No song is a guaranteed smash, but when it serves as the theme for a hit movie, its odds increase dramatically.

That’s what Survivor learned when they were asked to write the signature tune for Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky III sequel in 1982. The result was “The Eye of the Tiger,” the title track from the group’s third album, released June 8, 1982.

The song went on to become a worldwide chart topper. But the song’s co-writers — Survivor guitarist Frankie Sullivan and guitarist/keyboardist Jim Peterik — faced a daunting task. Stallone had already chosen Queen’s 1980 monster hit “Another One Bites the Dust” for an early cut of the movie, but the song got axed — either United Artists (which produced the film) nixed it for being too old, or Queen denied permission for its use.

“I actually saw it on the film at the studio when I was there with Sly,” Sullivan confirms. Whatever the reason, the result was a make-or-break opportunity for Survivor, whose first two albums had charted at just 169 and 82, respectively.

As Sullivan explains, the deal was instigated by Tony and Ben Scotti, owners of Survivor’s label, Scotti Brothers Records, over dinner at Rao’s Italian-American restaurant in Los Angeles.

“They were all good friends,” he says. “Tony was real smart, and he said to Sly, ‘I’ve got this band, maybe we could help each other.’ Tony asked Sly to call me, which he did. That dinner was probably the best thing that ever happened to my career.”

As Sullivan explains, the deal was instigated by Tony and Ben Scotti, owners of Survivor’s label, Scotti Brothers Records, over dinner at Rao’s Italian-American restaurant in Los Angeles.

“They were all good friends,” he says. “Tony was real smart, and he said to Sly, ‘I’ve got this band, maybe we could help each other.’ Tony asked Sly to call me, which he did. That dinner was probably the best thing that ever happened to my career.”

Stallone sent Sullivan a videotape of the film, but out of caution he included only its first 10 minutes. “I called him up and said I needed to see the whole film to write the song,” Sullivan says. “Which wasn’t true — I just wanted to see what happened in the movie. I reassured him, ‘Dude, I’m not going to make bootleg copies in my garage!’ He laughed and had a copy of the movie hand-delivered.”

Sullivan admits he and Peterik felt pressure writing the song, knowing that the potential reward was immense.

“It was tense, and we were struggling to complete it,” he says. “The music took about 10 minutes, but it took three days to get the lyrics right. We had 90 percent of them, but we couldn’t come up with a title.” He found what they needed while browsing a copy of the script. “There was the part where Apollo Creed says Rocky used to have the eye of the tiger. And that was our title.”

The recording session itself took very little time. “We recorded the demo for it really quick,” Sullivan says. “I used a Les Paul into a 50-watt Marshall JMP.” As Sullivan told The Guardian in 2020, the Les Paul had a headstock break that he had repaired himself out of necessity. “I couldn’t afford another one, so I glued it back together.”

The completed demo was soon delivered to Stallone, who assumed it was the final recording. “I told him that what we had given him was the demo version, and he said, ‘What the fuck is a demo?’” Sullivan recalls with a laugh. “He said that’s the version he’s using.”

Even so, Stallone wasn’t happy with one aspect of the recording. “He asked me about the sound of the song and why old AC/DC records sounded so powerful,” the guitarist says. “And I told him about tape compression — how great it sounds when you slam it into the red.”

To demonstrate, Sullivan ran the tape and pushed the faders higher until Stallone liked what he heard. “Sly said, ‘That’s it right there.’ I was worried that it would be too distorted, but he said ‘Print it,’ and that was the version that he used in the film.”

The global success of “The Eye of the Tiger” gave Survivor the fame they needed, and brought its writers huge financial rewards.

“I had a great manager,” Sullivan says. “He was way ahead of the game with publishing, and he made sure that I got everything that was due to me. I bought a Porsche 911 and a whole load of great old electric guitars, including a few ’50s Les Pauls, an original Flying V and a lot of ’50s Strats. I’ve got over 200 blue-chip guitars.”

The memory of seeing the movie in a theater for the first time still stirs up strong feelings for Sullivan. “I actually got goosebumps. It just slammed. I was driving home afterward, and three rock radio stations were playing our song. I mean, we had Rocky III for our MTV video. How could we fail?”

Freddie Mercury was the consummate rock-and-roll showman. In both his songs and performances with Queen, he gave everything he had to make the audience feel part of the story. A song like “We Are the Champions” demonstrates this clearly. Although it begins as a reflection on the trials of show business, the song ultimately becomes an anthem for the audience: not “I am the champion,” but “We are the champions.”

So it was fitting that the final song on Queen’s last album with Mercury should celebrate the stage itself. “The Show Must Go On” fills that role, and like “We Are the Champions,” it functions both as a reflection on Mercury and as a message to the band’s fans.

As guitarist Brian May explains, the song was also an attempt to confront Mercury’s battle with AIDS, the illness that would claim his life on November 24, 1991.

“It’s a long story, that song,” says May, the track’s main composer, “but I always felt it would be important because we were dealing with things that were hard to talk about at the time. In the world of music, you could do it.”

The song began during a jam between drummer Roger Taylor and bass guitarist John Deacon.

“‘The Show Must Go On’ came from Roger and John playing the sequence, and I started to put things down,” May explained. “At the beginning it was just this chord sequence, but I had this strange feeling that it could be somehow important, and I got very impassioned and went and beavered away at it.”

When May felt he had something worth developing, he arranged a writing session with Mercury to discuss the theme and lyrics. But the singer was already too frail to work for long.

“We only wrote one verse together — that was all we managed that afternoon — but it was enough to push me forward with the song.”

The concept they devised centered on a clown who is suffering but must still paint on a smile.

Over the following days May continued shaping the piece, adding a bridge inspired by Pachelbel's Canon and completing the lyrics.

One line in particular arrived, as he later described it, like “a gift from God.”

“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. 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.”

May finished the demo himself, although the melody was pitched so high that he had to sing the guide vocal in falsetto. He played it for Mercury the next time the singer was able to come into the studio.

“By that time he was suffering a lot. He could hardly stand,” May said of the session. “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!’”

This time, Mercury had no complaint.

Once the band completed the backing track — with May, as usual, playing his homemade Red Special electric guitar — he raised the issue again.

“I said, ‘Fred, I don’t know if this is going to be possible to sing.’ And he went, ‘I’ll fucking do it, darling,’” May recalled to Rolling Stone in 2010.

Mercury fortified himself with a drink.

“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,” May later told Total Guitar. “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. 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.”

Built on a dramatic, ascending chord progression and one of May’s most orchestral guitar arrangements, “The Show Must Go On” ultimately became one of the most powerful recordings in Queen’s catalog.

The song was released on October 14, 1991, as the final single from the album Innuendo — the last Queen album released during Mercury’s lifetime. Too ill to appear in the music video, Mercury is absent from the promo clip, which instead uses archival footage drawn from the band’s earlier videos and live performances spanning 1982 through 1991.

Roughly a month later, on November 23, Mercury released a statement confirming that he had AIDS. He died the following day.

In hindsight, “The Show Must Go On” stands as one of Mercury’s most poignant performances — a recording that captured his determination to keep singing even as his health failed. The title proved tragically prophetic: the singer was gone, but the music endured.

Freddie Mercury may hold the record for history’s most profitable half hour in the bathtub.

In May 1979, as Queen were preparing to record The Game at Musicland Studios in Munich, Queen’s lead singer stepped into a bathtub in the Bayerischer Hof Hotel and emerged 30 minutes later with a new song fully formed: “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.”

Grabbing an acoustic guitar, he quickly worked out the tune in his hotel room.

“’Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ took me five or 10 minutes,” he confirmed to Melody Maker in 1981. “I did that on the guitar, which I can't play for nuts, and in one way it was quite a good thing because I was restricted, knowing only a few chords. It's a good discipline, because I simply had to write within a small framework.”

As quickly as Mercury wrote it, Queen got to work tracking it in the studio.

“We recorded that song, really, six months before the rest of the album,” drummer Roger Taylor explained in a 1989 interview for In the Studio With Redbeard.

“It took half an hour to record. I remember he came in the studio. He says, ‘My dear, I just wrote this in the bath,’ and he did. He'd just been lying in the bath, and there it was. It was very simple, very easy, and it had a great fresh sound to it.”

As it turned out, everyone was present for the session except Brian May, who had been at the studio late the night before. In his absence, Mercury strapped on an acoustic guitar to lead Taylor and bass guitar player John Deacon through the song.

“It always happens: If I go out for a couple of hours, they create something else,” May humorously griped to In the Studio with Redbeard in 1989.

“I came back and they'd already put down the backing track. Roger just had the live drums, Freddie had played acoustic guitar — ‘cause that rhythm on there is Freddie. I don't think I played any of that.”

While he’s most often thought of as a singer and piano player, Mercury was also a talented guitarist. “Certainly in the early days he used the guitar as much as the piano to write songs,” May wrote in his Queen in 3D book.

May also notes that Mercury had solid rhythm chops, especially on acoustic.

“Freddie was really a good acoustic player. He was very modest about it, but he could really play the acoustic guitar very well in an inimitable, very frenetic kind of style.

“I can still his kind of horny fingers hitting the strings — Freddie doing his Elvis, very successfully.”

As May revealed in a February 2008 interview with Guitar and Bass magazine, Mercury even attempted to record the song’s guitar solo.

“He did the original solo on ‘Crazy Little Thing,’” the guitarist confirmed, “on a version that got lost, and I had to redo it. He was very good in a particular style of his own.”

While Mercury’s guitar solo is absent from the recording, we do have May’s, which is widely considered one of his best. Remarkably, it doesn’t feature his homemade Red Special.

In fact, by his own account, May was railroaded into using a Telecaster by producer Reinhold Mack, who decided that classic model was best suited to the song’s vintage rock-and-roll style.

“I said, ‘Well, I can make my guitar sound like a Telecaster, like those old rock and roll records,’” May told In the Studio with Redbeard. “And he said, ‘If you want it to sound like a Telecaster, play a Telecaster.’

May did so, calling it “one of the few times I ever played something that wasn't my regular guitar.” Taylor, who both plays and collects guitars, delivered a rarity from his vault.

“I used one of Roger's really old, beat-up, natural-wood Telecasters,” May told Guitar Player in our January 1983 issue “I got bludgeoned into playing it. That was Mack's idea.

“I said, ‘I don't want to play a Telecaster. It basically doesn't suit my style.’ But ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ was such a period piece, it seemed to need that period sound.

“So I said, ‘Okay, Mack, if you want to set it up, I'll play it.’ He put it through a Mesa/Boogie, which is an amplifier I don't get on with at all. It just doesn't suit me. I tried it, and it sounded okay.”

It may have sounded “okay” to May’s ears, but it was an absolute knock out to everyone else. May’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” solo is a stunning example of his ear for giving a song exactly what it needs — and in a style that has no equal in Queen’s catalog.

For that matter, it wasn’t the first time May had to fight over a solo. As he told Total Guitar, he had to push to convince Mercury to let him track a solo on Queen’s 1979 hit “Don’t Stop Me Now.”

With "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" completed, the band took a break from making The Game, during which time they performed at the Saarbrücken Open Air Festival in Germany that August.

Meanwhile, their label, eager for something new to release, took “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” for an advance single, releasing it in the U.K. in October 1979. The song quickly reached number two, leading the group to launch a short tour — dubbed, appropriately, Crazy — where they played a number of theater dates in the U.K. from November through December.

By December, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” had been released in the U.S., where it quickly began moving up the charts. Queen were back at work on The Game when it hit the top of the charts, becoming the group's first U.S. single to do so.

Roger Taylor recalled the strangeness of hearing the song had reached peak position in the States while they were still recording The Game in Germany.

“It seemed unreal because we were in the other side of the world, and we hadn't even finished the album, which the single was from,” he told In the Studio With Redbeard. “We were still working on it. And we thought, We’re off to a good start here!”

“Crazy Little Thing Called Love” would continue to pay dividends as a radio staple and popular cover tune. But for Taylor, the best of these rewards came in the form of a compliment from no less than John Lennon.

“I remember actually one of the things which made me very proud,” Taylor said, “was that John Lennon said in some article... ‘I heard the Queen record and it made me wanna get back in the studio.’”

The former Beatle would soon do just that, recording what would be his final album, Double Fantasy, in 1980.

“And I thought, Wow, fantastic!” Taylor remarked. “To have actually had any little dent on somebody like Lennon is great.”

More than three decades after the death of Freddie Mercury, Queen continues to perform — a reality that once seemed impossible to the band itself.

Mercury died of complications from AIDS on November 24, 1991, and in the immediate aftermath guitarist Brian May says the surviving members believed the band had reached its natural end.

How May and drummer Roger Taylor managed to carry on to this day owes something to Mercury and a gift he gave to the band in his final days.

Speaking recently with Sammy Hagar on Rock & Roll Road Trip for AXS TV, May recalled that Queen had long agreed that if any member died, the group would stop.

“I suppose what we did was give it up,” May explains. “We actually did give it up when Freddie died. We'd always said, ‘If one of us goes, that's it.’ So Roger and I both went out kind of grieving to the max and saying it's over.

“We didn’t even want to talk about it for quite a long time.”

But in the singer’s final months, Mercury — who had once fought with May over one of his most celebrated guitar solos — himself had already been laying the groundwork for the band to continue. Despite rapidly declining health, May says the frontman was determined to record as much as possible before the end.

“Freddie, in his last days, was like, ‘Okay guys, I’m not going to be here long. Just give me stuff to sing,’” May recalls. “Write me stuff on the back of a cigarette packet — whatever. Just give me stuff to sing.”

The band obliged, bringing Mercury fragments of songs so he could record vocal parts whenever he was physically able.

“And then when he'd gone… he was very undramatic about it,” May says. “He was never maudlin, ever. I never saw him cry or go into self-pity. He never did that. He was like, ‘Let’s just do it. Let’s keep doing stuff.’”

Those final recordings eventually became the foundation for Queen’s 1995 album Made in Heaven, released nearly four years after Mercury’s death. The surviving members built new arrangements around Mercury’s last vocal and piano performances.

“We made the last album, the Made in Heaven album, with the tracks Freddie had left us to play with,” May says. “It became a real labor of love because he left some lovely little bits and pieces.”

For May, Mercury’s presence is still felt whenever the band performs.

“Freddie was always inspiring,” he notes. “If he was here now, we'd be doing what we always do, I'm sure.”

In recent years, Queen has found new life touring with vocalist Adam Lambert, who has fronted the group alongside May and Taylor since 2011.

According to May, Lambert’s willingness to reinterpret the band’s classic material keeps the music from feeling frozen in time.

“Adam brings fresh views on things,” May says. “He’s not afraid to say, ‘Why don’t we try it this way or that way?’ So the songs are not fossils. They're alive and evolving with Adam.”

Lambert’s vocal range, in particular, continues to astonish the guitarist — especially when the band performs Queen’s epic ballad “Who Wants to Live Forever.”

“Sometimes he blows my mind,” he adds. “We do ‘Who Wants to Live Forever,’ which Freddie would do at times, but if he if he felt a little off color, then that was going to be a little bit too much strain for Freddie.

“Adam will always do it and always pull it off, and he’ll take it higher and higher. I’m standing there playing and sometimes I’m going, ‘What did he just do?’

“It blows my mind — the range that he has and the courage he has to morph things into a new place. I love it. I love working with that right now.”

While Queen + Adam Lambert have performed a number of the group’s biggest hits, May says there’s one song they’ll never play, out of respect for Mercury.

The band has no official plans to tour right now. Should that change, don’t expect to see them in the U.S. for the immediate future. May has said ““America is a dangerous place at the moment,” in the wake of the U.S. government killing American citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota in January.

May has also sworn off performing at Glastonbury, due to the culling of badgers that has occurred at the farm where the festival is held.

In related news, Steve Vai recently revealed that he had a chance to play May’s Red Special — his home-built electric guitar — around 1980 when he was 20, and found the guitar impossible due to its incredibly baseball bat–like neck.

“Between the gauge .008 strings, ultra-low action, and a neck the size of a small tree, I played it like a baby giraffe on roller skates,” the guitar virtuoso says.

In all the years Queen’s Brian May and Freddie Mercury wrote and performed together, creative friction was part of the process.

But May says they didn’t see eye to eye on one of his most famous and beloved guitar solos — and had he not held firm, it likely wouldn’t have made the final cut.

“Freddie envisioned it very much as a piano song, akin to Elton John, really,” May told Total Guitar of the track “Don’t Stop Me Now,” from 1978’s Jazz.

“[He heard] powerhouse piano, powerhouse vocal, and that’s it. I played lots of rhythm guitar on it, and Freddie still said, 'No, no, no, no — it's a piano song!’”

Mercury — whom May later honored with a touching tribute on his first signature guitar — eventually came around, conceding, “‘Well, it does need a solo. I need you to take over the vocal.’”

As May explains, that kind of push-and-pull was typical of their working dynamic.

“It’s the way we thought about things,” he says. “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 countermelody.

“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.”

In hindsight, May feels vindicated — not by theory, but by audience response.

“It’s very simple,” he concludes. “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.”

That instinctive, vocal-like phrasing is central to May’s sound, which is built on a highly individual rig: his homemade Red Special, a Treble Booster pushing a Vox AC30 — an amp he came to with a little help from Rory Gallagher — and his famously unconventional pick: an old British coin.

Brian May said last year that Queen were looking at the possibility of performing at the Sphere in Las Vegas.

He’s now ruled out any future concerts in America.

“America is a dangerous place at the moment, so you have to take that into account,” May tells the Daily Mail. “It’s very sad because I feel like Queen grew up in America and we love it, but it’s not what it was. Everyone is thinking twice about going there at the moment.”

May’s comments come in the wake of the U.S. government killing two American citizens in Minneapolis. Renee Good and Alex Pretti were murdered by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers deployed to Minnesota in January.

May had previously expressed excitement about returning to the U.S. for a Las Vegas residency.

“I’m very keen on the Sphere,” he told Rolling Stone. “It’s got my mind working. I sat there watching the Eagles, thinking, ‘We should do this. The stuff that we could bring to this would be stupendous.’ So, yeah, I would like to do it. We’re having conversations.”

Queen + Adam Lambert last performed in the U.S. in November 2023. The guitarist has been cautious about returning to the road following a minor stroke in 2024, although he has been onstage since then, including a performance with Benson Boone at Coachella, where he performed his electric guitar solo to “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

May recently told the Daily Mail that Queen would never perform at Glastonbury Festival due to the practice of culling of badgers on the grounds of Worthy Farms, where the music event is held.

“I wouldn’t do Glastonbury next year because of the politics of the people who run it,” he said, “Unless that changes, I won’t do it.”

It’s become one of the most popular music festivals in the world. Each summer, major artists like Coldplay, Paul McCartney and the Cure make it a favored stop on their tours. Thousands of fans flock for the entertainment.

But Glastonbury will have to continue to do without one of the world’s most celebrated music acts: Queen.

As founding guitarist Brian May tells The Daily Mail, he is a longtime animal rights activist and the founder of the Save Me Trust to protect wild foxes and badgers. Unfortunately, Glastonbury’s organizers act in direct conflict with May’s organization.

“I wouldn’t do Glastonbury next year because of the politics of the people who run it,” May tells The Daily Mail. “Unless that changes, I won’t do it.”

Michael Eavis, a dairy farmer who is a co-founder of the Glastonbury Festival, supports badger culling, saying it is necessary to prevent the spread of bovine tuberculosis.

May thinks that’s just an excuse to kill the animals.

“They like killing badgers, and they think it’s for sport,” he says. “And that’s something I cannot support because we’ve been trying to save these badgers for years, and they are still being killed for years. So that’s the reason we’re missing out on it.”

But whether Queen will return to touring at all is another matter altogether. The band’s last performance was for the Rhapsody tour, in February 2024, with singer Adam Lambert. Unfortunately, since suffering a stroke in September of that year, the 78-year-old guitarist has significantly altered his approach to live music and is likely ending full-scale world tours.

While he initially lost control of his left arm, May has since made a recovery and returned to the stage with his iconic Red Special electric guitar, although he is pacing himself and focusing on his health

“I don’t know when Queen will be back onstage,” he tells The Daily Mail. “It’s an unknown. We’ll take it day by day. It was time to take a break and spend time with family, take stock.

“But never say never about not coming back,” he adds tellingly. “The rebuild of Queen II is coming back, and there are a couple of things you haven’t heard.”

Sometimes a song becomes something bigger than a hit. It strikes a nerve with its audience and becomes an anthem that unites listeners with its message.

Brian May had no idea Queen were on the verge of recording such a momentous tune as the group set out to make News of the World, their sixth album, in 1977. Frontman Freddie Mercury had been working on a song designed to encourage audience participation. But when he first presented it to May, bass guitarist John Deacon and drummer Roger Taylor at a rehearsal, they didn’t get it.

Part of the problem was its lyrics, in which Mercury moved from complaints about having paid his dues to telling his audience his climb to the top had been “no bed of roses.”

Worst of all was the title: “We Are the Champions.”

“Our initial sense of it was that it was something very big-headed,” May told Guitar Player. “We all looked at Fred and said, ‘Really?’

“But he had a very clear view of it. It was aimed at an audience that wanted to feel a togetherness and a power and an optimism. He knew people would sing it.”

More than a gifted vocalist, Mercury was a performer who knew how to unite an audience. Which was only appropriate, considering that Queen had decided to bring them into the show with News of the World,

The genesis of this approach came after Queen‘s 1977 show at Bingley Hall in Stafford, England, where the audience sang along loudly and enthusiastically to every song.

“We did an encore and then went off,” May explained in a BBC interview that year, “and instead of just keeping clapping, they sang ‘You'll Never Walk Alone‘ to us, and we were just completely knocked out and taken aback.”

As they began to work on News of the World, the band was inspired to write tracks that would harness that collective energy. May brought along “We Will Rock You,” sensing its stomp-clap rhythm and simple vocal refrain would be good way to bring the audience together. Mercury, meanwhile, envisioned “We Are the Champions” as a theme that would unify fans in a moment of collective celebration.

“This was the first album where we contemplated audience participation,” May told Guitar Player. “Up until that point, we were sort of tentative. We didn't expect the audience to sing along because they didn't in those days. It was a big transition for us to realize that the audience was part of the show, and we decided to encourage that.”

As he explained, this shift in audience behavior was evident more in England and Europre than in America.

“This phenomenon started in Europe way before in the states,” he said. “And I used to prefer that people didn't sing, to be honest. I liked them to hear all the delicate nuances of what we were doing. I found it kind of annoying, as if it was getting in the way of Freddie’s vocals. It's funny to look back on that.”

Regarding “We Are the Champions,” May recalls that it was recorded in what was a typical fashion for Queen at the time.

“Normally, [Mercury] would put down the piano part with Roger and John live, and when it was good enough — after three or four takes — that would be what we used. And that's pretty much what happened with ‘Champions.’”

Working that way allowed May to think about his guitar parts while the others were recording their parts. But sometimes his best ideas came later, as they did for “We Are the Champions.” Roughly two weeks after initially completing his part, he added two new guitar tracks of bell-like chimes using his Red Special electric guitar.

Panned in stereo on the song’s second verse, they ping-pong from speaker to speaker during the lines “It’s been no bed of roses, no pleasure cruise,” adding a bit of decoration as the arrangement builds to a new high ahead of the chorus.

“I remember listening to it in the car the day it was to be mixed and thinking that my guitar wasn't good enough,” he explained. “I told them to give me one more go and planned that little piece in stereo that happens in verse two, which I really like, it's that sort of bell effect between two guitars. So I know I did some extra work on this one in the light of having lived with it for a couple of weeks.”

May also added some guitar lines — “the lead guitar responses to Freddie’s vocal, particularly at the end,” he said. But when listening to them in the final mix, he felt they were too obtrusive.

“We were very wary of that, because we liked order in our music,” he said. ”But the guitar in that case was kind of competing with Freddie’s vocal.”

However, Mercury felt it was exactly what the song needed: a contest of wills. He told May, “No. The guitar is fighting with the vocal here, and that’s the way it should be.”

“That song doesn’t have a solo as such,” May said, “and I don’t think it’s ever needed one.”

Journeyman guitarist Steve Vai has recalled two of his most poignant meetings with his early hero Brian May, and how it created “the most satisfying full-circle twists the universe has offered me.”

The former Frank Zappa, David Lee Roth, and Whitesnake man has taken to Instagram to show off his ‘Green Red Special’ — a gift from the man himself. Modeled on Brian May’s homemade axe, it is bestwowed with some important tweaks to eliminate the possibility of a repeat of the first time he met the Queen guitarist.

The electric guitar was built by U.K. firm Guyton Guitars and has been described by Vai as “devotion made tangible.” It features a longer scale length than the guitar May built out of an old fireplace with his dad while he was still a teenager — it has a 25.5” scale, usurping May’s 24” creation.

It also has a stunning quilted maple top, a much thinner neck, and Yonderbosk Vai-Sonic pickups. This trio of single coils was custom-wound for Vai specifically for the instrument. For Vai, it’s the realization of a near-lifelong dream.

“In the 1970s, when I was a kid in Carle Place trying to figure out how to play anything in tune, Brian May was one of my absolute heroes. His tone and touch oozed rock and roll class,” Vai writes on Instagram. “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.

“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,” he adds. “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.”

But the guitarist didn’t stay locked away in Vai’s imagination or on his record player forever. At 20, he relocated to Los Angeles. There, he started work as Frank Zappa’s transcriber, before being promoted to guitarist and learning an invaluable lesson from the eccentric musician.

“I landed a tiny apartment at Fairfax and Sunset, and one night I walked into the Rainbow Bar and Grill and saw Brian just standing there. Alone. Like a normal human,” Vai remembers. “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.”

It was a ”pinch me” moment for Vai, who was still coming to terms with the fact that he was on the payroll of another one of his heroes.

“Sitting in a room with the entire band was already unreal enough, but then I saw the Red Special,” he says. “I pointed and said, ‘Is that it?’ Brian said, ‘Yup. Want to try it?’ Time definitely slowed down.”

