The Queen songs Brian May calls his favourites
When you have a band as successful as Queen, if you sit down and listen to them, look at them, and scrutinise them in a bid to find out what makes the band work, you will realise just how many layers there are to peel back. Of course, you have Freddie Mercury’s excellent vocal performances and his next-level showmanship, but there is so much more to the band than that. One of the most undeniable attributes towards the band’s success is the guitar-playing style of Brian May.
Thanks to Brian May’s guitar playing style, innovation is built into every song that Queen has ever recorded. He doesn’t use a regular six-string; instead, he has a completely one-of-a-kind guitar that his Dad made for him, given that they didn’t have enough money to buy him one. The result? A cool-looking guitar and a completely individual tone.
“I desperately wanted a guitar, so when I was seven, Mum and Dad scrimped to buy an acoustic – which I still have – and he taught me the shapes on his banjolele. It wasn’t long before I had electrified it, plugging it into a homemade amplifier,” said Brian May, “At 16, I was desperate for a proper electric guitar, but there was no way we could afford it, so Dad and I started making one.”
He continued, “I was seventeen, and my dad was a great electronics engineer and a craftsman, so me and my dad set about making a guitar […] I couldn’t afford a Stratocaster or a Gibson or whatever, so we thought, ‘We can make a guitar, and maybe we can make something that’s better than anyone’s ever made’.”
Brian May contributed a great deal to the band, and a lot of what Queen was built upon had its foundations set with this unique guitar tone. This is the thing that a lot of avid listeners are always keen to look out for; however, it begs the question, what musical elements does Brian May consider the most important when putting together a Queen song? He will no doubt be aware of how important his guitar playing is, but there are other aspects too. The first, he believes, is the overall message of the song.
Brian May believes that a lot of what Queen tried to capture with their music was the aspirations of normal people. They wanted that aspiration to be reflected in their sound, and May believes one of their best songs for that is ‘I Want It All’. “The song was about reaching out and grasping what you want in life,” May said, “A lot of Queen’s music was about normal people, with normal dreams and normal frustrations trying to grab the kernel of life. So ‘I Want It All’ sums that up quite well.”
One of his other favourite Queen songs, which he thinks captures the essence of the band the best, was finished four years after Freddie Mercury’s death. ‘Made In Heaven’ was recorded by the rest of the band, who used some of Mercury’s previous studio recordings as a jumping off point. Despite never being released as a single, May believes it captures the band’s essence wonderfully.
“It’s a quintessential Queen track,” May said, “It’s one of the biggest we ever did. It was never a single, strange enough. It’s one of my favourite tracks. ‘Made In Heaven’ is so enormous.”
