Elsewhere in the interview, May adds how the band were “never happy” with the sound of their debut album.

“We were thrown into the studio and into a system which regarded itself as state of the art,” he says. “Trident Studios were very emergent as a force in the world. And they thought they had it down. But the Trident sound was very dead. It was the opposite of what we were aiming for. So Roger’s drums would be in a little cubicle, and all the drums would have tape on them. They’d all be dead and down.

“I remember saying to Roy Thomas Baker, ‘This isn’t really the sound we want, Roy.’ And he said, ‘Don’t worry, we can fix it all in the mix.’ Which of course is not the best way, is it? And I think we all knew: it ain’t going to happen!”

With specific reference to the sound of his guitar parts on the album, May continues: “That was a bit of a fight as well, because people had discovered multi-tracking and there was this feeling that everything ought to be multi-tracked.

“So you play a solo, and the first thing people say is, ‘Oh, do you want to double-track that?’ And maybe you do. But maybe you don’t – because sometimes you want to hear the personality, the attack, and the feeling in the moment when you do that one track.

“So there [were] an awful lot of overdubs on that first album, which I would say now [were] unnecessary, and perhaps made it a bit more stiff than it otherwise would have been.

“Having said that, I think the songs are very representative of where we were at the time. We were evolving… You can hear in the first album that we were finding our style.”

Last week, Brian May paid tribute to late guitar legend Jeff Beck, who died suddenly at the age of 78 after contracting bacterial meningitis.

In a five-minute video posted to social media, May said: “I don't think I could ever put into words exactly how much I did revere him, I hope I gave him the picture. I don't know if he knew. But I feel like I wasn't a good enough friend to him. And that's one of the things that happens, I suppose, but particularly in this case I feel like there were so many times I could have rung him up, and I wish I had, to be a proper friend.

“But Jeff Beck was so unique, so influential on every guitarist I've ever met in my life. The loss is incalculable. It's so sad not having him in the world anymore. I still can't quite compute it in my head.”

Read the full cover interview with Brian May by picking up the new issue of Total Guitar via Magazines Direct.

When Brian May speaks to Total Guitar about Face It Alone – the previously unheard Queen track that was finally released this year, more than 30 years after it was recorded – his first words are in tribute to the writer and singer of that song.

“The crowning glory is, of course, Freddie’s voice,” he says. “It’s just magnificent. You hear that quality in his voice. You hear the passion in his voice. And he’s fearless. The way he bends some of those notes is so beautiful.”

Face It Alone is an extraordinary song with a poignant backstory. It was recorded during the year-long sessions for Queen’s 13th studio album, The Miracle, between January 1988 and January 1989, at a time when Freddie Mercury had been diagnosed HIV positive. As Brian recalled of that period: “We were dealing with Freddie’s deteriorating health, and pulling together to support him.”

Face It Alone didn’t make the cut for The Miracle, which was released in July 1989, yielding hit singles in I Want It All, Breakthru and The Invisible Man. The following album, Innuendo, was Freddie Mercury’s last act. The singer died on November 24, 1991.

In all these years, Face It Alone remained an unfinished demo track, preserved in the Queen vaults and unheard outside of the band’s inner circle. But this and five other previously unreleased tracks were rediscovered and remixed during the creation of a new boxset reissue of The Miracle. And as Brian says, the finished version of Face It Alone that has now been shared with a global audience is absolutely true to how it was recorded in the ’80s.

“One of the discussions we had, and one of the reasons we wanted to release it, is because it is all original,” he explains. “We did a bit of tidying up on it, and I think – well, I know – that if we’d worked on it more it would have changed. It might have become a six-minute epic. But I really like it the way it is. It’s very genuine. It speaks from the time.

“So we thought: yes, button it up, but don’t tart it up. Don’t embellish it. Just put it out as we hear it, but suitably cleaned up. So I didn’t go back in there and do new guitar or anything. It’s all exactly as it happened.” 

This is an ensemble piece to which all four band members contributed: Freddie, Brian, drummer Roger Taylor and bassist John Deacon. “It’s rare to find any fragments which encapsulate the four of us actually working together,” Brian says. “But John’s on there, absolutely live with Freddie. And Roger’s on there with his strange percussive atmospheres.”