Guitars, though, can be highly personal things. He soon realized that he and the Red Special were not the perfect match.

“After idolizing that guitar my whole youth, holding it was seismic,” Vai purrs, before dropping the all-important ‘but.’ “I thought, ‘This is it, I’m finally going to sound like Brian May.’ But much to my chagrin, I didn’t. I sounded like me. And between the gauge .08 strings, ultra-low action, and a neck the size of a small tree, I played it like a baby giraffe on roller skates. Still, it was heaven.”

Though the guitar wasn’t quite what it was in his dreams, it remained a memory he held dearly. It seems May didn’t forget that meeting, either.

Vai continues: “After [Vai‘s second studio album] Passion and Warfare came out [in 1990], I was invited to perform at a Guitar Legends concert in Seville, Spain, and Brian was the musical director.

“Brian told me the story about a young guitarist he once let play his guitar at rehearsal, 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.

“Through the years since, I’ve been blessed to have had the opportunity to get to know Brian, jam with him on multiple occasions, and even work with him. It’s always an immense pleasure and honor, and he always delivered like a boss.

“And now comes the part that still makes me blink, laugh, and shake my head in disbelief: The true unspeakable honor of this extraordinary guitar he had custom-made for me and gifted to me.

“It’s a ‘Green’ Red Special! It’s hard to find the words. I’m truly humbled.”

Elsewhere, May has gifted his best friend, Tony Iommi, with a special left-handed version of the Red Special, which could yet get a Gibson-made reissue. The Queen guitarist signed with the historic gear makers in 2024, with his first-ever signature guitar, a 12-string SJ-200 acoustic, hitting the shelves last year.

It’s been just over a year since Brian May’s life took a turn for the worse.

In September 2024, the Queen guitarist revealed that he had suffered a “minor stroke” that left him temporarily unable to use his left arm.

He’s now offered a new health update in an interview with Alan Titchmash on ITV’s Love Your Weekend.

"I’ve been lucky, I get these things, but I seem to be able to get out of them,” May says. “They give you a wake-up call.”

The 77-year-old guitar virtuoso was likely referring to several other ailments he’s suffered in the recent past. He had a heart attack in May 2020 and subsequently nearly died when his heart medication caused his stomach to hemorrhage.

"That's the point where I nearly lost my life,” he told Good Morning Britain in 2020, “not the heart attack, strangely enough.”

In his new interview, May revealed that he's now giving more attention to his health by keeping active.

“I keep moving,” he explains. “I do my biking a lot of times a week. I do a hundred lengths in the pool once a week.

“To me, that’s what’s keeping me going. That's what's keeping me alive.”

He adds that his doctors have given him the thumbs up, telling him he's "doing the right things.”

“So, for now, I'm still here,” he says.

May first told the public about his stroke in an Instagram video in September 2024.

“They called it a minor stroke, and all of a sudden, out of the blue, I didn’t have any control of this arm,” he explained. “It was a little scary, I have to say.”

Since then, May has returned to performing, appearing twice with Benson Boone at Coachella and in London.

In that time, he has also become one of the loudest voices in the campaign against teaching AI with artists’ music. The guitarist raised concerns about the U.K. government adopting changes to copyright laws that would make it easier for AI developers to mine online songs.

“My fear is that it’s already too late," May said. "This theft has already been performed and is unstoppable, like so many incursions that the monstrously arrogant billionaire owners of Al and social media are making into our lives. The future is already forever changed."

May also recently revealed the “fireball” of an electric guitar player who blew his mind before Jimi Hendrix, saying, “He was incredible, nobody could play like that in those days.”

There’s no denying Jimi Hendrix changed the electric guitar game. But long before he ventured from New York City to London — where he sent shockwaves through the blues scene and nearly ended Jeff Beck’s career — another player sparked a revolution in the mind of future Queen guitarist Brian May.

May was in his early 20s by the end of the 1960s. Although Rory Gallagher would have the greatest influence on his guitar tone — inspiring him to adopt two hugely important pieces of gear into his rig — it was another British blues rock great who showed him what was possible with his instrument.

“He was incredible, nobody could play like that in those days,” May says of Deep Purple linchpin Ritchie Blackmore.

For May — who made his comments in the 2015 documentary The Ritchie Blackmore Story — it was the “wild and untamed” way Blackmore played that affected him most.

“It's hard to imagine,” he says. “It’s like going back to the time before there were wheels. People did not play like that in those days; you were looking at people who played jazz and were very safe and rather mellow.”

Blackmore's weapon of choice throughout the '60s was a 1961 Gibson ES-335, a guitar thrust upon him by future amp maker Jim Marshall,. That was the instrument with which he launched Deep Purple, and May was there right at the start of the journey, falling in love with their 1968 debut album, Shades of Deep Purple, while attending college.

Even then, Blackmore's reputation preceded him.

“Ritchie Blackmore already was a legend,” May explains. “I was together with [future Queen drummer] Roger [Taylor] at that point, and Roger had worked alongside Ritchie in his previous groups down in Cornwall.

“And Ritchie was a figure of mystery and wonder. He was able to play very fast, very accurately, and very passionately. He’s wanging the guitar all over the place, he’s using the tremolo bar, and making the whole thing into a completely different instrument.

“Ritchie came along and he's a fireball,” May continues. “He was beyond belief. His technique was incredible. Where that came from, I have no idea. And this was before Hendrix. Ritchie is a great creator and originator of the wild electric guitar.”

And yet, even with Blackmore’s sizable reputation, Deep Purple’s first few records had only middling success. It was only with the second line-up and the 1970 album In Rock that their fortunes began to turn. Coincidentally, it was the first record on which Blackmore played a Fender Strat, having made the switch after striking a deal with Eric Clapton’s roadie for one of Slowhand’s unused models.

The Mark II line-up came to a head with Blackmore as egos clashed. Although Blackmore had stuck around for a few more albums, he'd join forces with Ronnie James Dio in Rainbow before deciding life in the band wasn't what he'd expected.

Blackmore is now back out on the road after a series of health scares cast doubt on his future earlier this year. His rock days may be long behind him, but the impact he's had on the guitar world is still being felt.

When Bob Geldof planned the lineup for his historic Live Aid concerts in 1986, one of the biggest bands of the previous 10 years was nowhere to be found on it: Queen.

The former Boomtown Rats singer had managed to pull in some of rock’s biggest acts — including the Who, Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan — as well as crowd pleasers like George Thorogood, who represented rock's traditional roots (and was a favorite of show host Jack Nicholson).

But as far as Geldof was concerned, Queen’s “star had risen and fallen,” he told CBC Radio Canada.

“I was asked to call them and get them to do it,” he said “Frankly, I didn't care because if you want one word to explain why punk happened: Queen."

The group’s increasingly lavish productions during the mid 1970s had made them one of the acts many punk acts singled out for turning rock and roll into a bloated parody of itself. Brian May’s increasingly advanced electric guitar excursions had become passé by the mid 1980s. Even Queen recognized this, as they added synthesizers and disco rhythms to their music in an attempt to stay relevant.

But no matter what Geldof thought of the group, promoter Harvey Goldsmith was pushing for Queen to perform, and Geldof decided he would get them, come hell or high water.

There was only one problem: Queen had just finished a punishing world tour and weren’t very interested in the show. Freddie Mercury had gone off to work on a solo album, and drummer Roger Taylor and manager Jim Beach told Geldof the event wasn’t the type of thing Queen did. Even so, Beach agreed to broach the subject with Mercury.

A few days later, Geldof’s phone rang. He recalls hearing Mercury’s voice on the other line asking, “’So what's all this about, darling?'"

The conversation didn’t go well until Geldof got the bright idea to blow some proverbial smoke up Mercury’s backside.

"I said, 'Listen, Fred, honestly, if there was ever a stage built for you, this is it,'" Geldof recalls telling the singer.

"And he said, 'Well, what do you mean?' And I said, 'Well, darling, the world!'

"And there was this pause, and he said, 'I think I know where you're coming from.'"

Queen signed on for a 20-minute set that would feature their biggest hits: “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Radio Ga Ga,” “Hammer to Fall,” “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions.”

As “Bohemian Rhapsody” segued into “Radio Ga Ga,” the crowd clapped along with Mercury, who suddenly led them in an astonishing call-and-response. He launched it spontaneously with a sustained “Aaaaa-yo,” a shout that’s become remembered as "The Note Heard Round the World.”

Geldof recalls that he was making his way to the BBC studio at the top of Wembly Stadium when he heard “this astonishing sound.”

It was a remarkable moment of spontaneous synchronicity. Mercury tapped into the energy of the crowd and channeled it right back at them. In that one magical moment, it felt like everyone in the place united in celebration.

As May told The Guardian in July 2023, no one in the group had any idea what the singer had planned — or if he even did plan anything.

“No. Absolutely no inkling whatsoever,” he said. “We didn’t plan it. It was always up to Freddie, whether he wanted to do it, and he just felt confident that it was the right moment.

“Freddie did have an aptitude, it has to be said — he just could connect. He connected with everybody. As soon as he went, ‘Ay yo,’ that was it — the place imploded. I can remember looking over at Roger, thinking, seems to have worked!”

As far as Geldof is concerned, Mercury’s stunning moment helped Queen win the day. Many fans agree. For May, it was a strong confirmation of the group’s power and popularity during a time of uncertainty.

“It did feel different because it wasn’t a Queen audience — all of those tickets for Live Aid were sold before we were announced on the bill — yet they’d still reacted that way,” he says. “To see that happening sent big chills up my spine.”

Sometimes, public opinion elevates a song far beyond what its writers ever imagined. Scott Gorham admits he never saw Thin Lizzy's “The Boys Are Back in Town” as a single until American DJs put it on heavy rotation, and it spread like wildfire.

Similarly, Brian May has told Classic Rock he didn’t initially think “Bohemian Rhapsody” was anything extraordinary. But the public clearly had other ideas.

“People have such a hard time understanding how unsurprising ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was to us,” May says. “If you look at the first album, you’ve got ‘My Fairy King,’ which is very complex and goes all over the place.”

“Bohemian Rhapsody,” a mock opera penned by singer Freddie Mercury as a way of mashing three song ideas into one, was a quintessential Queen track. It didn’t stray from what the group had done on their first three albums.

May also points to “March of the Black Queen” from 1974’s Queen II as further evidence, noting that it is “way more complicated” than Mercury’s mock opera.

“So ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ wasn’t a surprise to us,” he says. “It was just, ‘We’ll do another one of these things.’”

The difference, he thinks, is down to producer Roy Thomas Baker, who took Mercury’s vision to the next level.

“We were going out to dinner one night, and I met Freddie at his apartment in Kensington,” Baker told Sound on Sound in 1995. “He sat down at his piano and said, ‘I'd like to play you a song that I'm working on at the moment.’ He played a bit and then stopped suddenly, saying, ‘This is where the opera section comes in.’ We both just burst out laughing.

“I had worked with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company at Decca, where I learned a lot about vocals and the way vocals are stressed, so I was probably one of the few people in the whole world who knew exactly what he was talking about.”

Soon the rest of the band were onboard.

“As we were constructing the opera bit, we were getting more and more wild,” says drummer Roger Taylor, speaking to CR alongside May. “‘Stick a bit more on, stick another bit in, it’ll all be fine when it gets to the heavy section.’ And it was.

“We were planting our flag in the ground: ‘This is really us — it’s a bit mad but it’s got everything in it,’” he continues.

The fact that it was written on a piano, rather than an electric guitar, presented some big challenges for May. Half a century after its release, the song still humbles him.

“It’s 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,” he told Total Guitar last year.

“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.”

May has also likened part of the song's magic to the Beatles.

In related news, May revealed in September that Queen have been in the studio. Although he says his touring days are behind him since he suffered a stroke last year, he performed with his Red Special guitar in a surprise performance with Benson Boone at Coachella, and he notes Queen are "very keen" to play a residency at the Las Vegas Sphere. .

Earlier this year, he released his first-ever signature guitar, a Gibson SJ-200 embossed with a touching tribute to the late Mercury.

Queen’s enigmatic guitarist Brian May has been behind some of the greatest songs to come from rock's classic era.

These days, the guitarist is singing the praises of a tune from 2013 that he calls “one of the best rock songs ever.”

His passion explains why May has lent his talents — and the iconic tone of his Red Special guitar – to a special reworking of the song: “Could Have Been Me,” the breakthrough single from British glam-rockers the Struts.

May somehow missed the song’s initial release, when it became the lead single for the Struts’ 2014 debut album, Everybody Wants. When he did eventually hear it, he was taken aback.

“I wish I'd heard that song when I was a kid,” May tells Classic Rock. “It’s a classic.”

The Struts formed in 2012, combining shades of Led Zeppelin, Queen, AC/DC and — oddly — Leonard Cohen into their unique brand of glam. Luke Spiller, the band's singer and songwriter, even recalls imitating Freddie Mercury and Bon Scott in front of the mirror when he was just 11.

“Could Have Been Me” earned the band a slot supporting the Rolling Stones in Paris in June 2014, a month before their debut LP hit the shelves. Spiller says s the chance to rework the song with one of the band's heroes has only compounded the tune's meaning.

“This song is all about seizing your dreams and living life to the fullest, no matter the obstacles,” Spiller divulges. “It’s a powerful anthem that reminds us to chase what sets our souls on fire.

“Collaborating with Brian on this track is a dream realized, and I can’t wait for you all to feel the energy and inspiration behind it.”

Much of that energy comes from May’s harmony-rich contributions. His guitar sings throughout, at times growling like a V8 engine, at others sprinkling the playfully camp panache that underpinned Queen's legendary music.

“It's one of the best rock songs ever,” May declares, noting, “It was actually bigger in America than it was in Britain: it passed people by over here, and it shouldn't have done.”

The song gained traction in the U.S. two years after its release, thanks to growing prominence on the radio, eventually peaking at number five on the Alternative Songs chart.

Notes May, “It's a very inspirational song: I don't want to look back and think I didn't live my life and take all the opportunities that were in front of me. I love that sentiment. It says everything that a kid needs to know when they're growing up.”

Oddly, the band’s label, Interscope, warned the band not to let May add too many guitars to the track, saying guitars aren’t in vogue.

No one bothered to pay them any mind.

“I could hardly believe I was hearing that,” May scoffs. “It’s ridiculous. The guitar is very much parallel to a human voice, and that's what makes it immortal. That's why people express themselves through guitar as well as through their voice. I don't think guitars are on the way out just yet!"

While May arms himself, of course, with the Red Special as an extension of his voice, Spiller’s voice and the swagger with which he delivers his performance on the song feel very close to home for their guest star.

“Working with Luke, I'm often thinking of Freddie,” May confesses. “There are a lot of similarities. They both have this unstoppable belief. They have incredible voices, they’re great songwriters, but they have that extra ingredient: ‘I’m going to do this, I’m going to let the world come to me.’ That’s what Freddie had, and that‘s what I see in Luke.”

“Hopefully, this song will go on to inspire many more people to take life by the scruff of the neck and drink it down deeply,” Spiller concludes. “Every day is a gift. Let’s celebrate them together.”

Mercury has been on Brian May’s mind a lot recently, with his first-ever signature guitar bestowed with a touching tribute to the late rock icon.

He’s also said he had to fight with him to get a guitar solo on one of Queen’s biggest hits — although another monster hit didn’t need one – and has discussed his favorite Queen deep cut. He says the band never plays the “magic” song live out of respect for Freddie.

Queen had their share of disagreements over the years that the original classic quartet was still together.

Guitarist Brian May and singer Freddie Mercury disagreed over whether or not to put an electric guitar solo on one of the group’s biggest hits. May also thought the singer was overdoing it when he pushed the guitar solo to the fore on the final choruses to “We Are the Champions” until it clashed with the vocals. Mercury replied that “the guitar is fighting with the vocal here, and that’s the way it should be.”

May was further displeased when the band recorded the backing track to their hit “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” in his absence.

But those were minor grievances compared to the interband controversy that continues over one of Queen’s cult favorites: “I’m in Love With My Car.” The song was penned by drummer Roger Taylor as a coy ode to drivers who feel too much affection for their automobiles.

Among its choice lyrics were the couplets, “When I'm holding your wheel / all I hear is your gear. / When my hand’s on your grease gun / oh, it’s like a disease, son.”

“Brian was like, ‘Is this a joke?’” Taylor recalls in an interview with Mojo. “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?”

But what really bothered May was the decision to place the song on the B-side to Queen’s monumental 1975 hit “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Because record sales royalties are split evenly between a record’s A and B sides, the arrangement meant Taylor’s joke of a song went on to earn a ridiculous amount of money courtesy of a song that was Queen’s labor of love.

“We were aware of the injustice of ‘I’m in Love With My Car’ making as much money as ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’” May explained to Mojo. “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. How long did it take me to get over it? Oh, quite a while.”

Indeed. The resentment even surfaced in the 2018 Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, where May’s onscreen twin complains about Taylor’s song getting an unfair advantage.

Apparently, May and Taylor have sparked on other occasions when the guitarist took a hand with the drummer’s songs.

“I think Roger would say to you that it’s very simplistic with him,” May says. “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.”

Taylor is unhappy with the insinuation.

“Not really, no!” he snorts. “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!”

His grievances aside, the drummer takes comfort in knowing his royalty haul from “I’m in Love With My Car” continues to get under May’s skin.

“He’s never forgiven me,” the drummer says. “And I’ve never stopped laughing about it!”

Brian May accepted long ago that he'll never be able to shred like Steve Vai or Joe Satriani. As a result, he was forced to reassess his approach to electric guitar pyrotechnics to serve the song rather than his ego.

Despite this, he occasionally found himself at odds with Freddie Mercury when it came to Queen's arrangements. The two men famously disagreed on the need for a guitar solo in “Don’t Stop Me Now.” The band’s eccentric frontman deemed it was a “piano song,” while May thought it would benefit from a spot of lead guitar.

But when it came to “We Are the Champions,” the guitarist tells Total Guitar such a thought never crossed his mind. Ironically, though, Mercury felt the track needed an obtrusive guitar part to fight with his vocals, making the arrangement consistent with the song's theme.

“It’s a strange story,” May explains. “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 realized... there’s not really any lead guitar on there.’”

In response, he says, “I put in those answering pieces — the lead guitar responses to Freddie’s vocal, particularly at the end. Also, those little bell chimes–type things in the second verse.”

Unfortunately, when May and Mercury sat down to finalize the mix, the guitarist says, his new lead parts clashed with the vocals.

“On that song, the last couple of choruses have guitar going through them,” May told Mojo in 2017. “We were very wary of that, because we liked order in our music. But the guitar in that case was kind of competing with Freddie’s vocal.

“In those days it was all manual mixing, and we both had our fingers in that mix. And strangely enough, Freddie had his hand on my guitar, and I had my hand on his vocals. He’s pushing up the guitar more and more, and I’m going, ‘Freddie, are you not overdoing it?’”

Mercury’s answer?

“No. The guitar is fighting with the vocal here, and that’s the way it should be.”

“That song doesn’t have a solo as such,” May adds, “and I don’t think it’s ever needed one.”

In retrospect, he says, a solo might have caused problems with their live show, since he would have to stop playing rhythm, depriving the song of its much-needed power.

“The bottom would drop out of it,” he says. “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…”

Indeed, last February, May revealed that, in the band’s early days, he made a pitch for Queen to employ a rhythm guitarist onstage. At that point, his thinking was solely based on confidence — “it took me a long time to feel confident about being the only guitar on stage,” he admitted — but in truth, such a move would only have facilitated more guitar solos.

Without another player to thicken up their sound, May took on a new approach and employed solos only when a track called out for them.

His stance on virtuoso playing harmonizes with comments made by Wolfgang Van Halen. The son of one of the world’s best-loved shredders isn’t averse to lighting up his fretboard, but he says his focus is on songwriting.

“I approach guitar playing more as a producer and more as a drummer than a guitar player,” he explains. “Rhythm is always the first thing for me, and melody is the second.

“A really core thing for me that my dad always instilled is that a solo should be melodically memorable.”

George Harrison, meanwhile, tracked four different solos for "Let It Be" over a one-year period, and today, its guitar tabs are the most viewed as players look to emulate his magic.

Sophie Lloyd has also opened up about the guitar solos that changed her life, and May has picked out his favorite Queen deep cut. It's a “magic” song the band has never played live out of respect for Freddie Mercury.

Like many young guitarists in the early 1960s, Queen guitarist Brian May was influenced by the original wave of rock and roll. He was also more song-oriented in his approach, focused on rhythm rather than lead.

“I love playing rhythm and that's the way I started,” he told Guitar Player in our March 2012 issue. “When I was a kid I just played acoustic guitar and strummed and sang. I sang Everly Brothers songs, Tommy Steele songs, Elvis songs — so rhythm guitar is where I come from.”

But as music changed, so did May’s ambitions. His early lead work was influenced by the Shadows, whose electric guitar instrumentals were based in large part around the song's main melody. May said the group was "the most metallic thing out at the time.”

But by 1965, May had his head turned around by two new guitarists on the scene: Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. It was because of them that he began to look beyond the Shadows style of guitar playing he grew up on and got serious about developing his blues and rock chops.

He was particularly impressed by Clapton.

“Absolutely. Clapton from the very beginning, because I used to go and see the Yardbirds. We did a couple of their songs," he said.

“Clapton was unbelievable, just so sparkling and fluid. He was what turned me away from the Shadows style and sent me back to listen­ing to B.B. King, Bo Diddley and all those people who I'd heard.

“But I thought it was all the same: 12-bar blues, and that was it. I didn't realize the depth or emotion there was in it until I saw Eric Clapton doing it. That somehow made it accessible for me.

“After I went back and listened to his influences, I listened to Clapton very closely and people like Mike Bloomfield on the first album with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which had all those classics.

“Jeff Beck was an influence too, extremely. I couldn't believe what he could do. I remember seeing him put the guitar down, make it feedback. and play a whole tune without even touching the finger­board. That was the first time I saw a Les Paul guitar. I saw a gig at the Marquee soon after Beck had joined, and Eric Clapton came on and jammed at the end. That was pretty amazing; I'll never forget that.”

It was also around this time May caught a show by another newcomer on the London scene who would prove influential to him: Jimi Hendrix.

“I thought after seeing [Clapton and Beck], I'd seen it all. I had been playing all that time, and I could play that style. I was beginning to make the guitar sort of talk. I always wanted the guitar to play for people, to talk the same way a vocal did and have feeling in it. I didn't want it to be an accompanying instrument.

“Then when I saw Hendrix, I thought, Oh. my God. This guy is doing everything that I was trying to do. He just made me feel like I couldn't play.

“It’s a funny thing: It makes you feel very uncomfortable when you thought you knew everything that was going on, and then suddenly somebody comes along who seems to be doing all sorts of things which you hadn't even thought of, never mind find yourself able to play.

“I heard him play on a single of ‘Hey Joe,’ and on the flip side there's an amazing solo on ‘Stone Free,’ where he's talking to the guitar and it's talk­ing back to him. I thought, Well. he can't really be that good. He must have done that with studio technique.

“Then when I saw him for the first time supporting the Who at the Savoy Theatre in London, he just completely blew me away. I thought, He's it. The Who couldn't follow him in those days and they were really hot, big news in England. Any­body in the world would find it hard to follow Hendrix.”

Pete Townshend has attested to that. The Who guitarist told Guitar Player how Hendrix’s arrival in London in 1966 devastated his confidence as a guitarist. Ultimately, though, he said his inability to compete at Hendrix’s level pushed him to create more ambitious songs, which in turn led to the creation of the Who’s breakthrough album, Tommy.

“And what that actually did was provide me with records that sold in America, somehow,” Townshend said.

As for May, he would eventually find his own path and develop a signature style that remains one of rock’s most stylistically and tonally unique. As he’s explained, some credit is due to Rory Gallagher, who turned him on to the virtues of a Vox AC30 combo amp and a Dallas Rangemaster Treble Booster when May met the guitarist backstage at London's Marquee club following Gallagher’s performance.

“I found a Treble Booster,” he said. “I plugged it in with my guitar, turned it all the way up and it just melted my stomach. That’s my sound.”

Queen have had so many hits that their greatest-hits album could easily be released as an anthology. Brian May and Freddie Mercury, aided by the songwriting talents of Roger Taylor and John Deacon — and further helped, of course, by May’s standout Red Special guitar — achieved huge success together.

So picking one song as a cut above the rest was never going to be an easy task.

In their homeland, the band has broken into the Top 40 on 54 occasions, topped it six times, and produced 10 number-one records. In the U.S., they've made the Billboard 200 on 30 occasions, with nine top 10 hits and a singular track reaching number one.

Yet, when asked by the BBC’s One Show what his favorite Queen track is, May chose a song that's unlikely to feature on any collection. He shuns the anthemic, chart-smashing, and wedding party mainstay “Bohemian Rhapsody” which he recently performed at Coachella with Benson Boone. And he’s looked past other titanic hits like “Another One Bites the Dust” and “Don’t Stop Me Now”.

In fact, he splits his answer into two parts: the song on the band’s setlist that always gets his blood pumping, and another song that has never made it to the stage.

As for the first song, May says (via the Express), “I still love playing them all, I have to be honest. But I would have to say ‘We Will Rock You.’ It always gives me a good feeling."

As for his favorite song which remains forever off set lists, May revealed it during a Q&A session on the Queen YouTube channel. He says it’s his personal and emotional connection to the song that gives it special resonance.

“I’m going to pick a song that not everybody knows out there, which is called ‘The Miracle,’ which Freddie wrote that I always thought has a strange, unique magic to it,” May says.

“Especially because Freddie wrote it at a time when it was very hard for him to be optimistic,” May adds, referring to Mercury's AIDS diagnosis, “and it’s just very beautiful. I’ll go for that.”

"The Miracle" was released on Queen's 13th album of the same name, which would prove to be the penultimate Queen album released in Mercury's lifetime. All four members are said to have contributed to a song that began with Mercury and Deacon.

