#idk why this is unpublished or if this is even credible but I'm going to believe it is until proven otherwise

[lonelyasawhisper]

The Hard Life of Brian: Brian May

By Ian Fortnam, unpublished, April 1998

It's quite a spread – set in the majestic, green sward Jerusalem of the Home Counties' stockbroker belt, and surrounded by idyllic gardens painstakingly landscaped a little over a century ago by Kew's leading horticulturalist.

The architectural opulence is quite simply breathtaking, unpretentious yet quietly exuding an authoritative aura of immeasurable affluence. With wealth and celebrity comes the acquisition of such pastoral pleasures. Unsullied tranquillity, precious time to reflect on past achievements and, not least, limitless solitude.

Indeed, as countless recipients of those elusive "big money balls" will undoubtedly find, to their eternal cost, an ivory tower can swiftly metamorphose into an impenetrable cell for the soul. Behind the glitz and glamour associated with our celebrated host – and the proud owner of the careworn white clogs temporarily abandoned in Utopia's sumptuous porch – is a tangible melancholia. In fact, Brian 'Tie Your Mother Down' May is the living, breathing personification of that age-old glam rock dictum: In every dream home a heartache.

As Brian, simultaneously soft-spoken and garrulous, reminisces over his remarkable career; formative gigs on the late-'60s psychedelic underground circuit, the fifteen year ascendancy of Queen from the Wadebridge Young Farmers Club to the unassailable spectacle of their '86 live finale at Knebworth Park, and ultimately, as a solo standard-bearer for Queen's timeless legacy of baroque über-rock, he occasionally touches on the tenacious inner demons which can mercilessly torment a gentleman rock star whilst ensconced in the confines of his country retreat.

"Because my partner (former Eastenders actress, Anita Dobson) is not able to live my life, and I'm not able to live hers, I'm on my own a lot of the time," admits Brian, clutching his ever-present, six-stringed security blanket.

"During the day it's buzzing. Everyone's around – music's happening in the studio, the builders and the gardeners are here – but at night everyone goes away and it's just me. And sometimes I have a problem with that. Sometimes I find it quite difficult. I cling to things like, I'll always make my bed when I get up, because I don't want the feeling when I go to bed that no one's been in there since morning. Strange things like that. I also leave the light on, so that when I go into the bedroom at night it doesn't feel cold. It's not as if I'm scared of the dark, but it's an icy feeling which can grab your heart and say; 'Nobody loves me. After all this time, here I am on my own'."

*

On 19th of July, 1954, Brian May's seventh birthday, he received an acoustic guitar and – enthralled by the recordings of such artists as jazz legend, Django Reinhardt and celebrated Elvis Presley and Jim Reeves sideman Chet Atkins – set about duplicating their chops. However, with the dawn of the 1960s, Brian had succumbed to the charms of solid-bodied rock guitar with an evangelical fervour, firstly by way of obscure Rick Nelson records, but most tellingly, on witnessing Jeff Beck live at the Marquee, and was overwhelmed by an irresistible compulsion to get amplified. There was, however, one seemingly insurmountable obstacle in his path.

"We didn't really have any money, we were really close to the breadline. My mother used to secrete sixpences in jars to try and pay the gas bill."

Happily, what the Mays lacked in finance they more than made up for in ingenuity.

"I played around with my acoustic guitar and figured out how to make a pick-up with magnets and wire, plugged the wires into my dad's radio, and it sounded brilliant. Really amazing. We made everything, my dad and me. My dad was particularly amazing at turning his hand to every kind of craft. He was an electronics draftsman by trade, so he made our radio. We had the first TV in the street, because he made it. We couldn't afford a guitar, so we figured we'd make one."

And so, in August 1963, work began on what became known as 'The Red Special', the most famous homemade guitar in rock history. With a neck fashioned with a penknife from a woodworm-riddled mahogany fireplace, and a body constructed from odds and ends of oak, the guitar cost just £8 to construct, yet its unique fluid warmth of tone has graced every recording and show that Brian has ever played. Yet as we speak, Brian's pride and joy lies in pieces on a nearby workbench. After a thirty-year tour of duty, the battle-scarred 'Red Special' is finally undergoing a belated overhaul.

It was only after three exact replicas were painstakingly constructed over an eighteen-month period that permission was finally granted to disassemble the singular instrument. And when its heavily dented body was cautiously prised apart, its internal acoustic pockets were found to be entirely clogged with innumerable shards of silver. A bizarre condition, symptomatic of the fact that Brian May's plectrum of choice has always been the shiny, pre-decimal sixpence.

From the very beginning Brian May has been reaching for the stars. Literally. With an enthusiasm kindled by the works of Patrick Moore, he would spend moonless nights gazing toward the heavens through a (somewhat predictably) homemade telescope, and at the age of 18 was successful in his application to study physics and infrared astronomy at Imperial College, London. Three years later, in 1968, he received his Bachelor of Science degree from the Queen Mother. But, by now, Brian's passion for music was all-encompassing and, despite being offered a prestigious research position at Jodrell Bank, he abandoned astronomy for rock 'n' roll. It was a decision that was to cause a major rift within the May household.

