“in the heat of the battle, when we’re playing bohemian rhapsody live and that riff comes along, i’m excited, but i’ve got to keep apart of my brain cool just to handle where the fingers have to go. it’s one of the most unnatural riffs to play that you could possibly imagine!”

BRIAN MAY

In aworld exclusive interview, Queen’s guitar genius Brian May recalls how many of the band’s most famous songs were created, what inspired his magical solos in Killer Queen, Don’t Stop Me Now, Crazy Little Thing Called Love and more, and why the band cooked up apunk-stye version of We Will Rock You. He also reveals why he didn’t play the funk rhythm on Another One Bites The Dust, and why that heavy riff on Bohemian Rhapsody is still one of the hardest things to play…

Words ChrisBird

BRIAN MAY IS FEELING GOOD.

“A little tired,” he smiles, “but very happy.” On acold winter afternoon, the legendary guitarist is talking to Total Guitar from his home in Surrey, afew days after the North American leg of Queen +Adam Lambert’s Rhapsody tour ended with another sold-out date at the BMO Stadium in Los Angeles.

“Everyone in the States has been saying that this show is the best we’ve ever done with Adam,” he says. “So it’s agreat result. Wonderful!”

Certainly, the Rhapsody tour –which reaches Japan this month –is a huge production with spectacular state-ofthe-art visual e ects. “I’ve always loved to make ashow a real event,”Brian says.

But it’s the music, of course, that continues to draw huge audiences for this tour across the globe –all of those great songs that Queen recorded with Freddie Mercury from the early ’70s until the singer’s death on November 24, 1991.

In a lengthy conversation with TG, Brian discusses the creation –and his role speci cally –in many of the biggest hit songs and landmark tracks in Queen’s career. Ten of these songs featured in the setlist from that recent show in LA: KillerQueen, Bohemian Rhapsody, LoveOfMyLife, WeAreThe Champions, Don’tStopMeNow, We WillRockYou, AnotherOneBitesThe Dust, CrazyLittleThingCalledLove, UnderPressureand AKindOfMagic.

One is a hit that Brian wrote with his tongue-in-cheek –the OTT movie theme Flash. Another has great poignancy as one of the last Queen songs released in Freddie Mercury’s lifetime –TheseAreTheDaysOf OurLives.

And nally, there is a fan-favourite deep cut from 1980, DragonAttack, picked out for TG by one of Brian’s greatest admirers, Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett.

As Kirk tells us: “I love Queen. I love all of it. I love all the stu that everyone else loves. I especially love that song DragonAttack.”

But before we get to that, we’re going all the way back to the 1970s, beginning with the hit single that de ned Queen as one of the most inventive an