The song, which references cultural icons as wide-ranging as Captain Cook, Cain and Abel and guitar hero Jimi Hendrix finds the singer praying for the ultimate miracle: peace on Earth

Mercury started showing symptoms of HIV/AIDS in the early '80s, and as the decade closed out, his health was deteriorating. Yet his perspective was always positive-minded and outward-looking.

"The Miracle" is a song that represents the kind of character Mercury was, with doses of his flamboyancy pushing the progressive rock track along. It has never been played live as a mark of respect to their late frontman.

The song wasn't a success, commercially. May even went as far to say that “everybody hated it for some reason,” but it's a track he still holds dear.

"It’s very uncool to be idealistic in Britain, I suppose, at the moment,” he theorized in the wake of the song's release in 1989. “They said, 'How can they talk about peace’, and all that sort of stuff, then of course, China happened and everything [the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre]. It seems very relevant to us.”

May, however, has previously cited other Queen tracks as some of his favorites. On one occasion, he turned to a song completed four years after Mercury's death and featured on the posthumous album, “Made in Heaven”.

“It’s a quintessential Queen track,” he said of the title track (via Far Out). “It’s one of the biggest we ever did. It was never a single, strange enough. ‘Made In Heaven’ is so enormous.”

Another contender previously cited by May is “I Want It All,” a song he felt captured the band's desire to sing about the struggles of the everyman.

“The song was about reaching out and grasping what you want in life,” he had said, “A lot of Queen’s music was about normal people, with normal dreams and normal frustrations trying to grab the kernel of life. ‘I Want It All’ sums that up quite well.”

Mercury now lives on in a touching tribute featuring Brian May’s first-ever signature guitar, which comes after he became a Gibson artist. That announcement has led to speculation that a Gibson-made Red Special could be in the works, and he’s done little to downplay those wagging tongues.

Since Queen’s debut album was released in 1973, plenty has been said about Brian May’s guitar tone, and rightly so. Yet, while most look to his handcrafted Red Special guitar, alongside a Vox AC30 combo and a treble booster as the secrets to his tone, a Queen expert has pointed out a lesser-known but equally significant element: sixpence guitar picks.

Guesting on the Booked on Rock Podcast to promote his new book, Queen & A Night at the Opera: 50 Years, author Gillian G. Gaar has spoken about the big impact the unusual guitar picks have on his overall sound.

“He didn't like a pick,” Gaar explains. “And Brian, being ever so meticulous about this stuff, was saying that the older six-penny pieces, which would probably be a type of pence coin these days, had more nickel in them.

“So, they were a bit softer, and the serrated edge would help him get different tones from the guitar. He always has a stack of older six-penny pieces he could rely on. I think he said people mail them to him as well.”

According to Gaar’s book, May isn’t just after any old coin; he has a very specific criterion any would-be pick needs to meet.

“He said, 'Sixpences expenses are very soft metal, which doesn't hurt the guitar strings. But if I turn that serrated edge at an angle to the string, I can get that kind of articulating percussive, consonant sound,’” the book states.

“‘Before about 1950, they had a high content of nickel. Which makes them really soft. So, I especially like a 1947 sixpence, the year that I was born.'”

While the six-penny piece is now consigned to the history books, the coin, which was first minted in 1551, remained in circulation until 1980, nearly a decade into Queen's career. May likely had a sizable number of the coins set aside by that point.

The coin is so important to May that he has a custom made "Maydusa" six-pence glued to the headstock of his Red Special. The legend on it reads "Brian May: Back to the Light."

Billy Gibbons is another iconic guitarist who ditched traditional picks for currency, finding a Mexican peso far better for the job. Speaking of the switch to Guitar World in 2005 he said, “Tommy Carter of Jimmie Vaughan's Dallas band the Chessmen used a quarter to play bass. He described the serrated edge of the coin as producing a delightful scratchiness as he scrubbed the strings.

“That gave me the idea, and our love of the Mexican border is what drew us to the peso. The peso coin is a rarity, but we've still got a few filed down for the ready.”

Of his famed Vox AC30 and treble booster loyalty, Brian May took inspiration from Rory Gallagher, having seen him perform at London’s Marquee back in his Taste days.

“I managed to stay behind at the Marquee when everyone had gone home," he recalls. “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.”

May, now a signature Gibson artist, says it’s “not out of the question,” that his Red Special could receive a Gibson-made reissue in the near future.

Of the guitar’s DIY origins, the guitarist revealed that “everyone told us it was never going to work,” but says, upon hearing the band’s first album played back in the studio, it was a guitar he knew he could conquer the world with.

The guitarist made a surprise appearance at Coachella this weekend, starring in Benson Boone’s set during a rousing “Bohemian Rhapsody,” although the crowd’s lack of appreciation for the guitar legend has been met with derision by the Queen fanbase.

It’s been roughly 48 hours since guitarist Olly Pearson owned the stage and blew away the judges on Britain’s Got Talent, and in that time he’s no doubt received countless invitations from bands across the globe in need of a new shred monsters.

Whether he’ll be able to entertain any such offers remains to be seen. Pearson, you see, is all of 11 years old.

The diminutive guitarist admitted that he was nervous as he strolled onstage with what appeared to be a Patrick James Eggle guitar. Pearson, who first picked up the electric guitar at age seven, said that his favorite guitarist is AC/DC’s Angus Young, to which judge Simon Cowell responded, “Okay. Now you’re talking.”

That’s when Pearson put it all out there, telling the judges, "My dream for the future is to become the best guitarist in the world.”

With the cheering crowd already on his side, and his proud grandfather Lee looking on, Pearson paid tribute to Angus by kicking things off with a crunchy slice of “Highway to Hell.” In the blink of an eye, AC/DC morphed into Van Halen as the young picker nailed some of Eddie’s spunky licks on “Jump.”

But the kid – and the crowd – was just getting warmed up. He concluded his star-making spot with a smashing, note-perfect performance of Brian May’s solo on Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now.”

All of which brought the crowd, and the judges, to their feet.

“Oh, my god, Olly. Literally, a star is born. I have never, ever seen anything like that in my life,” said a stunned Amanda Holden, who presented Pearson with the “Golden Buzzer.”

Next came Cowell’s verdict: “You already have your own distinct sound, which normally people take decades. You’re that good! That was brilliant.”

Still basking in his triumph, Pearson appeared on Britain’s This Morning broadcast with his grandfather Lee, who recounted the moment his grandson was bitten by the guitar bug.

“Olly said to me, ‘I saw a guy playing in the street, and I wanna do that.’"

Guitar became their bond, as grandpa, a player in his youth, relearned the instrument while Olly blew past him.

“I didn’t so much teach him,” Lee said. “I just opened the door and out it came.”

Because of his deep-rooted love for his self-made Red Special guitar, it’s taken Brian May half a century of noise-making to get his first official signature guitar. His Gibson SJ-200 12-string is the result, and it a heartfelt tribute to the late great Freddie Mercury that’s easy to overlook.

May turned heads when he joined Gibson’s family of artists last year, ushering in rumors of a Gibson-made Red Special, which the guitarist added further fuel to with his comments several months later.

However, a different signature guitar has come first, and it satisfies more immediate and pressing needs for the guitarist, thanks to the 12-string’s quirky setup.

Discussing the guitar’s origins in a celestial-themed promo video, May says: “The 12-string I was accustomed to wasn’t performing. Gibson kindly said, ‘We’ll make you something special,’” and it’s met his key request.

“One of the things I asked for,” he explains, “was for the octaves to be placed around the other way from the way it's usually done because I like to pick upwards and hear the top notes when I'm doing it.”

For the uninitiated, 12-string guitars feature the regular six strings, but strings E through to G are joined by a double of the string tuned an octave higher, while the high E and B strings are given a partner string in the same octave. This creates a bigger, more ringing sound than regular acoustic guitars.

However, where typical 12-strings place the higher octave strings above the standard string, May’s unique model flips them around to make the higher octave strings more prominent and to match his picking style.

Beyond that, the spirit of Queen’s legendary frontman, Freddie Mercury, lives on in a guitar that both serves as a tribute to May’s two biggest loves in life — music and space — and stands as a symbol of Mercury’s legacy because of how the guitar is set to be used live.

May has taken to performing “Love of my Life” from 1975’s A Night at the Opera solo — but backed by audio and video of Mercury — during the band’s live shows in recent years. During those performances, his 12-string playing — previously delivered on a Godin or Ovation model — shines.

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

However, the band chose to revise the song for the stage after May “picked up a 12-string and found that I could make it sing with Freddie quite easily”.

“But probably even more importantly than that,” he adds, “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.”

And so, when designing the guitar, he made sure there was a little Freddie flair in its chic stylings.

“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 muses. “Look how much technology and craftsmanship has gone into this.”

He then points to the guitar’s beautiful pickguard design, which features a constellation of stars and planets.

“They were able to put the universe here in some figurative way,” he says. “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 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,” he concludes. “But I have a Mercury on the guitar now, which makes me very happy.”

Meanwhile, Brian May has revealed that guitars were illegal at his school, and in the same interview, he admitted that he had doubts about his Red Special guitar at first. However, after hearing the band’s debut album, 1973’s “Queen I” for the first time, we changed his mind and set his eyes on taking over the world with it.

“I started off on acoustic, and I was on acoustic for a long time,” Brian May recalls. “All I did was sing and play accompaniment. It was a long time before I became clever enough to play what I call single notes. I could hear people doing it on records but I couldn’t. I didn’t know how to do it myself.”

Brian May would go on to develop a guitar tone that is among the most identifiable in rock music. But discovering the ins and outs of guitar playing would take some time for May. As he explains to with Music Radar in a new interview, guitars were “illegal” contraband at his high school, Hampton Grammar. Long before he dared to play single-note lines on electric guitars.he had to sneak around to learn his craft.

“In the lunch hours, we would hide behind the cycle sheds because it was illegal to have a guitar at my school,” he says. “Seriously, things were very different in those days! [At] Hampton Grammar School, you would get suspended for even having a guitar, let alone possessing one at school.

“So behind the cycle sheds, we would hide, and we would play, and go, ‘Hank Marvin’s done this, y’know. And this…’ All these wonderful things were happening. Elvis was happening. Buddy Holly was happening. And we were finding out what they do, how they do it. That’s what we wanna do!”

Of course, May would eventually electrify his playing and has spoken at length about the trials and tribulations that came with building his iconic Red Special guitar that would come to define his career in Queen.

Along the way, a half dozen of those records he loved as a teen became essential to his quest to refine his tone. Here, in his own words to Guitar Player in 2004, are May's self-described "Six Tones That Changed My Life."

"Hello Mary Lou" — Ricky Nelson 

"James Burton's incredible crackling and wiry sound — and the squeezing of the unwound third string across the fingerboard of a Telecaster to make the guitar growl like a cat — is spine chilling! We all rushed out and replaced our wound third strings with Clifford Essex Banjo strings from the BMG Music store on Earlham Street, Cambridge Circus, in London. For me, this solo changed the path of history."

"Bold As Love" — Jimi Hendrix

"Hendrix's tone is enormously fat, yet incisive. It's almost clean, yet tinged with a gluey edge of overdrive. He launches into the solo, tears it up, and you think you have heard it all. But then, after a wonderful, galloping reintroduction by Mitch Mitchell that's deep in tape phasing, Hendrix's guitar bursts back in — also deep in the phasing — with what must be the most searing and ethereal epilogue ever recorded. It truly reaches for the stars."

"Where Were You" — Jeff Beck 

"This, in spite of my lifelong devotion to Hendrix, might just be the greatest recorded piece of guitar in the world. Ever.

"Beck has no match. All through his life, he has made our jaws drop. I think we we guitarists regard Jeff in the way Mozart's contemporaries regarded him. We do not understand where this magic comes from. What Jeff is doing here is colossal, but that wonderful sound — born of a particular way he plays harmonics, and what is in his fingers as he plucks a string — makes it utterly beautiful.

"This track inspired me to make what I resolved would be the last U-turn I would ever make, during a period of deep crisis in my life. It led me to a rebirth of my spirit, and it's the closest thing I have heard to a divine revelation."

"Key to Love" — John Mayall and the Blues Breakers 

"Writing these appreciations reminds me that sound is pretty much everything for a guitarist. Without it, even the most inspired bit of ax wielding goes for nothing.

"You can hear Eric Clapton's guitar all the way through this track, underpinning, and darkly hinting at what will eventually come. After what seems like an awful lot of verses, the young Clapton hits an open B string at the end of the main riff, and the beast is unleashed at last. The very first double-Unison note screams in, and a hail storm of passion ensues. Nobody could hear this and not get chills."

"The Frightened City" — The Shadows 

"Hank Marvin is the master of rich guitar tones — 'Wonderful Land,' 'Atlantis,' 'Foot-Tapper' — but this track from his early days is full of passion. The sound is almost a snarl, but still with an underlying beauty.

"It might sound clean next to 'Smells Like Teen Spirit,' but, believe me, it symbolizes just as much the rebellion and swagger of Hank's generation. A glorious sound.

"Looking for Someone to Love" — Buddy Holly

"A mighty clang. Raw power that made me and a million other kids want to make that noise."

Long after his school days were through, May continued his furtive guitar studies. He recently recalled how he snuck into London's Marquee Club in the late '60s to meet Rory Gallagher and ask him about tone.

That led to him forging a relationship with Vox amplifiers and treble booster pedals. He admits to having had one brief flirtation with Marshall amps since, although that led to a humbling at the hands of Jimi Hendrix, which saw him return to Vox and never look back.

In other news, May has just released his first signature guitar since signing on with Gibson last year: : a limited-edition SJ-200 12-string made in Gibson's Bozeman, Montana Custom Shop. The guitarist says a Gibson-made Red Special isn't out of the equation.

The thorny subject of the greatest guitar solo of all time has long been a fiercely contested debate, probably because every solo is different. How do you compare, say, “Comfortably Numb” with “Crazy Train,” or “Stairway to Heaven” with “Sultans of Swing”? It’s impossible. Still, public opinion ebbs and flows, and we wanted to find out which solos currently rank among our readers as the greatest of them all.

So we ran a poll on GuitarPlayer.com to find out and here we present the results. We’ll take a look at the stories behind the songs and find out just what made those lead guitar breaks so great through conversations with Brian May, Kirk Hammett, Michael Schenker and others.

20. Gary Moore | “Still Got the Blues”

GUITARIST: GARY MOORE (1990)

The definitive blues guitar ballad.

Presented as the title track from his 1990 album, this wistful tune in A minor became Gary Moore’s calling card fairly late in his career, when he reinvented himself as a blues artist. There’s a point in the solo where you can hear the Belfast great switch from the neck humbucker to the bridge on the 1959 Les Paul Standard he nicknamed Stripe and start deviating from its main theme, mainly sticking within the A minor pentatonic scale, with a few notes from the Aeolian and harmonic minor scales.

Moore was plugged into his prototype Marshall JTM-45 reissue head with one of the company’s newly designed Guv’nor distortion pedals out in front. More than 30 years later, this remains one of the most raw and expressive blues tracks, with Moore almost fighting his guitar at points, yet never failing to deliver the goods

19. Metallica | “Fade To Black”

GUITARIST: Kirk Hammett (1984)

Metallica’s first ballad features some of Kirk’s most epic playing.

Recorded at Flemming Rasmussen’s Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen in February and March 1984, Ride the Lightning, Metallica’s sophomore album, was more progressive and stylistically greater in scope than the all-out thrash assault of their debut, Kill ’Em All. That change is evident on “Fade to Black,” which features acoustic guitars and a nonstandard structure more akin to the “Stairway to Heaven” school of songcraft. But it is the song’s timeless melodic solo that most vividly signals a stylistic shift in guitarist Kirk Hammett’s playing. And the signature element he employs for the last solo is arpeggios.

“I have been playing that song for so long now,” Kirk tells our sister publication Total Guitar. “For the very last solo, I know how I want to start it, but then I am in an area where I can improvise for 16, 18 or 24 bars, and then [drummer] Lars [Ulrich] will hit a certain fill, which means that it’s up and it’s time for the arpeggio part. And then I just slide right into those arpeggios.” And they are arpeggios played on two strings, Hammett specifies. “When guitar players first started incorporating arpeggios into their playing, before the whole Yngwie sweep-picking thing, arpeggios were played on two strings – not three or four strings,” he explains. “And that was what the vogue was at the time in the 1980s, so I have been playing those for a long time. I use my middle finger just to anchor my position on the neck.”

That’s a great tip from the man who plays the solos. But how should you tackle them yourself? First, there are two essential scales you’ll need to know: the B natural minor scale and the B Phrygian mode, both shown below. These cover you for the entire opening 30 bars, which, let’s face it, is a lot of music, so this is a good reason to learn a couple of shapes if ever there was one.

To make it simpler, most of your time is spent in the natural minor scale. Not until around bar 20 will you find yourself briefly landing on the C note, which appears in the Phrygian mode. The bottom line is that Hammett improvises this part of the solo live – and these are the shapes he uses.

Up next are those two-string arpeggio shapes, and they’re 16th notes – all of them! At 142 bpm, it’s pretty fast, but Hammett doesn’t pick every note, opting to use pull-offs to make those rapid licks easier. It’s definitely something to experiment with and if you’re still struggling, you could try adding in an occasional hammer‑on, too.

18. Steely Dan | “Kid Charlemagne”

GUITARIST: Larry Carlton (1976)

Messin’ with the “Kid.”

Steely Dan’s catalog is filled with remarkable guitar solos, but Larry Carlton’s brilliant work on The Royal Scam’s “Kid Charlemagne” remains the most celebrated. Carlton strings together a series of tasty phrases that follow the underlying chord changes with a blend of inside and outside playing that is technically mind bending and emotionally satisfying.

“I was pretty familiar with the tune, so I just improvised,” he tells Guitar Player. “People think I’m kidding when I say that, like I had worked the solo out beforehand, but I didn’t. It was straight improv, and it worked.” Very well, in fact. Perhaps more has been written about his solo than of the song itself.

Despite the acclaim, Carlton was, and remains, nonplussed. “When the record came out, there was a wonderful review of the tune in Billboard and they raved about the solo,” he says. “I put the record on and listened to it with my wife, and at the end of it I said, ‘I don’t know. It just sounds like me.’”

17. Cream | “Crossroads”

GUITARIST: Eric Clapton (1968)

The finest rock and roll cover of an acoustic blues song.

It started as a blues tune called “Cross Road Blues” by Robert Johnson and became one of the finest examples of natural ability, soulfulness and showmanship from a virtuosic 22-year-old guitarist named Eric Clapton. His reimagining of the song as “Crossroads” further cemented a legacy that by then had earned him the nickname God.

Famously recorded at San Francisco’s Fillmore West venue for supergroup Cream’s Wheels of Fire album, Clapton’s arrangement retains the soul and spirit of Johnson’s original but updates it for a contemporary audience raring to cut loose and be entertained by dazzlingly quick, passionate musicianship.

Remarkably, Clapton is no fan of the performance: He complains that the band lost the “one” in the first verse of his second solo break, thereby throwing off his phrasing. That’s perfectionism for you. For everyone else, this four-minute track remains a source of fascination more than 50 years on.

16. Eric Johnson | “Cliffs Of Dover”

GUITARIST: Eric Johnson (1990)

Heavenly tones from the Texan great.

This instrumental won Eric Johnson a Grammy for its exquisitely tasteful guitar playing and jaw-dropping tones. For the recordings, the Texan musician mainly stuck with his early ’60s ES-335, though he chose to use his 1964 “Virginia” Strat for the opening lead and parts of the main solo. The guitars were fed into a 100-watt Marshall Super Lead, with an Echoplex and BK Butler Tube Driver to help achieve those smooth, violin-like tones and warm sustain.

“I first heard him in 1986 on Live at Austin City Limits,” Joe Bonamassa told us in 2015. “It was ‘Cliffs of Dover,’ and it was just terrifyingly good guitar playing. I wasn’t even sure if it was real! Then I saw him live, and his tones were the best I’d ever heard. I wondered how this guy was getting all of these sounds out of his Strat. I’d never seen anybody have such a forward-thinking rig like that.”

15. Prince | “Purple Rain”

GUITARIST: Prince (1984)

The Purple One’s defining guitar moment.

The epic outro to “Purple Rain” – which takes up nearly two thirds of the song itself – stands out as some of Prince’s finest work on the six-string, wailing away in G minor pentatonic and occasionally including some more modal notes, like the minor 6th. There’s also that repeating motif that dances around the 2nd and minor 3rd intervals.

It’s simple and effective, setting things up for the vocal melody that comes in toward the end. It’s not a busy solo by any means. Rather, the Purple One chose to leave a lot of space in between the lines he played and focus on big hooks instead of monster licks.

Prince would extend the solo for up to 15 minutes in live performance. While there are many great live renditions of this track, his half-time performance for 2007’s Super Bowl in Miami is the stuff of legend. Shredding alone onstage in the middle of a storm, Prince seemed to be living the moment for which this song was written.

14. Deep Purple | “Highway Star”

GUITARIST: Ritchie Blackmore (1972)

Race with devil on English highway.

“I wrote that out note for note about a week before we recorded it,” Ritchie Blackmore said of his remarkable and most definitely memorable solo to “Highway Star.” “And that is one of the only times I have ever done that. I wanted it to sound like someone driving in a fast car, for it to be one of those songs you would listen to while speeding. And I wanted a very definite Bach sound, which is why I wrote it out – and why I played those very rigid arpeggios across that very familiar Bach progression – D minor, G minor, C major, A major. I believe that I was the first person to do that so obviously on the guitar, and I believe that that’s why it stood out and why people have enjoyed it so much.

“Over the years, I’ve always played that solo note for note, but it just got faster and faster onstage because we would drink more and more whisky. [Keyboardist] Jon [Lord] would have to play his already difficult part faster and faster, and he would get very annoyed about it.”

13. Guns N’ Roses | “Sweet Child O’ Mine”

GUITARIST: Slash (1988)

A game of two halves.

Slash’s solo on this Guns N’ Roses breakthrough single is rock guitar at its finest. The first half is laid-back and modal, built around the Eb minor scale with a few major 7ths thrown in for a harmonic-minor flavor. The second half is much more aggressive and bluesy, and sticks mainly to position one of the pentatonic scale an octave up the neck in the same key. The bends feel that much wider and the vibrato more pronounced.

Slash plays the first section on the neck pickup for thickness and warmth before switching over to the bridge for more bite, with his Cry Baby engaged. Perhaps most impressive is his off-the-cuff sense of feel and how he strings it all together, which is the mark of any great guitar solo. Remarkably, although Slash’s riff was responsible for the song’s creation, he wasn’t fond of the song originally. “We were a pretty hard driving band, and that was sort of an uptempo ballady type of a thing,” he said. “So it’s grown on me over the years.”

12. Ozzy Osbourne | “Crazy Train”

GUITARIST: Randy Rhoads (1980)

Fretboard fireworks galore on Ozzy’s Blizzard of Ozz comeback.

The Double-O has often cited Randy Rhoads as the man who saved his career – and when you hear the solo on “Crazy Train,” you understand why. Although Rhoads’ classical- and modal-based approach was far from Tony Iommi’s blues leanings, he was, like Ozzy’s old bandmate, a true inventor.

There’s a section toward the end of this solo that actually sounds like a train squealing off the tracks, thanks to the use of a chromatically ascending trill that then descends in key. Rhoads concludes the solo with a fast-picked F# minor pentatonic phrase before a rapid Aeolian legato run ending with a big bend on the 19th fret.

The shredder performed the solo with his customized Jackson guitar through a Marshall and a couple of 4x12s while sitting in the control room. “We’d plug the guitar directly into the console,” recalls Blizzard of Ozz engineer Max Norman. “We’d preamp it in the console and send it down to the amp from there. That way we could control the amount of gain that hit the amp.”

11. Michael Jackson | “Beat It”

GUITARIST: Eddie Van Halen (1982)

Breathtaking results from an unlikely pairing.

Asked to contribute guitar to Michael Jackson’s Thriller album, Pete Townshend declined but offered a suggestion: How about Eddie Van Halen? Jackson and producer Quincy Jones thought that was a great idea, and got Ed onboard to play the solo to “Beat It.” But after hearing the part where he was asked to solo, the guitarist was unhappy with the chord changes and had the engineer edit the tape to create a new pattern that better suited what he had in mind.

Ed knew Jackson might be surprised and possibly unhappy with his executive decision. “So I warned him before he listened,” he told CNN in 2012. “I said, ‘Look, I changed the middle section of your song.’ Now in my mind, he’s either going to have his bodyguards kick me out for butchering his song, or he’s going to like it. And so he gave it a listen, and he turned to me and went, ‘Wow, thank you so much for having the passion to not just come in and blaze a solo but to actually care about the song and make it better.’” And he did it for free.

10. The Beatles | “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”

GUITARIST: Eric Clapton (1968)

An uncredited Slowhand makes a rare guest appearance with the Fab Four.

By 1968, George Harrison was penning compositions that rivaled those of his bandmates John Lennon and Paul McCartney. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” was every bit as good as anything his musical partners wrote, but no one could get up the enthusiasm for it, so Harrison invited his pal Eric Clapton to play on the session, knowing it would put the Beatles on good behavior.

Using Harrison’s 1957 “Lucy” Gibson Les Paul through a Fender Deluxe amp, Clapton doesn’t so much mimic the haunting, aching main melody as he creates a harrowing song within a song. His descending bends and release notes, and that inimitable vibrato, are on full display and are appropriately tear-jerking, weaving a dramatic narrative that builds to a shattering climax.

9. Chicago | “25 OR 6 TO 4”

GUITARIST: Terry Kath (1969)

Wah-drenched ecstasy.

This magazine once described Terry Kath’s “25 or 6 to 4” solo as “Wes Montgomery meets Jimi Hendrix,” and it’s a fair point, as Kath was influenced first by jazz and, later, hard rock. As a founding member of the jazz-rock band Chicago, he held down guitar duties for the group until his tragic death from an accidentally self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1978.