"My dad always dreamed that I would get what he regarded as a proper job. A respectable job. So I would be able to do things for my family, that he hadn't been able to do for his. He regarded it as the ultimate form of blasphemy. It was the worst thing he could imagine. He just couldn't compute it, and we actually had a terrible time. We hardly spoke for about a year and a half. But it ended happily, because the first time Queen played at Madison Square Garden, I flew my parents over on Concorde, stuck them in the Waldorf Astoria and said, 'Order yourself some room service'. They came to the gig and they loved it. And my dad said: 'Yeah, I understand now.' It was a really nice moment."

During his years at Imperial, Brian had been playing in his first band, 1984. Fully immersed in the capital's psychedelic underground, the band rapidly found themselves supporting the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Tyrannosaurus Rex.

"They were prestigious gigs, but we were lower than the bottom of the bill. I had this funny little group, which was put together at school, and a couple of would-be managers took us down to Carnaby Street and bought us all the gear. They put us on at Christmas On Earth (an all-night psychedelic "happening" that took place at London's Olympia in December '67), which was very cool. I remember plugging into the same stack that Jimi Hendrix had plugged into. It sounded like the whole world when he played through it. For me, it sounded like a transistor radio.

"It felt like we were at the beginning of creation. Suddenly, all around us, people were discovering what happened when you turned a guitar up to max and it had a life of its own. It became a completely different instrument and the fact that it went with all the psychedelia, drug culture and peace and love was very exciting for me. It all sounds really corny now, but it was so new and dangerous then that it was just wonderful to be a part of it.

"I never took the drugs. I wanted to be sure that everything I experienced was real. I didn't want to disentangle what was drug-induced and what wasn't. I just got very high on the music. I was supposed to be at college, but we were playing and going out to see people like Pink Floyd, Cream, The Who, Hendrix. You could see all those people in one week. Can you imagine? We never slept."

*

OVER THE NEXT COUPLE of years, 1984 metamorphosed into Smile, and ultimately, into Queen. But when Brian and newly recruited drummer Roger Taylor were initially approached by Ealing art student Freddie Bulsara, they were none to keen to utilise his vocal talents.

"We didn't think he had any vocal talents at the beginning. We thought that he was just all talk. He was very flamboyant and very arrogant, in a rather nice way. But then we started to go round to each other's houses and share our dreams, I suppose."

With Freddie, now boasting the charismatic appellation Mercury, firmly ensconced in the band, they set about conquering the world. But the vocalist's singular dress sense was always a cause of some consternation within the Queen ranks.

"It was a source of great amusement and embarrassment for us, especially what we call the prawn outfit in the video for 'It's A Hard Life'. But it was Freddie, you know, and we all have our quirks and indulgences. I think the first time we saw the red and silver glitter outfit we were kind of dubious. But there wasn't anything he wouldn't do, and the more you were shocked at what he did, the more he loved it. He had great love and respect for his parents, but if they came to a gig, he would do things which were in questionable taste to make them feel uneasy. I think he had a great desire not to be fettered, and it taught me a lot."

To many, Queen's greatest sonic legacy was their epic 1975 single 'Bohemian Rhapsody'.

"We viewed it quite tongue-in-cheek, it was mock-opera, and such a step into the unknown that it kind of made us smile. It was meant to be that way. The video was done incredibly cheaply, and again quite tongue-in-cheek, and when we saw it we all had a good laugh. We were all surprised at how seriously people took it, to be honest."

As the years progressed, Queen came to exemplify rock excess in all its forms. Their parties have since passed into legend. Five-day bashes with attendant capering dwarves and, on one infamous occasion, a nude model in a bath of raw liver. Yet as the revellers immersed themselves in behaviour of a distinctly Caligulan nature, for Brian, it was simply a case of another dream home, another heartache.

"New Orleans was pretty excessive, but whatever you're in at the time is your own personal heaven or hell. I remember I was really sad at that party. Cos I'd fallen in love some years before in New Orleans and I expected that I would see her, but she wasn't there. So, you know that feeling, where everything's going on, everything's wonderful, fabulous, marvellous, but inside there's this big hole? So it was great, it was outrageous, but I remember thinking, all is not quite right.

"Over the years, there were some strange things that went on. The Kensington Roof Gardens was pretty strange. There were naked people there with their clothes painted on and some pretty bizarre stuff occurred. But, y'know, nobody got hurt."

With Freddie Mercury's tragic AIDS-related death in November 1991, Queen effectively ceased to exist. "In retrospect, I think my great consolation is that we never went downhill or became a pale imitation of our former selves. Things were still getting bigger and more exciting. The last tour we did, in '86, was the most massive thing that we'd ever undertaken."

The last album the band recorded together, Made In Heaven, was released in 1995. And its final track, 'It's A Beautiful Day', features a brief excerpt of Queen's first hit 'Seven Seas Of Rhye' in its triumphal coda. For Brian it was a final gesture to close the circle.

