Guitarist Brian May opens up about working with Queen’s charismatic singer – and the emotional aftermath of his death .
"If I am asked once more, 'What was it like working with Freddie?’, I will spew,” sighs Brian May, as he settles down in front of me. It is not the most auspicious of beginnings to our encounter, particularly since the subject is the 40th anniversary of Queen, whose late frontman, Freddie Mercury, remains a character of enduring fascination to the public.
To be fair, the 63-year-old guitarist is otherwise unfailingly polite, softly spoken and thoughtful in his responses, and genuinely endeavours to “delve deep and true”. But that truth includes an edge of ambivalence about the group who have dominated May’s musical life. “Queen cast a long shadow,” as he puts it.
“When Freddie died, it was like losing a family member, and we all handled it in different ways. For a time, I really wanted to escape fromQueen; I didn’t want to know about it. I think that was my grieving process. But I’m very proud of what we did together. My God, we really did go on some interesting excursions! Mostly, it makes me feel good.”
For a band who formed in 1971, and effectively came to an end when their frontman died in 1991, Queen remain extremely present in pop culture. Their Greatest Hits is the biggest selling album of all time in the UK and their musical, We Will Rock You, has been running for nine years in London’s West End. This month, Island begin re-releasing all their albums in deluxe formats, starting with the first five: Queen, Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack, A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races. A Freddie Mercury movie is scheduled with Sacha Baron Cohen in the title role, and there is an exhibition at the Truman Brewery, London, Stormtroopers in Stilletos.
May admits that he and drummer Roger Taylor (bassist John Deacon retired in 1997) were “quite unsettled” by seeing their early days laid out before them. “It was a jolt, our childhood pressed in front of our faces.”
May and Taylor formed the band Smile in the Sixties. Farrokh Bulsara (Freddie Mercury’s given name, reflecting his Indian-African background) was a fan before joining forces with them. What potential did May detect in him? “We took it on faith somehow. His personality was so strong. We didn’t see a great singer or musician first of all: he was very wild and unsophisticated. We just saw someone who had incredible belief and charisma, and we liked him.”
Mercury’s development was lightning-fast. “I think the first time it struck me was in the studio, when Freddie was listening to his voice come back, going, 'No, that won’t do’, and just working and working. He was exceptional, and there was a very quick period, you could almost have blinked and missed it, where he learned to harness his technique.”
What is particularly striking about Queen is the vast scope and variety of their material, even from the earliest days, encompassing heavy rock , florid showtunes, hook-laden pop, folky sweetness and off-the-wall experimentation.
“There were no limits. Our heroes were the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, things like The White Album were religious texts for us, in terms of how free and creative you can be. And we had better toys than the Beatles had. The studio had developed: we were like artists let loose with loads of lovely paint pots. It’s hard to put a name to it . It’s just four guys making the music of their passion .”
By the time of Bohemian Rhapsody and A Night at the Opera (1975), Queen were venturing into places of almost comical grandeur. “There was a great spirit about it. We were watching Marx Brothers movies at Rockfield, where we were recording, and we got a sense that they could go anywhere they wanted, they were so in control of their medium. It was quite outrageous. And we felt the same sort of spirit: we had discovered our power as a group and were just at the point where we could really turn ourselves loose.”
All four band members proved themselves accomplished songwriters, which doesn’t sound like a recipe for creative harmony. “We were very equal and very competitive. Nobody got away with a single note that the other three didn’t think was OK.” He admits that sessions were frequently fraught. “We were argumentative to the point where we almost destroyed each other. At times we all left the group, one of us would go storming off saying, 'That’s it!’ Quite often, in fact. There was a very painful side, four artists with brushes in hands trying to paint on the same canvas.”
Mercury was usually the peacemaker. “Freddie wasn’t greedy for power. People have this image of him as a diva who insisted on getting his own way, but he was the mediator, the guy who could make sense out of opposite ends of arguments. He was very good at focusing on the important issues.”
May’s warmest memories of Queen, strangely, come from their final recording sessions in Montreux, Switzerland, in the period leading up to Mercury’s death, on November 24, 1991, of Aids-related pneumonia. “It was obvious that Freddie had not got long to live, but he just wanted life to be normal, and to make as much music as humanly possible. He said, 'Keep writing for me, let’s keep recording stuff. Then you guys can finish it when I’m gone.’ So he had an amazing acceptance himself.
“We were there with our very closest family, in this rather warm and cosy place where we could just create. And Freddie loved it. It was his favourite thing in the world, just to make music, to make unusual things happen. He wasn’t very well by that time, but if it came to it, he’d say, 'Oh well, we need a vocal, don’t we? ---- it, I’ll do it’. Then he’d down a couple of vodkas, prop himself up at the desk, and go for it, and sing amazingly, with such passion and strength, until he dropped.”
For someone who started the interview dreading discussing Mercury, May offers this, unbidden: “I think about Freddie all the time, really. There certainly isn’t a day where I don’t have some sort of thought about him.
“I have been to the extremes, where I have found it very painful, and I couldn’t talk about him. But I don’t feel that any more. He’s part of our lives, still, in a very real way. I’m not saying there aren’t moments when I don’t get tearful, because there are, but most of the time it’s a joy.”
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