Brian May recently spoke to Leona Graham on The Leona Graham Podcast. The legendary guitarist spoke about potential new Queen music, how he wasn't sure about Freddie at first, and how Freddie didn't like his sound until he heard it back.
A Side. Got a few questions for you today. How did you first get into music and playing guitar?
Well, I was fortunate enough to be born at the time when rock n roll was being born. Um, so we started our young lives listening to Uncle Mac on Children's Favourites, playing The Laughing Policeman and The Three Billy Goats Gruff and stuff like that. And then suddenly come along comes Little Richard, screaming his head off and Buddy Holly doing incredible things with that incredible guitar twang sound, and we were all just blown away. We thought, this is us, this is our music. I was that kid listening to Radio Luxembourg on a little pair of earphones, which my dad had got government surplus from German submarine or something, and we had a little crystal set which we made together. And I used to listen every night under the covers to what was coming out of America, and it eventually managed to get into British radio. But it took a while. And there it was. It was there, and it was like the voice of our generation, somehow irresistible.
And who inspired you musically back when you started?
I think most of all, Buddy Holly and the Crickets. I was just blown away, I still am, I still get chills up the spine when I hear like 'Maybe Baby’. It was so breathtakingly new, but also had this haunting beauty with those harmonies. And I've done my own versions of some of those songs, but they're always there inside me. Buddy Holly had a very short career. He had like two and a half years of of being a rock star. But the melodies he delivered during that time and the whole vibe of this rock music was, to me, immortal. And it's definitely still part of what I do.
Yeah, you mentioned melodies there, and of course they were new then. Is it harder to do melodies now? Because every melody must exist?
You know, it's funny you say that. I find myself thinking that more and more. I thought it was just my age, Leona. But you're a young person, so I don't know. But I went to see the last dinner party.
Yes, I heard about that. And you thought they were great?
Yeah. And I see I can see where some of this stuff comes from. And Emily, their guitar player, was kind enough to say that she was very influenced by me. And you can see influences, but it's very unusual. It's different and dangerous, and I like that you can hear these riffs coming out, but they don't go where you think they're going to go. It's not stock, it's not standard. So I was really impressed. Yeah, I love people like that.
You've got a brand new version of Queen 1 out and in your words, it's a rebuild, not a remaster. Tell us about it and why you're releasing it.
Yeah, Queen 1, the actual sound of it we never liked. We were forced into this position where we got very dry drums and recorded in a small room with pillows in the bass drum and tapes all over the drum skins. And it wasn't even Roger's kit, which he was comfortable on. So Roger's there hitting these things, which don't even sound like drums to him. And in the in the middle of all that, we're also recording guitars very dry and kind of multi-tracking in unison a lot, Making things very stiff, doing loads of takes like take 29. Let's keep doing it boys, until you get it right. Contrary to the spirit, we were all about spontaneity and energy and about liveness in a room, the big ambient sounds and none of that we got on the first album.
So what do you mean by a dry sound exactly?
Depending on where you put the microphone or where you put your ear, you get a very different effect. If you're very close up, it's dry and small and tight, short sound. If you put the mic a long way away, like the other side of the room, a lot of the sound that you'll pick up is ambient, the sound that's kicking around the room.
And that's what you wanted? You wanted some ambience?
Yeah that’s what we wanted. If you're in a room with a drummer and he hits it, you're kind of enveloped by that sound. That's what we wanted. We wanted it to be something that you feel in your body. So we couldn't achieve that at the time. Now we've been able to use every hit, every note, every vocal and whatever exactly as it was but added the kind of ambience that we would have wanted at the time.
It went back in the charts recently, I noticed, and the greatest hits popped up again. I mean, that's in and out of the charts all the time, isn't it?
It’s amazing, yeah. Well, I think this is the first time the first Queen album has been in the top ten ever. I don't think it was originally. No, I think it got to 20 something. No. It was hard for us in the early days. We didn't get an instant number one or anything. So this is, I think the first time we got a top ten album with Queen, we retitled it Queen I, because we didn't know at the time that there was going to be any more Queen albums. So we just called it Queen. And of course, the year following that we made an album called Queen 2. So it now makes sense for this to be Queen 1.
And here we are in 2024. And Queen, as I mentioned, still in and out the charts all the time. What is it about Queen's music that makes it last so well and relate to new audiences today?
Leona, you'll have to tell me. I really don't know. As songwriters, we write as everyman. We don't write as rock stars. We very seldom have talked about sort of being in the rock world, like most people do in rock lyrics. It's not really about that, it's not. Normally our songs are about things which everybody feels, and I think that has an effect. We all have hopes and dreams. We all want to break free. We all want it all, all at once.
There was a very definite point where we decided that the audience were as important as we were in the stage show, and this is why we wrote we Will Rock You, We are the Champions and everything that followed really, because we realised that it was cool to let people actually get rid of their inhibitions and not just nod their heads, but actually sing with you, stand with you, clap with you, jump about with you. That became the Queen thing. We encouraged the audience to be with us and to perform with us.
And there's talk of some new Queen music.
I think Roger and I both put stuff down from time to time. We do. And sometimes we get together and go, what you got? You know? So that kind of stuff happens and maybe there will be a point where we where we actually make the decision to do it. It's kind of it's an odd feeling. There's a feeling of almost rebirth happening because we have exchanged all our future earnings from the past for a lump sum. That's what this, you know, selling out to Sony is actually doing, you know. But what it means is they own the copyrights in all the past, but we will own the copyrights in the future. So in a way that's a kind of invitation to create something. And I think we may be able to rise to that challenge in some way.
Listen to the full B side and first 3 episodes of The Leona Graham Podcast which are available to stream now free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. The next episode is due out on Tuesday 14th January.
