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| - | [[Category:guitarists]]
| + | '''Currently undergoing editing!''' |
| - | [[Image:Brian2.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Brian May.]]
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| - | == Introduction. ==
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| - | '''Brian Harold May''', CBE, (born 19 July 1947) is a British musician and astrophysicist most widely known as the lead guitarist of the rock band [[Queen]]. As a guitarist he uses his home built guitar, '''"Red Special"''', and has composed hits such as ''"Tie Your Mother Down", "We Will Rock You", "Who Wants to Live Forever", "Hammer to Fall", "Save Me", "Fat Bottomed Girls"'' and ''"I Want It All"''. Currently the ''Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University'', May lives in Surrey. | + | |
| - | He was made ''Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE.)'' in 2005 for "services to the music industry".
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| - | May was ranked 39th in Rolling Stone magazine list of the ''"100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".''
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| - | == Biography. ==
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| - | May was born in Hampton, London and attended Hampton Grammar School (now Hampton School). During this time he formed his first band with vocalist and bassist Tim Staffell named ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' after George Orwell's novel of the same name. He graduated from Hampton Grammar School with ten GCE Ordinary Levels and four Advanced Levels in Physics, Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Additional Mathematics.<br>
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| - | May's father Harold worked as a Draughtsman at the Ministry of Aviation and had been a long-time cigarette-smoker. As a result, May dislikes smoking, even to the point where he has prohibited smoking indoors at his more recent concerts.
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| - | He has stated in interviews that he suffered from depression in the late 1980s, even to the point of contemplating suicide, and that drug use would have worsened any problems he faced.<br>
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| - | Brian is married to former Eastenders actress Anita Dobson, who gained fame in the 1980s for providing vocals to the theme tune to the aforementioned soap, entitled ''Anyone Can Fall in Love''. May himself produced the song, which reached #4 in the UK Singles Chart in August 1986.
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| - | == Astrophysics. ==
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| - | May studied physics at Imperial College London, graduating with a B.Sc. (Hons) degree in both Physics and Mathematics and ARCS with Upper Second-Class Honours. He then proceeded to study for a Ph.D degree, also at the Imperial College London departments of Physics and Mathematics, and was part way through this Ph.D programme, studying reflected light from interplanetary dust and the velocity of dust in the plane of the Solar System, when [[Queen]] became successful. He abandoned his physics doctorate but did co-author two scientific research papers: ''MgI Emission in the Night-Sky Spectrum'' (1972) and ''An Investigation of the Motion of Zodiacal Dust Particles (Part I)'' (1973), which were based on May's observations at the Teide Observatory in Tenerife. He is the co-author of ''Bang! – The Complete History of the Universe'' with Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott, which was published in October 2006. More than 30 years after he started his research, in October 2007 he completed his Ph.D. thesis in astrophysics, entitled ''A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud'', passed his viva voce, and performed the required corrections. He officially graduated at the postgraduate awards ceremony held in the '''Royal Albert Hall''', on the afternoon of Wednesday 14 May 2008.<br>
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| - | On 17 November 2007, Brian May was appointed ''Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University'', taking over from Cherie Blair, and installed in 2008.<br>
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| - | Asteroid '''52665 Brianmay''' was named in his honour on 18 June 2008 on the suggestion of Sir Patrick Moore (probably influenced by the asteroid's provisional designation of '''1998 BM30''').
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| - | == Musician. ==
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| - | [[Image:Brian.jpg|thumb|right|Brian with the 'Red Special'.]]