Though his superb playing graced many tracks – notably “Introduction” and “Free Form Guitar,” both from the group’s 1969 debut, The Chicago Transit Authority – there’s no denying the power of his soloing on the group’s early hit “25 or 6 to 4.” Kath uses his wah generously to add emotion to his lines, giving them at times a frenetic despair.

Kath most likely played his Gibson SG Standard, as pictured on Chicago Transit Authority’s inner sleeve, using his favored string set, as revealed to GP: the high E string from a tenor set and a standard set for the rest, moved down one string (i.e. high E for the B string, B for the G string, and so on).

8. Lynyrd Skynyrd | “Free Bird”

GUITARIST: Allen Collins (1974)

The Bird is the word.

As it happens, the four-minute-and-24- second guitar solo that closes “Free Bird” was originally added to give singer Ronnie Van Zant a chance to rest his vocal cords during Lynyrd Skynyrd’s relentless performance schedule. At 143 bars long, the solo is far and away the most epic offering here (in fact, it’s 286 bars of recorded music because the whole thing is doubled).

The tune appeared on the group’s eponymous debut album in 1973, and guitarist Allen Collins delivered the lot on his 1964 Gibson Explorer. As Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Gary Rossington once told Guitar World, “The whole long jam was Allen Collins himself. He was bad. He was super bad! He was bad-to-the-bone bad. When we put the solo together, we liked the sound of the two guitars, and I could’ve gone out and played it with him. But the way he was doin’ it, he was just so hot! He just did it once and did it again, and it was done.”

7. Dire Straits | “Sultans Of Swing”

GUITARIST: Mark Knopfler

An understated guitar hero fingerpicks his way to glory.

Right when the world was crowning Eddie Van Halen the new King of Guitar, along came the rather unassuming Mark Knopfler – schooled in rockabilly, blues and jazz – who demonstrated that you didn’t need walls of distortion to turn heads.

Knopfler composed this pub-rock classic on a National steel guitar but thought it sounded “dull” – that is, until he picked up a Stratocaster, at which point the song “came alive.” Using nary a hint of grit on a Fender Twin, he fingerpicks not one but two standout solos.

The first features a lyrical section of elegant, Chet Atkins-style single-note and chordal bends that sigh and swoon with dreamy romanticism. In itself, that would be enough, but the outro solo is the real attention-grabber, on which Knopfler builds to a dazzling set of spitfire 16th-note arpeggios – cleanly played, precise and rousing every time you hear it.

6. The Jimi Hendrix Experience | “All Along The Watchtower”

GUITARIST: Jimi Hendrix (1968)

The greatest solo in a cover version.

This song tops any list of covers that are better than the original. Guitarists invariably refer to it as a Hendrix cover rather than a Bob Dylan original, proof of how much Hendrix made it his own. Jimi’s rhythm playing is astounding, both in the intro and in the deft chord/ melody work of the verses, and of course, there’s the small matter of four guitar solos to consider. The man many refer to as the best of all time makes the most of his Strat and Marshall rig here, but it’s his offering at the 2:20 mark that we’re interested in. Following an opening run of octaves, he gets into his stride with a typically blues-based minor pentatonic approach in C#.

At 2:32, the main solo explodes into a trademark combination of rhythm and lead, plus funky scratching on muted strings. It’s worth playing along with the scratches, trying to keep a loose wrist and consistent down-up strumming. Those few beats alone will teach you a lot about Jimi’s groove and feel.

To get the sound, select a bridge-position single-coil pickup, dial in delay at around 350ms, add compression for sustain and opt for a Vox wah pedal or something similar. You’ll hear the wind begin to howl.

5. Eagles | “Hotel California”

GUITARISTS: Don Felder & Joe Walsh (1977)

Those iconic twin-guitar harmony lines took the Eagles to new heights.

The title track from the Eagles’ fifth album, and without doubt the song the band will be most remembered for, “Hotel California” frequently tops greatest guitar solo polls. The solo begins at 4:20, forming an extended coda, over which guitarists Don Felder and Joe Walsh trade licks before joining together to play those iconic harmonized licks at 5:39.

As it turns out, those harmony lines work in a relatively simple fashion. Felder and Walsh play an arpeggio of every chord, and the harmony is created by one of the guitars always playing one note lower down in the chord. For example, the notes of the Bm chord are B, D and F#, so, if the higher guitar plays an F#, the lower guitar will play a D, and so on.

This nugget of information can take you a long way to mastering those descending arpeggios. We won’t go as far as to say you could easily work it out by ear, but if you know the chords to the song, it’s possible to jam along. And you can’t say that about many of the solos on this list!

4. Queen | “Bohemian Rhapsody”

GUITARIST: Brian May (1975)

It might just be the biggest rock song of all time.

Following Freddie Mercury’s 1991 death and a cameo moment in 1992’s Wayne’s World, “Bohemian Rhapsody” became a trigger point for a worldwide outpouring of affection and respect for Queen. Their renewed popularity would continue into the new millennium as Ben Elton’s We Will Rock You musical and the band’s discovery of a different way to exist behind frontman Adam Lambert brought their music to a new generation.

And “Bohemian Rhapsody”? Unsurprisingly, it’s Queen’s best-known song, and its brief nine-bar solo is a short and sweet musical interlude, bridging the verses to lead into what’s become known as the song’s “operatic section.” Those two words alone should warn you that this song shouldn’t work. There’s no chorus and, aside from two verses, no repetition. But of course it does work, and Brian May’s solo is the perfect melodic break.

His phrasing is loose and natural, moving across the backbeat rather than sticking to a rigidly timed grid. The fastest licks are expressive bursts, rather than repetitive noodling, and his articulate pre-bend and vibrato technique demonstrates his beautiful touch. Somehow, within the confines of the complex structure of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” this solo is made to order.

3. Led Zeppelin | “Stairway To Heaven”

GUITARIST: Jimmy Page (1971)

Heaven-sent soloing.

From the moment Jimmy Page plays the opening run on his ’59 Fender Telecaster, right through to the flurry of notes and the wailing bend that completes it, this is guitar-solo perfection – a masterpiece of composition. Rather than wander aimlessly, Page creates a song within a song.

The opening phrases set the scene, as he adds notes to the pentatonic scale to follow the song’s final chord progression. A rapid mid-solo repeating lick raises the bar before a game of question-and-answer with a haunting overdubbed guitar leads into that last flurry and bend. As we say, it’s all about the composition: licks that track the chord changes, the contour of the melody and the pacing of the widdly bits all take the listener on a journey.

Three takes were recorded (the other two allegedly still survive, presumably locked in a Led Zeppelin vault somewhere), all of them improvised, although Page has reportedly said that he had worked out the opening line. But while we’re all certainly curious to hear those solos, let’s face it: They’re not going to be any better than the one we’ve come to know and love all these years.

2. Van Halen | “Eruption”

GUITARIST: Eddie Van Halen (1978)

Eddie’s iconic solo that shook the world.

With its mix of fast legato hammer‑ons and pull-offs, pinched harmonics, whammy-bar dives and two-hand tapping, Eddie Van Halen’s mind-blowing instrumental guitar solo inspired a generation of guitar heroes. While the tapping gets the attention, his tone, blistering legato and creative note choices are all equally important. Amid all that virtuosity, Eddie still played with joyous rock and roll abandon.

Remarkably, Ed was never completely happy with the released recording. “I didn’t even play it right,” he told Guitar World. “There’s a mistake at the top end of it. Whenever I hear it, I always think, Man, I could’ve played it better.”

His admission aside, the track is a technical opus. The first eight bars are a bluesy affair, whose virtuoso legato licks perhaps recall the mojo of Jimmy Page’s breakdown solo in Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love.” It’s a theme Eddie develops over the following eight bars, taking notes from the major and minor pentatonic scales to add chromatics.

His tapping finale is probably one of the least understood solo sections in rock history. Eddie’s taps are not always on the beat, which makes for tricky timing changes as he switches from tapping the first and fourth sextuplet notes to the third and sixth notes. From start to end, “Eruption” is a masterpiece that would take most guitarists a lifetime to perfect.

1. Pink Floyd | “Comfortably Numb”

GUITARIST: David Gilmour (1979)

Gilmour’s greatness comes through in waves.

In a 1992 interview with MTV’s Ray Cokes, Gilmour was asked what he thinks of Keith Richards’ theory that songs, lyrics and guitar solos are “just out there in the air and you sort of grab them.” Gilmour agreed. “I think he’s right. They sort of appear as if they are out there in the air. But I don’t know how they get there.” But the best ones he said, just happen. “The best ones do, but often you work very hard and struggle over them.”

Gilmour's two "Comfortably Numb" solos are certainly among his best, and it’s easy to understand why our readers voted his efforts to be the number-one pick in our poll. But the real question is, which of those two solos qualifies for inclusion? Whichever way you go — and granted, most fans prefer the first solo to the second — there's certainly plenty to justify the song's position at the top.

The tone is legendary. Gilmour’s signal chain consisted of his iconic black Strat, then featuring a DiMarzio FS-1 bridge pickup, into a HiWatt DR103, with the essential EHX Ram’s Head Big Muff pedal. The FS-1’s fatness and the Big Muff’s smoothness leave no hint of the harsh treble that can plague Strats. With some extra help from an MXR Dyna Comp, Gilmour had so much sustain that he could hold notes as long as he wanted. As in his live rig, he combined a WEM 4x12 cab with a Yamaha rotary speaker lower in the mix, to add subtle modulation. The epic delay was added in the mix.

The first solo, in D major, uses the Strat’s neck and bridge pickups together, permitted by a custom switching arrangement. His phrasing here is the more unconventional of the two, with arpeggios and sliding passages. Gilmour’s use of the bar for vibrato – aided by its shortened tremolo arm – again distinguishes him from typical bluesers, inspiring many a fusion player in the process. He rakes into the beginning of many of the phrases, similar to Brian May, extracting all the excitement he can from every note.

By comparison, the outro solo’s licks are more standard, with phrases similar to Hendrix’s. The passages at 4:57 and 5:12 could be from “All Along the Watchtower” or “Foxey Lady,” but in this epic track few listeners would make the connection. It sounds both masterful and improvised at the same time. Gilmour has explained he created this impression by recording five or six takes and compiling the finished solo from the best bits of each. The result is stunningly well written, with a combination of repetition and development that keeps the excitement building for two minutes. The Hendrix-style blues lick returns at 5:27, longer and more intricate than before. The aggressive double-stops first appear at 5:15, and by 5:35 he has turned that idea into a motif.

For the climax, Gilmour shoots up an octave just when it seems he’s wrung every inch of expression from his maple neck. He descends back down the neck, incorporating one of his spectacular three-fret bends on the way, and finishes with another take on that double stop motif. It has all the excitement of an improvised performance, and all the structure of a careful composition.

Both solos share brilliant rhythmic awareness. Gilmour uses triplets, sextuplets, 16th and 32nd notes freely, within the same phrase. And check out the effect at 5:10 when he plays a lick in 16th notes and then immediately repeats and expands in sextuplets. A good solo can have great tone, rhythms, melody or expression, but only a work of rare brilliance features them all to this degree.

Late-night talk shows have long been a great source for classic live performances from music's biggest names, particularly in the 1980s and ‘90s, when the likes of Leno and Letterman would battle it out nightly for supremacy. One music legend making an appearance was reason enough to tune in — but when two show up, well, that's must-see TV!

That's what happened when Brian May invited Slash to stop by The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on April 5, 1993, to trade solos on the Queen classic track “Tie Your Mother Down.”

May was on The Tonight Show to promote his debut full-length album, Back to the Light, which (although officially released in September of the previous year) had only just dropped in the U.S. market to align with the now solo artist's supporting tour.

Performing two songs on the night — with a short chat in between — May kicked off his appearance with a solid rendition of the album's title track. Jump to around the one-minute mark if you'd rather skip Leno's questionable Cockney accent in the intro.

Backed by Cozy Powell on drums and Neil Murray on bass, as well as Jamie Moses and Spike Edney providing guitar work and keyboards, respectively, May delivered his trademark treble-boosted tone through several Vox AC30s. However, things really get interesting during the second song of the night: the May-penned cut “Tie Your Mother Down,” from Queen's 1976 album A Day at the Races:

With the song powering toward the solo section, May encourages the audience to "Please welcome Mr. Slash!" The Guns N' Roses guitarist enters, with a Les Paul slung low and a cigarette hanging from his lip, and delivers some slippery and sleazy pentatonic phrases throughout the performance. The pair even treat the audience to a good old-fashioned guitar duel to bring matters to a close.

At the time, Slash was performing on the Skin N' Bones leg of GNR's Use Your Illusion tour, one that had seen Brian May open for the band on some of the dates.

In the interview section of the clip, May sheds some light on the creation of the Red Special, the guitar he famously built in his teens with help from his father. "It came out of pieces of the old fireplace," May explains to Leno, confirming the story that apparently had some doubters. "People think it's a wind-up, but yeah, it was made from pieces of fireplace, tables and motorbike valve springs. It's a piece of junk, really, but it works."

Following the performance, May supported Guns N' Roses on 14 dates of their European tour, revealing at the time how the support slots took the pressure off him while he was finding his footing in the new role of frontman. Although the tour was riddled with injuries, dramas and controversy for GNR, May praised the band, telling MTV, "You hear all these stories about Guns N' Roses, but these people are professionals." The tour would be Slash's last with the band until he rejoined in January 2016.

May and Slash were no strangers, of course, with Guns N' Roses playing their part in the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium in April '92, as well as May later joining the L.A. rock band onstage for a couple of tracks during their own show at the London venue.

Earlier in 2024, the Queen guitarist dropped a couple of hints regarding a new partnership with Gibson that seems likely to result in a signature run of the Red Special. "We have spoken about such things, and it would be lovely to have an edition of the Brian May guitar based in the States," May told Guitar World, before mentioning that he has a "great relationship" with Gibson.

No more information on the release has been revealed as of yet; however, we may not have to wait too long for an update.

In the rock world, Queen's Brian May has stood out over the last half century not only for his unique brand of guitar heroism – it can be argued that no guitarist on the planet can quite match his flair for the dramatic – but for his homemade Red Special electric guitar.

May famously built the original with his father while in his teens, crafting its neck with wood from an antique fireplace. Impressively, May and his father even originally built the guitar's pickups themselves, though on that front they faced some headwinds.

“We made the original pickups, which sounded pretty good except they had one bad fault,” May told GP in a 1983 interview. “When you would squeeze the strings – bend them across the fingerboard – they would make this kind of rushing sound because the polepieces went north-south, north-south, north-south, instead of north, north, north, north, north, north.

“I eventually bought some Burns pickups,” the Queen guitarist continued. “Burns were making guitars in England at the time, and they made some of the stuff for the Shadows.”

Having already worked on the Red Special before, May turned to Burns – after initially working with Guild – to create Red Special replicas for the wider market. Eventually though, May created his own firm, Brian May Guitars, to produce the unique guitar worldwide.

Following May's surprise appearance earlier this year at the opening of the London Gibson Garage though, there's been ample speculation that Gibson may take up the mantle of producing more upscale Red Special replicas in the United States.

For his part, May has done little to dampen the rumors, publicly voicing his support for a potential collaboration.

“It’s not out of the question,” May told Guitar World in a recent interview. “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.”

Tone-chasers all over the world often find themselves gushing over what Brian May can coax out of his Red Special electric guitar and a Vox AC30 guitar amp. 

While a high-end Gibson-made Red Special may be in the works, May has put forward a budget alternative for replicating his sound. 

The combination of his Red Special, carved from an 18th-century fireplace with the help of his father, and a Vox AC30 is one of the most coveted and iconic in rock history, but replicating it like-for-like isn’t cheap. 

In the era of digital modelers and amp-in-a-box pedal solutions, however, a raft of May-channeling products have hit the market, like Victory's V4 The Copper preamp.

Speaking in the new issue of Guitar World, the Queen guitarist has singled out the one that does the best job. 

“I’ve tried modelers, and there are some very good ones now,” he relays. “There’s a great simulator, [The Catalinbread Galileo] – it’s a pedal that really does a very good job of simulating my sound.” 

As one would expect from such a name, the Catalinbread Galileo is marketed on its May-like imitation. However, it isn’t a traditional amp-in-a-box pedal, rather it’s an overdrive pedal designed, with the help of May, to cram “his entire rig” into a standard-sized pedal. 

As Catalinbread says, May “never turns the treble booster off, accessing a wide range of tones simply by manipulating his volume knobs and pickup settings” which helps transform his rig into “a singular musical instrument.”   

With this in mind, the Galileo can excel, encouraging users to dial in “jangly AC30 cleans” and “aggressive-yet-focused rhythm” tones via the volume control alone.

Priced at $180, it comes in at a fraction of the price of the real-deal, or the slew of digital modeling rigs currently available. 

It's a recommendation that will no doubt have the boffins at Catalinbread will no doubt rub their hands with glee at this mention. But he adds that, away from his guitar, amp, and treble booster setup, a certain, tangible magic is lost. 

“There’s nothing quite like the original when it comes down to it,” he believes. “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. 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,” he concludes. “I don't think I could do the modeling thing live on stage.”

Last month, the sleuths at Guitar World helped identify the mystery Texan guitarist who inspired the tapping techniques he later employed on It’s Late, from 1977’s News of the World. This would, in turn, hugely influence Eddie Van Halen’s playing style.

In February, when Gibson guitar legends like Jimmy Page and Tony Iommi gathered for the launch of the London Gibson Garage, Brian May was a surprise special guest. 

Rumors of a Gibson-made Red Special began to circulate almost immediately after May was announced as the firm's latest family member at the event, and have since intensified as guitar fans contemplate what this new working relationship could spell.  

Now, the Queen guitarist has revealed that talks about a production run have indeed taken place. 

May's iconic Red Special, a home-made solidbody carved partially from an 18th-century fireplace with the help of his father, has been the guitarist's ever-reliable sidekick throughout his career. 

There have been several production variations of the design produced over the years – including one finished in the “world’s pinkest pink” in 2020 – released under the Brian May Guitars moniker.  

The firm has been producing Red Special copies for the past two decades. It even expanded its range with a non-Red Special signature model for Arielle in 2021.  

Going off comments made by the rock icon in the latest issue of Guitar World, it appears that Gibson and its Murphy Lab, which specializes in making brand-new builds seem like vintage guitars, will take the reins of production. 

“It’s not out of the question,” says May. “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.”

Gibson, which celebrates 130 years of business in 2024, is certainly well qualified for the job. The Gibson Custom Shop and Murphy Lab have, in recent years, reproduced Kirk Hammett’s legendary Greeny Les Paul and Jimmy Page’s EDS-1275 double-neck with painstaking accuracy. 

Jason Isbell’s 'Red Eye' Les Paul, previously owned by Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Ed King, and Blackberry Smoke’s Charlie Starr’s beloved 1956 Les Paul Junior are two of its latest faithful rebuilds. 

Both models have utilized the latest technological advancements to achieve a near-identical likeness to their original counterparts, right down to their wear. Could the Red Special be next in line? 

Brian May Guitars was launched in 2004, with May working in partnership with his long-standing technician, Pete Malandrone. Its lower-end Red Special replica currently sells for a fairly modest $849, but with Gibson at the helm, the world's most musical fireplace could soon get a more high-end and realistic replica.  

“The Gibson Garage is great,” May says, reflecting on its grand opening event. “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.”

Naturally, May’s comments will whet the appetite of Queen lovers, and there are hopes that a US-made Gibson Red Special may not be too far away. 

Keep an eye on Gibson for further updates.  

Contrary to the belief that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, during a 2021 interview with Guitar Player, Brian May spoke about being inspired to learn two-handed tapping techniques after seeing a performance by a then-unnamed Texas electric guitar virtuoso. 

The Queen guitarist was enjoying a day off on tour in Texas in 1977 when he came across the guitarist in question performing in a bar. 

“He would be bending strings, like we all do, but then he’d put his right hand onto a fret and make this kind of singing sound,” he recalls. “And I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a beautiful thing to do; he creates a completely new dimension.’”  

“I went up to him after the show and I said, ‘I’m telling you now, I’m going to nick that from you.’ He said, ‘Great, go for it. I got it from Billy Gibbons.’” 

May added that he wished he knew the identity of the guitarist, who he referenced again in an interview with Classic Rock two years later, proving that his influence on May's playing was far from fleeting. 

Now, the sleuths at Guitar World have put a name to the talent, revealing the guitarist to be Rocky Athas. 

The Texan native honed his skills jamming with Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Johnson, with Gibbons and late Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell said to be admirers. 

Speaking to Guitar World, Athas said his “phone blew up” when the interview was published, saying “My friends all knew it was me.” 

Queen were traveling across the US with Thin Lizzy at the time of the chance meeting, with Athas and his band, Lightning, already well on their way to establishing a reputation as one of Texas's best live rock bands. 

Over the course of their career, the band opened for The Kinks and Alice Cooper, along with a long list of other big-name acts. But it wasn’t just Athas’s fretboard acrobatics that got tongues wagging – apparently, the band's drummer would punctuate their set by doing a back flip. 

Showmanship, it seemed, was second nature to the band. 

May caught them at the height of their powers, and promptly incorporated Athas’ tapping techniques into his repertoire. In particular, it was used on It’s Late, from 1977’s News of the World, kickstarting a domino effect of inspiration, as Eddie Van Halen would later cite that song as a key influence in him forming his playing style. 

May and Athas haven’t spoken in the 47 years since, but says he “would love to have a chat with him now [and] hear how he remembers that night.” Of course, neither guitarist knew the chain reaction that show would cause in the coming years.

Guitar World is due to publish its full interview with Athas in the coming weeks.   

There are Teiscos, and then there are Teiscos. The 1968 May Queen shown here is definitely in the latter category. Made for just one year, it’s one of the rarest and most sought-after Japanese-made Teiscos, and with good reason: It’s a proper electric guitar, not a knock-off made for department stores. 

While the name May Queen brings to mind a certain British band and its celebrated guitarist, this model predates them both by some four or five years. In fact, the name refers to the young girl who leads the parade celebrating May Day, a mostly British holiday marking the start of spring and/or summer. 

The shape is something akin to an artist’s palette, or like a cross between a Vox Teardrop and a Rickenbacker 360. Speaking of Vox, in 1967 the company made a limited run of Mando-guitars with this exact body shape. But other than the shape and a groovy “cat’s-eye” f-hole, the quality of this guitar is on a level with Teisco’s fabled Spectrum line. It’s a guitar designed for players, not just beginners.

Despite its semi-hollow body, the May Queen is most definitely not a jazz guitar. The tone is just too snarky. The two single-coil pickups are hot and musical, and great for surf and/or funk-style rhythm tones when run clean. But the real fun begins with overdrive or full-on distortion. Playing full chords through my Vox AC30 elicited the kind of distorted-but-defined sound of the early Kinks or ’60s garage bands. Any resulting feedback could be easily molded, and musically so, just by changing my orientation to the amp. There are global tone and volume controls, and a three-way pickup toggle.

The May Queen’s tremolo system is smooth and holds pitch well, and the bridge is fully adjustable and intonatable. 

The enclosed tuners are the fancy starfish-cased ones that I’ve only ever seen on the Spectrum line. With the combination of the zero fret, well-grooved nut and well-pitched headstock, the guitar has no need for the “towel rack” string retainer typically found on Teisco’s cheaper builds. The bolt-on neck has an easily accessible truss rod and sports 22 nicely dressed thin frets set into a ¼-inch slab of Indian rosewood. The string scale is 24 ¾ inches, like a Gibson, but the slender mahogany neck is somewhere between a shallow C and D shape. And at 1 11/16ths, the nut width is also like that of the average Strat.

The guitar’s original $160 MSRP was triple what most of Teisco’s guitars sold for, yet about half the price of a Stratocaster. Vintage market prices for the May Queen currently range from $600 to $1,600. The Teisco-branded 1999 reissue used different pickups and bridge, and sells for anywhere from $300 to $1,400. Eastwood made a nice replica in the 2010s that retailed for $800. And keep an eye out for 1968 models shipped into the U.S under the Kimberly brand. They’re identical to the Teisco, except for a sticker crudely placed over the Teisco logos.  

Unassuming yet idiosyncratic looks, it sounds both unique and musical. And thanks to its semi-hollow build, it weighs about two pounds less than a Telecaster and three to five pounds lighter than a Les Paul.   

Thanks to Paul Connet for breathing new life into this one. 

Talking to a rock star usually isn’t rocket science. Unless you’re talking to Brian May – er, that would be Dr. Brian May to you.

The Queen guitarist – who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II – is a bona fide PhD astrophysicist. He was studying at London’s Imperial College as his group was forming and launching in the early 1970s, then returned to his education in the mid ’00s, receiving the advanced degree in May 2008. Since then, he’s been as active in the scientific realm as he is in music. “I do stereo-photography for various unmanned missions to the objects in the solar system,” he tells GP via Zoom from his home in England. “So I’m hooked into various NASA and ESA [European Space Agency] missions, which is great.”

He pauses and offers a slight smile. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, ’cause it was a dream when I was a kid that I would work with people who are real astrophysicists and space explorers. But now I get to do it, which is wonderful. It takes up a lot of time, a lot of energy, but I wouldn’t lose it. I wouldn’t walk away from it for the world.”

May, at 76, is actually a case study in being able to have it all – including, of course, the music. Since the death of singer Freddie Mercury in 1991, he and Queen drummer Roger Taylor have kept the group’s legacy alive in other permutations – with Paul Rodgers, from 2004 to 2009, and, since 2011, with American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert, who has demonstrated an astounding ability to channel Mercury’s flamboyance and vocal chops onstage. As a result, Queen remain a going concern, even 15 years since their last new music, 2008’s The Cosmos Rocks, with Rodgers.

