Brian May

Brian Harold May (London, England, July 19, 1947) is a British musician, composer, singer, multi-instrumentalist, activist and astrophysicist of Jewish descent. He is known for being the guitarist, songwriter, vocalist, and sometimes keyboardist for the British band Queen. He wrote many of Queen's songs, such as "Now I'm Here", "'39", "Sweet Lady", "Tie Your Mother Down", "We Will Rock You", "Fat Bottomed Girls", "Save Me", "Sail Away Sweet Sister& #34;, "Flash", "Hammer to Fall", "Who Wants to Live Forever", "I Want It All", & #34;The Show Must Go On", "Headlong", "Too Much Love Will Kill You" or "No-One but You (Only the Good Die Young)". He uses an electric guitar made by him and his father, called the Red Special. the most important and original guitarists in popular music. In 2003 and 2011, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 26th on its list of the greatest guitarists of all time. In 2005, a Planet Rock interview ranked him as the 7th place of the best guitarists. In 2020 he was chosen as the best guitarist of all time by the readers of Total guitar magazine.

In 2005 he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his "services to the music industry". May earned a PhD in astrophysics from Imperial College, and since April 2007, he has been elected honorary chancellor of John Moores University.

In 2022 he was made a Knight of the Order of the British Empire (Sir Brian Harold May). Finally, on March 14, 2023, he was knighted by King Carlos III.

Biography

Born on 19 July 1947 in Hampton Hill, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. He is the only son of Harold May and Ruth Irving Fletcher (of Scottish origin). His father was a London-born electronics engineer who served in the Royal Air Force during World War II, and his mother was Scottish, serving in the Women's Royal Air Force. As a child Brian showed great interest in music and astronomy. He began to play the ukulele, an instrument that his father played very well. At the age of 7 he received his first acoustic guitar as a gift. His father was a smoker for a long time. As a consequence, May hates tobacco, to the point of banning it at his most recent concerts.

He was a student at Hampton School, where he earned top marks in physics and mathematics. During his studies, he met Tim Staffel, with whom he formed his first band, 1984, after George Orwell's novel of the same name.

He was married to Chrissie Mullen from 1974 to 1988. With her he had 3 children, Jimmy (born June 15, 1978), Louisa (born May 22, 1981), and Emily Ruth (born June 17, 1981). February 1987). After divorcing Chrissie in 1988, he began a relationship with actress Anita Dobson. After 12 years, they married in 2000.

Suffered from severe depression in the late 1980s and early 1990s, to the point of contemplating suicide over his troubled first marriage, feeling a failure as a husband and father over his father's death and illness and death of Freddie Mercury.

In May 2020, he sustained a buttock injury and a heart attack, requiring three stents to be inserted into three blocked arteries.

In December 2022 he received a knighthood from King Charles III of the United Kingdom, now officially his name is Sir Brian Harold May.

Artistic career

Smile

In 1968, while studying at Imperial College, he formed the band Smile with fellow singer and bassist Tim Staffel. After leaving several announcements at the university requesting a drummer, Roger Taylor would join them. After two years, Staffel left the band in 1970 with a set list of just nine songs. Eventually, they were joined as vocalist by a young man named Farrokh Bulsara, who had declared himself a fan. On December 22, 1992, during a concert by Roger's band, The Cross, Smile reunited to perform 2 songs: "Earth" and "If I Were A Carpenter".

Queen

Live Queen in Frankfurt am Main (Germany) in 1984 during The Works Tour. (from left to right) Deacon in the bass, Mercury in the main voice, Taylor in the drums, and May in guitar and choirs.

In 1970, after incorporating Farrokh Bulsara, now Freddie Mercury, they named the band Queen. After going through several bassists, they began looking for a permanent one, and that's how they met John Deacon. After an audition, Deacon was brought into the band in March 1971.

