The Sunday Times – a rubbish article, and an absolute betrayal of trust

|

Look at this garbage !! We gave the Sunday Times a worldwide exclusive to serialise my “Queen in 3-D” book. This is what they came up with. “Freddie and Me” is NOT what the book is about. And the photograph used for this cover is nothing to do with the book and is so crudely cut out and stuck on that garish yellow background, you just have to wonder how these people sleep at night, churning out this cheap rubbish.

Sunday Times Magazine cover 21052017


We gave the ST exclusive use of ALL the photographs in the book. They used just two of them, one of them reproduced not much bigger than a postage stamp; the rest of the piece illustrated with recycled ordinary snaps from God knows where. The opening of the piece inside says “Tragedy, debauchery … and dwarves … ” !! NONE of this tired old stuff features in the book, or was discussed in the interview. This woman came into my house, pretended she was a fan and was going to write a nice piece about the book, as agreed; then went away and wrote this pathetic sensationalistic drivel. I’m angry and disgusted. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such crass journalism and experienced such a betrayal of trust. Folks – please ignore this trash – the book is NOTHING like this.

Over the last few weeks we have meticulously kept to the agreement we had with this newspaper. It’s been a pain in the neck, but we felt honour-bound. We denied EVERYBODY else any access to the pictures or the text of the book. We even sat with a huge pile of books under the table for the first 4 days at the Photo London fair – when the whole audience of our talk would have liked to buy them … purely to honour our agreement to embargo everything until the ‘serialisation’ in the Times supplement came out. I specially gave them publicity too, in radio interviews, and at our talk to Photo London last week. And this is how they honoured their side of the bargain.

I think the worst part of it all to me is that people will see this article and think that this came from me. They’ll think that this is the way I see things, and that this is what the book is about. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. I can hardly believe that they had exclusive access to all the wonderful pictures in the book, which were today causing people to gasp as they saw them, but they chose to use random flat pictures from elsewhere to illustrate the article. And no acknowledgement whatsoever that this is, uniquely, a stereoscopic book.

The online version describes itself like this …

“QUEEN and I Guitarist Brian May tells Krissi Morison about the debauchery of the Freddie Mercury years.”

This is not only crass sensationalism – it’s also a lie. I did not. And neither does the book. I spent over two years fashioning this into the first book of its kind – EVER – a biography of a band from the inside illustrated with my own photographs – and in 3-D, with a fabulous viewer to bring them to life in three dimensions. It’s honest, goes deep, and is tasteful and dignified (I have been told !) but nobody reading this awful amateurish piece of journalistic opportunism would know it.

Well, here’s a message for you, Krissi Morison and your scummy pals. I hope you think it was worth it. Because neither I nor any intelligent reader of this travesty will ever give you the time of day from here on in.

Look out for some sample pages from “Queen in 3-D” on this page tomorrow, folks. 

Bri

PLEASE OBSERVE COPYRIGHT
© brianmay.com