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| - | Brian May has been referred to as a virtuoso guitarist by many publications. He has used a range of guitars, most often the '''"Red Special"''', which he designed when he was only 16 years old. It was built with Mahogany wood from an 18th century fireplace. His comments on this instrument, from Queen In Their Own Words (ed. Mick St. Michael, Omnibus Press, 1992, p. 62) are:<br>
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| - | ''"I like a big neck – thick, flat and wide. I lacquered the fingerboard with Rustin's Plastic Coating. The tremolo is interesting in that the arm's made from an old bicycle saddle bag carrier, the knob at the end's off a knitting needle and the springs are valve springs from an old motorbike."''<br>
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| - | In addition to using his home-made guitar he prefers to use coins (especially a sixpence), instead of a more traditional plastic plectrum, on the basis that their rigidity gives him more control in playing. He is known to carry coins in his pockets specifically for this purpose.<br>
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| - | May's early heroes were [[Cliff Richard and The Shadows]], who he says were ''"the most metallic thing out at the time."'' Many years later he gained his opportunity to play on separate occasions with both Cliff Richard and Shadows lead guitarist [[Hank Marvin]]. He has collaborated with Cliff Richard on a re-recording of the Cliff Richard and The Shadows (then known as [[The Drifters]]) 1958 hit ''"Move It"'' on the Cliff Richard duets album Two's Company which was released on 6 November 2006. On Queen For An Hour 1989 Interview on BBC Radio 1 May listed [[Jimi Hendrix]], [[Jeff Beck]] and [[Eric Clapton]] as his guitar heroes.<br>
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| - | May was proud upon hearing that Cliff Richard had mentioned in an interview that he would have Brian May in his personal fantasy band. As well as recording with [[Hank Marvin]], May also contributed to the 1996 album ''Twang!: A Tribute to Hank Marvin & the Shadows'', playing ''FBI''. The album featured many other renowned guitarists.<br>
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| - | In Queen's three-part vocal harmonies, his was generally the lower-range backing vocal. On some of his songs he sings the lead vocal, most notably the first verse of ''Who Wants to Live Forever'', the bridge on ''"I Want It All"'', ''"Some Day One Day"'', ''"All Dead, All Dead", "Long Away", "Leaving Home Ain't Easy", "Good Company", "Sleeping on the Sidewalk"'' and ''"'39."''<br>
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| - | On 22 October 2000, Brian May made a guest appearance at the [[Motörhead]] 25th Anniversary show at Brixton Academy along with [[Eddie Clarke]] (former [[Motörhead]] guitarist) for the encore song ''Overkill''.<br>
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| - | In recent years, he has overseen the remastering of [[Queen]] albums and various DVD and Greatest Hits releases. In 2004, he announced that he and drummer [[Roger Taylor]] were going on tour for the first time in 18 years as '''"Queen"''', along with [[Free]]/[[Bad Company]] vocalist [[Paul Rodgers]]. Billed as '''"Queen + Paul Rodgers"''', the band has played throughout 2005 and 2006 in South Africa, Europe, Aruba, Japan, and North America and released a new album with [[Paul Rodgers]] in 2008, entitled '''"The Cosmos Rocks"'''. This album was supported by a major tour.<br>
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| - | In the Queen's birthday honours list of 2005, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) "for ''services to the music industry''".<br>
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| - | During the time in which Brian May and his father were building the '''Red Special''', May also produced plans to build a second guitar. However, so successful was the '''Red Special''', that May simply had no need to build another guitar. These plans were eventually given to guitar luthier [[Andrew Guyton]] in around 2004/05, some slight modifications were made and the guitar was built. It was named '''"The Spade"''', as the shape of the body resembled the form shown on playing cards. However the guitar also came to be known as '''"The Guitar That Time Forgot"'''. As yet, this guitar has not been used in any recordings and remains in May's possession.
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| - | == Career Highlights. ==
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| - | Brian May began composing in 1968/1969, and through the years he has collaborated with other songwriters, including ''Frank Musker'', with whom he wrote ''"Too Much Love Will Kill You"'', and with ''Elizabeth Lamers'', whose music won the '''Ivor Novello Award''' for ''Best Song Musically & Lyrically'' in 1996. A meticulous arranger, he focuses on multi-part harmonies, often more contrapuntal than parallel — a rarity for rock guitar. Examples are found in Queen's albums A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, where he arranged a jazz band for guitar mini-orchestra (''"Good Company"''), a vocal canon (''"The Prophet's Song"'') and guitar and vocal counterpoints (''"Teo Torriatte"'').<br>
