Brian May on why John Lennon was “the coolest guy on the planet”
Every member of a high-profile rock band will always be playing second fiddle to the frontman. As difficult as it is to overcome stage fright and play songs perfectly in front of a paying audience, the one singing the songs tends to get all the glory when performing live, holding the audience in their hands and putting all their energy into making shows a spectacle. While Queen didn’t have to worry about such problems, even Freddie Mercury paled compared to whom Brian May picked as the greatest bandleader of all time.
Before Mercury had even joined Queen, the original incarnation of the band Smile had Tim Staffold singing in a power trio lineup with May and Roger Taylor. Though May had reservations about bringing Mercury into the group, the electricity in the room whenever he took to the stage was apparent in a second, treating every show like it was a theatrical piece.
When May was first cutting his teeth playing gigs, though, the most prominent artist in the world was coming from the other side of England. As opposed to the sounds of Led Zeppelin or The Rolling Stones, The Beatles made a name for themselves as one of the biggest pop bands of all time, with John Lennon standing at the helm.
Though Lennon collaborated with Paul McCartney on nearly every song he wrote with the Fab Four, his acerbic wit bled through every piece he sang, whether it was the bitterness in the lyrics of ‘Norwegian Wood’ or the reckless abandon behind ‘I Am The Walrus’. Compared to the rest of the band, May thought that the rock and roll swagger radiated off of Lennon.
When discussing his influences with Classic Rock, May said that Lennon towered high above anyone else, recalling, “Lennon, from a frankly less-than-glamorous teenager with a bit of a chip on his shoulder, developed into the coolest guy on Earth. He was cool enough to write the greatest teen pop song ever, ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’; to embrace psychedelia; to leave The Beatles when he felt it had all become a shallow game, and then to put his whole being into promoting peace in his solo work, producing the greatest, most daring and personally revealing solo albums ever made”.
Given Lennon’s extensive back catalogue, May said that it was impossible to limit Lennon’s Beatles songs to just a handful of pieces, explaining, “There is not enough space here to come close to chronicling all Lennon’s masterpieces, but check out ‘Tomorrow Never Knows,’ ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,’ and then ‘I Am the Walrus’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. Never has anything been created like these works in the whole of history”.
Then again, it was easy to spot Lennon’s influence on Queen’s sound. Combing through future classics like A Night at the Opera, the band approached the studio like an instrument, just as Lennon did, with ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ being the clear extension of what Lennon had tried to do on ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’.
Like most rock acolytes, Lennon’s death was a significant blow to the band, writing the song ‘Life is Real (Song For Lennon)’ on the album Hot Space dedicated to his memory. Although Lennon may not have seen the next few decades of music he inspired, that rock and roll swagger can still be felt in every song he wrote.
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