Brian May says he and singer Freddie Mercury disagreed about putting a guitar solo solo on a classic Queen track, and that it only happened because the guitarist stood his ground.
“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.”
“[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 has 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.
