In all the years Brian May and Freddie Mercury wrote and performed together in Queen, they had their share of disagreements.
But May says they didn’t see eye to eye on one of his most famous and beloved guitar solos. Had he not stood his ground, it likely wouldn’t have made it onto the record.
“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!'”
The singer, to whom May included a touching tribute on his first-ever signature guitar, eventually relented when he admitted, “‘Well, it does need a solo. I need you to take over the vocal.'”
As May explains, this back-and-forth between the pair wasn’t uncommon.
“It’s the way we thought about things,” he details. “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.”
May says he feels justified given fans' reaction to the song.
“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.”
May’s guitar tone can be explained by a collection of unique elements. There's his one-of-a-kind Red Special, a guitar he was told wasn’t good enough when he first started playing the homemade axe. There's his use of a Treble Booster and AC30 amplifier, which he picked up with a little help from Rory Gllagher, as well as his unusual choice of a guitar pick — an old British coin.
In other news, May recently performed a “Bohemian Rhapsody” guest spot at Coachella with Benson Boone.
