Brian May – Unwrapping the “Queen in 3-D book”, FULL LENGTH VERSION – https://youtu.be/eobYGDOtkN0 – Recorded on or before 24 April 2017
PART 1 (Previously shared April 2017) – continues with remainder below..
Hey Folks
I feel like it’s Christmas because yesterday [23 April] the first copy of Golden Days came along and we were able to actually unwrap it. The album that me and Kerry Ellis have made over the last couple of years.
Today [24 April] arrives in the post this, which is also a very long term project. At least three years we spent on this and I must say I’m thrilled to hold this. It’s very heavy but there’s a lot in here folks. This is “Queen In 3-D” and really it chronicles in snapshots the whole of our history – and in fact almost the whole of my history back to being a kid when I first found the 3-D cards in Weetabix.
Unwrapping the Queen in 3-D book
So it’s a story of 3-D and stereoscopy, but also of the band that we called Queen and we worked in this band for more years than I can count really.
Finally I can unwrap it, so I thought I would share the unwrapping with you and show you how it works. Okay, no batteries needed.
You can see there’s more than one thing in here. There’s more than just a book. There is an OWL envelope in here and I’ll show you what that all means. You can see there’s more than one thing in here. There’s more than just a book. There is an OWL envelope in here and I’ll show you what that all means.
So using the fingernail carefully, see if I can get into this thing. There we are. Amazing, amazing, amazing. Feels good, smells good. All shiny and new.
Front cover has a lenticular picture of Freddie on, and that’s one kind of 3-D. Doesn’t need any batteries. Doesn’t need any viewer and you can probably see, even in mono, the fact that it’s, well, 3-D, so should look good in the book shops and this lovely foil stuff is great. You would swear this is embossed because it looks very 3-D in itself, but our lovely people in China have managed to do this on foil.
PART 2
So let’s see what’s in the box. Okay. Will it come out? Yes it will. This is the slip case which we can now discover some stuff with the back telling you all about it, but I’ll tell you all about it, okay.
So first of all I’m gonna show you this thing. This is the OWL stereoscope and many of you will know what this is because we’ve recently, well not recently, but over the last few years put out some books on various Victorian subjects like “Scenes In Our Village” and the “Diableries”, which are these amazing French devils from the 1860s. I was gonna say from France, but they aren’t. No, no.
This an OWL. Same kind of Owl. This particular one has been moulded in spectacular 1986 Freddie Mercury jacket from Wembley Stadium yellow and.. but it works the same as the previous ones have. You find your crest on top – London Stereoscopic Company crest on top. Fold it up and clip it like this. We might give you some close-ups of this later. Fold the eyepieces up in the same way and clip ‘em on like this. (Clip them) together, and there you have your OWL, which you always hold at the back. You never hold it at the front, okay. Hold it at the back and then the thumbs go in these thumb holes here and that’s how you focus. So this will work for pretty much any kind of eye sight. Let’s hope so.
So here’s your OWL. What do you use this for? You use it for perusing this unique stereoscopic book about Queen through the ages. Here it is, and you’ll find lots of normal kinds of illustrations here. Now I’ve never opened this before in my life.
<Smells book> Something about the smell of new books, like smell of new vinyl (your nose?). You know smell is a very important sense, so is touch, so is hearing. Thank God for our music but so is visual, and I’ve always been, I think. equally obsessed with the visual as well as wit sounds. Hence I was always carrying a stereo camera.
Here we go. This is not stereo. So far this is just showing you kind of what’s in the book.
Here we have Contents – through the years starting off with How To Use This Book, but I’m going to tell you and you get a picture me as a boy with a camera slung around my neck. I don’t know if you can see that. The camera’s not a stereo camera, but I used it to make stereo pictures because I twigged how it was done with the Weetabix.
So, working through the book – pretty soon you’re gonna come to the first stereo picture that I ever took. My Mum and Dad and stuff… me on a bike, but moving swiftly through, you can see that I was always carrying one of these cameras, with two eyes – the stereoscopic cameras. Hope you can see that – and the the rest of the book is showing you what was captured with those kind of cameras.
Starts off with the early days of Queen with us rehearsing and then the first tour of the USA – Freddie in his Zandra Rhodes outfit – and it works pretty well without the viewer, but you’ll notice that here’s a stereo picture down the bottom. I don’t know if you can see that. This is where your OWL comes in handy. So what you do is – I hope I can show ya’ – you squarely situate your OWL over the top of the stereo picture like this. I can show you – you have to hold it in this position – and you would be holding it by the back and focusing with your thumbs. I can assume you’ve done that, otherwise I can’t hold it up. Can you see that? And then once you focus the viewer, look through and you’ll see a pretty good window opening up on the world of, in his case, about 1974, and here’s Freddie. And I think you’re gonna feel like you’re there. It’s quite amazing.
There’s something very special about a snapshot in 3D rather than in 2D. You always feel like you could walk through and touch things that are in it. You would speak to people who are in the picture.
Here’s Freddie, looking very unglamorous. I don’t know what he would think really, but I think, you know, with the benefit of time we all have a sense of humour. Here he is, after a gig, looking very – very wet, because he’s been working very hard and he’s looking at some of these toys that the Japanese fans brought to us.
So the book goes on through the years and here, a little self-portrait, so you can see what I’m doing. Again the stereo camera is here. But we go through the days – we do Japan – we do Europe – we do England – we do Australia. Lots and lots of stuff – and some nice onstage pictures in 3D of course, and some nice offstage pictures. Some of my favourites are things like this, where we’re in a photo session and playing about basically, but here’s Freddie looking very relaxed and the quality of the illustration is as high as we could get it in a print – it’s much higher than the normal artwork book you’ll fine, so hopefully you will enjoy and be able to forget the fact that you’re looking at a picture at all. You’re just looking through a window at something which happened long time ago.
I’m gonna find one of my favourites of Freddie here. There’s some good onstage stuff captured, in this case, by a fan who had a stereo camera at the time. Pretty lucky that. It’s quite an interesting collection. And here’s some more. These were captured by more professional people, photographers that I lent the stereo camera to. Particularly nice one of Freddie here. But some of the offstage stuff is equally – ah here’s the cover shot – you see that, … you can see – the offstage shots of Freddie are really nice and of all of us. Some of John and we don’t hear much about John, but you’ll hear about him in this book. Roger playing around… us on a boat trip in Scandinavia someplace, and again nice to just flick through the book like this, but even better with your OWL because the OWL will bring it to life. And there’s Freddie as large as life.
So that’s about it really. Here’s the book, “Queen in 3-D”. It’s out May the something-or-other.. About a month’s time. May the what? – 25th or something – something like that. I’m being prompted. So you have to wait a little bit longer for this but I hope it’s worth he wait. We’re gonna launch it around the around the beginning of May and hopefully this will be something which you’ll all enjoy for a long time to come.
God bless y’all.
Bri
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