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| - | May explored a wide variety of styles in guitar, including [[sweep picking]] (''"Was It All Worth It", "Chinese Torture"''), [[tapping]] (''"Bijou","It's Late","Resurrection", "Cyborg", "Rain Must Fall", "Business", "China Belle", "I Was Born To Love You"''), [[slide guitar]] (''"Drowse", "Tie Your Mother Down"''), [[Hendrix]] sounding licks (''"Liar", "Brighton Rock"''), [[tape-delay]] (''"Brighton Rock", "White Man"'') and [[melodic]] parts (''"Bohemian Rhapsody", "Killer Queen", "These Are the Days of Our Lives"''). Some of his solos and orchestral parts were composed by Freddie Mercury, who then asked May to bring them to life (''"Bicycle Race", "Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon", "Killer Queen", "Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy"''). May also performed notable acoustic works, including ''"Love of My Life"'' from 1975's '''A Night at the Opera''', the finger-picked solo of ''"White Queen"'' and the skiffle-influenced '''"'39"'''.<br>
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| - | In January 2007, the readers of Guitar World]] voted May's guitar solos ''"Bohemian Rhapsody"''and ''"Brighton Rock"'' into the top 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of all time ("Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted #20 and "Brighton Rock" was voted #41).<br>
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| - | Aided by the uniqueness of his guitar — '''the Red Special''' — May was often able to create strange and unusual sound effects. For example, he was able to imitate an orchestra in the song ''"Procession"'', in ''"Get Down, Make Love"'', he was able to create sound effects with his guitar that were so unusual that many thought a synthesizer was being used. In ''"Good Company"'' he used his guitar to mimic a trombone, a piccolo and several other instruments for the song's [[Dixieland]] jazz band feel.<br>
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| - | May's abilities are not restricted to one instrument. During his [[Queen]] days he performed banjolele (''"Good Company"'' and ''"Bring Back That Leroy Brown"'') and sometimes piano, detaching on a soft and gentle style (''"All Dead, All Dead", "Save Me", "Dear Friends"''). He also played part of the synthesizer intro (the melody) to ''"One Vision"''. He recorded some other instruments (maracas, banjo, etc), including the harp on ''"Love of My Life"'', which was recorded in overdubs and mixed to sound as one performance.<br>
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| - | May is also an accomplished singer. His wide vocal range went from notes around low F (87 Hz) to very high tenor Ds and Es (mostly in his solo career). Occasionally he contributed falsetto parts as well (''"Ogre Battle", "Why Don't We Try Again"''). From Queen's '''Queen II''' to '''The Game''', May contributed lead vocals to at least one song per album.<br>
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| - | May composed a mini-opera, ''Il Colosso'', for Steve Barron's 1996 film, ''The Adventures of Pinocchio''. May performed the opera with Jerry Hadley, Sissel Kyrkjebo, and Just William. On-screen, it was performed entirely by puppets.
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| - | == Equipment. ==
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| - | [[Image:Brian3.jpg|thumb|right]]
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| - | Most of May's guitar work was done on the '''Red Special'''. However, he has used a number of other electric guitars, including a '''Burns Double Six''' (''"Long Away"''), a [[Gibson Les Paul]] (as a backup during the early tours.), a [[Gibson Flying V]] (spare during ''Hot Space'' tour), a [[Fender Telecaster]] (''Crazy Little Thing Called Love''), a [[Stratocaster]] copy in the "''Play the Game''" promo, an [[Ibanez]] JS (''Nothing But Blue''),a''' Greco BM90''' (featured in the promo video of ''"Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy"'', but was not actually used in the studio), a [[Tōkai]] Hummingbird Acoustic (on some recordings), a [[Parker]] Fly (''"Mother Love"'') and a [[Jackson]] [[Randy Rhoads]] in the video for ''"Princes of the Universe"''.<br>
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| - | In early Queen tours he had a [[Fender Stratocaster]] as a spare guitar, replacing it with a [[Les Paul]] Deluxe in 1974, then a '''John Birch''' replica of his '''Red Special''' the next year. In a concert in the States on the 1982 Hot Space North American tour, he got frustrated with that instrument and smashed it, thereafter using a [[Gibson Flying V]] until he got more suitable replicas of his beloved Red Special. In 1984 [[Guild]] released the first official '''Red Special''' replica for mass production, and made some prototypes specifically for May. However the solid body construction (the original RS has hollow cavities in the body) and the pickups ([[DiMarzio]]) that were not an exact replica of the '''Burns TriSonic''' did not make May happy, so the production stopped after just 300 guitars. In 1993 [[Guild]] made a second replica of the RS, made in just 1000 copies, of which May has some and used as a backup. At the moment, he uses the 2 guitars made by '''Greg Fryer''' — the luthier who restored the Old Lady in 1998 — as backup. They are almost identical to the original, except for the Fryer logo on the headstock (May's original one has a sixpence).<br>
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| - | For acoustic guitars, he mostly used [[Ovation]] 12-Strings, [[Martin]]s, a [[Godin]] Thinline A-12 for the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert performance of ''"Crazy Little Thing Called Love"'' and a [[Gibson]] [[Chet Atkins]] for nylon-string parts. He created the unique "buzzing" tone heard on ''"White Queen (As It Began)"'' and ''"Jealousy"'' by placing pieces of piano wire under the frets. His ukulele was Aloha. Pianos he recorded include Bösendorfers, although in concerts he relied on Freddie Mercury's Steinway. May used Yamaha DX7 synths for the opening sequence of ''"One Vision"'' and the backgrounds of ''"Who Wants to Live Forever", "Scandal"'' and ''"The Show Must Go On"''.<br>