"I was really proud of that, actually. Even then we were breaking new ground, we'd never done anything like that. So to the last we were crossing over boundaries. We did do a little revisit. I had a track called 'No One But You', which was about Freddie, and it became a Queen song as part of the Rocks album. But the truth is that it reminded me that really I'm happier doing what I do now. I like being the way I am. I like the people I'm working with. In a way it's a liberating thing. I don't have to be Queen anymore. In some ways, although I have great sadness about it, it’s a relief."

Brian initially embarked on a solo career in 1991, when he was asked to write the music for a Ford commercial. 'Driven By You' reached number 6 in the UK singles chart and earned Brian his first Ivor Novello Award. His subsequent debut album Back To The Light went on to sell a million, and the Brian May Band hit the road, supporting Guns 'N Roses, in '93.

May's second solo offering, Another World, set for release this month, has been three years in the making and finds the infrared astronomer on star-scraping form. Sandwiched between the all-out metal holocaust of 'Business' and the acoustic introspection of the title track, Brian pays tribute to a number of his musical heroes. Not only with covers of Larry Williams' 'Slow Down', Hendrix's 'One Rainy Wish' and Mott The Hoople's 'All The Way From Memphis', but also with 'The Guv'nor', a self-penned tribute to Jeff Beck, on which the master himself makes a rare guest appearance.

"I consider myself very fortunate that he's a friend of mine now, because he was and is a hero. Not just because he plays so miraculously, but because of his whole approach to life. He doesn't make any compromises. He's magic, and whenever he picks up a guitar, I don't wanna have a guitar in my hand."

With gigs in place and the band positively itching to retread the boards after a protracted lay-off, disaster struck when Brian's close friend and sparring partner, drum legend Cozy Powell, was tragically killed in a car crash on April 5th.

"I cannot believe that we're sitting here now and he's not around. Cozy was so much part of my life. He was the most supportive friend you could ever imagine. I just can't really seem to comprehend that he's gone. He's all over the album. His power and his enthusiasm, his sense of humour. He was a magnificent bloke, and this is not false. I said it to his face; I think he knew how much I thought of him. He was a hero of mine, and when I first met him it was a dream of mine that I would play with him one day.

"He was like family, he really was. On the road, we had a fantastic time, we toured for a year, and it was a wonderful time in my life. I was probably struggling to get out of that whole sorrow about Queen and everything, I'd lost my dad and my marriage had broken up and I was actually really in pain, and having a hard time trying to pull myself back together and those guys, of which Cozy was the centre, made me have the confidence to get up and lead a band."

*

AS BRIAN TICKLES THE fretboard of his replica red special and stretches his extensive frame across a sumptuous chaise longue in the drawing room of his fabulous country mansion, does he consider that he's led something of a charmed life?

"Yeah, I have a lot to be thankful for. But the person you are is very much what goes on in your own head. So I'm probably very ungrateful, because I've been able to do things that most people would only dream of doing. But you always live in the moment, and the moment can be very cruel. And I've spent a long, long time really battling against being depressed for various reasons. It really doesn't matter what your material circumstances are. If you're unable to move forward in your personal life as you perceive it, then you can get very depressed. And that's not, like, miserable. Depression is a sort of illness which can get you, and I sort of drift in and out of it. I try not to drift back into it, but a lot of the time I suppose I do get too introspective."

The hard life of Brian: a kind of magic, undoubtedly, but more than enough to drive you ever so slightly mad.

Loves of My Life: Those Brian May collections in full:

Striding around the sumptuous confines of the May domicile it immediately becomes starkly apparent that the big-haired maestro is entirely addicted to the acquisition of certain bizarre artefacts. Specifically:

Limited edition plates

As seen in the back pages of the Sunday supplements. They're all here: the robin on the log, the News Of The World Tutankhamun collection, vintage vehicles, and hey, what's this? A Brian May plate. And it's signed!

VOX AC30 amplifiers

A veritable forest of the valve-driven little blighters. They line the walls of the hall, the baronial hall, and very probably, the royal wee. Every colour, every model, and all, characteristically, up to 11.

Vintage Dan Dare toys

In glass cases, no less. Our astronomically inclined host obviously feels an irresistible affinity with the intrepid, granite-jawed pilot of the future. But what's this over here? Wa-hey, Star Wars! All together now: Flash! WO-OH!!!

Stereo Pictures of the 1850s

Second only to Brian's well-documented lust for volume is his unquenchable passion for photography. But not any old snap-snap, grin-grin detritus, we're talking the real deal. Duplicate images from the Victorian age, best viewed through a cumbersome contraption straight out of Heath Robinson. David Bailey? Pish. Charles Piazzi-Smythe, now there's a photographer.

Harold May's tool kit

You never know when they'll come in handy. Greg, the meticulous, antipodean guitar-maker commissioned to rebuild the legendary 'red special' was astonished to find that Brian had retained all of the original apparatus he and his father had used way back in 1963. Screwdrivers, penknives, fret saws, even the original tins of wood-stain.

Brian May rag dolls

Gangly, cloth doppelgangers with intricately embroidered clogs. The fans send them. What can you do?

* Writer for NME, VOX, KERRANG and other publications, Ian has covered the recent alternative and hard-rock scenes extensively.

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