Brian had a friendly interview (via Zoom) with Simon Mayo on Drivetime, Greatest Hits Radio, 7 July 2021, talking mainly about Queen Greatest Hits album, among other subjects.
Brian May & Simon Mayo ‘Drivetime’ Greatest Hits Radio – 0707202 Edit
– https://youtu.be/zLWeEAF3JCw
TRANSCRIPT EDIT:
SIMON MAYO: Hello Brian. How are you?
BRIAN MAY: So staring at you quite convincingly…. Yeah, the marvels of Zoom.
SIMON: Yes, yes – it’s Zoom and “Queen’s Greatest Hits” is being reissued in assorted formats. Fiftieth anniversary year – I mean this crazy. Before we get to any of that, have you found this period of lockdown, have you found it creative? Have you found it interesting to sort of be at home with your musical instruments and composing? Have you found it enormously frustrating?
BRIAN MAY: It’s kind of all of those things really. It caught me by surprise I suppose. Having said that I did get busy, yeah. Whenever I could I got online and I did these “Jam With Bri” things, which did very well. I just sat there and played the guitar and asked people to play along with me on Instagram, so the Instagram became my kind of performance platform and I enjoyed it.
We also did a… I started off a thing for Queen. We did a new other champions – I’m cutting a very long story short, but I started off doing that with the guitar. Roger played drums, Adam did some singing and eventually we made it into a record. So that was very early in the lockdown and we showed that it could be done. To be honest I have found it frustrating that, particularly the first lockdown period, I didn’t go anywhere. I couldn’t get to my studio. I couldn’t get to the place where I do all my stuff.
I couldn’t get to see my kids. I couldn’t see my grandchildren. It was really really bad, you know, but I’m not alone. Everybody’s been finding this, but that was hard for me especially coming off a big tour where like the world is your oyster. We were out in Korea and Japan and Australia, and then to come back to that and be sitting in a house and be stuck, it was very tough. But we’ve all had a tough time, yeah, and I think we’re a little bit… we’re beginning to see the light now.
SIMON: And so re-released in new formats. It’s crazy that we’re even talking about it to promote it, because this is – I do the Album Show on Sunday afternoon and a number of times referred to the fact this is the UK’s biggest selling album of all time – SO think it’s something like one in four households has got a copy of this album is that? Is that right?
BRIAN: That’s right – it’s insane – isn’t it – yeah. I never realised it would get to this kind of height. Yeah amazing, yeah. The biggest of all time – so great – we’re thrilled we really are. It’s great to be current – just to feel that you’re part of life it is a great feeling.
SIMON: Forty years since its original release. I mean the stats are just mind-boggling. I mean I mentioned that you know one in four households has copy. It’s gone Platinum 22 times, 900 weeks on the album chart and it’s an omnipresent. It’s just something that is always there. No album collection is complete unless you’ve got “Queen’s Greatest Hits”.
BRIAN: That’s right. I love that quote about every CD that stays in a car for more than a year turns into “Queen’s Greatest Hits”. I forget where that comes from. I should know where that comes from but it makes me laugh. It is great. I mean it’s the ultimate compliment for an artist really I think, to be sewn into people’s lives to that extent and I often talk to people about ‘We Will Rock You’, for instance, and people don’t really realise that anybody wrote that, which I think is kind of the ultimate compliment. It’s like it’s always been there. It’s part of our lives. So it feels great, and we all feel the same. I know Roger feels exactly the same, you know. We have that privilege of actually being triggers in people’s lives, which will always be the case as long as this generation, all these generations, are around that will be the case. I feel very proud of what we managed to do.
SIMON: I wonder with ’We Will Rock You’, whether it’s people can’t imagine that that rhythm track, that feels as though it’s always been with us you know ,and it’s quite likely if you if you’re watching a football match that the crowd are just gonna start doing exactly that rhythm track, isn’t it? I mean that’s the amazing timeless nature of it.
BRIAN: That’s right, yeah. It was the simplest thing I could think of at the time that a crowd could do together and it was one of our live shows where people were all crammed in and wanted to participate and I thought, “What can they do?” They can stamp, they can clap and they can sing a simple kind of mantra that ‘We Will Rock You’ is something simple for people to sing. It’s also something inspiring I think, because it’s something that brings people togethe. So yeah, I’m so happy that that became part of not just sporting life but life in general for people.
SIMON: I’m going to play ‘Now I’m Here’ from the … I mean to be honest we could play anything from “Greatest Hits”, apart from ‘Bo Rhap’ just ‘cos it will take us out of time, but the reason why I want to play this is, I don’t think it gets played enough and also it takes me back to being at school and looking at a copy of the album and marvelling at, you know, side one, track one – it’s just I’d never heard anything like this before, you know. This is astonishing. What do you remember of ‘Now I’m Here’ when you were making this?
