Brian May has given an interview that covers all sorts of interesting ground – Queen’s Flash Gordon soundtrack album, the Highlander score, his own recent Masters Of The Universe score and whether Queen are now definitely done with touring.
On that latter, the guitarist claimed that recent reports that he (and thus Queen) have retired from the road are inaccurate. “I got kind of misinterpreted, slightly misquoted there,” he told Rolling Stone. “I never said we’ll never tour again. I don’t know how I could ever say that. I couldn’t.”
“I feel like I’m on a break, and I’m enjoying my break, and I’m getting to do all the things which I dreamed of doing when there was no time all those years on the road.”
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He also spoke about his own approach to the guitar which, as we know, is very thoughtful, precise and uniquely him. “If I can’t hear it in my head, I can’t play it,” he confirmed. “Cause to me, the guitar is a voice, and if you don’t know what you’re gonna say, it’s pointless opening your mouth, really.
“You can wheedle, wheedle, wheedle endlessly because things happen when you pick up a guitar, but that’s not really playing the guitar with a purpose. And to me, yes, I always wanna hear it in my head, whether it’s the Bohemian Rhapsody solo or it’s a piece of Eternia which we haven’t visited before.”
The latter was a track off the recent Masters Of The Universe soundtrack on which he worked with Daniel Pemberton. The pair roped in The Darkness for the another track – The Legend Of Eternia – which is as bombastic as you’d expect any track with both May and The Darkness on it would be.
“I reconstructed the whole track, pulled everything in that I could find, with the help of Daniel,” May explained. “And then I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could get the Darkness on this as well? It would bring it to life.’ And I wanted a bit more vocal anyway, to tell a bit more of the story. The Darkness were already involved in the project – they’d done the end-title theme.”
So May phoned them up. “They are really dear friends of mine. Dan came down first, and played bass, which I actually wasn’t expecting, but he just instantly said, ‘Look, I have to play bass on this.’
“And I said, ‘Do you think we can talk to your brother about doing some vocals?’ And Justin immediately said yes. He was brilliant, Justin, ’cause they were already on tour and halfway around the world, and what he did was take a copy of the track and a little handheld, well, an iPhone, I suppose, and just sang into it in his hotel room and sent it over to me, and it was good enough quality for me to put on the track.”