The Miracle was the first Queen album on which, as an expression of unity, the writing credits for all songs were attributed to the group as a whole. But as Brian now says, “There was always one of us who was leading the party.” And with Face It Alone, that was Freddie. “He was coming up with the lyrics and leading us with this lovely stuff. And as we working on it, we were very enthused about it.”

The guitar solo is quintessential Brian May, as perfectly judged as the solos in signature Freddie Mercury songs such as Bohemian Rhapsody and Killer Queen.

“You can hear that I’ve played this solo basically as a means of getting from verse one to verse two,” Brian says. “It’s like: this is what I feel at the moment, and probably we’ll work on it later, and who knows what might happen? So the solo is very much in the moment. It’s me trying to be a voice next to Freddie’s and to extend the atmosphere and the message of the song. So it’s very real.”

Brian’s lead break in Bohemian Rhapsody – voted the greatest solo of all time by TG readers in 2021 – ran to nine bars. At seven bars, his solo in Face It Alone once again eschews traditional four-/eight-bar structures. But he says: “It wasn’t conscious in that way. It’s not a question of counting. But it is a conscious way of building things, so that you leave an open-ended place for the vocal to take over again. So conscious in an unconscious way, I think. That’s the way we build songs, so there’s space for the ideas to develop and then move on.”

He was, of course, playing the Red Special. “I’m so lucky that my guitar and amp have such a wide range of possibilities,” he says. “So if I turn the guitar way down, still through the treble booster, it becomes completely clean. And I can vary the amount of compression just by turning it up. There’s no tricks. It’s just the guitar, the treble booster and the wonderful AC30 amp. And that’s what it does. It does everything that I want it to do. And that hasn’t changed in the last 45 years.”

There are, however, a couple of details on which Brian is a little unsure. First, the weird, plucky sound to the arpeggios on this track. “The basic backing sound? Well, I don’t remember very clearly. So either that’s a keyboard or else it’s been converted to a keyboard sound through a device – and I don’t actually know. I see what you’re saying. I will have to go back and have a look!” 

Second: was he playing that solo with a pick, or was it fingerstyle? It feels very personally delivered in the way that fingerstyle often does, but it also sounds like the clink of metal on string.

“Hmmm,” he says with a shrug. “You’re asking all the right questions and I haven’t got all the right answers! I would think it probably would be just with the finger. It’s quite a sensitive piece. Of course with the finger you can snap it, so it does get a kind of metallic edge to it, still, but it has a lot more feel. So I think it was done with the first finger.”

Here, he refers back to 1975 and the game-changing video for Bohemian Rhapsody. “It’s like you see in the Rhapsody video, very briefly. Sometimes it makes me smile, because I didn’t realise I was doing it that so far back. I was kind of hammering with the right hand instead of plucking.”

What he says, in conclusion, is that Face It Alone represents the very best of Queen. “It’s beautiful. And it’s absolutely original. It was done in the moment, in 1989 – the four of us in the studio.” And as he says of this and other material in this new box set, this is Queen as you’ve never heard them before.

“It’s a bit like watching The Beatles’ documentary Get Back,” he suggests. “The Beatles are still The Bible to me, so I loved watching that stuff, seeing how they did it. And this box set stuff is a little bit like that. There’s no video, but the soundscapes that you hear are very evocative.”

“There’s lot of moments where you hear us in the studio talking, moving things along, laughing. You hear things in development. All sorts of goodies. It’s like you’re a fly on the wall in those sessions in 1989. I think people who are really into us are going to just love what they hear.”

• The Miracle (Collector's Edition) is out now.

Leading into the massive supporting tour for 1986's A Kind of Magic, Queen found themselves as they always had: steeped in magnificent splendor.

But by the end of what would be their final live performance with Freddie Mercury in Knebworth Park in 1986, Queen had reached a fork in the road. With Mercury dealing with a life-threatening diagnosis and guitarist Brian May battling personal issues, Queen's perpetually swarming operations were all but halted for nearly two years.

And then, in early 1988, the clouds parted, and Queen – as they always had – came together through positivity, optimism, and a remembrance of the legacy they had built. Now resolute in the face of the unknown, Mercury and May joined bassist John Deacon and drummer Roger Taylor at Olympic Studios to begin the sessions for what would become 1989's The Miracle.

“I think we came back together,” guitarist Brian May recalls. “We became a unit again as far as writing, and I think the newfound policy of sharing credits really worked. It worked to the point that, for the first time in what felt like forever, all four of us were highly visible on every track. 