Queen and Lambert are back on the road this year, but May is celebrating another part of his past as well. Forty years ago, during a band hiatus, he stepped outside of the Queen confines for Star Fleet Project, a three-song EP recorded over two days – April 21 and 22, 1983 – at the Record Plant in Los Angeles by a troupe dubbed Brian May + Friends.

And what friends they were. First and foremost was Eddie Van Halen, riding high on the multi-Platinum success of his band’s first five albums. REO Speedwagon drummer Alan Gratzer, latter-day Doors bassist Phil Chen and keyboardist Fred Mandel (Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd, Elton John and Queen) rounded out the core band, while Queen bandmate Roger Taylor contributed backing vocals.

The sessions yielded three songs: the sci-fi flavored title track, which was inspired by the Japanese TV series X-Bomber (released as Star Fleet in the U.K.), which May’s then-young son Jimmy favored; the bluesy, Queen-styled rocker “Let Me Out”; and “Blues Breaker,” a nearly 13-minute band-composed opus dedicated to Eric Clapton. Star Fleet Project came out on Halloween of that year and was May’s first foray outside of Queen, which would be followed by two solo albums during the 1990s (Back to the Light and Another World) as well as the 2000 soundtrack to Furia.

For the album’s 40th anniversary May has put together a box set, remixing the three tracks and adding alternate takes and jams from the sessions. For aficionados, The Complete Sessions disc offers a lot of May and Van Halen playing, and a deep look at how the august ensemble worked together and brought the songs into shape.

Grinning widely, May talked to GP about this trip down memory lane.

What does Star Fleet Project mean to you 40 years on?

It’s a very important part of what I am, and it’s something I really wanted to be buttoned-up and safe and out there for all time. It’s a precious moment that I felt was getting lost on some shelf, and I wanted it to be out there so that people could experience it the way I experienced it. Luckily the analog tapes are still there. Hearing that stuff is not just nostalgic – it’s inspiring, and very emotional. So it means a lot to get it out there, just so it will always be there.

How did the whole project come to be?

Back then, I was absolutely engrossed in Queen. For years we went into the studio for three months, and then we went on tour for nine months. It was completely all-encompassing, and this was a point where we took a break, ’cause we really needed to get away from each other for a while. Suddenly, I had the opportunity to open a different door. And it was an adventure, ’cause I had no idea what would happen. I’d put all these people in the studio together with me, and maybe nothing would happen. And then I went in to do it, and it was the experience of a lifetime. 

Did it take long before you realized that it would work?

The first day was so full of adrenalin and a good kind of nerves, and just the joy of discovery – the discovery of each other and creating in a different arena, a different universe almost. We all go in there and suddenly it’s happening, and the tape is rolling. And it’s kind of a bluff, ’cause we don’t really know what we’re doing, and gradually we do it a few times and it comes together. We eventually sound like a band, which is a miracle, really, because I don’t think I ever expected it to gel quite that well.

It’s the outtakes that are the most valuable for the listener. You really get a chance to hear the five of you evolve and learn to play together, in a very short time, too.

It’s nice that you say that. We’d never played together before. There was no rehearsal period. What you hear in the Sessions part of this box set is exactly what happened the first time we ever got together and switched on the amps and tape machines. Every single take, every mistake, every laugh, a lot of funny stuff. You can hear that chemistry evolving.

We did have a little bit of preparation, because I had a couple of demos which we circulated to the guys. I didn’t want to go in there completely unprepared, so I sent a little demo of the title track to each of them – a little cassette with me singing and playing acoustic guitar, demonstrating the chord sequence and the development of this song. And there was also a very rough version of “Let Me Out.” So they all knew kind of what was in my head, and Ed popped around to my house in L.A.

Just like that?

[laughs] I’d recently got a house there, ’cause we were effectively being Californians for a short period. My little boy went to nursery school there. So Ed came around, we plugged our guitars into a Rockman and played to each other and experimented a little bit. I wouldn’t call it “rehearsing,” but we had some fun, and I showed him what was in my mind. Phil Chen came around and we did the same thing with the bass. And Alan was my neighbor. We saw quite a bit of each other, so we had a chance to talk about it, but we never, until [Star Fleet Project] played with each other. So Alan was a good friend by that time. Fred Mandell is a virtuoso piano player that we’d just gotten to know in connection to Queen. I thought, How great would it be to get all these guys in the studio and see what happens?

How tight were you with Eddie at that point?

Ed I knew as a friend, but I’d very seldom had the chance to hang out with him. I got very drunk with him one night, ill-advisedly, ’cause he could drink and I couldn’t. So I tried to match him and it was a terrible mistake. I ended up falling over in his bathroom in his hotel room… That’s another story. [laughs]

One of the great services of the box set is to give us more Eddie Van Halen playing.

I set him up. I gave him that break in the middle of ”Star Fleet,” the bit where Ed steps forward and does his own thing, unfettered by anything. That to me was the climax of the whole song. He steps in, and it comes completely out of his head. That’s not an overdub – he just does it. Every time he does it, it’s different, ’cause his brain’s constantly creating new stuff, which to me is one of the great joys of the [box set]. I love to hear the different version of what he came up with. What an extraordinary player he was. Just incredible.

Is the box set a tribute to Eddie in a way?

Yes, it is, but I did hesitate. At the time when I was starting to think about it, it was just about the time Ed passed away, and I couldn’t do it. I just didn’t feel right about it. So I embarked on the first two solo albums proper, Back to the Light and Another World. And then a few years passed and I got to talking to Alex Van Halen, who’s a great inspiration and also a wonderful musician. He’s become a trusted friend, and I have enormous admiration for him. He’s been through such a terrible time because, of course, the two brothers were completely inseparable. For Alex it’s like losing half of himself.

So I wanted Alex’s blessing to do this, ’cause I didn’t want to do anything that felt distasteful. Now I’m more conscious than ever that I kind of stole Ed for a day or two days, and that wasn’t something that happened very often. Van Halen were a family and they operated as a family, always in the same space as a group. And, to be honest, Queen were pretty much the same way.

There’s a lot of blues on Star Fleet Project, in that Queen sort of way, in “Let Me Out” and, of course, in “Blues Breaker.” I guess whenever you get a group of musicians together, it can tend to go there, right?

Twelve-bar blues is a great place to learn to play with people. And Ed, like me, was inspired by Eric Clapton, and that’s why when everything else had been attempted, we lapsed into this blues jam, which became “Blues Breaker” and was inspired by those days. And by that time we were very relaxed. We’d gotten over our nerves and we’re not regarding each other like foreigners anymore. We’re just enjoying playing, getting in the groove and really hearing and playing off each other. It was the most relaxed we got in the studio during those two days.

Eric is on record as not particularly complimentary about it, however.

I think he hated it! [laughs] But he’s entitled. Eric could do anything and he’ll still be our hero. There’s probably lots of things I disagree with Eric about, but that doesn’t change anything. He’s been one of the greatest inspirations of my life, and that’ll never change.

So will there be a Bohemian Rhapsody sequel?

No. I think if by a miracle the right script was created by somebody, that would be a different story. But for now we don’t see a way to do it.

What about new Queen music?

Not at the moment, ’cause we’re so busy doing the other stuff. We love playing live, and Adam’s given us the ability to do that, and he kind of keeps us young, because he’s so full of energy. So we’re very engrossed in honing the live stuff, trying to introduce new elements to that. We did actually get into the studio a couple times to do various bits and pieces, but we never felt there was anything right.

There’s a lot being made about AI right now, and its potential use in the music world. That’s a technology you’ve probably been involved with and even used in your scientific pursuits, no?

It is, and my major concern with it now is in the artistic area. I think by this time next year the landscape will be completely different. We won’t know which way is up. We won’t know what’s been created by AI and what’s been created by humans. Everything is going to get very blurred and very confusing, and I think we might look back on 2023 as the last year when humans really dominated the music scene. I really think it could be that serious, and that doesn’t fill me with joy. It makes me feel apprehensive, and I’m preparing to feel sad about this. 

I think a lot of great stuff will come from AI, because it is going to increase the powers of humans to solve problems. But the potential for AI to cause evil is, obviously, incredibly huge – not just in music, ’cause nobody dies in music, but people can die if AI gets involved in politics and world domination for various nations. I think the whole thing is massively scary. It’s much more far-reaching than anybody realized – well, certainly than I realized.

Does it scare you off or fuel you to do more as a human creator?

I’m always doing bits and pieces. I do a lot of guesting on people’s tracks; I quite enjoy that. But it’s like the universe is a different place now, and there are echoes of us in that place. But where we actually stand as artists, I’m not sure. We still have something to say, but methods and media are so different now. It’s kind of a struggle for us to stay on top of that, I think. We have young people around us, thank God. We ask them what to do. [laughs] The combination between different generations can produce a lot of powerful stuff. So we still have our methods, and our methods are acquired through years and years of experience, both in the studio and on the road.

The funny thing is they’ve forgotten the old methods, so sometimes when I go to someone else’s studio I say, “What if you did this?” and I’ll suggest doing something everyone would have done 40 years ago. And they’ll go, “Oh, yeah. We never heard of that!” So there is that value in the combination of the old and the new that gives you great power, and I value that. But I have to swim quite fast to keep it up. Even being able to turn my TV on! [laughs] Put it that way.

In the October 2023 issue of Guitar Player we catch up with Brian May as he releases his expanded Star Fleet Project box set featuring fellow guitar legend Eddie Van Halen.

In this essential interview, the Queen guitarist expounds on Eddie’s role in the 1983 EP and why he wanted Alex Van Halen's blessing before releasing this epic 40th anniversary tribute.

Elsewhere, Doctor May reveals his thoughts and feelings on the future of Queen and explains the dangers AI poses for music.

There’s a lot being made about AI right now, and its potential use in the music world. That’s a technology you’ve probably been involved with and even used in your scientific pursuits, no?

It is, and my major concern with it now is in the artistic area. I think by this time next year the landscape will be completely different. We won’t know which way is up. We won’t know what’s been created by AI and what’s been created by humans. Everything is going to get very blurred and very confusing, and I think we might look back on 2023 as the last year when humans really dominated the music scene. I really think it could be that serious, and that doesn’t fill me with joy. It makes me feel apprehensive, and I’m preparing to feel sad about this.

I think a lot of great stuff will come from AI, because it is going to increase the powers of humans to solve problems. But the potential for AI to cause evil is, obviously, incredibly huge – not just in music, ’cause nobody dies in music, but people can die if AI gets involved in politics and world domination for various nations. I think the whole thing is massively scary. It’s much more far-reaching than anybody realized – well, certainly than I realized.

Does it scare you off or fuel you to do more as a human creator?

I’m always doing bits and pieces. I do a lot of guesting on people’s tracks; I quite enjoy that. But it’s like the universe is a different place now, and there are echoes of us in that place. But where we actually stand as artists, I’m not sure. We still have something to say, but methods and media are so different now. It’s kind of a struggle for us to stay on top of that, I think.

We have young people around us, thank God. We ask them what to do. [laughs] The combination between different generations can produce a lot of powerful stuff. So we still have our methods, and our methods are acquired through years and years of experience, both in the studio and on the road.

The funny thing is they’ve forgotten the old methods, so sometimes when I go to someone else’s studio I say, “What if you did this?” and I’ll suggest doing something everyone would have done 40 years ago. And they’ll go, “Oh, yeah. We never heard of that!”

So there is that value in the combination of the old and the new that gives you great power, and I value that. But I have to swim quite fast to keep it up. Even being able to turn my TV on! [laughs] Put it that way.

Read the rest of this fascinating interview in the October 2023 issue of Guitar Player, out now.

Growing up in classic rock’s golden years shouldn’t negate the possibility that you enjoy music made today. I may have an extensive vinyl collection of favorites dating back to my childhood, but I stream music everyday and constantly discover great songs by inspiring artists across the genres.

Yet, there are some who believe the modern music scene is a wasteland.

If you think that, you probably aren’t listening. But if one thing has suffered in the past two decades, it is the long-player. There are fewer epic albums being made today, and there is less reason to invest one’s time and ears in 40 minutes or more of an artist’s music.

Of course, I say this with the benefit – and certainly blessing – of having grown up at a time when the album was king.

Take 1973. A half century ago, we experienced one of the greatest years in rock and roll. It was a year that saw debuts from potent acts like Queen, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aerosmith, and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, as well as from guitar heroes like Tony Rice and Lindsey Buckingham, making his nod with Buckingham Nicks.

From my youthful vantage point, 1973 was lived as 52 weeks of breathless Saturday trips to the record store, where we were tempted by such epic albums as Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions, Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and the Who’s Quadrophenia, not to mention prog monsters like Yes’s live three-album set Yessongs, Manfred Mann Earth Band’s Solar Fire, Todd Rundgren’s A Wizard/A True Star, Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Brain Salad Surgery and, the behemoth of them all, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon.

In 1973, we saw the last flashes of glam rock with Bowie’s Aladdin Sane and Pin-Ups, Rick Derringer’s All American Boy, Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies and the debut from the New York Dolls.

But it was a great year for art rock, with Fripp and Eno’s experimental tour de force (No Pussyfooting), John Cale’s orchestral pop masterpiece Paris 1919, Lou Reed’s dramatic Berlin, Camel’s brilliant self-titled debut, and a pair of landmark Roxy Music albums: For Your Pleasure and Stranded.

That was all but the tip of that year’s multi-genre, stylistically freewheeling musical iceberg.

For any album to stand out among this pack, it would have to be pretty freaking great. Which is the least you can say about Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, a compilation of eight wildly inventive songs that together serve as a cross-section of that year’s dizzying musical styles, including prog, reggae, glam, folk, funk and art-rock.

It was the first Zeppelin album I bought and the first – perhaps only – album they made that kept their bombast in check, served up an ear-catching range of styles and delivered with economical arrangements.

As Jimmy Page said: “You can hear the fun we were having.”

Indeed, we can, to this day. Here’s to singing in the sunshine and laughing in the rain.

Brian May doesn’t recall particulars about every Queen show. But there is one – roughly 50 years ago at London’s Imperial College, where the guitarist had previously studied physics as an undergrad – that sticks with him.

Why?

For one, it was Queen’s first gig to be reviewed in a newspaper – and if you’re wondering, yes, it was a positive write-up.

For another, because, in the 75-year-old guitarist’s words, “We had our full complement – we knew we finally had the right people in the band.”

These people, of course, were drummer Roger Taylor, with whom May had previously played in the late-’60s rock-pop-blues-progressive outfit Smile, Zanzibar-born singer Farrokh Bulsara, who by that time was answering to the name Freddie Mercury, and fresh-faced bassist John Deacon.

“So that was a big deal, for starters,” May says. But beyond the good reviews and winning combination of players onstage, May also recalls that performance being a standout thanks to the audience’s reaction.

“We had our first album coming out, and it felt like, for the first time, people knew what to expect from us,” he says. “The effect was phenomenal, because instead of going onstage and trying to persuade people that they might like what we do, we went onstage to a crowd of people who knew our music and wanted it. And they were giving us the energy to propel us to make those sounds that they’d cottoned on to.

“The feeling was incredible – it was like having your finger in a dam and a little trickle of water is coming out, and then suddenly the whole thing breaks down and you have this great, wonderful flood of energy.”

Today, Queen may not look quite the same – Mercury passed away from AIDS-related complications in 1991, and Deacon retired from music toward the end of that decade. But that flood of energy persists, with May and Taylor continuing to rock arenas the world over with current singer Adam Lambert.

50 years after the release of their self-titled debut album in July 1973, Queen remain as resonant, beloved and popular as ever. The 2018 film Bohemian Rhapsody smashed box office records to become the all-time highest-grossing music biopic, with worldwide receipts of nearly $1 billion and a quartet of Academy Awards to its name.

As for the music? Using just one metric, Spotify, as an example, “Bohemian Rhapsody” has racked up well over two billion streams on its way to becoming the most-listened-to classic-rock song on the service, but Queen’s next four top-streamed tracks – “Don’t Stop Me Now,” “Another One Bites the Dust,” “Under Pressure” and “We Will Rock You” – all handily dwarf the numbers of anything by the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones and many of their other rock-legend peers.

It’s a “phenomenon,” as May puts it, and one that seemingly has no end.

As for how he explains it? Despite Queen’s much venerated flair for grand and wildly dramatic musical gestures, “our songs were never elitist,” May says. “At their core, they were songs about the joys and the sorrows and the pain that every man, woman and child feels.

“They express the extreme emotions of non-extreme people – people that think they’re ordinary. And I think that’s why they have aligned with listeners.”

Voted by Guitar Player readers as one of the greatest solos of all time, May’s sonorous lead tone in “Bohemian Rhapsody” was created using a Rory Gallagher-inspired rig comprising a Vox AC30, a Dallas Rangemaster Treble Booster and little else.

“I used delays and stuff, but the fundamental tone that you hear is the [Red Special] and the treble booster and the AC30,” May told GP.

During the recording session, the 28-year-old maestro tracked rhythm guitar parts as the song came together in distinct sections. Along the way, the team felt a solo was needed to inject a different melody into the work and May decided he would approach it as if he were singing a verse on his instrument.

Although he has no idea where the melody came from, the guitarist recalls that he could hear the idea in his head long before the red light came on. And as is so often the case, after a few passes it was clear the first take was the best.

So how might today’s guitarist go about recreating that kind of magic? One approach could be to take some inspiration from the effects units in May’s current live rig as used during the epic Queen + Adam Lambert concerts.

Greg Fryer has been custom-building guitar gear for the Queen legend since the mid-‘90s, and his Treble Booster Touring unit was recently spotted in the live rig. Described as having “a balanced sound with sweet harmonic detail and smooth treble definition,” a new batch is currently in the pipeline, according to the Fryer Guitars website.

Other effects units in May's rig include a Dunlop DCR2SR Cry Baby Rack Module and a TC Electronic G-Major 2 multi-effects rack unit.

And if you're looking for some official Brian May gear including electric guitars and amplifiers you need look no further than the Brian May Guitars website. There you can find a plethora of Red Special-style six strings along with the new Vox signature series amps.

Queen’s Brian May is a nimble-fingered and technical player with a keen grasp of harmony, but his melodic, singable approach to both riffs and solos means any player can learn from his style. 

In this lesson, we’ll highlight the key elements of Brian’s signature lead playing voice, which is informed by a diverse mix of musical influences ranging from blues, metal, classical and even traditional Dixieland jazz.

The licks presented herein demonstrate a variety of techniques, including the kind of single-string tapping, scalar picking approaches and soulful, melodic lead work that Brian is noted for applying tastefully in such songs as “Bijou” and “Who Wants to Live Forever,” all delivered with singing finger vibrato and string bends.

We’ll also take a look at May’s clever use of a delay effect to create harmony leads live.

TAPPING

Ex. 1 employs a single-string tapping approach inspired by what Brian plays in “One Vision,” the opening track from A Kind of Magic (1986).

To perform the repeating bend lick on beats 1 and 2, use alternate picking and your fret hand’s middle finger to bend the B string, supported one fret below by the middle finger (3+2 reinforced bend fingering).

Then move your pick hand’s middle finger into position to repeatedly tap and pull-off from the A note on the high E string’s 17th fret as your fret hand continually shifts down the neck to catch each pull-off from a successively lower fret.

Be sure to fret each lower note before pulling off to it. And when releasing each tap, flick the string slightly downward (toward the floor), in order to keep the string vibrating and maintain a good, even amount of volume note to note.

The descending notes are derived from the E blues scale (E, G, A, Bb, B D), so this lick works well over most E-based rock riffs. 

ALTERNATE-PICKED LICKS

Ex. 2 is a classically flavored Brian May-style ascending run performed with alternate-picking, using notes from the C major scale (C, D, E, F, G, A).

If you want to play a harmony part above it, use diatonic 3rds or 5ths in the key of C, starting on E or G and walking up the scale in lock-step fashion. Notice the position shift on beat 3 of bar 1, which is crucial for continuing the climb, and the use of vibrato with a half-step bend on the final note.

This type of vibrato, which is called bend vibrato, is the most expressive and vocal-like guitar technique, and it’s a hallmark of May’s guitar voice and touch.

The key to performing this technique well is to first bend up to the prescribed target pitch, which in this case is C, then proceed to partially release the bend, by about a quarter tone (which is half of a half step), then bend it back up to the target pitch.

Do this repeatedly in a quick, even rhythm, but not too fast. (Recall the sound of a great singer holding and shaking a note.)

EXPRESSIVE STRING BENDS

May is a master of using a pre-bend to add great expression to a melody note, as he does so beautifully throughout his solo in “Bohemian Rhapsody” (A Night at the Opera, 1975).

The lick in Ex. 3 similarly makes effective use of the technique. As its name implies, a pre-bend is performed by bending a note silently, before it is picked. This is indicated in the tablature by a straight vertical arrow above the fret number, and in the standard notation by a grace note enclosed in parentheses. 

The technique takes a bit of practice to master, as you need to acquire the muscle memory to accurately anticipate the precise amount of push pressure to apply against the string in order to bend it up to the intended target pitch without the benefit of hearing what you’re doing until it’s too late – meaning until after you’ve already bent then picked the string, in that order.

And so it takes some trial and error for your ear and brain to train your fingers to feel and blindly respond to the string tension to achieve the desired result.

Each bar of our featured example begins with a pre-bend that is then gracefully shaken using the bend vibrato technique detailed earlier.

Mastering this technique is a key to copying Brian’s celebrated touch and style.

DELAY EFFECT FOR HARMONIES

A signature effect-based trick that May is famous for employing brilliantly is the use of a delay unit to add either one or two prominent repeats, the timing of which the guitarist sets to match the tempo of what he’s playing, so that each note he plays echos in a pronounced quarter-note rhythm at the same volume.

May originally employed a Maestro Echoplex mechanical tape delay machine for this effect back in the 70s, most famously in his breakdown guitar solo in “Brighton Rock” (Sheer Heart Attack, 1973).

The trick involves playing an ascending or descending scale-based melody, with the echoed notes providing a rhythmically synchronized harmony to the notes played in real time, like a melodic canon, or round, as in “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”

Set the rate, or speed, control on your analog or digital delay pedal accordingly for the lick shown in Ex. 4 to create a harmonious waterfall of notes.

BLUES INFLUENCE

Inspired by May’s solos in songs such as “Headlong” (Innuendo, 1991) and “Dead on Time” (Jazz, 1978), Ex. 5 presents a descending lick that’s based on the B blues scale (B, D, E, F, F#, A).

Notice the cascading melodic contour, as the notes zigzag and work their way across the strings, and the use of a pull-off from the first 16th note of each beat, which creates a smooth legato articulation. 

When pulling off, pull the string in toward your palm slightly as you let go of it, so as to pluck it slightly, which will keep the vibration going and maintain an even volume note to note.

The objective is the same as with the tapped pull-offs detailed earlier with Ex. 1. The only difference is that now we’re pulling-off from a fret-hand finger.

And, as always, be sure to pre-fret the lower note that you’re pulling off to, so that it’s ready to catch the pull-off.

ORCHESTRATING GUITAR LINES

Among his many talents, May is a skilled and accomplished audio engineer and producer who knows how to make great use of a multi-track recording studio to craft ambitiously orchestrated arrangements.

Inspired by the baroque-tinged “The Millionaire Waltz” (A Day at the Races, 1976), Ex. 6 will help steer you in new musical directions and think about effective ways to construct guitar parts.

Notice the use of arpeggios and targeted chord tones, as well as the contrast between sustained, vibratoed notes and quick triplet flourishes.

SCALE RUNS

The lick in Ex. 7 is inspired by Queen classics like “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the Jazz cut “Bicycle Race,” two tracks that feature Brian playing long, winding scale runs.

You’ll need to learn some scale shapes to take the idea further, but this lick, which uses notes from the E major scale (E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, D#) will get you started. It’ll also help you improve your finger dexterity, and you’ll develop your ear too.

Again, note the use of finger vibratos, pre-bends and a position shift, in this case after the bend in bar 2.

Also noteworthy are the staccato articulations (indicated by the little black dots) leading up to the final note. These notes are to be muted with the fret hand immediately after they’re picked, to create a short, clipped sound.

EMOTIVE PLAYING

Brian’s playing can be incredibly emotive, as you can hear in tracks like “Who Wants to Live Forever” (A Kind of Magic), “These Are the Days of Our Lives” and “Bijou” (both from Innuendo).

For our final example (Ex. 8), you’ll use pre-bends and bend vibratos to emulate Brian’s magic touch.

You’ll need to shift your fret hand down the string for each successive bend, so that it is performed with the ring finger, supported one fret below by the middle finger.

Note that the first two pre-bends are whole-step bends (as indicated by the “1” in the tab), which is the equivalent pitch of an unbent note two frets higher, and the final pre-bend is only a half-step bend, matching the pitch of the unbent note one fret higher. 

The phrase concludes with a legato finger slide down the B string, from C to A, for which only the C note is picked (as indicated by the slur connecting the two notes).

The A is gently shaken, then the whole sequence repeats, providing worthwhile practice for these invaluable rock lead playing techniques.

2023 marks the 50-year anniversary of Queen's self-titled debut album. In celebration of that major milestone, the band's guitarist, Brian May, recently sat down for an extensive interview with Total Guitar.

In it, the electric guitar giant discussed that first LP, and the influence Led Zeppelin had on the fledgling group. Zeppelin, May explained, not only sold millions of records, they did so without making any compromises to their boundary-pushing, hard-rocking sound.

“Those guys [Led Zeppelin] were not far ahead of us in age,” May said, “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," May went on. "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.”

Along those lines, May, elsewhere in the Total Guitar interview, described how – from the beginning – Queen looked to follow their own playbook when it came to making records, even if that meant ignoring conventional wisdom.

“[On The Night Comes Down, from the band's debut], we’re doing something which people told us we couldn’t do,” May revealed. 

“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," May went on, "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!’”

To read the full interview with May, pick up a copy of the latest issue of Total Guitar via magazinesdirect.com.

"Her musicianship is a clear indication she has been here before! Pass her by at your peril,” says Brian May.