Along with Mercury they were the main songwriters for Queen. May wrote songs for all of the albums and several of the band's worldwide hits, including "We Will Rock You, "Tie Your Mother Down", "Fat Bottomed Girls", "Keep Yourself Alive", "Who Wants to Live Forever?", "Hammer to Fall", "Save Me", "I Want it All", "The Show Must Go On" and "No-One But You (Only The Good Die Young)"

As a singer in the band he performed on songs like "Some Day One Day", "She Makes Me (Stormtrooper in Stilettos)", "' 39", "Good Company", "Long Away", "Sail Away Sweet Sister (To The Sister I Never Had)", " All Dead All Dead", Leaving Home Ain't Easy", "Sleeping On The Sidewalk", "Who Wants to Live Forever?", "I Want it All", ''Lost Opportunity'', "Let Me Live", and "No-One But You (Only The Good Die Young)"

From 2005 to 2009, Brian worked on the post-Queen project, Queen + Paul Rodgers, which paired May and Taylor with former Free and Bad Company singer Paul Rodgers. With this band they made a successful tour called "The Return of The Champions" (The return of the champions) in the year 2005.

On September 15, 2008, Queen+PR's first studio album, titled "The Cosmos Rocks"", was released, and is their second under the Queen name since the death of Freddie Mercury, after "Made in Heaven". The album contains fourteen new songs, including the hit single 'Say It's Not True'.

At the end of 2008 the World Tour "The Cosmos Tour" finished, which took them through Europe, Asia, North America, and was the reason for the return of May and Taylor to play on stages in South America. After the tour ended, Paul Rodgers announced that he was amicably ending his collaboration with Queen.

May is known for strumming the strings on a British sixpence. According to him, with it he achieves a much more metallic sound with more body. His guitar solos and historical riffs were endowed with harmony, what Freddie did with his voice, Brian could say he did with his Red Special guitar.

Soloist

May in 1998.

In 1983, members of Queen experimented with solo work. On April 21 and 22 in Los Angeles, May recorded her first solo effort; a mini EP titled Star Fleet Project , on which she collaborated with Eddie Van Halen. In 1986 she collaborated with Ramoncín playing the guitar on the song "Como un susurro".

On April 5, 1992, five months after Mercury's death, he organized the "Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert," along with Roger Taylor and John Deacon, to raise funds for the AIDS cure.

On September 28 of the same year, he released his album Back to the Light which had great success with songs like "Too Much Love Will Kill You" and "Resurrection". At the end of the year he formed The Brian May Band, with members such as Cozy Powell on drums and Spike Edney on keyboards, heading out on a world tour, which led to the release of a live album titled "Live at the Brixton". Academy & # 34;.

After the promotional tour ended on December 18, 1993, May returned with Taylor and Deacon, the surviving members of Queen, to record the band's final effort, Made in Heaven.

In 1998 he released his solo work Another World. In 1999 she composed the soundtrack for the film & # 34; Fury & # 34;, and in 2000 the album of the same was released.

In 2006 he performed with McFly the songs "Don't Stop Me Now" and "5 Colors in Her Hair" during the Motion in The Ocean Tour.

In that same year, May collaborated on the recording of the debut album of the Spanish artist Momo Cortés (Constant Contradiction). Specifically for the theme "So much love is not good" Spanish adaptation by the Spanish artist of May's own classic "Too Much Love Will Kill You".

Kerry Ellis and Brian May at BBC Proms in the Park (2010).

May has collaborated extensively with singer and musical actress Kerry Ellis, whom she met after she was selected to play one of the lead roles in the play We Will Rock You. He has produced on Ellis' first EP; Wicked in Rock , released in 2008. She also produced and performed all the instruments and backing vocals on Ellis' first album; Anthems released in 2010. Since then, he began appearing in most of Ellis' performances. In May 2011 May began a tour, named the "Anthems Tour" throughout the United Kingdom with Kerry Ellis in which they performed songs from the singer's latest album, as well as well-known Queen songs. The tour began on May 1, 2011 at the Royal Albert Hall in London in a double performance and ended in the English city of Cranwell on July 16, 2011, passing through various cities and towns throughout Great Britain.

Most recently, May collaborated playing guitar on New York singer Lady Gaga's single "Yoü and I" from the album Born This Way. On August 28, 2011, she performed the song alongside the singer (played as hers hers male alter ego Jo Calderone), at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles. On August 26, 2011, she performed "We Will Rock You" and "Welcome to the Black Parade" with the band My Chemical Romance at the Reading Festival in the UK.

On January 1, 2019, his song "New Horizons" was released, in honor of NASA's New Horizons mission, of which he is a part.

The Red Special

Red Special's body.