“It came from us working away, putting in ideas, sharing discussions, and bringing things to life together. Looking back, The Miracle is very colorful and full of all our collective talents as opposed to having separate works brought together after the event. It's very much a group album, which I love. And I have to say that I still find that very satisfying. I think in many ways The Miracle might be Queen's most cohesive album of the '80s."

Some 33 years later, the remaining members of Queen are preparing to reissue The Miracle through a stunning boxset featuring lost tracks, outtakes, live cuts, and more. With vinyl sales continuing to grow and Queen's legacy as stout as ever, it would be all too easy to make a connection between the two, and in the eyes of May, the assertion may have some weight to it.

“As far as vinyl helping new fans discover Queen, I've never asked myself that question," says May. “But yes, I think it could be because it's been recent that the vinyl revival has happened, and there does appear to be some trends. We've noticed while touring recently that we have a fantastic new contingent of fans who seem to have a full understanding of our stuff. Of course, they're listening to and finding us digitally, but I do think the vinyl revival could have something to do with that, too.”

While Freddie Mercury has been gone for nearly 31 years, his legacy still looms larger than life. For collectors of physical media – specifically vinyl – reissues such as The Miracle box set serve as an integral opportunity to fully immerse oneself in the grandiose music of one of Queen. 

Moreover, when it comes to a band such as Queen, it's easy to get lost in the effervescent bursts of glitter-bomb grandeur, but The Miracle reissue provides a unique opportunity for fans to see Queen in a different light.

“This record came at a difficult time in our history,” May recalls. “But I think that now I'm more friendly disposed to it than I was before we did this reissue. Because I discovered I liked it a lot more than I realized, and that was a bit surprising to me. I think partly because of the good feeling about being in a band that it brings forth and partly because I'm looking at it with new eyes so many years later. 

“But as far as its importance, honestly, I don't know. I'd like to think that The Miracle provided much-needed cohesion, which got us to the next place; I think that's probably the truth.”

"Regardless, though, one of my favorite sayings is everything is the way it's meant to be. This sometimes means that when you're facing a lot of shit, it doesn't always make a lot of sense. And so, it helps to just say, ‘Yeah, this is the way it's meant to be because this is getting me to the next place that I need to get to.’ And I guess that's what I feel about The Miracle, but it was full of joy as well. I thank God for that.”

Now able to reflect on the unique legacy of The Miracle, Queen's Brian May settles in to recount the origins of the album, Queen's renewed interband dynamics, his love for vinyl, and a whole lot more.

We're on the precipice of the reissue for The Miracle; what was the project's impetus?

“Well, I guess we're working our way through all the classic stuff driven by the fact that we don't know what we're going to find. And while nobody has a full recollection of those sessions, we do know that they were very fertile and that lots of things were started but never finished. 

“So, this project was very effective in that we found a lot of tracks, which, even though they hadn't been finished at the time, we were now able to finish and put them into a state where they're palatable for the public. It's also nice to go back and polish stuff up and bring things into the new media. Because you can do a lot more in terms of quality now than you could then.

“So, without wanting to remix the originals, there's a lot we can do in terms of mastering, and it's been fun to go back to the multitrack and investigate what could have happened. In other words, what different tastes could have been used, what different arrangements, different guitar solos, different vocal performances, and lyrics; there's a whole wealth, there's a whole universe of stuff to investigate.

“So, we've been able to go back and put all of that into a form that I feel is entertaining. And I think we all felt quite inspired by Peter Jackson's revisiting of The Beatles footage, so there's a similar feeling here. We basically said, ‘Let's go back and see how things were back then and then see about communicating that to people now.’”

What was Queen's collective mindset as you entered the studio?

“It was very optimistic. I think we felt like we'd found a new way of reading one another. Because we have been through a little bit of an extreme estrangement there, with people going off and doing their own thing. We came back, and we decided to share the publishing of all the songs. 

“So, that meant we'd share authorship, credit, and monies, which was a very grown-up thing to do. And on the one hand, I'm surprised it hadn't happened earlier. But on the other hand, I'm quite surprised it happened at all because you have to give up quite a lot to make that decision.

“When you decide to do something like that, you have to give up your baby and share it with your partners. But it was a wonderful decision because it freed us up and inspired us to work much more openly with each other. 

“It allowed us to be more dispassionate about choosing what's going to be done, what's going to be used as singles, running orders, etc. All those decisions became much more pleasant when we decided to share ownership of everything.”

