“Gonna Make my Resurrection”
Resurrection
“It’s so massive in scope, and it’s so ridiculously ambitious from the point of view of singing as well as playing,
I think that’s the one I want on my tombstone really!”
Relive Brian May talking through his ‘Back To The Light’ Album track by track, starting with ‘RESURRECTION’ here:
Storytelling with Brian May: “Gonna Make My Resurrection”
– https://youtu.be/eL30xIWn_zA
TRANSCRIPT by Jen Tunney
BRIAN MAY:
Yeah. The impetus from that came from Cozy and it was a gift from Heaven. I’m looking for something which expresses my need to try and find new life and suddenly Cozy comes in with this track, which he’s made down at Mono Studios, his favourite place to make a big drum sound.
And he goes, “Brian – you want to play on this?” And it was going to be on his solo album. And I said, “Yeah, I’ll do whatever you want.” And he said, “Well, do you want it for your solo album as well?” I went, “Yeah, that would be great.” So we shared everything.
You know, I listened to it this morning, and it really did kind of blow me away because it’s it’s so massive in scope, and it’s so ridiculously ambitious from the point of view of singing as well as playing. I think that’s the one I want on my tombstone, really. That’s the one I want played at my funeral, probably. because it’s irresistibly, forcefully, full of belief. It’s the kind of belief that you need to overcome the massive obstacles that get put in our way during our lives.
So I feel very proud of it. I love it. It’s very uncompromising again. It’s full of ridiculous hope and passion and belief and fireworks.
We made a video for it, Cozy and I, and there was fireworks and lots of flames and stuff. It was all like …. It’s a kind of biblical intensity to it. I love it. I love the feel of it. I love the sound of it. And we really went to town on the overdubs. There’s probably more overdubs on that than there is on Bohemian Rhapsody. Of course, there’s only me. So there’s a lot of work for me.
I was also pushing myself. It was a time when I wanted to know how far I could go. Suddenly I’m without Freddie. I’m trying to sing my own stuff. How far can I go? How high can I go? How intense can I go? How broad can I go in the vocals. So I kind of pushed myself till I bled when I doing these vocals – more and more – higher -harder and harder. and probably could never do that again. I don’t think I could do that now, but I’m pleased with the place that I got to. It was the place I needed to get to at that time.
‘Resurrection’ is full of hope, full of belief. It was good to have that open book. Yeah – there was no expectation. There was no need to sound like Queen or the Brian May that was part of creating Queen, yeah. So it’s a bit harder.
I used some different guitars as well. I used that Joe Satriani guitar for some of it – a big Metallic Joe Satriani guitar, and it’s got a real bite to it, and yeah, there was no limit. And I’m tapping away, which I normally didn’t do in Queen. Queen. It’s very melodic, and although I had that sort of tapping thing in my vocabulary, there’s not often a place to use it in Queen.
[Yes] – I just went for it all, and it’s reaching for the sky in terms of pushing my guitar playing as well.
ENDS
Brian May ‘Back to the Light’ Remastered Reissue Coming August 6, 2021.
Available to Pre-order Now @ https://BrianMay.lnk.to/BackToTheLight