And if you haven’t already heard American singer-songwriter and guitarist Arielle, you can watch the music video for her new single, “’73,” here.

The title track from her forthcoming album, “’73” is an ode to the maestro’s beloved 1973 VW bus named Magick.

Featuring some slick slide licks, Arielle tells us the track will, “have you checking your speedometer more than once.”

Around this time in ‘73, May was getting ready to launch Queen’s self-titled debut album. Half a century on and the Brian May Guitars company is offering an impressive array of solidbodies, among them the Arielle model.

Notable as “the first original build that the Queen virtuoso has actively contributed to since he and his father embarked on the construction of the Red Special,” Arielle appears on the cover of her new LP, ’73, strapped with her signature axe in a Two Tone finish. (The same model is also available in Windermere Blue and Antique Cherry.)

"To understand why this guitar was irresistible to me, you need to hold her in your hands,” says Arielle. “The guitar is light, and smooth and agile. The BMG Arielle sings like a bird.”

Arielle has long followed her own path in the music world. A guitar prodigy, she first met May at his Bang! The Complete History of the Universe book-signing event in Hollywood in 2007 when she was a student at L.A.’s Musicians Institute.

Taking along her own self-built six-string (not dissimilar to May’s Red Special) the pair got talking about guitars and hit it off immediately.

Having become pen pals, Arielle would send the Queen guitarist videos of her performing from time to time.

“He told me, ‘That’s really good – you should audition for my musical,’” she told Guitar Player. “So at 18, I got a visa, packed a suitcase and a couple of guitars, moved to England and landed a spot in We Will Rock You.”

Since appearing in the London stage production of Queen’s We Will Rock You musical and working with artists like Nuno Bettencourt, Eric Johnson and Vince Gill, Arielle has notched up an impressive catalog of albums.

A unique blend of classic rock and '60s-style songwriting, self-proclaimed analog girl Arielle’s 12-track studio album ’73 is slated for release on April 20.

Pre-order ’73 here.

Visit Arielle’s website for more information.

Some of the most influential electric guitar players in history stand out not just for their playing skills but also for their innovative approach to building and/or modifying equipment.

Les Paul was instrumental in the development of the solidbody early on and pioneered several important studio practices, as evidenced on his highly original records.

In the ‘50s and beyond, Chet Atkins also played a major role in advancing guitar technique, studio method and instrument design (notably the Gretsch Filter’Tron humbucking pickup.)

In the ‘60s, Jimi Hendrix further pushed the electric guitar into new areas, enlisting the likes of Roger Mayer to help him fully explore the possibilities of the recording studio.

Suffice to say, all of these guitar legends possessed an instantly recognisable sound – no doubt in part because of their willingness to experiment with gear.

Similarly, in the ‘70s, a guitarist called Brian May was busy creating his own unique brand of electric guitar tone with Queen.

Sweet, sonorous and immediately identifiable, May’s iconic sound has sustained the band for decades.

A majority of the guitarist’s classic tracks were cut using his famous Red Special six-string – a home-made solidbody carved from an 18th century fireplace.

Put together when he was just 16 years old with the assistance of his dad, Harold, May has cherished the instrument ever since.

And in the latest episode of The Red Special Guitar Podcast, host Jon Underhill talks to the man himself about building this famous axe, early Queen, songwriting and more.

On the subject of tone, May says, “So much of it is in the fingers, but the guitar is still your closest thing – it’s almost like part of your arm.”

Watch the interview here...

Browse the Queen catalog here.

Mostly ignored, often hated, England’s the Soft Boys debuted in 1979 with A Can of Bees, an odd art-punk entry that took an edgy approach to late-’60s rock and prog, wrapping it up with witty wordplay and surreal subject matter.

Guitarists and songwriters Robyn Hitchcock and Kimberley Rew gave a less abrasive treatment to their classic-rock influences on its follow-up, 1980’s Underwater Moonlight, resulting in an album that is credited for launching the neo-psychedelic revolution.

With it, Hitchcock and Rew assimilated the ringing guitars of the Beatles and Byrds with Hitchcock’s apparent admiration for Syd Barrett and Dylan-esque absurdity.

A song like “I Wanna Destroy You” filters punk through psychedelia’s jangling guitars and plangent harmonies, while “Queen of Eyes” anticipates the brand of chiming rock that R.E.M. (who cited the Soft Boys’ influence) would bring to U.S. college rock radio within a few years.

On the hypnotic title track, Hitchcock’s and Rew’s syncopated tremolo guitar lines ping off one another, segueing into power-pop and funk on the chorus and even delivering a raga-tinged solo in the break.

Although the group broke up shortly afterward, Underwater Moonlight paved the way for Britain’s neo-psychedelic acid-punk scene as well as shoegaze and dream pop.

Browse the Soft Boys' catalog here.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” is Queen’s best-known song, and its brief nine-bar electric guitar solo is a short and sweet musical interlude, bridging the verses to lead into what’s become known as the song’s “operatic section.”

Those two words alone should warn you that this song shouldn’t work. There’s no chorus and, aside from two verses, no repetition. But of course it does work, and Brian May’s solo is the perfect melodic break.

His phrasing is loose and natural, moving across the backbeat rather than sticking to a rigidly timed grid. The fastest licks are expressive bursts, rather than repetitive noodling, and his articulate pre-bend and vibrato technique demonstrates his beautiful touch. Somehow, within the confines of the complex structure of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” this solo is made to order.

Here, we catch up with May to talk about the writing process and how he made the melody fit so perfectly with Mercury’s masterpiece.

What do you remember about the recording of “Bohemian Rhapsody” and how you created the solo for it?

This track had been evolving for a while. It was very much the product of the fevered brow of Freddie. We knew it was something very special. It was recorded in pieces, as I think everybody knows. We would rehearse and record. We’d do it until we got it right. The various bits were put together. Freddie put a guide vocal on, and then we started doing all the multitracked vocal harmonies.

There was already a rhythm guitar on there, of course. And somewhere during that process we talked about where there would be a solo, and that part of it Freddie hadn’t mapped out. He said he wanted a solo in there, and I said I would like to, effectively, sing a verse on the guitar. I would like to take it somewhere else. I would inject a different melody. There was already a lot of color in there, but I would like to have a free hand. And I could hear something in my head at that point, long before I went in there and played it.

As you’re remembering this, can you picture you all in the studio?

It’s funny, because you see this in the Bohemian Rhapsody film. It’s quite faithfully reproduced, the way the Brian May character says, “Okay, how about this?” And Freddie’s going, “Oh, lovely. But can you try a bit more of this?”

And the idea you had in your head, was that exactly how the solo came out?

Yeah. I basically sang it. I regard the guitar in that situation as a voice. I could hear this melody and I had no idea where it came from. That melody isn’t anywhere else in the song, but it’s on a familiar chord sequence, so it dovetails in quite nicely. And of course the job of the guitar solo is to bring that extra voice in, but then it’s a link into what everybody now calls “the operatic section.” You know you’re into something very different.

Did the solo require multiple takes?

It came out very easily. I didn’t do many takes. It was one of those occasions where you do a few takes, and then you go back and listen to the first one, and the first one is almost exactly what you want. You just need to trim it a little bit and polish it up.

And the climax of the song is very heavy on guitar.

The bit where everybody does the head-banging? That’s just riffing, and that was much more Freddie’s idea than mine. He had that riff in his head and I just played what he wanted there. I think he just sang it to me, what he wanted. We went for it live in the studio.

The different tones in that song, from the clean sounds in the solo to the distortion in the heavy part – how did that work?

It’s all about Vox AC30s and the [Dallas Rangemaster] treble booster, which was all inspired by Rory Gallagher. 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, because the AC30 is fundamentally a Class A amplifier, and because of the way the valves are used. They’re biased halfway up, so 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.

There’s something about the tone of that solo. Maybe the way you pick, or the metal picks you use?

The pick has a little bit to do with it, definitely. It all adds up to that incisive tone. These days I’m using the pick less and less, and I find that I can get all of that range of sound using the fingers. It’s odd. I don’t know why that is. Maybe because I play more and more at home, and there isn’t always a pick at hand, I just end up using fingers. But I also find I get more expression out of the fingers these days, and I like it that way. Probably live I’ll never do that, because live, people want to hear it the way it was on the record. But it’s always slightly different every night. Although I’m playing that solo almost note for note, it always comes out differently, because of the different feelings going through my head or the fingers falling in different places. But that’s the closest to a set piece that I have, I suppose.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” was Freddie’s masterpiece. Did that make it more of a challenge for you to create that solo?

There was a lot of interaction, and I think that was part of the magic that we had. We gave each other a lot of stick, really, but in a very positive way. We were always pushing each other to try things. You know, one day Freddie had a big smile on his face when I came into the studio, and he popped a cassette into the player and said, “Listen to this, darling. This is going to surprise you.”

And what he’d done was spend the whole morning putting together all the guitar solos that he could find in the work that we’d done, and he’d strung them all together. It was quite amazing. And one of my big regrets is I can’t find that cassette! I never throw anything away. I’m a bit of a hoarder. So it ought to be somewhere. But Freddie was very proud of the stuff that I’d done and that we’d done together.

Pick up a copy A Night At the Opera here.

Onstage and on record, Brian May creates an amazing array of tones – from the thunderous counterpoint lines in "Brighton Rock" to the slick, rockabilly-influenced fills in "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" to the sweetly singing multi-tracked tones of "Keep Yourself Alive" and "Killer Queen". In this rare archive interview from the January 1983 issue of Guitar Player he discusses his recording techniques and specific cuts...

Perhaps your most identifiable sound is the sweet, sustaining tone used in "Killer Queen" from Sheer Heart Attack, "Procession" from Queen II, "The Wedding March" from Flash Gordon, and several other tracks. How is that created?

For those orchestral things, I've usually used a Vox AC30 as well as a small amplifier which was made by John Deacon. This has a little hi-fi speaker cabinet which is about a foot by six inches, and John put a little transistor amplifier inside it. I use it with a treble booster which overloads it. It just makes a good noise; I don't know why. I've gotten that tone out of all kinds of little practice amps as well – just crank them up, drive them nuts. Vox made a little baby AC30, and I've used those on occasion. They're quite good.

For almost everything else, I use old Vox AC30s that have tubes instead of transistors. These have a very flexible, identifiable sound without much coloration. You can get a wide range of sound from them, and they always have that nice little high fidelity edge to them. They use tubes biased in a Class A range. Most guitar amplifiers are Class B, which means they have more inherent distortion in them at lower levels. The Vox AC30s are very clear at low level and then gradually and smoothly go into a nice distortion.

Did you use a Fender on "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" from The Game?

Yes. I used one of Roger's really old, beat up, natural wood Telecasters. I got bludgeoned into playing it. That was [Producer Reinhold] Mack's idea. I said "I don't want to play a Telecaster." It basically doesn't suit my style. But "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" was such a period piece, it seemed to need that period sound. So I said, "Okay, Mack, if you want to set it up, I'll play it". He put it through a Mesa/Boogie, which is an amplifier I don't get on with at all; it just doesn't suit me. I tried it, and it sounded okay.

How did you process the rhythm strums on the version of "Keep Yourself Alive" on Queen?

That was real tape phasing. This was in the days when you took the tape off the sync head, put it though a couple of other tape delays, and then brought it back with the play head. There is no processing whatsoever on the solo in that tune, as far as I remember. I used John Deacons's small amplifier and the Vox AC30 to do those little three-part chorus thing behind, as well as the fingerboard pickup on the guitar. There is a bit more tape phasing on the end of that track.

Did you play slide on "Tie Your Mother Down" on A Day at the Races?

Yeah, a glass one. That was on standard tuning. The only tuning I've used apart from normal is to take the bottom string down to D, which I've used on "The Prophet's Song" [A Night at the Opera], "White Man" [A Day at the Races], and "Fat Bottomed Girls" [Jazz].

Did you use a slide for "Dancer" on Hot Space?

No, that's guitar in parallel harmonies. Those aren't my favorite harmonies, really. I much prefer guitar harmonies which aren't parallel. There are very few people who have done them. The real interest in guitar harmonies comes from when they're crossing over, diverging, and converging. Somehow on "Dancer" it seemed right to do those parallels.

Browse classic Queen albums here.

With the live music scene gathering momentum it may be time to start thinking about dusting off your rig and shaping up to gig (if you aren’t already!) And while there can be a hell of a lot to think about, you can’t beat some good, old-fashioned preparation to alleviate some of that gear anxiety and minimize any problems that may occur. After all, anything can happen during a gig, right?

Chris Lawson has worked as a Guitar Tech for some of the biggest acts in the business from Kate Bush, Queen and Robert Plant to the Electric Light Orchestra and Peter Gabriel. In this priceless interview, he shares his expert knowledge so that you can get on with doing what you do best: performing!

How do you deal with the common problems faced by gigging guitarists?

Guitars, amps and pedalboards are all susceptible to having a hard life on the road. So many things cause wear and tear and you've got to factor that in when you're thinking about gigging. You've got to think 'What can I have a spare of?' Cables have a pretty hard life – they might get flight cases rolled over them, or guitar jacks will go, so it's important to have spares.

Pedalboards can sometimes be very difficult, depending on how they're put together. My tip is to have a pedalboard where you can easily access things individually, so that if something does go down you can get in there and fix it quickly.

How do you keep a guitar road-worthy?

With guitars it's really just the basic stuff. Is the instrument set up well? Is everything tightened down? Are all the electrical connections and pots good? You can do yourself a lot of favors if you check the silly stuff, like strap buttons – are they screwed in tight enough? In the past I've picked up guitars and noticed strap buttons that are about to come out, which you don't want in the middle of a show.

What should people consider when it comes to amplifiers?

Check everything's tight. Sometimes you'll get a rattle or something, especially on new amps. Just before the start of a tour, or before a gig, check the basics and make sure everything's clean, including the jack sockets. Valves can quite easily come loose and might need to be reseated if an amp has been out on the road, or it might have taken a bang during handling.

Also, keep some spare fuses. You're going to look pretty silly if the rest of the band are looking at you and you can't play any more of the gig because you haven't spent pennies on a fuse.

Is your approach to equipment maintenance generally the same, regardless of venue size?

It's all about preparation and that goes for all levels of performance. It'd be the same if I was doing a club gig or if I was going to do a concert at Madison Square Garden. I'd want a plan-B with an adequate number of spares. It's about being attentive so that if something goes wrong on stage you've got it covered.

What's really important when it comes to using musical equipment live?

What musicians actually need is gear that's just going to work and can be changed. There's a lot of nonsense talked about gear – a lot of marketing speak. After 15 minutes at full volume on stage you cannot tell the difference between cables. I'm open to anything and will listen with an open mind, but the geek in me can only go so far these days. I just want something to work and to play. I'm not a Luddite, but it needs to work.

What's the best way to mic up a guitar amp?

In a live situation things need to be miked as close as possible if you want to cut down on microphone spillage. Normally people use fairly tight dynamic mics. The classics for guitar cabs are things like Shure SM57s and Sennheiser MD409s and MD421s.

People tend to go for the traditional stuff when miking cabs, but I've also seen people using Electro-Voice RE-20s and even AKG D-12 kick drum mics for a particularly bottom-end-heavy sound. It comes down to the fact that people just know they work!

The other thing with microphones is to try and tuck them out of the way, because stuff sometimes gets knocked around at a show.

What should guitarists consider when it comes to amplifier settings?

If you have too much bottom-end in your guitar tone the chances are that the front of house are going to cut it out. Because if there's lots of washy bottom-end they'll always be trying to get on top of it.

The other thing is they're always going to try and hold your volume back. If you're louder than the PA (which is easily possible in a small venue) then they may ask you to turn down, which to most guitarists is like insulting their mother.

It's been increasingly less important to have loud amps on stage and a lot of bands use modelling these days. Quiet stages are preferable for most people, unless you're a guitar driven rock band whose trademark really is that sound of loud guitars on stage at high volume.

Some people use power soaks and there's a lot of cab simulators around now as well.

What's the best way for a band to get a good monitor mix on stage?

It's all about how you communicate with the engineer. The classic one with a band is that everybody's talking at once. If you've got a five-piece band on stage and they're all asking you for stuff at the same time then it's extremely difficult.

When it's your turn to do a monitor mix, everyone else should shut up and, likewise, you should shut up when they're doing their mix. One at a time and you'll get there much more quickly – and you'll get what you want.

Buy the Fender Custom Shop Tool Kit by Cruztools here.

Nancy Wilson was all of nine years old when she first saw the Beatles on TV. She remembers it as her “call to Mecca moment.” “That was it for me,” she says. “What the Beatles were doing was so mind blowing, it just went right through me. I immediately set my sights on learning the guitar.”

Her sister Ann was similarly besotted, and after much begging of their parents, the Wilson girls were rewarded with a $30 Lyle acoustic, which Nancy remembers as being nearly impossible to play. “You could not form a barred F chord on it to save your life,” she says. “It was such a struggle. A little later, Ann got sick and our grandmother gave her a much better guitar. I would sneak off and play it, which made Ann furious. But I could actually play that one.”

After college, Nancy joined Ann, now a lead singer, in the band that would become Heart. At their early gigs, she would hear a certain phrase: “Pretty good for a girl.” “It was as if people were shocked and stunned to see a girl who could actually play with any kind of competence,” she says.

“Up till then, there weren’t a lot of female guitarists, and those who did play were usually accompanying themselves and doing very soft folky stuff. You just didn’t see women playing rock and roll and attacking the guitar very aggressively. So yeah, when they saw me, it was like, ‘Whoa! You’re pretty good for a girl.’”

The backhanded compliment stung, but Wilson took it as a challenge. “I wasn’t about to fade in the background and be some wimpy chick,” she explains. “I made it my mission to prove myself and be a really good player – period. 

"I was really serious about it. You can see it on my face,” she says of early videos showing the band in performance. “I was very earnest onstage, concentrating really hard on what I was doing. I was out to prove myself, and I think I did.”

Whether playing alongside Heart co-lead guitarists Roger Fisher and Howard Leese in the band’s classic 1970s lineup, or with current axemen Craig Bartok and Ryan Waters, Wilson has been content to let her rhythm playing do most of the talking. “I like playing solos, but when I do, I try to make the phrases meaningful,” she observes.

“Give me somebody like David Gilmour any day of the week. I’m really into that kind of lead work. But rhythm is my main thing. I like to groove. A lot of people don’t take that role seriously, but it’s what drives a band. I like to play percussively and get inside the song. When there’s too much extra stuff going on, it can sound like clutter.”

1. “Magic Man” from ‘Dreamboat Annie’ (1975)

“We didn’t really have this song worked out before we started recording it. It was pretty much something we built in the studio. Ann had these cool words, so we found a groove for them with Mike Flicker, our producer at the time. Roger, Howard and I worked out our parts, and we left a lot of spaces for us to answer each other on our guitars. In terms of the music, this song is a real conversation between the guitarists.

“I admit I was very nervous when we recorded it. It was my first time seeing that red light come on in a studio and hearing, ‘We’re rolling.’ I felt this immediate sense of pressure come over me, like I had something to prove. That can play tricks with you; it messes with your nerves. Your guitar is so ultra-present in the headphones, so you start worrying you’re pushing too hard, speeding up. Then you start to think that you’re laying back too much.

“I really had to learn how to relax while recording. It was an eye-opening – and ear-opening – experience in so many ways. After we recorded the basics and I was listening to a playback in the control room, I wondered, ‘Is that how we really sound?’ My guitar playing was under the microscope, and it was kind of scary at first. But that’s what makes you grow and improve. You hear your mistakes and learn what you need to do to be a better player.”

2. “Crazy on You” from ‘Dreamboat Annie’ (1975)

“I was in love with the idea that we were making a sort of a concept album, one which had a prologue, an epilogue and a recurring motif. I wanted certain songs to take you on a journey, and this was one of them.

“We already had the rock part of the song – you know, the song itself. It had a big cool riff and those poetic lyrics, and the main rhythm was inspired by the Moody Blues. They had a song called “Question,” which was a definite inspiration for the strummy rhythm. But I wanted the song to have an intro, a free-floating piece.

“I always loved this acoustic instrumental piece [composed by Davey Graham] that Paul Simon played called “Anji,” and I wanted to emulate it. It’s a shuffle, and I just loved the way it moved. So I wrote my own take on that.

“I worked really hard on it for a couple of days. I didn’t want it to sound like this tossed-off jammy thing; I wanted it to have a definite structure and for it to feel like a true part of the song. It’s pretty intricate, and I did a lot of takes to get it just right. I was feeling a little less tentative than when we did “Magic Man,” but I still felt pressure to get it just right.

“I borrowed this big Guild acoustic guitar that belonged to Mike Flicker. It was this big warhorse. Then I just played the intro over and over to get a complete take without any mistakes. At the end, I had some real blisters on my fingers. What’s great is seeing people today learning how to play it. I go on Instagram and check out videos of people playing it. I love that.”

3. “Barracuda” from ‘Little Queen’ (1977)

“We were opening for Queen, and one of the other openers was Nazareth. They had a hit song with a version of Joni Mitchell’s “This Flight Tonight.” They turned it into a real rock-metal track, and it had a really intense riff. We loved it and said, ‘That’s such a cool groove!’ We had the idea to call a song “Barracuda,” so we decided to use that groove for ourselves. We saw the Nazareth guys later on, and they were pretty pissed at us.

“Roger Fisher was really an amazing innovator, and he came up with that really muscular style of muting the strings. That’s the secret to playing “Barracuda.” You have to really chunk down on the strings with the flat part of your hand. There’s a lot of finesse involved. I played acoustic guitar on the track, but I did add some electric guitar stuff with my red Strat at the end.

“We built the song up in sections: two bars here, eight bars there. We had a sense that it was going to be a monster song, so we took a lot of time getting it right. Every time we played it back, it sounded so huge and furious. The song was just galloping along. This was recorded in the days before automation, so everybody was riding the faders during the mix. We were all jostling for position to make ourselves louder. By the end, the VU meters were pinned red.”

4. “Even It Up” from ‘Bébé le Strange’ (1980)

“This was during a period of transition for us. We were soaking up the new-wave vibe, getting a little more garagey and Stonesy. You listen to albums like Dreamboat Annie, and the sound is very precise. There’s not a lot of slop anywhere. So we wanted to shake things up and get a little wilder, gutsier and dirtier.

“This song started out as something I was writing for another track. Annie and I were working with a songwriter named Sue Ennis, and we would go to one of our favorite spots on the beach of the Oregon coast. We had a drum machine named Ringo, and we would jam along to it. I had this intro written on acoustic, and that’s how I thought the song would go, but when we showed it to the band, another idea took shape. We said, ‘Let’s make it raunchier! Let’s have the Tower of Power horns!’ The whole thing changed and it became an electric number.

“It’s a lot less produced than what we had done before, but that was the idea. The guitars in the band were now played by me and Howard Leese, and I was doing a lot more leads. It was a lot of fun for me to have more freedom playing electric guitar. I was using more distortion and working with pedals. I blew up quite a few amps looking for the right sound. The whole vibe in the band was different. Annie and I were stepping out and being leaders, and that’s what this track was all about.”

5. “Tell It Like It Is” from ‘Greatest Hit Live’ (1980)

“We loved Aaron Neville’s original recording of this song. We had the single on our jukebox, and we played it all the time. It’s just so beautiful and melancholy. It’s got everything. We would sing it around the house and at beach-fire get-togethers. I would always play acoustic to accompany Annie. Her voice just slayed on it. It was a natural that we would record it and get the horn section in on it. Annie and I were really psyched to do our own version.

“In the studio, we worked hard to make the sound groovy. Tempo was key. It couldn’t drag, but it couldn’t be too fast, either. The main thing was keeping a lot of space in the track for the horn players to feel comfortable in their zone. It was just a matter of feeling it and laying back, but not too much. The whole thing had to sit in a nice place.

“I’ve got a lot of blues in my arsenal, and I played the song enough times to know what I had to do. I used a [Gibson] ES-335 and a [Fender] Deluxe, and I had this great warm tone. I would slide up to the diminished chord, and I would put in these little bursts of air, these magical spots that really pushed the rhythm. It was a lot of fun showing it to the guys and running through it with them. They fell into it beautifully. In many ways, playing a cover is easier than when you’re trying to create your own song in the studio. You’re starting with something that you know you like, and you’re intent on doing a good interpretation.

“We’ve run into Aaron Neville over the years. He always loved what we did with the song, and we’ve always loved what he did, so it’s been great. He’s a buddy.”

Though he's currently in the midst of revisiting his 1992 solo debut album, Back to the Light – in some very creative ways, mind you – Queen electric guitar hero Brian May's still keeping an eye on a potential future solo album.

Speaking to Goldmine (as transcribed by NME) the Red Special-toting icon said he might return to the studio upon completion of Queen + Adam Lambert's pre-COVID touring commitments.

“I do think about it,” May said of the possibility of making a new album. “And strangely enough, I think it probably would be instrumental this time. Because I have enough ideas. And I have lots of unfinished business.”

“We have a big world of touring to do. And we’ve been postponing and postponing the Queen tour, which we started just before COVID happened.

“Next May we will be doing a bunch of touring," he continued. "Once that’s done, I think I will have the opportunity to sit down, and if I’m spared – as my mum used to say – and still functional, I think I might make the album.”

May has two proper solo albums to his name: Back to the Light and 1998's Another World. He did, however, release a standalone single, the cosmically-themed "New Horizons," in early 2019.

“I don’t have the dazzling technical expertise of a Joe Satriani or a Steve Vai or Al Di Meola or Eddie Van Halen. But I just might,” he said of doing an instrumental LP. “My guitar is very much my voice. I can’t play faster than I think.

“I’ve always been obsessed with songs and songs to me are about singers, and about the vocals.”

While we're on the subject of new material from May, the Queen legend also mentioned to Guitar Player earlier this summer that he, Roger Taylor, and Adam Lambert had "been in the studio trying things out, just because things came up."