How would you say that newfound unity was best reflected in the tracks featured on The Miracle?

“It got us to work in the studio together. We were now in one room all at the same time, which might sound kind of obvious, but that hadn't been the case for quite a while. To that point, we'd gotten into a habit of working in different studios at different times and then pulling stuff together. 

“But in this case, we all got back together in there and had fun. You can hear it on things like Was It All Worth It and Khashoggi's Ship. These are all things that we kicked around from an initial idea and were bouncing ideas off each other in the same room, ‘Okay, you do this, and I'll try this. Can you do that? I'll do this.’ 

“It was a lot like the old days, the same way that we made those early Queen albums. It really was a rebirth of interactive playing for us.”

Queen had just performed what would be its last show with Freddie Mercury at Knebworth Park in 1986. Did that influence the sessions?

“Well, we didn't know that we weren't going to be performing anymore. I think Freddie possibly knew it, but I don't think we did as a band. The way I looked at it was that Freddie was known to go through various moods and mindsets, and I felt that he would bounce back again, not realizing that he was wrestling with something which we didn't know about.”

What can you tell me about the recently unearthed track, Face It Alone?

“I can tell you that I don't remember much about it. [Laughs]. There were so many fragments of songs that were started but never finished. And, of course, I played on it at the time; what you hear is all contemporary with that time, and we didn't add anything new. 

“So, obviously, Freddie put down a verse and chorus, essentially, and I think I can imagine myself saying, ‘Okay, let me have a crack at the solo and see if it moves the song on to towards the next verse.’ And that's probably as far as it got.

“I can also tell you that there were a few vocal takes. So, when we were putting this together, we resisted the temptation to try to make it into the epic that it probably would have become if we'd spent time on it in the original days. 

“I like it because of its simplicity, and you can hear Freddie's voice coming through so beautifully. His passion and the extraordinary sound from his God-given voice; it's something which definitely moves me. And we all felt that when we heard it back. It's been very warmly received by folks out there, so I'm glad that we put it out as that first teaser from The Miracle reissue.”

How about Too Much Love Will Kill You? Why was that pulled from the original release?

“Well, there's a whole long story about Too Much Love Will Kill You, but I had written the song on my own with a couple of other people. By my own, I mean away from the group because I was so depressed that I couldn't have anything to do with any of our public life. And so it was the only song that I wrote during that period. 

“I was in a bad way because I was struggling with personal issues, and I recorded it for my solo album but never thought of it as a track for Queen. But at some point, I played it to the boys, and Roger [Taylor], John [Deacon], and Freddie; they loved it and said, ‘This has to be a Queen track. We have to do a Queen version of it,’ which I was very happy about. 

“And so, I thought, ‘Well, let's treat it differently. Let's make it special.’ So, it received the big, bombastic, dramatic Queen treatment, whereas my version is quite understated and small, I suppose.

“But what I didn't realize was Freddie was seeing it from a different perspective. He was seeing it from the point of view of his own life, and then his own life, of course, was something only he knew about, and we didn't. 

“So, looking back on it, I have a very different appreciation of what he was putting into his interpretation of the song. And I think people tend to remember the song now as Freddie saying something to himself, as opposed to me saying it for different reasons. But that's all good; songs have a way of developing their meanings as they go along and evolve. And I'm very fond of the Queen version.

“As for why it didn't make it onto the original version of The Miracle, it came down to a dispute about the publishing. Because I had written the song with two other people, and they both wanted a third or something like that. So, now we were sharing the publishing with those two people and the boys in Queen, and it got a bit messy. 

“It would have been something where Freddie would have gotten a quarter of one-third, and he basically said, ‘I'm not agreeing to that.’ I could see his point, and we were all very frustrated. And I felt even worse about it than he did because I put a year of my life into that song. But Freddie, probably quite rightly, put his foot down and said, ‘I'm not doing this.’ And so, an impasse was reached, and the song came off the album.”

As you were putting this reissue together, has your perspective changed knowing that as unified as you were, Freddie was battling something in secrecy?

“In many ways, yes. Looking back on things, it is quite hard to fathom, really, because Freddie was an eternal optimist. And even with all that he was going through – which we knew nothing about at the time – he always came in with so much positivity. 

