Before he became one of rock’s most distinctive guitarists, Brian May was a teenager in southwest London trying to find his musical voice. Like many aspiring British players of the era, he was captivated by the guitar heroes emerging from the local club scene. But two musicians in particular would fundamentally alter the way he thought about the instrument: Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.
Speaking about his formative years in a school band called 1984, May recalled regularly performing soul covers by Sam & Dave and Otis Redding before Britain’s psychedelic explosion changed everything.
“We played a mixture of adapted soul stuff,” he said. “It was just pre-psychedelia. We used to try and do a couple of songs of our own. Luckily, as time went on, Pink Floyd, Cream, and Jimi Hendrix came along, and we started doing that.”
The first major revelation came from Eric Clapton during the guitarist’s tenure with the Yardbirds.
“Clapton was unbelievable, just so sparkling and fluid,” May said. “He was what turned me away from the Shadows style and sent me back to listening to B.B. King, Bo Diddley, and all those people I’d heard before.”
At the time, May admitted he had underestimated the blues, viewing it largely as a repetitive form.
“I thought it was all the same: 12-bar blues, and that was it,” he explained. “I didn’t realize the depth or emotion there was in it until I saw Eric Clapton doing it. That somehow made it accessible for me.”
Inspired by Clapton’s playing, May began tracing the guitarist’s influences and immersing himself in the records that had shaped the British blues boom.
“I went back and listened to his influences,” he said. “I listened to Clapton very closely, and to people like Mike Bloomfield on the first album by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.”
May was equally enthralled by Jeff Beck, who replaced Clapton in the Yardbirds and pushed the electric guitar into increasingly adventurous territory.
“I couldn’t believe what he could do,” May recalled. “I remember seeing him put the guitar down, make it feedback, and play a whole tune without even touching the fingerboard. That was the first time I saw a Les Paul guitar. I saw a gig at the Marquee soon after Beck had joined, and Eric Clapton came on and jammed at the end. That was pretty amazing; I’ll never forget that.“
But even the combined impact of those two British guitar giants could not prepare him for what came next.
After years of developing his own expressive approach to the instrument, May believed he was beginning to achieve the sounds he heard in his head.
“I was beginning to make the guitar sort of talk,” he recalled. “I always wanted the guitar to play for people, to talk the same way a vocal did and have feeling in it.”
Then he encountered Hendrix.
“When I saw Hendrix, I thought, Oh my God. This guy is doing everything that I was trying to do.”
The experience was humbling.
“He just made me feel like I couldn’t play,” May said. “It makes you feel very uncomfortable when you thought you knew everything that was going on, and then suddenly somebody comes along who seems to be doing all sorts of things you hadn’t even thought of.”
Initially, May suspected that some of Hendrix’s seemingly impossible sounds might have been studio trickery. Hearing the guitarist’s conversation-like soloing on “Stone Free,” he wondered whether recording techniques were responsible.
That skepticism vanished when he saw Hendrix perform live at London’s Savoy Theatre while supporting the Who.
“He completely blew me away,” May said. “I thought, ‘He’s it.’”
The impact was so overwhelming that May believed even one of Britain’s biggest bands couldn’t compete.
“The Who couldn’t follow him in those days,” he said. “Anybody in the world would find it hard to follow Hendrix.”
The lessons May absorbed from both players would remain central to his own style. From Clapton, he learned that blues guitar could communicate emotion and nuance — even if he did once earn Slowhand’s wrath when he and Eddie Van Halen dedicated a blues jam to the guitarist that Clapton called “so horrible.” From Hendrix, he discovered that the instrument’s expressive possibilities were far broader than he had imagined.
Those influences would eventually help shape the singular voice May developed with Queen — a style capable of singing, soaring, and, just as he had always wanted, making a guitar talk.
