“That’s the deal”: the hit Queen solo that Brian May disagreed with
Part of what has always made Queen so great is that their songs seem heavily guided by the incorporation of the guitar. Though many other aspects are unquestionably inviting, like Freddie Mercury’s vocalisation, the endearing melodies, and uptempo party atmospheres, a handful of their hits—like ‘Another One Bites The Dust’, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, and ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’—create their unforgettable moments with Brian May’s distinctive guitar work.
Musicians and music lovers have long debated what makes a good guitarist, with the more obvious criteria centring around their technical proficiency and ability to let intuition guide their playing. Though some of the greatest guitar heroes of all time have excelled at finger-picking intricacy, others allow themselves to be driven by emotion, which isn’t always an easy facet to extract while playing the instrument.
While two of the more obvious examples of May’s unparalleled ability are ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘Killer Queen’, both of these songs show the exact reasons he maintains a reputation as one of the greatest guitar players ever to exist, rooted in his ability to make the instrument sound completely its own without detaching too far from the vocals or the rest of the arrangements.
Ultimately, May is one of the smoothest players out there, with immense technical skill and knowledge of when to give more and when to pull it back. Perhaps May’s popularity has also been intensified by his withdrawal from competitive circles, as he believes great guitarists should never be pitted against one another, mainly because each one has something unique to bring to the table.
In his view, criticising guitarists for their technique would be the same as calling someone like Kurt Cobain a bad musician—there wasn’t “a lot of technical stuff there,” according to May, but that doesn’t mean Cobain was any less talented at what he did. Cobain became one of the most influential guitarists of all time, but it had nothing to do with his technicality. “He didn’t work that hard at being technical,” May said, “And yet he gives us a legacy of some of the greatest guitar music of all time.”
May’s immense contributions to Queen provided an additional layer of texture even when the guitar wasn’t a song’s sole driving force, which showed how defining a presence his work was and the sheer elevation his playing brought to the band’s music. Interestingly, one of the band’s biggest hits, ‘I Want To Break Free’, was a unique exception because it sounded like it incorporated May’s signature guitar layering, but the sound you hear is actually a synth solo played on a keyboard.
Unsurprisingly, May wasn’t initially all that excited about the idea of having his usual contributions replaced by, in his view, a far less credible source, but John Deacon, who wrote the song, strictly did not want a guitar on this particular track. According to Roger Taylor, his desire to leave the guitar out of it led him to Fred Mandel, “a very brilliant keyboard player” he brought in to “improvise something around the main tune.”
However, understanding the level of respect the band shared over the years, May eventually stepped aside. “I didn’t exactly agree with it at the time, but I gave it my blessing… that’s the deal,” he later recalled, even though they had a strictly “no synthesisers” policy prior to creating the song. However, perhaps it was the way Mandel’s contributions didn’t overtly sound like a synthesiser that made them feel more lenient, but ultimately, part of it was likely May’s willingness to evolve and experiment that led to this shift.