“And as we were going back through these tracks and remembering the sessions, those were some of the things that really did strike me. And, of course, one of my favorite Freddie tracks of all time is The Miracle. I love that song because, on that track, you hear nothing but joy, positivity, lightness, and humor. 

“It's gorgeous that Freddie was able to do that even though he was battling dark stuff underneath. You would never know. You could never hear it at that time. It's just one of the many marvelous things about Freddie, his ability to radiate positivity and optimism no matter what he was going through internally.”

Did the revival of physical media affect your decision to reissue The Miracle?

“Not really, no. We are aware of the revival of vinyl, but it's also something that never went away for us. First and foremost, what's wonderful about this reissue – especially the vinyl – is that you get to hear the record as it would have sounded had certain things not happened, like Too Much Love Will Kill You being removed. 

“But we're very old school, and all of us still love vinyl; there's something about it which you can't quite capture in the digital world. And I think every album we put out has been available on vinyl somehow, so that's not a new thing for us at all.”

Do you collect vinyl yourself?

“Yes, but not at a great rate anymore. But I will say that all the albums I've collected are still very much a part of my daily life. I love my vinyl. When I want to relax, I put vinyl on. I don't generally put CDs on. I think partly it's the feel, and it's partly the fact that you get a nice big sleeve where you can read and enjoy the pictures. And you get to physically touch this beautiful thing, treasure it, smell it, and put the needle on in a very physical way. 

“But I must say that there is also something undefinable about the sound of vinyl. I know that they can make digital sound great, but I think your body still knows the difference. Because when it comes to vinyl, I think your body is a vital piece of gear, and it reacts much differently to analog stimulation. I don't know why, but that's my theory of what goes on.”

Is there a piece of Queen memorabilia you've held onto that means the most to you?

“Very interesting question. Well, I have one of the original robots from News of the World, which stands about four feet high and holds the album cover. [Laughs]. He's quite a treasured relic, I must say. He's even more treasured to me because I lost him. 

“What happened was I moved house, forgot that he was in the attic, and I left him, which caused me great upset. And then, I was able to come across one secondhand from a collector, and I kind of kid myself into thinking that he is the original guy that I had. 

“I don't know if he is or not, but I tell myself that he's the original ‘Frank’ that I had in those days. I should mention that we call him Frank, and I'd say that he's the most meaningful piece that I have.”

Freddie has been gone for some time now, but the music of Queen is as relevant as ever. To what does the music of Queen owe its longevity?

“That's a good question and not an easy one to answer. I think the songs have a lot to do with it. And the fact that we were aware enough to realize the value of each other's songwriting. 

“With that, we were able to turn our competitive spirit into something positive all along the way. Songs like We Will Rock You, We Are the Champions, Another One Bites the Dust, and Radio Ga Ga became a massive part of the public consciousness, not just for Queen fans but for the people in the street. 

“They hear these things, and they then become part of the soundtrack of their life because of sporting events, weddings, and various things that are happening. 

“So, it's been wonderful for us that we've become written into people's lives so ubiquitously, I suppose I could say. And then a lot of it would be the performance aspect of it. We were consistently a live act throughout our career, and we took it very seriously. 

“We would record an album and immediately take it around the world as far as we could and then go back into the studio and record another album. We were utterly dedicated to that flow of consciousness for many years, and I must say, it took a lot of dedication. 

“Because you can have all the songs you want and all that dedication, but it still might not have worked. But by the grace of God, we were fortunate to be in some of the right places at the right time. And we were good enough to take our chances when they came along.”

• The Miracle (Collector's Edition) is out now.

Charles Berthoud, bassist and social media star with over a million subscribers on YouTube, recently took to the stage in São Paulo, Brazil, with members of Rockin' 1000, the self-proclaimed 'biggest classic rock band on Earth.’ 

With the entire bass guitar section at his disposal, Berthoud led a performance of Under Pressure, the 1981 Queen song co-written with David Bowie. “The band has a great setlist of classic rock songs like Sweet Child O’ Mine, Enter Sandman, Learn To Fly, but I chose Under Pressure because most people already knew the bassline,” he says. “I could immediately hear how I could split the bassists into two sections and then play the lead part on top.”

The unmistakable bassline is one of the most iconic intro's in rock music history. Remarkably, Charles was fairly relaxed about it all. Asked how he monitored his own sound, he explains: “We were all wearing wireless headphones so we could hear each other, but there was still a crazy echo around the stadium. There wasn't much time for a soundcheck either, so it all sounded beautiful and spacey, but also a little chaotic!”

