TEAM ROCK INTERVIEW – Brian May interviewed by Dewsbury (Russ Collington).
TRANSCRIPT BY JEN TUNNEY (BrianMay.com)
E&OE
DEWSBURY (aka Russ Collington): It is the Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards 2015 – my name’s Dewsbury, and it’s not that often I go “Oooooh”. I met Tony Iommi. I was “Ooooh. I’m sat here right now with the Riff Lord 2015, Dr Brian May. How are you sir?
BRIAN MAY: I’m very good. I’m very proud to be here in that capacity – especially after Tony Iommi, who is my ultimate best friend in the business. Words cannot do the man justice, yes. I’m thrilled to do this. No, you can’t even express what Tony Iommi is, yeah – the father of it all. So I’m happy to be here, very honoured, specially with Matt. I gave my award to Matt Taylor who is the awesome dude who threw this piece of machinery 317 million miles into space and it arrived at the right place and landed a tiny little pod on a comet, incredible stuff. So I awarded him his Spirit of Hammer Award, and he awarded me – Riff Lord.
DEWSBURY: The Riff Lord ! I wanted to ask about you and Dr Matt. Dr Mat, Dr Brian. I’m the least qualified person within… radius, knowing that Dr Matt has done what Dr Matt has done, what he’s done – how did that come about going “Let’s give him this award”?
BRIAN: Well, it wasn’t my idea, but I’ve been following their mission all along, you know. They started ten years ago. They pushed this thing into space and they deliberately didn’t talk to it for ten years while it found its way to the right place and they were hoping, obviously, that they’d calculated the predictions right and when it switched itself on it would be in the right place. Well, low and behold it was and we all from our armchairs on the internet watched this thing approach a comet in a way that’s never been done before, and then this tiny little lander was detached and sent down to the actual comet itself, hit the surface – unfortunately hit it too hard and bounced and ended up in some place which was in shadow, so its solar battery, it’s solar powered battery.
DEWSBURY:… it didn’t get on, did it.
BRIAN: But, this is the greatest timing, because yesterday the thing woke up. Philae actually woke up and now is back in contact with the Earth- back in contact with these Rosetta guys.
DEWSBURY: Do you feel excited just to be alive and be present at such a time when such gigantic steps are being made in Science?
BRIAN: I do love it. I must say, ‘cos, you know, when I as a kid I used to beg to be allowed to stay up and watch Patrick Moore on TV as we all did when we were kids, and yeah, it was my dream that things like this would happen. So I love waking up and knowing that we’re taking these amazing steps into space. I have a strange, I have a cautious view of the Human Race, ‘cos I think we’re making a horrible mess of planet that we live on, and that bothers me greatly and I spend a lot of my time campaigning against what I consider to be bad practices of Human Beings. But Human Beings, nevertheless are capable of the most wonderful things, and this is one of them. This is an awesome achievement, in my opinion.
DEWSBURY: Riff Lord 2015, at the Metal Hammer Golden Gods – this is Dr Brian May.
BRIAN: Thank you, Russ.