Brian May

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Music, Society & Culture, Personal Journals, Music Commentary

4.3 • 14.3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2002

⏱️ 37 minutes

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Summary

Brian May spent his childhood in Feltham near London and he learnt his first chords on his father's ukelele banjo. He soon progressed to the guitar, which he started learning when he was eight. He perfected his technique by buying records and copying the trickiest guitar parts. Although Brian's dream was to be a guitarist, it didn't seem like a reality so, encouraged by his parents, he went to London University's Imperial College to study physics. Whilst there he continued playing in bands with his drummer friend Roger Taylor. They were soon joined by art student Freddie Bulsara (who became Freddie Mercury) and John Deacon and formed Queen. Brian was researching infra red astronomy and part-time tutoring, but Queen soon hit the big time with their 1974 album Sheer Heart Attack, a success on both sides of the Atlantic. The band recorded 20 albums over a 22 year period and had frequent hits around the world with Killer Queen, Radio Ga Ga and Bohemian Rhapsody. Brian wrote huge Queen hits such as We will Rock You, Fat Bottomed Girls and Flash. They were known for their flamboyant live shows, where Brian provided technical brilliance and extended guitar solos inspired by Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. When lead singer Freddie Mercury died of an AIDS-related illness in 1991, Brian and his fellow band members organised a huge tribute concert for AIDS research which was shown on television screens around the world.

Thirty-one years after Queen began, the band is still popular: Bohemian Rhapsody was voted most popular British song in a BBC Radio 2 poll this year, 24 years after its first release. Brian has also written and toured with his own band and in June this year he kicked off the Queen's Jubilee concert with an amazing guitar solo of The National Anthem from the roof of Buckingham Palace. This month he came fifth in a poll to find the World's Greatest Guitarists.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Saturn - the Bringer of Old Age by Gustav Holst Book: Out of the Silent Planet by C S Lewis Luxury: His own guitar: the Red Special

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive for rights reasons
0:06.0	We've had to shorten the music. The program was originally broadcast in
0:10.6	2002 and the presenter was Sue Lolley
0:13.2	My cast away this week is a rock musician. He'd planned on becoming an astronomer but while he was studying for his doctorate, the music that had always occupied his spare time took over his life.
0:39.2	This was due not only to his dedicated professionalism, he'd made his own guitar out of hardboard and a lump of mahogany, but also to the recruitment of a charismatic lead singer called Freddie Mercury.
0:51.2	The band, yes, it was Queen, was formed in the early 70s and the rest is rock music history. This summer the man who started it all stood tall on the roof of Buckingham Palace playing God save the Queen as part of the Golden Jubilee celebrations.
1:05.2	As salute, it could be said from one kind of royalty to another. He is Brian May. It was a great moment, Brian. You up there on the roof, hanging out the national anthem and your picture was on the front of practically every newspaper the next morning.
1:19.2	But you said it was an exercise in fear management. What were you frightened of?
1:23.2	I wasn't frightened of falling off. That wasn't the problem. Just the fear of messing it up, I think, that the chances of being really bad were very high.
1:33.2	It was completely live and there was no safety net in that sense.
1:39.2	But apparently it was your idea to be on the roof. They wanted you somewhere else, didn't they?
1:43.2	Yes, they asked me to open the show, but not in that situation. They wanted me to be inside the palace, strolling around playing a guitar, and I just couldn't see that working.
1:51.2	Not exactly strolling minstrel lines. No, not your image.
1:55.2	No, no, no. I thought, well, if I'm going to do this, I have to be up there. I have to be this lone piper sort of figure.
2:01.2	That's right, but there was something terrific about that. This kind of icon of the rock industry, standing on the very roof of the establishment, if you like.
2:09.2	Yeah, I think I saw it that way. It was a symbol for my generation.
2:13.2	Because of course, when I started off, it would have been unthinkable for somebody playing that horrendous rock guitar instrument, that loud thing on top of the Queen's page.
2:22.2	And your horrendous rock guitar instrument was that one I mentioned in the introduction, wasn't it? The one you made yourself? The red special.
2:28.2	And that I've had all my working life, yes, that I made with my dad all year.
2:32.2	I calculate she's 40 years old next year.
2:34.2	Yes, she's doing well for an old lady.
2:37.2	I want to ask you much more about it, but none of this would have happened if you turned to astronomy.
	...

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