But, he added, "up to this point we haven’t felt that anything we’ve done has hit the button in the right way." 

"It’s not like we’re closed to the idea," May said of the band's attitude toward a new studio album, "it’s just that it hasn’t happened yet. And to be honest, life has now taken a turn in which it’s very difficult to explore an avenue like that. Things may change, but I don’t think they’re going to change very fast."

Featuring some glorious acoustic guitar work and infectious melodic hooks, Brian May considers the poignant track “Too Much Love Will Kill You” from his 1992 solo album Back to the Light to be, “in a way, the most important song I ever wrote.”

Ahead of the August 6 re-release of his '92 debut longer player, this top-ten selling hit has, today, been made available in its remastered form.

Though it’s often thought the song is a tribute to his much-loved friend and bandmate Freddie Mercury who sadly passed away in 1991, the inspiration behind “Too Much Love Will Kill You” actually stems from May’s own personal upheaval during the late ‘80s. In fact, a version of the song was recorded with Freddie Mercury on vocals for Queen’s Miracle (although it never made it onto the 1989 album).

“"Too Much Love Will Kill You" is a big, long story,” explains May, “and the version that you hear on Back to the Light is the original. It has the original keyboard that I played when we were writing the song. Me and Frank Musker, and his lady friend at the time, were in a room and it was like a therapy session for me. I was just pouring out all these words because I felt like I was trapped. I was in a place that I could never, ever get out of. All I could do is write about it. This is the only song I wrote in that probably nine months or a year period.” 

Available on CD, Vinyl, Cassette, digital download and streaming formats, Brian May’s remastered Back to the Light album is available to pre-order here.

George Martin has said that you don’t have to teach children to love the Beatles. You merely have to expose them to the Beatles and they’ll take it from there, exploring the catalog, identifying with the songs, and developing a deep, lifelong love affair with the band. It has happened with every generation since the group’s inception and shows no signs of ever stopping.

The same is true with Queen.

The band obviously gained a loyal following almost instantly, with fans drawn in by the amazing combination of melody, harmony, subtlety, and bombast. Each hit single garnered new adherents, but that can be said of almost any successful band, and it generally only lasts as long as the band lasts. But when Queen’s supernaturally talented singer, Freddie Mercury, passed away in late 1991, the band’s popularity did not die with him. In fact, that’s when the first of many waves of new fans hit, beginning with the inclusion of “Bohemian Rhapsody” in the movie Wayne’s World. It happened again with the debut of the theater hit We Will Rock You. It happens every time newer artists such as Pink, Jake Shimabukuro, Katy Perry, or Lady Gaga cover Queen tunes in concert. And it will likely occur again when the Queen Extravaganza—an officially sanctioned tribute band—hits the road.

And even as new generations get hip to Queen’s music, oldschool guitar freaks continue to rediscover the wealth of 6-string magic that was created by Dr. Brian May. It’s constantly inspiring to be reminded of how lyrical his melodies are, how inventive his harmonies can be, and how freaking great his tones are. You can hear “Killer Queen” any old time. Want to really rekindle your love for Queen? Listen to his solo in “Bijou,” check out the celestial guitar choir of “All Dead, All Dead,” and revel in the absolute sweeping grandeur of May’s work in “It’s a Hard Life.” There is simply no one like this guy.

With Freddie Mercury no longer with us and bassist John Deacon firmly ensconced in retirement, it is primarily May, with help from drummer Roger Taylor, who oversees Queen’s enduring legacy. The good doctor has been busy of late, creating the album Anthems with British theater star Kerry Ellis, an intriguing fusion of musical theater, orchestra, and rock guitar. Shortly thereafter, May and Taylor acted as executive producers for the re-mastering of the Queen catalog to celebrate the band’s 40th anniversary. The old songs sound better than ever, and the bonus tracks, including the band’s first demos, are mind-blowers. One listen to those embryonic early recordings will prove to new and old fans alike that May and his cohorts had their whole trip together from the get-go, and that will ring just as true 40 years from now.

What did you learn as you went through this remastering process, both from a full band standpoint and a guitar standpoint?

I kind of marveled at it because of all that we did. It was so complex. Particularly when we got to A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, we really were flying in terms of ideas and ways to execute those ideas. I don’t know what I learned. I don’t think as a guitar player my technique changed that much from the beginning to the end. What changed was just the experience in getting the ideas to their fruition. I look back and I see a very, very young guy on that first album making his first stabs in the studio. I’ve got to smile. I think it’s amazing that I got away with that.

The early demos are fascinating. You guys might be a little raw, but you definitely sound like Queen.

I actually love the sound of those first demos. We all prefer those to the way the first album turned out. When we made the record, we got kind of forced into this particular way of working that has made Trident Studios very famous: a clinical, very separated kind of recording with the idea that you could put the warmth back in the mix. But it was never going to work. We went along with it because we had to. 

The first album at Trident was on such a shoestring budget and we would use bits of time that other people abandoned. We literally would get called at 3:00 in the morning and someone would say, “We’ve got a couple of hours, boys. Come in and do a bit.” It was a very disconnected kind of procedure. 

As time went on, we actually had proper studio time. Queen II was the first time. There was a lot of exploration going on on Queen II—things we always dreamed of doing: building up guitar orchestras and the beginnings of vocal choir effects as you can hear on “The March of the Black Queen.” So, although some people got surprised at the time, when I look at our output I don’t think there’s anything too surprising. All the seeds of those ideas like “Bohemian Rhapsody” and a lot of the hits were there, in essence, in the first couple of albums. They just needed full realizing. 

We went out on a few limbs. After we had gone really, really far into the complex side on A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, we did strip it all back for News of the World, so we got “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions” and stuff. That was a major departure.

Why change things up when they were obviously working so well?

We had this idea that we never should repeat ourselves, so we deliberately put ourselves in different situations of writing and recording just so we would keep moving and keep breaking down any barriers that might seem to be there. I felt another barrier was broken with “Another One Bites the Dust,” as well. To various degrees, sometimes we weren’t totally comfortable with it, and certainly Roger wasn’t very comfortable with that song. He didn’t want his drums to sound like that really, but the idea was supported by John and also by Freddie, who got brilliant passionate about how we would have this very sparse, tight little sound for the drums and everything would be very spare. 

Hot Space was a continuation of that in a sense. Let’s try to, not do less, but leave more spaces and make the sounds count more when they come. So there were a lot of departures, but our basic equipment was what it was from the beginning. I don’t think we really developed new talent. We just honed what was already there.

The demo for “Keep Yourself Alive” starts with an acoustic. That was surprising. Is there any acoustic at all on the released version?

No. I think that’s a good observation. I don’t quite know why we switched. I like the old version. It’s so relaxed. It’s got such a great feel to it. From that day on, I always had this theory that it’s really not a good idea to make demos. I’m not saying you can’t use your tape recorder as a notebook. I find that very valuable. But to actually make a demo of a record you’re going to make in the future, it’s generally disastrous because almost certainly you get something fabulous at the first attempt, something which you will never be able to revisit, no matter how hard you try. The more you chase it, the further it gets away. I was never happy with any the recordings we made after that first one.

These re-mastered discs contain other bonus material, such as the guitar and vocal mix of “I’m In Love with My Car.” You really can focus on what you’re doing, and it sounds like you were playing your Burns 12-string in addition to the Red Special.

You’re right—that definitely sounds like the old Burns. I had to think about it but I would say yes. It must be in there.

Some other songs where you didn’t play your Red Special include the “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” solo, which was a Tele, “Long Away,” which also had the Burns electric 12, and “Who Needs You,” which featured that funky, buzzy nylonstring. What’s up with that guitar?

I have no idea where that guitar came from. The song just seemed to need a proper Spanish guitar, rather than a regular steel-string acoustic. So we found one and I played it but I can’t tell you what it was. I’m very un-snobbish about guitars. It doesn’t matter what they’re called or where they come from. If they sound good at that point in time, that’s it. A lot of the acoustic stuff that we’ve done was played on very cheap old things I had lying around, but I just liked the particular sound. I’ve never played anything expensive, in terms of an acoustic guitar. I know that for sure. A lot of the people around me had these wonderful old Martins and things, but they wouldn’t make the sort of noise that I needed.

You’ve talked a lot in the past about the band’s vocal blend and how that came together naturally with Freddie having the pure bell-like tone, Roger having that rasp in the upper range, and you fitting somewhere in the middle. What about your guitar choirs? Do you think they came together in a similar way, like almost by chance—the way your AC30 tone blends with the Deacy? How much of that was planned out and how much of it did you just stumble upon?

A lot of stumbling [laughs]. I would generally just try things out and see how they sounded. They’re done all different ways, those guitar harmonies. Sometimes it’s all AC30 on a particular setting, sometimes I mixed it up. In some cases, like “Killer Queen,” you’ve got one part that’s the Deacy and then one part that’s the AC30 working against each other. They just work. I found things that sounded good to me, so I went with them. But I was looking for a voice. In my search I was always looking for something that would speak to you like a human voice would. That’s the ideal for me.

You’ve talked about how you don’t generally blend different pickup combinations when you’re layering a bunch of guitars, that they just seem to take care of themselves. But do you have a favorite pickup setting with the Deacy?

I tend to settle on the bridge pickup and the middle pickup in phase—that thick sound— and I use it for a lot of things. The variation of sounds from the Deacy normally comes from moving the microphone. It’s very sensitive to where you put the microphone. So that’s the principle that molds that sound. We don’t use much EQ. It’s generally just all the sound of the amp and the guitar and where the mic is positioned.

I’ve seen pictures of an SM57 on the Deacy. Do you experiment with other microphones, too?

All kinds of different mics. It just depends on what we’re looking for.

The “guitar jazz band” in the song “Good Company” is an astounding bit of guitar orchestration. You not only nail the sounds of trumpets and trombones, but you really capture the nuances of how those instruments are played. Talk about how you did that. For instance, did you use a slide for the trombone sounding parts?

I didn’t use a slide, no. I just used bending and the tremolo. It came about because I was mad, mad keen on this group called the Temperance Seven. They were part of the traditional jazz revival that happened in England in the ’60s. Actually George Martin produced their 1961 album. The arrangements were deceptively loose sounding, and yet meticulously crafted so the right harmonic changes were always there. I just fell in love with this style of arranging and I had this dream of making that kind of sound on the guitar.

When you started layering those parts on “Good Company,” what was it like when you heard it playing back?

It was really exciting. I actually did a bit of work on it. Normally I work very instinctively, but I did go away and pencil a few things down. I tried to imagine what I would be playing if I were that trombone player, or that trumpet player or clarinet player. So I tried to make them play in a way that they would find natural. I pieced it all together with little bits of guitar through the Deacy amp using a wah-wah pedal as a tone control, just trying to get it right.

Listening closely to it on the re-master, it’s an amazing accomplishment. I’ve never heard anything like it.

I appreciate that. Yeah, I’m proud. I’m relieved that that happened. That’s on A Night at the Opera, and we were really charging the hill at that point. We had three or four studios on the go at one time making that album because there was so much to do. We had such an ambitious plan for it. I was off doing that at some place in North London while Freddie was doing vocal overdubs someplace else. Then we all came back together and played each other what we’d been working on and had a good laugh. We felt like we were breaking into new territory and really enjoying ourselves.

So there’s no slide on “Good Company,” but you do play slide on “Tie Your Mother Down” and “Drowse.” What are some other songs that feature slide?

You named the two that I would have thought of. I don’t know if there’s that much else that I played on slide. I don’t regard myself as a very accomplished slide player.

Who are some of your influences for slide playing?

Probably Eric Clapton, to be truthful, although he didn’t do much, did he? I have a couple things where Clapton plays slide. Jeff Beck. Jeff Beck is always an influence. I should say Ry Cooder but that’s not really my area.

It would seem to me that the action on your guitar would be a little low for slide, but you don’t have any problem playing the “Tie Your Mother Down” parts on it.

You’re right. It’s damn difficult to play slide on my guitar because the strings are a fraction of an inch off the fingerboard. I just have to be really gentle and not hit the frets. It’s not ideal.

In “Save Me,” you do three distinct lead breaks. There’s the acoustic part, then the harmonies that sound like they’re through the Deacy that are fairly subdued, with minimal vibrato, and then there’s the solo where you really play with abandon, particularly with your use of vibrato. Do you remember how those sections came together?

I was just exploring textures, I suppose, and trying to make it tell a story, have a development. The song has a very gentle sense to it, but it also gets to a passionate place at the end and I guess I was trying to mirror that with the guitars. It’s funny. When that album got reviewed, people said, “What happened to the guitars?” I remember feeling kind of hurt when I read that because I thought, “Actually there’s quite a bit of guitar on there.” I recently redid the song on an album called Anthems with a young lady that I’ve been producing, Kerry Ellis.

Your work on Anthems is an interesting blend of rock, orchestra, and musical theater. That doesn’t seem like it should work, but your guitar fits into it seamlessly and naturally.

To me, it’s the next step, where the guitar sits in a different place, where rock meets orchestra. Ten years of development went into that so I do feel very proud of it. It’s not a great seller—so far anyway—but I’m as proud of the work on that album as anything I’ve done. I read that Jimi Hendrix talked about that idea of combining guitar with orchestra before he died. I find it absolutely riveting when you get it right, and everything seems to organically fit together—all out guitar and all out orchestra.

Roger says that his favorite solo of yours is in “Was It All Worth It.” Are you surprised by that?

I had no idea Roger thought that. I love the track but to be honest I just had to go and play it to remind myself what the solo was. It’s not bad!

That solo is pretty technically demanding. Is it all alternate picking or do you use sweep picking for the arpeggios?

Thanks, but I don’t think it’s very technical, really. It’s just will power! I pick up and down on those arpeggios. I can do it for short periods but after that my brain short-circuits and my hand gets confused. I actually like those rising lines. I like lines that suggest harmonic content. I tend to play across chords rather than along lines.

Your first story in Guitar Player showed you with a Les Paul Deluxe, and you also played a Strat many years ago. What were your impressions of those guitars and were there specific songs you would play them on?

I don’t have much to say about them, really. I only used them as spares because I didn’t have a decent copy of my guitar at that time. Neither of them really worked for me, though they work just fine for other people. The Les Paul was too dull, the pickups whistled, and it had no trem. The Strat sounded painfully thin and didn’t sustain the way I wanted. I kept thinking, “It worked beautifully for Rory Gallagher with a similar amp setup.” But for me it was just frustrating. In time we got the BM guitar copies going, and my problems were solved.

What were your impressions when Greg Fryer presented you with the replicas that he made of the Red Special?

I was very happy. He’s an amazing guy. He made three of them, and they are stupendous. We call them John, Paul, and George. He kept Paul and I kept John and George. John is the one that I use most and George is the one I have at home to play. George is the prettiest of the three, with a lovely marbled veneer. They’re wonderfully made. His attention to detail was absolutely top class.

Was it nerve wracking to have him work on the real deal?

You mean when he took my guitar to bits and had it in pieces all over the workshop? I did have a moment of catching my breath because that had never happened since I made it. But I quickly learned to trust this guy. He’s an amazing craftsman and he took infinite care. He had to take it all to bits to take all the measurements he needed. When he finished, he put the new guitar into my hands, and if I closed my eyes I couldn’t tell it wasn’t mine. It’s amazing.

Your Red Special has great intonation, even when you’re playing full chords at the 14th position in tunes like “Hammer to Fall” and “We Will Rock You.” How did you and your dad achieve such precise fret placement, especially considering the fact that the 24” scale length is different from Fender’s and Gibson’s?

I did the calculations for the frets on the computer I was working with at the time in my work place. This is about 1964, and a mainframe computer filled a large building, with an overall capacity of about a thousandth of your laptop. I made up my own formula, and based my program on an iterative solution to the equation. The calculations were correct to 24 decimal places. Really! I have the printout somewhere.

How did you come to include a zero fret? Why don’t more manufacturers use them?

The zero fret is part of the plan for good intonation and return from whammying. I got the idea from my small acoustic, but it made the business of minimizing friction at the nut much easier. It works. I’m really surprised that so few people have followed that up.

Freddie tended to write in non-guitar keys. Did that pose any challenges for you?

Absolutely. It made me play in different and unusual ways on the guitar. It was definitely a big influence on the way that my style developed. You get used to playing in Eb and F and all the keys which your fingers don’t want to work with. It’s very formative. It really made me find all sorts of shapes that I never would have found otherwise.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” is certainly in line with that. You’ve talked about how the ending bits in that song are tricky for you to play. Are there other pieces or sections in your catalog that you find challenging to perform?

Probably “Millionaire Waltz.” I don’t think we’ve ever managed to play that all the way through. I had a lot of fun with We Will Rock You, our musical, because I have a couple of great guitarists and a keyboard player that can sound like a guitarist if we ask him to. I’ve had a lot of fun rearranging some of our stuff to be played live, in a way that I wouldn’t be able to do on my own. But obviously some of the stuff we did on record is so complex it would take ten guitars at once to actually reproduce it.

Much has been written about your lead work and as a result your rhythm playing doesn’t get talked about as much. What can you say about the attention you put into being a great rhythm guitarist?

Ooh…you used the word “great” [laughs]. I take rhythm playing very seriously because for me, the guitar is a lead instrument and can be a voice, but it has to be always playing underneath the vocal. This is what I tell my guitarists all around the world who play in We Will Rock You—be free and be creative, but always remember that if you’re doing something that messes up the vocal, you’re in the wrong playing field. So with rhythm guitar, you have to do things that are complementary to the vocal and to the song. If they get in the way, you’ve lost the game. 

I love playing rhythm and that’s the way I started. When I was a kid I just played acoustic guitar and strummed and sang. I sang Everly Brothers songs, Tommy Steele songs, Elvis songs—so rhythm guitar is where I come from. That doesn’t tend to happen to people these days. People go straight into the widdly widdly things and they don’t really have time to get settled as rhythm players. I’m very lucky because with the AC30 and my guitar and the treble booster I can have an infinite adjustment between clean and totally distorted. That smooth transition is so useful for playing rhythm because you can make it sound big without it becoming a horrible mess. It’s just enough in just the right way to make it envelop and yet at the same time be sweet.

You mentioned your acoustic strumming. That was on display in the tune “39,” which you sang on A Night at the Opera. Yet on Live Killers and also on the live bonus tracks, you’re not singing it. Freddie’s singing it. Was that so you could focus more on the driving quality of the acoustic rhythm?

Live, it seemed a crime not to have Freddie singing. I could have sung it, but you’ve got one of the best singers in the world there so why not use him? I’ve come to the conclusion, at the end of a long road, that I’m not really a singer and I can play much better guitar if I’m not singing. There are people who can sing and play at the same time, but maybe they’re just not me. If I have a singer standing beside me, I can concentrate on making the guitar speak.

What do you think about the fascination that guitarists have with your signal chain and your tone?

It’s very flattering. It surprises me sometimes. I’m constantly amazed when people like Joe Satriani or Steve Vai—people who can play me out of this universe—say they get excited about what I do. That means a lot to me. I think it’s down to the fact that people feel something when I play. It’s a voice. If there is something special there, it’s because it’s very direct and most of the time it’s very uncomplicated. I try to speak through the guitar other than just playing notes. But it’s very hard to answer what people might like about things. It can only be because there’s some speaking going on there through the guitar.

I recently heard a couple of tunes from your pre-Queen band, Smile, and I was surprised at how heavy they were. You were really interested in powerful, heavy guitar work from an early age. What led you to that approach?

I think we all have our heroes and we all have those moments where we get excited and think, “That’s what I want to do.” So it’s a mixture of all that. For me, it probably starts with James Burton playing on Rick Nelson records and little bits and pieces I heard on Everly Brothers records, and it develops. It goes through the Shadows and Hank Marvin’s amazingly lyrical and beautiful sound, and then the beginnings of that explosion—Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck. I was inspired by that, but I was also always inspired by harmonic and melodic content. 

I talk about the Everly Brothers a lot, and Buddy Holly and the Crickets. Those harmonies electrified me. They are quite simple, but they just hit the button. Forever I was looking to records and unconsciously figuring out what everybody was singing, so I could sing all the parts on those records when I was a kid. My dream was to combine melody and harmony with a real uncompromising heavy undertone. 

Then I met Roger and he had a similar feeling about music, and Freddie as well. John came to us with a slightly different emphasis but he very much got into developing the dream. We were very lucky to find each other. It was a very organic combination of people. We just worked together really well.

Did Smile open for Hendrix?

We played in the same building but not in the same room. Actually, it wasn’t Smile. It was a group called 1984, which was before Smile. We played in the bottom refectory part and Jimi played in the great hall upstairs, which held about 1,000 people. People tell me that Jimi came in and saw us playing, and at that time we were playing “Purple Haze.” I don’t know what he thought. He probably shook his head and went off and had a laugh. But later we went up and saw him play and it was indescribably huge. I’ll never get over it. It was just beyond amazing. You couldn’t imagine how that kind of sound could come out of three people—the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It was colossal.

How does it make you feel to see younger artists like Pink, Jake Shimabukuro, and Lady Gaga pay tribute to your music and expose their fans to it?

It makes me unquestionably happy. Pink’s version of “Bohemian Rhapsody” impressed the hell out of me. I think it’s amazing. It’s the greatest accolade you could have that people in different generations—who are essentially peers, but in different years of time—come in and appreciate you. It’s the best thing that could happen, and it makes me feel very good.

Roger Taylor on Brian May: "When you hear Brian, it could only be Brian..."

Queen drummer Roger Taylor knows a thing or two about extravaganzas. He’s the guy, after all, who brought not just gongs but tympani on tour back in the ’70s. He sang those high-pitched Galileos. He’s in love with his car. He’s Roger F*cking Taylor and you’re not. So who better to choose the players and singers for the Queen-approved tribute band that will tour as the Queen Extravaganza? From a bunch of great candidates, Taylor went with Tristan Avakian and Brian Gresh to fill the guitar roles. He talked to GP about this, about his guitar collection, and about what he thinks about the guitarist he’s worked with for more than four decades.

Explain your overall concept here. What were you going for with this Queen Extravaganza?

I really got tired of seeing our music presented in the form of tribute bands, often represented as cheesy, small scale, and not very well done. I thought, “Why don’t we get our own tribute together and produce the show ourselves and throw our own energies into it?” We know our music better than anybody and I want to see it represented to people in an excellent and spectacular way.

What were you looking for in a guitarist? I’m guessing it wasn’t enough just to be able to play Brian May licks.

I didn’t want impersonators. I wanted people with their own personalities. Obviously you need a certain amount of proficiency because Brian’s stuff is very technical. I also wanted people to have a little bit of showmanship. I think that is very important.

How much deviation from Brian’s parts would be too much? It would seem like there are certain things that absolutely need to be there.

Take a song like “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” I would expect the main guitar solo to be note for note, but then at the end, we let them go off and show what they can do.

When I watched the YouTube videos for the guitar finalists, many of them seemed to be better lead players than rhythm players. Since you’re a very rhythmically oriented guy, what was your take on the rhythm guitar playing of the finalists?

That’s a good question. You tend to look at their lead playing abilities first because Brian is best known for that, I suppose. There was quite a variation in rhythm playing. Some were definitely better than others, but I think we got the right guys.

When I asked Brian about when you two met, he remarked at the tone of your drums and how you meticulously adjusted them so they were all in tune with one another. Were you struck by his style and his sound as well?

Absolutely. I had worked with quite a few guitar players, and he was so much better than any of them. He’s got this touch—you’ve either got it or you haven’t. It’s this bending touch and melodic touch, which I think makes him a unique player, and that contributes to his sound. Plus of course there’s that little fireplace he plays on. It’s a great-sounding, unique guitar. But it’s really in the touch. It’s like Jeff Beck. It could only be Jeff Beck. And when you hear Brian, it could only be Brian.

Do you have a favorite Brian May solo?

Yeah I do, actually. It’s a very obscure song called “Was It All Worth It.” It’s got a killer solo on it. “Bohemian Rhapsody”—that’s quite a solo on there. I guess “Killer Queen” has one of my favorite solos, as well.

You’re a guitarist yourself and a guitar collector. What are some interesting pieces in your collection?

I have a very early Strat, which I believe is the most valuable in the collection. I have a Broadcaster, serial number 017. That’s obviously very early, before the Telecaster. I just got a Gretsch Duo Jet, and I love that guitar. I have an interesting guitar collection. I think I’ve got more than Brian, actually. But I don’t play them like he does.

This interview was first published in Guitar Player in April 2012.

On this day in 1985, nearly 90,000 people geared up to attend the Live Aid concert at the John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia. 

Meanwhile, over the pond, Queen erupted their set at London’s Wembley Stadium with “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Released in 1975, the operatic rock opus was a massive hit for the band, selling more than a million copies while topping the charts for nine weeks.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” is memorable for several reasons – not least of which the first epic guitar solo which segues into the song’s operatic section. And in this historical live rendition, Brian May brings the band’s masterpiece to a crescendo with one of rock’s best-known electric guitar lead breaks using his “Old Lady” in front of a wall of Vox AC30 amplifiers.

Coincidentally, Queen’s 1973 debut album, Queen, was released also on this day. Buy it here.

Brian May doesn’t recall particulars about every Queen show. But there is one – almost 50 years ago at London’s Imperial College, where the guitarist had previously studied physics as an undergrad – that sticks with him.  

Why? For one, it was Queen’s first gig to be reviewed in a newspaper – and if you’re wondering, yes, it was a positive write-up. For another, because, in the 73-year-old guitarist’s words, “We had our full complement – we knew we finally had the right people in the band.” 

These people, of course, were drummer Roger Taylor, with whom May had previously played in the late-’60s rock-pop-blues-progressive outfit Smile, Zanzibar-born singer Farrokh Bulsara, who by that time was answering to the name Freddie Mercury, and fresh-faced bassist John Deacon. 

“So that was a big deal, for starters,” May says. But beyond the good reviews and winning combination of players onstage, May also recalls that performance being a standout thanks to the audience’s reaction.  