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| - | May was keen on using some toys as instruments as well. He used a [[Yamaha]] plastic piano in'' "Teo Torriatte"'', a '''"genuine George Formby Ukulele-Banjo"''' in ''"Bring Back That Leroy Brown"'' and in ''"Good Company"'', and a toy mini koto in'' "The Prophet's Song".''<br>
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| - | May has used [[Vox AC-30]] amplifiers almost exclusively since a meeting with his long time hero [[Rory Gallagher]] at a gig in London during the late 60s/early 70s. His choice is the model AC30TBX, the top-boost version with ''Blue Alnico'' speakers, and he runs the amp at full volume on the Normal channel. He also customizes his amps by removing the circuitry for the Brilliant and Vib-trem channels (leaving only the circuitry for the Normal), and this alters the tone slightly, with a gain addition of 6-7dB. He always used a 'treble booster' of some kind which, along with the AC-30, went a long way in helping to create many of his signature guitar tones. He used the ''Dallas Rangemaster'' for the first [[Queen]] albums, up to ''A Day at the Races''. Then, effects guru Pete Cornish built for him the TB-83 (32dB of gain) that used for all the remaining [[Queen]] albums. He switched in 2000 to the Fryer's booster, which actually gives less boost than the TB-83.<br>
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| - | Live, he uses banks of [[AC-30]] amplifiers keeping some amps with only guitar and others with all effects such as delay, flanger and chorus. He has a rack of 14 AC30s, which are grouped as Normal, Chorus, Delay 1, Delay 2. On his pedal board, May has a custom switch unit made by Cornish and subsequently modified by Fryer that allows him to choose which amps are active. He uses a [[BOSS]] pedal from the 70s, the Chorus Ensemble CE-1, which you can hear in ''In The Lap of The Gods (Live at Wembley '86)'' or ''Hammer to Fall'' (slow version played live with P. Rodgers). Next in the chain, he uses a ''Foxx Foot Phaser'' (''We Will Rock You, We Are the Champions, Keep Yourself Alive, etc''), and two delay machines to play his trademark ''Brighton Rock'' solo.<br>
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| - | == Album Discography. ==
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| - | == Studio Albums. ==
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| - | Queen ~ 1973<br>
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| - | Queen II ~ 1974<br>
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| - | Sheer Heart Attack ~ 1974<br>
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| - | A Night at the Opera ~ 1975<br>
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| - | A Day at the Races ~ 1976<br>
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| - | News of the World ~ 1977<br>
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| - | Jazz ~ 1978<br>
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| - | The Game ~ 1980<br>
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| - | Hot Space ~ 1982<br>
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| - | The Works ~ 1984<br>
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| - | A Kind of Magic ~ 1986<br>
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| - | The Miracle ~ 1989<br>
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| - | Innuendo ~ 1991<br>
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| - | Made in Heaven ~ 1995
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| - | == Live Albums. ==
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| - | Live Killers ~ 1979<br>
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| - | Live Magic ~ 1986<br>
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| - | Live at Wembley ~ 1992<br>
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| - | Queen on Fire - Live at the Bowl ~ 2004<br>
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| - | Queen rock Montreal ~ 2007
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| - | == Compilation Albums. ==
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| - | Greatest Hits ~ 1981<br>
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| - | Greatest Hits II ~ 1991<br>
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| - | Queen Rocks ~ 1997<br>
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| - | Greatest Hits III ~ 1999<br>
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| - | The Platinum Collection ~ 2000
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| - | == Some videos. ==
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| - | '''Bohemian Rhapsody.'''
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| - | {{#ev:youtube|irp8CNj9qBI}}<br>
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| - | '''Fat Bottomed Girls.'''
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| - | {{#ev:youtube|-D99n9f3vU4}}<br>
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| - | '''I'm going slightly mad.'''
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| - | {{#ev:youtube|rNBWf54RvsI}}<br>
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| - | '''Those were the days of our lives.'''
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| - | {{#ev:youtube|mRwG5LoSvwQ}}
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| - | == Related Lessons. ==
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| - | [https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/solo-guitar/in-the-style-of-brian-may/ In the style of Brian May by David Wallimann.]<br>
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| - | --[[User:Sensible Jones|Sensible Jones]] 17:49, 28 September 2009 (CEST)
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