The story of this guitar began in 1963, when Brian May, at just 16 years old, realized that with his acoustic guitar he couldn't interpret the songs he heard on the radio and tried to emulate. So he decided to trade his acoustic guitar for an electric one, but at that time young Brian did not have the money to buy the expensive Gibson Les Paul Golden and Fender Stratocasters that he had in the market. So with the help of his father, Harold May (an electrical engineer), he decided to embark on a difficult project: making his own guitar, a job he began in August 1963 in a bedroom in his converted house. In workshop. For the choice of material, Brian had to do a lot of research. For example, for the mast they used wood from a fireplace that a family friend was going to throw away. The wood was good-quality mahogany, and although it was old and a bit rotten, Brian managed to shape it by hand. Other elements of the instrument are sewing needles and mother-of-pearl buttons.

Brian continued to search for a signature sound. After much experimentation, he discovered that playing with a sixpence piece as a pick produced a pure, clean sound. That's the technique he used on Queen's records and concerts.

This "Red Special", the first guitar he made with the help of his father, is the one he owns and uses today.

Equipment and skills

As for other skills outside of the world of music, Brian May is an expert stereoscopic photographer. Throughout his life he has created his own stereoscopic cameras by joining two ordinary cameras on different supports and has perfected the assembly to suit him. He literally has taken tens of thousands of 3D photos on tours that he did with Freddie Mercury. These two-camera setups for taking 3D pictures are not unique to May, for almost as long as photography was invented there have been photographers taking 3D pictures. Recently, Brian May has published a book with all those photographs from his tours and concerts, which includes a custom viewer to view the photographs in 3D.

Scientific career

He graduated in Physics and Astronomy from Imperial College London in 1968. For his PhD in astrophysics, Brian studied the reflection of light from interplanetary dust in the Solar System. His thesis, An Investigation of Motion of Zodiacal Dust Particles, is based on his observations at the Teide Observatory, at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (Universidad de La Laguna), on the island of Tenerife, during the years 1971 and 1972 of whose works he made two publications. The first, MgI emission in the spectrum of the night sky, was published in the prestigious journal Nature on December 15, 1972, while the Investigation on the movement of zodiacal dust particles appeared in the monthly journal of the English Royal Astronomical Society in 1975.

However, May stopped writing her thesis when Queen were becoming a successful band, only resuming it after more than thirty years to deliver it in 2007. Their graduation ceremony was at the Royal Albert Hall on the afternoon of May 14, 2008, thirty-seven years later. On July 19, 2007, he was named Honorary Rector of Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), taking over from Cherie Blair, and since 2008 he has regularly attended the solemn acts of this British university as the highest academic authority.

Brian was active in the initiative to declare World Asteroid Day.

In May 2020, an article in which he participated (as he stated on Instagram) was published in Nature as part of the team that carried out the stereoscopic simulations.

Activism

May has formed a group to promote dignified treatment of animals and animal rights. Although she has been a Conservative Party voter for most of her life, she has stated that her policy on fox hunting and badger culling motivated him to stop voting for them. His group, Save Me, campaigns for the protection of all animals against unnecessary, cruel and degrading treatment, with a particular emphasis on preventing fox hunting and badger culling. The group's main concern is ensure that the 2004 Hunting Act and other laws protecting animals remain in force.

In a September 2010 interview for the BBC, May said he would rather be remembered for his work for animal rights than for his music or work for science.

Movie and TV Portrayals

Biographical Film

Gwilym Lee plays May in the biopic about Queen.

A biopic about Freddie Mercury and Queen with the title Bohemian Rhapsody was released in 2018. It is directed by Bryan Singer and stars Rami Malek as Mercury, Gwilym Lee as Brian May, Ben Hardy as Roger Taylor and Joseph Mazzello playing John Deacon. The film was released on October 24, 2018 in the United Kingdom and on November 2 in the United States. It was awarded four Oscars, two Golden Globes and two BAFTAs, among other awards.

Other representations

The television docudrama The Freddie Mercury Story: Who Wants to Live Forever premiered on Channel 5 in November 2016. Mercury was portrayed by singer John Blunt, while Patrick Warner starred as Brian May, Martin Teall as Roger Taylor and Jack Beale as John Deacon. Although the film was criticized for focusing on Mercury's love and sexual life, Blunt's performance received praise.

Discography

Queen

Solo discography

Videography

Tours

With Queen