BRIAN: Ah, there’s a big story there. It reflects that first tour that we did of the States with Mott The Hoople. We’d already toured England with Mott The Hoople, who were a big band at the time and then went out to America with them, and it was an incredible tornado of experiences. I’ve never experienced anything like that in my life. We were just boys. We came to it from nothing. I went straight from home to rock and roll life all around the States, and it was mind-blowing. The music was amazing, the people were amazing, the whole feeling of kind of breaking through a doorway was incredible. So the song is about that and it was inspired partly by my musical heritage, if you like. You can hear The Who in there. You can probably hear Jimi Hendrix. You can probably hear Buddy Holly, but also you can probably hear Mott The Hoople, because I watched them every night and I watched the magic that they created on stage and learned a lot, and boy, it was something to see. So I, it’s kind of dedicated to Mott The Hoople, this track.
SIMON: Alright, let’s play it from “Queen’s Greatest Hits”, which is back out now. Buy another copy. You’ve probably got a hundred copies – anyway get another one. We’ll play ‘Now I’m Here’… …
I think Freddie would have been 65, Brian. I was doing the calculation. Is that right?
BRIAN: Think that today?
SIMON: No no, not today. I’m just trying to imagine what Freddie would have been like singing at 65.
BRIAN: Ah, well, I think he would still have been pretty great. Yes – he exercised – he took care of himself. It’s such a tragedy that that disease took hold of him and destroyed his body – but yeah Freddie would have been if, I often think, if Freddie’d been around now, then we would still be doing it together I’m sure and he would still be saying, “No, I need to do my solo stuff”, but he would be coming back to the family to do what we do, and you know the funny thing is I feel more and more that he is kind of with us in a way. Maybe I’m getting to be an old romantic but Freddie’s in my day every day. He’s always in my thoughts and I can always kind of feel what he would be saying in a certain situation like, “What would Freddie think? Yeah, he’d probably like this. He’d laugh at this or whatever and it is so much a part of the legacy that we created that will always be the case, so I suppose you get through. You’ve never finished grieving if you lose like a family member, and Freddie was a family member, but you get to the point where you’re at peace and you think, “My God, the guy had a great life. We created wonderful stuff together which is still making people happy”, so there’s an acceptance there and a joy that actually it all happened. How amazing it happened, yeah.
SIMON: I listened to the whole album in sequence this morning, Brian, just because I think maybe this is just something that people of a certain age do. Itkind of matters what order the tracks are in, but ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ followed by ‘Another One Bites The Dust’, followed by Killer Queen’ – that kind of works and then it finishes with ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘We Are The Champions’, and it’s there for a reason and I feel as though people should listen to albums. I know this is gonna make me sound very old, but that it’s there for a reason. It’s arranged like that for a purpose.
BRIAN: You’re absolutely right, yeah. That’s kind of got washed away these days, hasn’t it with shuttle and whatever. Yeah, every album we ever made, including the “Hits” albums. We thought, “Yeah people are going to be putting this on their turntables”, as it was at the time, “and they will be listening to it in sequence and we want to give them a journey. The tracks have to work in sequence”. So yeah and thank you for bringing that up. I hope people will play it all the way through. It’s great.
SIMON: Yes, well I’ve always read that you’re a perfectionist, Brian. I seem to remember from our previous conversations that your reputation is something of the perfectionist, so I think people – it would give you a lot of pleasure think that people start at side, one track one, and work their way through properly and in order .
BRIAN: Yeah, I’m a horrible perfectionist. I think it drives people mad but I always – I think I got it from my Dad.- He’d always say, “If it’s worth doing it’s worth doing properly”, and my extension of that is if it’s worth doing it’s worth doing better than anyone could ever do it in the past. Let’s just go for it.
SIMON: And it’s that tendency to the perfectionist is that it increasing as you get older?
BRIAN: I’m trying to hold it in check to be honest. One of my favourite phrases is ‘we managed to avoid perfection on that’ – so yeah, perfection isn’t always what you want you know. Sometimes you want the spontaneity and I’ve always been aware of that, but now and again if the odd little moment is perfect then, thank you.
SIMON: And is it true. Brian, just just finally just on this – the other day I was playing “Hunky Dory” – David Bowie – and the story is that the piano that Rick Wakeman played for David Bowie on “Hunky Dory” is the same piano that Paul McCartney used for ‘Hey Jude’ and is the same piano that Freddie played on ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and it’s an 1898 Bechstein piano. That’s either a complete Internet made-up fact, or it’s true.
BRIAN: Do you know, I’m not actually sure. I wouldn’t like to swear to it but I think it’s quite possible – yeah. I think that Trident piano was there for a long time and it was a Bechstein which had very hard hammers, which gave it that very metallic kind of sound. It doesn’t sound like a classical piano, although it was built as a classical piano. It has that kind of hard edge to it and, yeah, I think it’s highly possible.
SIMON: Let’s go with it – it’s a great story. Anyway, when do we actually see you play and it’s difficult to plan for these things but when might you be stepping out and getting on that stage again?
BRIAN: Well, all things being well, Queen and Adam Lambert will be back on the stage next May – end of next May 2022. It’s booked. It’s all sold out. It’s been sold out for a long time. I’m just crossing my fingers that we’ll actually be able to do it. It’s a long way away still. Fingers crossed that’s what we’ll do. We’ll be ready. I’m gonna be ready and fit and hitting the ground running as soon as I can.
SIMON: Brian, a pleasure as ever. Thanks very much for your time.
BRIAN: Bless you thanks. Thanks for having me. Good luck to you.
Credit: GREATEST HITS RADIO