“We had our first album coming out, and it felt like, for the first time, people knew what to expect from us,” he says. “The effect was phenomenal, because instead of going onstage and trying to persuade people that they might like what we do, we went onstage to a crowd of people who knew our music and wanted it. And they were giving us the energy to propel us to make those sounds that they’d cottoned on to.  

“The feeling was incredible – it was like having your finger in a dam and a little trickle of water is coming out, and then suddenly the whole thing breaks down and you have this great, wonderful flood of energy.” 

Today, Queen may not look quite the same – Mercury passed away from AIDS-related complications in 1991, and Deacon retired from music toward the end of that decade. But that flood of energy persists, with May and Taylor continuing to rock arenas the world over with current singer Adam Lambert. 

Lest there be any doubt, 50 years after Deacon joined the band, in March 1971 – thus cementing the “full complement,” as it were – Queen remain as resonant, beloved, and popular as ever. The 2018 film Bohemian Rhapsody smashed box office records to become the all-time highest-grossing music biopic, with worldwide receipts of nearly $1 billion and a quartet of Academy Awards to its name.

As for the music? Using just one metric, Spotify, as an example, “Bohemian Rhapsody” has racked up close to a billion and a half streams on its way to becoming the most-listened-to classic-rock song on the service, but Queen’s next four top-streamed tracks – “Don’t Stop Me Now,” “Another One Bites the Dust,” “Under Pressure,” and “We Will Rock You” – all handily dwarf the numbers of anything by the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and many of their other rock-legend peers.

It’s a “phenomenon,” as May puts it, and one that seemingly has no end. As for how he explains it? Despite Queen’s much venerated flair for grand and wildly dramatic musical gestures, “our songs were never elitist,” May says. 

“At their core, they were songs about the joys and the sorrows and the pain that every man, woman, and child feels. They express the extreme emotions of non-extreme people – people that think they’re ordinary. And I think that’s why they have aligned with listeners.”

In honor of Queen’s 50th anniversary, May sat down with Guitar Player to look back on some of these songs, as well as recall key moments (the recording of their 1973 self-titled debut; their eye-opening 1974 tour with Mott the Hoople) and the various components – including his legendary Red Special guitar, homemade amps, and modded pedals – that have been crucial to the band’s development. But even with so much history behind him, May is still firmly focused on the present.

Late 2020 saw the release of the Queen + Adam Lambert concert document Live Around the World, which compiled performances from the group’s past six years on tour, and the plan going forward – pandemic permitting, of course – is to continue that around-the-globe jaunt once the world is safe for arena-sized pomp-rock spectacles again.

So May is quick to say that while the golden anniversary is a nice milestone, it presents at least two of the band’s members with a dilemma. “Roger and I asked, ‘Do we really want to be celebrating the fact that we’ve been here for 50 years?’” May says, and laughs. 

“Instead, we decided, ‘Why don’t we just celebrate the fact that we’re here, that we’re still alive and, potentially, still performing.’” The show, as a great British rock band once sang, must go on. “The past is there, but why get all nostalgic?” May reasons. “We’ll just press on with it.”’

The characteristic Queen sound is a complex thing. But it’s all there – if perhaps in somewhat embryonic form – right at the beginning, on your 1973 self-titled debut. From the harmonized guitars to the stacked vocals to the epic compositions, you were already enacting some fairly advanced ideas, both musically and technologically.

You’re right, yeah. It was all bottled up in our heads and unable to get out. And even with the first album, it was a hard job getting it out because we were doing that record in little bits and pieces of time. 

The people at the studio [Trident Studios in London] gave us the crumbs from the table. We would work during the cancellations or at three o’clock in the morning: “Come on boys, do a couple of hours!” So although we had the run of a good studio, we didn’t really have the opportunity to flex our muscles until the second album, when we actually had studio time booked. 

But yeah, it was all there. We dreamed of these big vocal harmonies and guitar harmonies and we were reaching into a place where we could visualize that. Also, we were inspired by what was around us. Nobody creates in a vacuum. 

So we were looking at bands like the Who. And I remember going to see [Scottish pop group] Marmalade at a local gig in Twickenham and hearing those amazing harmonies with the guitar behind it and thinking, How far could you take that? What would it sound like if you went to an entirely new place with it? And we were ready to do that. We just needed to get the canvas to paint on and a decent amount of colors to use.

You didn’t have much studio experience as individuals or as a band, and yet you were able to realize these big, layered productions – “Liar,” “My Fairy King,” “Keep Yourself Alive” – right off the bat. How?

We had some good help. We had [producer] Roy Thomas Baker, who was the technical rock that we could bounce off of. Roy was a very different person in those days. He was highly technical, but not very interested in the art, if you like. But we had the art. We knew what we wanted it to sound like. We just needed someone who could make it happen. Roy was very good at doing that. 

Also, we had our textbooks – we had the Beatles, we had Jimi Hendrix. We immersed ourselves in those records and figured out how the studio was being used, how those toys were being brought to bear and how they were employed as an augmentative factor in the songwriting. And, of course, we came along a little bit later, and so instead of 16 tracks we had 24 tracks, and then 48 tracks. We had better compressors, limiters – you name it. We were there, waiting to get our hands on every new toy.

By the same token, your guitar approach is more or less fully formed on Queen. On the very first song, “Keep Yourself Alive,” we’re introduced to the Brian May sound and style that we would hear for the next five decades. 

I played then not very differently from the way I play now, I think. I suppose there was this kind of immersion in what we wanted to be, and you can see it in Freddie as well – all of Freddie’s amazing range and power and range of emotions was there, too. 

It just needed a chance to get out and be polished. As for my guitar, I could hear the sound in my head, but I couldn’t get it until I went to the Marquee Club on Wardour Street [in London] and saw Rory Gallagher. 

My mates and I used to go every Thursday, I think it was, to the Marquee to see Rory, and one night at the end of the show we hid away while everyone was being taken out of the place. Then we snuck out and talked to Rory. 

We were just boys, but he was so polite and gentle, like, “Yeah, I’ll show you how I do this.” So I said, “Well, what is your sound?” He told me, “It’s very simple. It’s just this guitar, this beautiful amp” – which was a Vox AC30 – “and this little box here between the two,” which was a [Dallas] Rangemaster [treble booster]. 

And so I went out and got an AC30, got a Rangemaster, and plugged my own homemade guitar [the Red Special] into it. And glory be, the sound was there! It sang. I had always wanted it to sing, because I wanted it to be my voice. And it sang from that moment on. It hasn’t really changed in all these years. It’s slightly polished up, but it’s the same thing.

The Red Special, of course, is today one of the most famous guitar designs in rock history. But back then it was just something you and your father had built together in the early 1960s. Add in the fact that you prefer a sixpence for a pick, and that, while you had a Vox and a Rangemaster, you would also occasionally record with a rudimentary amplifier – the “Deacy” – that John Deacon built from parts he found in a dumpster. It’s amazing to think that, given the elegance and high production value of a Queen song, you were using a fair amount of homemade gear. 

Well, you know, you don’t need to spend a fortune on gear – you just need to know what you want and beaver away until you get it. And Queen songs, I mean, they are big productions, but I think we were also very conscious that the production wasn’t us – the songs were. We were about conveying emotion and making contact with people.

One of your first major tours, in support of 1974’s Queen II, was as the support act for Mott the Hoople. It was also your first time in America as well. What was that experience like? 

It was mind-blowing. I mean, we were kids. We’d never done any of this stuff. We’d spent most of our youth at home dreaming of what it might be like to travel and play music, but what happened was way beyond anything that we could have imagined. And Mott the Hoople were the perfect people to go out with because they were the model of how a rock band can be on tour. 

I remember when somebody told us we were going out in support of Mott, I thought, Eh, they’re not bad, I suppose. I didn’t think of them the way I thought of the Who or Led Zeppelin. But once we went out with them and we were able to see what happened every night and every day, it was like a master class.

Those guys knew how to communicate with their audience. And they knew how to enjoy themselves without being in any way destructive to anyone. They lived the life to the full. We learned a lot every day. 

Now, the other thing that was happening on that tour is that people were actually responding to us, which nobody really had anticipated. People started to turn up to the shows dressed how we had started to dress – in the white theatrical costumes and things.

And people of all sexes turned up being very proud of who they were. It felt like a very liberated audience that came to see us, and that in turn allowed us to go out there and learn how to be ourselves. America taught us how to be rock stars, without a doubt. Mott did, too. That’s a big thing to say, but I think it’s true.

On that tour you also experienced severe health issues – you were diagnosed with hepatitis, and you collapsed in New York and had to be rushed back home to Britain. Is it true that you were worried you would be sacked from the band? 

Oh, yeah. I also thought I might not pull through at one point. It was pretty serious. I had a very serious condition of the duodenum, and it was by no means certain I would pull through. 

Then when I had an operation, it seemed like a very slow recovery, and I thought, Maybe the band needs to move on. But Freddie came to the hospital and said, “Don’t worry, darling, we’re waiting for you.” And then they brought stuff in to play for me, including “Killer Queen.” And I got very critical, being the arrogant person I am. I went, “Yeah, but this is too harsh. You need to redo it.” And Freddie said, “Okay, we’ll redo it when you come out.” And we did.

You said that to him from your hospital bed? 

I did. But then they also tried to make me laugh. Because that was one the thing I couldn’t do, recovering from the massive stuff I was recovering from. So it was kind of funny. But not funny for me. It was painful.

You wrote the song “Now I’m Here” [from 1974’s Sheer Heart Attack] about that whole experience – the Mott tour, going to America. 

Yes, I did. That song describes the experience of that first tour better than I can do it in words. It’s the feeling of, I think, this kind of Technicolor romp through a new kind of space, a new universe. It was an amazing time for us.

That album kicks off with “Brighton Rock,” which features an extended guitar break that replicates a portion of your unaccompanied solo spot from the Queen II tour. 

That’s a rather unorthodox move, and maybe every guitar player’s dream – putting your live solo spot into a studio recording. [laughs] Well, Van Halen did it, a little bit later.

Sure, but “Eruption” was sort of its own thing, rather than something fully inserted into the middle of what is otherwise, relatively speaking, a straightforward rock song. 

Again, it was ideas locked up in a bottle waiting to get out. And that whole solo came together live, really. I had wanted to be able to do guitar harmonies onstage, and I thought, How do we do that? 

So I did it with delay, taking an Echoplex apart and building a new box with a longer rail and more tape to make a longer delay time. And then I thought, Well, if I have another delay, then I can do three-part harmonies, which are always much better than two-part harmonies… So I built another one. 

And that of course opens the door to all this other stuff, because you’re essentially playing a kind of fugue with yourself. So by the time we got to making the Sheer Heart Attack record, I had been playing the solo live, so it wasn’t that difficult for me to go into a version that could be in that song. But it didn’t start off in that song. It started off in “Son and Daughter” [from Queen] I think, on the first tour. But it just seemed to work better in what was then a new song, “Brighton Rock.”

You mentioned Van Halen, which brings to mind one of my favorite solos of yours, from “It’s Late” [from 1977’s News of the World]. You do some two-handed tapping in that, about six months before “Eruption” was released.

Yeah, I picked it up from… I wish I knew who it was that I saw. I went into a bar in Texas when we were on tour, and I saw this guy playing. And he would be bending strings, like we all do, but then he’d put his right hand onto a fret and make this kind of singing sound. And I thought, Oh, that’s a beautiful thing to do; he creates a completely new dimension. 

I went up to him after the show and I said, “I’m telling you now, I’m going to nick that from you.” He said, “Great, go for it.” I asked him, “How did you figure out how to do that?” And he told me, “I got it from Billy Gibbons.” Now, I ought to talk to Billy about it, because I can’t put my finger on the piece where Billy did it. But somewhere in the murky past, somebody thought up that technique.

Did you ever talk to Eddie about it? 

I did talk to Eddie about it, and he said, “Yeah, I copped that.” [laughs] But I think he was already onto it. Strangely enough though, I recently came across a live recording of Van Halen doing “Now I’m Here.” It’s great. They’re sort of doing us. And I think the blurb that went along with it online said something like, “Edward hadn’t developed his style yet.” But I don’t agree. 

You listen to what he was doing and he’s already him. He’s already doing his own thing. But he’s doing it on my song, which makes me very happy.

Those early Van Halen live recordings and demos are available online, and I would agree with you – he sounds exactly like the Eddie we all know and love. 

Oh yeah, genius. He was genius from birth, I think. And he’s no longer around, which is so painful, so hard. I just wish he was here.

Looking at Queen’s career more broadly, one thing that I’ve always felt sets the band apart is the diversity of the music. For some people, “Bohemian Rhapsody” is the defining Queen song. For others it might be “We Will Rock You” or “Killer Queen” or “Another One Bites the Dust.” And yet, each tune could be the work of an entirely different group in terms of sound and style. How were you able to shapeshift so expertly while at the same time maintaining a distinct “Queen-ness”? 

Probably because we had four writers competing for rotation. We had a collective vision, but we also had visions which were uniquely personal. Also, there was a realization at a certain point that we could do anything we like. 

We could explore any frontier. And we’re lucky that we have an audience that has allowed us to do that. They didn’t want to put us in a box. So the writing is a big part, but there were some points where we would question it, particularly with Roger and John, who were at opposite ends of the spectrum. 

John was very much leaning toward funk from the beginning, whereas Roger was leaning toward the more extreme end of rock and roll. And it was questionable sometimes whether that could all be contained under the umbrella of what Queen is. But somehow we were able to do it. And somehow it all counted, and all became part of us.

To that point, it’s amazing how “what Queen is” continues to be redefined. For example, “Don’t Stop Me Now” [from 1978’s Jazz] was not a huge hit, and yet it has become one of your most popular songs, with close to a billion listens on Spotify. 

It’s a phenomenon, that song. I’ve seen it played at all sorts of functions. It’s become the most requested song at hen parties and stag parties and marriages and weddings and funerals, just because it brings joy. And I think this is well known, but I didn’t really take to it in the beginning. I didn’t feel totally comfortable with what Freddie was singing at the time. 

I found it a little bit too flippant in view of the dangers out there of AIDS and stuff. But as time went on, I began to realize that it gave people great joy. So I don’t think you need to look any further than that. And I think that’s what Freddie had the amazing knack of doing. He could put his button on things that make people feel a bit more alive. So I don’t have any quarrel with it now. And I enjoy playing it onstage. 

I just put a little bit of extra rock in it, ’cause that’s the way I am. You can hear it on our new album, Live Around the World, and the audience is so loud singing along that it was hard to even mix it. But it’s wonderful that everybody wants to sing that. And in singing it with us, they express their own joy and their own determination to make the best out of their lives, and to keep on and not get knocked down by things. It’s an amazing kind of spiritual lift. That’s what the song has become.

It’s remarkable that a song you once viewed as dangerous has become, interpreted through the lens of your audience decades later, a life-affirming statement. 

You know, I had to give in. [laughs] It’s a great song – there’s no getting around it. It moves people, makes them smile and jump up. What more could you ask for?

I know you get asked this a lot, but could you ever see a new Queen record happening? 

I always say, “I don’t know.” It would have to be a very spontaneous moment. Actually, Adam, Roger, and myself have been in the studio trying things out, just because things came up. But up to this point we haven’t felt that anything we’ve done has hit the button in the right way. 

So it’s not like we’re closed to the idea, it’s just that it hasn’t happened yet. And to be honest, life has now taken a turn in which it’s very difficult to explore an avenue like that. Things may change, but I don’t think they’re going to change very fast.

Until you can play your guitar on a stage again, you’ve kept yourself busy on social media. Over the past year I’ve watched you give lessons on how to play the “Bohemian Rhapsody” solo, perform virtually with guitarists like Nuno Bettencourt and Zakk Wylde, and also jam with Queen fans around the world. I’ve even seen you take part in a TikTok challenge. You’ve been visible in a way that I imagine is very heartening to your fans. And you also seem incredibly comfortable operating in the online world. 

Well, I’m a performer, and performers are all struggling to be heard, aren’t they? And in this new situation that we’re in now, the only way to be heard is on the social media sites. And so Instagram has become a little platform for me to play on. 

I don’t get instant applause, but I get a lot of response in the comments, and I get people actually participating. People take up the challenge of jamming along with me, and then they put it out there so I can see it. It’s very interactive. So it’s great. Sometimes I look at it and I think, Yeah, that’s become what I do.

After 50 years, that’s sort of a wild place to wind up. 

It is. Now, I do other things as well. I’m pretty deeply into science, as you probably know. I’m working on various different projects with different NASA teams, and I’m editing a new book on the birth of stereoscopy. So it’s not like I’m stuck for things to do with my time. 

Also, I had real physical problems last year. I had a long period of being out of action because of a heart attack, and various weeks of repercussions that came after that. 

But at the heart of it, I’m a musician and I need to play. And in a sense, I suppose, I need to see people’s faces. I need to feel that I can get a response and do the thing that musicians do, which is communicate. Right now, the only thing that is different is in the way we do it. But other than that, it never changes.

Even those with a passing acquaintance with classic rock can reel off the hits from a Queen setlist. ”Bohemian Rhapsody,” ”We Will Rock You” and ”Killer Queen” are part of the pop-cultural furniture.

But going off-piste with the Queen catalog always bears fruit, and we have dug in the crate for the tracks that forever seem to be passed over, but can more than hold their own. Moreover, they once more demonstrate the breadth of imagination in Queen's songwriting. Scarcely has a band carved out their history in rock with such a sense of Baroque, operatic flair. 

1. Goin' Back (Larry Lurex Single, 1973)

The artist name on the single was Larry Lurex, but this languid cover of a Carole King classic was really a pre-fame Freddie Mercury, Brian May and Roger Taylor doing a favor for Trident Studios’ house engineer Robin Geoffrey Cable. If Phil Spector had produced Queen, it would have sounded like this.

2. My Fairy King (Queen, 1973)

The cogs of Freddie Mercury’s musical imagination were working overtime even on their first album. A multi-part mini-epic arriving in a swirl of leather, chiffon and black nail polish, “My Fairy King” kicked off the journey that eventually culminated in “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

3. Some Day One Day (Queen II, 1974)

Queen veered close to prog on their second album, but Brian May’s otherworldly semi-ballad took off somewhere else entirely. Hazy and unknowable, they never sounded like this again.

4. Tenement Funster (Sheer Heart Attack, 1974)

Queen’s third album was an entire musical universe in itself. Amid the dandy pop, playful ragtime and proto-thrash metal aggro was Roger Taylor’s love letter to the aspirational power of rock and roll.

5. The Prophet's Song (A Night at the Opera, 1975)

“Bohemian Rhapsody” grabbed the headlines, and just about everything else, but Brian May’s eight-minute epic is no less ambitious or insane, not least in the fever-dream chorale at its center. It kicks back in with a killer riff, too.

6. Drowse (A Day at the Races, 1976)

No member of Queen seemed as happy in their own skin as Roger Taylor, and “Drowse” reflected that. This was the drummer as an old man looking back at his younger self and saying, “Wasn’t it brilliant?”

7. It's Late (News of the World, 1977)

One of the great Queen tracks: six minutes of escalating sexual tension set to a blockbusting Brian May riff, it builds and builds before exploding in a big sweaty mess. When it’s done you’ll be reaching for a smoke.

8. Princes of the Universe (A Kind of Magic, 1986)

Part of the soundtrack to cult classic Highlander, this sword-swinging monster sees May and Taylor cranking up the volume and having a blast doing it — although not as much as Mercury when he hollers “Bring on the girls!” with his tongue jammed firmly in his cheek.

9. Ride the Wild Wind (Innuendo, 1991)

It’s hard not to view Queen’s swan song through the prism of impending mortality. “Ride the Wild Wind” pulses with lust-for-life romance, but a current of sadness swirls beneath it. The line “Gonna leave it all behind, get out of the rat race” is defiant and heartbreaking.

10. Time to Shine (The Cosmos Rocks, 2002)

May and Taylor’s union with Paul Rodgers worked better when they weren’t trying to sound like Queen, as this soaring highlight from their sole album together proves. It makes you wonder what would have happened if they’d stuck it out.

Apparently, no-one told Arielle it’s difficult to come up with something unique in the world of rock guitar. For years now, the singer-songwriter and six-stringer has followed her own singular path in the music universe, from appearing in the London stage production of Queen’s We Will Rock You musical to working with artists like Nuno Bettencourt, Eric Clapton and Vince Gill. 

And it’s all culminated in the release of her brand-new solo record, Analog Girl in a Digital World, as well as her signature guitar, the Arielle, a uniquely designed offset that represents Brian May Guitars’ first foray into a model that’s not the Red Special. The guitar represents a full-circle moment for Arielle, given that it was Queen, and Brian May, that led her to the instrument. 

“When I was six years old, I was living in Northern California, and a babysitter showed me a video of Live at Wembley,” she recalls. “I saw the band, and I saw this guy with cool hair and a neat guitar, making cool poses, and it moved me to where I needed to be a guitarist, and that needed to be my life. I had to be like him.”

By the age of 10, Arielle was playing guitar and graduated high school early in order to attend Musicians Institute in L.A. It was during this time, in 2007,  that she befriended May while he was out promoting his astrophysics book, Bang! The Complete History of the Universe, in Hollywood. Arielle went to a book signing and brought along her guitar, a homemade creation (much like May’s Red Special) named Two-Tone. 

“We started talking and connected pretty quickly, and we became pen pals,” Arielle says. She would occasionally send May videos of her performing. “He told me, ‘That’s really good – you should audition for my musical.’ So at 18, I got a visa, packed a suitcase and a couple of guitars, moved to England and landed a spot in We Will Rock You.” 

Afterward, Arielle came back to the U.S. and launched her own career in earnest. Bettencourt, she said,  “took me under his wing for a while,” producing songs and helping her land her first record deal. From there she moved to Nashville, was mentored by Vince Gill, and toured and worked with Clapton, Gregg Allman, Graham Nash, Heart, Joan Jett and others.  

Despite her talent for six-string shapeshifting, at heart Arielle is her own artist, as exemplified on Analog Girl in a Digital World. The new effort is rooted in her love for ’60s and ’70s rock, but with a fresh and decidedly modern approach. 

She cut half of the album’s songs in analog and half in digital, with the basic tracks recorded live, in single takes. The result is a record that runs the gamut from straight-up classic rock (“You’re Still a Man”), sparkling power-pop (“Digital World”) and Byrds-like jangle (the first single, “Peace of Mind”) to intimate, acoustic folk (“Living in a Fortress”), slow-burning balladry (“Inside & Outside”) and wild, Queen-like guitar freak-outs (“I’d Rather Be in England”), all of it informed by Arielle’s distinctive songwriting and guitar perspective.

Much of that perspective comes courtesy of her original Two-Tone, as well as a prototype of the new BMG Arielle. She was inspired to build her own guitar after learning how May had constructed his Red Special as a teenager. When fans asked where they could buy one, she and a friend decided to build a few per month, by hand. 

“That’s when Brian suggested, ‘Why doesn’t Brian May Guitars do it?’” she recalls. The result is a true collaboration. While the new Arielle features the Two-Tone’s body shape, color scheme and other elements, it also boasts a very Red Special–like headstock, pickup set and switching system. 

“We changed a few specs, but I think overall the really relevant features have stayed the same,” Arielle says. “It’s not called Two-Tone because it’s not a replica of my original guitar. It’s its own thing.”

• Analog Girl in a Digital World is out now.

In 1992, Brian May set out on his own with his debut solo album, Back to the Light. Released less than a year after Freddie Mercury’s death, the album was a welcome gift to Queen fans, and May did not disappoint, delivering a strong set of tracks that included the UK Top 10 hits “Too Much Love Will Kill You” and “Driven By You.”

Out of print for several years, Back to the Light will return soon in an expanded reissue overseen by May. “I’m working night and day right now to bring back this album,” he says. “It’s quite tricky under lockdown – but it will soon be ready – all remastered and polished and with a nice little package of bonus tracks.”

You’ve spent part of lockdown working on the reissue of your 1992 debut solo album, Back to the Light. How is that coming along?

Yeah, that’s my new thing and I’m very excited about it. The first idea was, “Should I do a box set?” Because my solo stuff isn’t out there – it’s all been deleted and I don’t have a record contract. But then I thought, Why don’t I tackle one project at a time? So I’m starting with Back to the Light.

We’ve unearthed a few outtakes and bits and pieces, and I’m writing some new retrospective liner notes. And we remastered it to make it what it needs to be in the 21st century. And it’s really produced a big effect in me. 

I find myself getting very emotional listening to that stuff because I put my heart and soul into it at the time. Also, I sang on it. I never became the greatest singer in the world, but I did get good enough to express the emotions I was feeling at the time.

In addition to handling vocals on the album, you went out on tour and sang these songs onstage. Did assuming the role of frontman give you a renewed appreciation for Freddie and what it means to be the guy everyone’s eyes are focused on, in particular, seeing as this album was released soon after his passing? 

It did. It was heaven and hell, but mainly hell because I never felt I was good enough. But it was also heavenly because I had the chance to be out there and just be me and express myself. There’s an enormous amount of grieving in my solo career, because, first of all, I’m grieving for Freddie. And then I was also grieving for Queen.

I was determined not to look back and not to be defined by the band. I was out there being Brian May of the Brian May Band, and people would ask me about Queen and I would say, “No, I don’t want to talk about Queen. That was then and this is now.” But you know, it’s like, “He doth protest too much.” Because I was part of Queen, and I had to go back in and reappraise that at some point.

But singing was tough, and eventually I gave it up. I realized I would rather play alongside someone else who was singing. And luckily that happened. Roger and I got back together with Paul Rodgers, and we went and did some stuff.

And then we found this precocious boy named Adam, and Adam was able to do things that… well, he’s able to do anything we throw at him! So that’s been an extraordinary voyage of rediscovery and re-interpretation. 

We’ve been lucky. I’ve been lucky. And I no longer want to be that frontman. I did it for a while, and there were some great rewards. But I prefer to play my guitar, honestly.