Because of his deep-rooted love for his self-made Red Special guitar, it’s taken Brian May half a century of noise-making to get his first official signature guitar. His Gibson SJ-200 12-string is the result, and it a heartfelt tribute to the late great Freddie Mercury that’s easy to overlook.
May turned heads when he joined Gibson’s family of artists last year, ushering in rumors of a Gibson-made Red Special, which the guitarist added further fuel to with his comments several months later.
However, a different signature guitar has come first, and it satisfies more immediate and pressing needs for the guitarist, thanks to the 12-string’s quirky setup.
Discussing the guitar’s origins in a celestial-themed promo video, May says: “The 12-string I was accustomed to wasn’t performing. Gibson kindly said, ‘We’ll make you something special,’” and it’s met his key request.
“One of the things I asked for,” he explains, “was for the octaves to be placed around the other way from the way it’s usually done because I like to pick upwards and hear the top notes when I’m doing it.”
For the uninitiated, 12-string guitars feature the regular six strings, but strings E through to G are joined by a double of the string tuned an octave higher, while the high E and B strings are given a partner string in the same octave. This creates a bigger, more ringing sound than regular acoustic guitars.
However, where typical 12-strings place the higher octave strings above the standard string, May’s unique model flips them around to make the higher octave strings more prominent and to match his picking style.
Beyond that, the spirit of Queen’s legendary frontman, Freddie Mercury, lives on in a guitar that both serves as a tribute to May’s two biggest loves in life — music and space — and stands as a symbol of Mercury’s legacy because of how the guitar is set to be used live.
May has taken to performing “Love of my Life” from 1975’s A Night at the Opera solo — but backed by audio and video of Mercury — during the band’s live shows in recent years. During those performances, his 12-string playing — previously delivered on a Godin or Ovation model — shines.
“Love of my Life was written by Freddie on a piano,” he explains. “I played harp on it, and in the intro a Japanese koto.”
However, the band chose to revise the song for the stage after May “picked up a 12-string and found that I could make it sing with Freddie quite easily”.
“But probably even more importantly than that,” he adds, “it became a staple feature of our set. We would always quit the bombast, come down very small, and just Freddie and I would play together. It was always a lovely feeling.
“When we lost Freddie, I wanted to play ‘Love of my Life’ just the way we used to, so it became an audience thing where they all sing it and I hardly need to sing it at all. It just seemed right to involve Freddie.”
And so, when designing the guitar, he made sure there was a little Freddie flair in its chic stylings.
“I believe that the best science is done artistically, and the best art is done with a knowledge of the universe. Look at the science of this guitar,” he muses. “Look how much technology and craftsmanship has gone into this.”
He then points to the guitar’s beautiful pickguard design, which features a constellation of stars and planets.
“They were able to put the universe here in some figurative way,” he says. “And look what’s right here in the middle: The planet Mercury. That’s a little nod to a friend of mine.
“Freddie’s always with me because he was like a brother. The relationships in Queen lasted longer than any of our marriages. It was a big, big thing.
“We still carry Queen around with us, even though we don’t have Freddie,” he concludes. “But I have a Mercury on the guitar now, which makes me very happy.”
Meanwhile, Brian May has revealed that guitars were illegal at his school, and in the same interview, he admitted that he had doubts about his Red Special guitar at first. However, after hearing the band’s debut album, 1973’s “Queen I” for the first time, we changed his mind and set his eyes on taking over the world with it.
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