“Uncompromising”: Brian May names the quintessential pop-rock anthem
Professor Brian May has not ascended to the intellectual elite without good reason. With a PhD in astrophysics and the ingenuity to build his iconic Red Special guitar as a young man, he stands apart from most rock stars of his stature. While many of his contemporaries have fallen into excess or cynicism, the Queen guitarist has maintained a level-headed perspective, particularly when it comes to evaluating the work of others.
He might have had the odd spat with journalists who have overstepped the mark and encroached into his personal space. Still, for me, May has always represented a form of cerebral refinement rarely seen among the notorious hellraisers of the era he made his name in.
Even the band’s experiments with audience sing-alongs, weaponising the power of their fans and harnessing it to augment their performance, display just how astute and self-aware May and the rest of the quartet were. Thinking outside of the box and peering behind barriers was what they did best.
It’s safe to say that May’s pinnacle was in the 1970s, despite Queen going onto stratospheric heights in the ensuing decade. After breaking out with their self-titled debut in 1973, they produced an array of explosive, exciting and genuinely unique albums that pushed rock into new realms by fusing it with theatre and other forms. During this era, May asserted himself as an emphatic force on the guitar, and the counterbalance between his work and frontman Freddie Mercury made for an excellent blend that placed the London band as one of the ultimate pop-rock acts. They had catchy choruses and no end of piercing hooks but were no strangers to heaviness in the vein of Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and their other heroes.
Because May and Queen straddled the line so adroitly, appealing to rock fans and the masses, they loved other groups who also managed to do so. One act to which May was particularly deferential was Rainbow, the brainchild of former Deep Purple guitar hero Ritchie Blackmore, a musical and personal enigma who had carried the baton from Hendrix and continued to instil raucous heaviness into rock.
While Blackmore left Deep Purple in 1975 with an array of influential classics to his name, including the 1970s effort Deep Purple in Rock, he’s a prolific creative and wanted a group that better suited his prismatic style. That was Rainbow, and in the early years, they fused hard rock with baroque music. However, they gradually morphed into a pop-rock group that embraced the era’s tastes, with bands like Boston and Chicago all the rage.
However, this shift toward the mainstream didn’t put May off their work. In 2014, when speaking to Planet Rock, the Queen legend was asked to name a great guitar track. He chose Rainbow’s 1979 global hit, ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’, the cover of the Russ Ballard song, which featured Graham Bonnet on lead vocals. Its pop-rock power has continued to stand out for him. May said: “Okay, what has popped into my head is ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’ because I think it’s a quintessential -I suppose you’d call it pop rock in a sense – you know, but it’s uncompromising, it’s a great song, and it’s brilliantly played.”
He then noted that his late friend Cozy Powell played the drums on the track, whom he recalled had music running through his veins. Demonstrating that typical acuity, May also noted that Blackmore is an “extraordinary” player and questioned why he does not get his dues, considering he is technically incredible and a trailblazer in every sense.
“This is a good pop record, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s great rock music, in my opinion. I think it’s perfect,” May concluded, offering great insight into what makes him tick as a guitarist and the perspective with which Queen saw music during their pomp.