Days before the video was first shared on YouTube, Berthoud had also slapped his bass with 200 drummers in the same stadium. “I've never done anything even remotely similar to this,” he tells us. “I knew I would have only five minutes per video on the day, so I really had to conceptualize every detail in advance. Surprisingly, it went mostly to plan!”

To watch more from Charles Berthoud, subscribe to his YouTube channel or visit charlesberthoud.com

During this year’s Royal Jubilee Concert in London, England, Queen icons Brian May and Roger Taylor revealed the existence of a “lost” song from the band, which featured the vocals of the late Freddie Mercury.

Now, that track, titled Face It Alone, has finally arrived, bringing back with it Mercury’s once-in-a-lifetime, mountain-moving vocals and May’s own electric guitar excellence.

With lashings of reverb and an ominously minor progression, it’s quite apt that the track first lets Mercury’s vocals stake center stage, with May initially busying himself with some rumbling, back-of-the-mix leads.

The 1:40 mark ushers in the guitar icon’s main solo contribution, though, which can only be described as quintessential May – a descending fretboard slide, uber-compressed bends, colorful chromatics and a litter of selective licks tinged with delay.

Face It Alone was first recorded in 1988 during Queen’s sessions for their 1989 album, The Miracle. At the time, it didn’t make the cut and was eventually forgotten.

However, the track was recently unearthed by Queen’s production and archive team, who found themselves sifting through the ‘88 sessions as they worked to put together an upcoming reissue of The Miracle.

As such, it’s the first time in eight years that a Queen track featuring Mercury has been uncovered and released. It follows 2014’s Queen Forever, which featured three previously unheard tracks: Let Me In Your Heart Again, Love Kills and There Must Be More To Life Than This.

Of Face It Alone, May commented, “I’m happy that our team were able to find this track. After all these years, it’s great to hear all four of us – yes, [John Deacon] is there too – working in the studio on a great song idea which never quite got completed ... until now.”

“We’d kind of forgotten about this track,” added Roger Taylor, “but there it was, this little gem. It’s wonderful, a real discovery. It’s a very passionate piece.”

Face It Alone precedes The Miracle reissue, which will be available in a The Miracle Collector’s Edition format – an eight-disc box set that also includes the original cut of the ‘89 album, fly-on-the-wall audio of the band at work and The Miracles Sessions CD, featuring original takes, demos and six previously unheard tracks.

The reissue, which will arrive November 18, is available to preorder now.

Queen And Adam Lambert have announced Rhapsody Over London – a live and on-demand streaming event featuring footage captured during their remarkable 10 day-run at London’s O2 Arena back in June.

The online event takes place on July 24 will feature a 28-song concert film, which was recorded in rich detail using a team of over 100 technicians and 26 cameras.

It will all be presented via KisWe’s live streaming platform, enabling fans to interact with live chat, cheer buttons and other futuristic gubbins, including exclusive digital stickers and the ability to purchase merchandise during the show. 

Fans will also be able to submit questions for the band to answer during a live streamed pre-show Q&A session.

However, all of that is secondary to the performance. As mentioned, the film encompasses a formidable 28-song setlist that will include the likes of Bohemian Rhapsody, Bicycle Race, These Are the Days of Our Lives, Under Pressure and A Kind of Magic. 

Q.A.L.’s press release is also promising a “towering” Brian May solo set piece and a poignant duet with (a video reprisal of) Freddie Mercury. 

Just like a real arena show, tickets are available in various confusing packages, though at least we can guarantee you won’t get stuck behind a pillar for this particular gig.

Everyone purchasing a ticket (starting from $20) will get access to the concert film (until July 31), the live pre-show Q&A and the option to stream the documentary The Show Must Go On: The Queen + Adam Lambert Story in the two days prior to the event. 

Upgrading to the RhapsodyPlus option ($30) gives you access to a further bundle of on-demand video, including Summersonic – Live in Tokyo, Live Around the World, ‘Queen + Adam Lambert – Meet the Press’ and the ‘Live Around The World’ launch Q&A. For another $10 you can stream all that in 4K. 

Finally, the excellently-titled I Want It All package ($75) gets you all of the above, plus a Rhapsody Over London t-shirt. 

If you want it all, or at least some of it, head over to Queen’s live stream site to buy tickets.