Brian May of Queen caught up with The Classic Rock Magazine Show in Los Angeles in 2014 after picking up the gong for Band Of The Year after the release of Queen Forever and a slew of shows with singer, Adam Lambert.
As he told Nicky Horne, “After we lost Freddie, for Roger and I there was a long period where we didn’t want to talk about Queen, that part of our lives were over, but it comes back, and in a pleasant way, as people want to hear the music still. We’re still able to play and we can bring Freddie and John back in a small way, even though neither of them are with us any more, technically, spiritually, they are…
“And with Adam, it’s not in any sense a copy, it’s a joy for me to explore this material with Adam, it’s like the final piece of the puzzle. And he’s such a nice guy, if he were a shit then this wouldn’t have happened. And he’s so invested in it, when we were putting the set list together he had a lot of input. I feel so grateful that we can just do it.”
Talking about the band’s then recent Queen Forever album and the previously unreleased Long Away, which featured May’s lead vocal, he says: “In the early Queen albums, Roger and I would write songs that weren’t easily negotiable by Freddie. I think, in our own precociousness, that we could bring something to them vocally because we sang in a different way. We later abandoned that idea as we thought, god, we’ve got Freddie here, let’s use him, he’s the greatest singer in the world.”
And, finally, responding to Nicky Horne’s question about his thoughts on mortality and the metaphorical ticking of the clock, “We think about mortality quite a lot, in a healthy way. You should be aware of the clock ticking away, it’s a clock that could stop at any point. So what is it that’s worth doing at this point? For me, it’s about being a rounded human being, about the way we treat the other species on the planet…”
Sorry, this On Demand content is no longer available.
To read more on Queen and Brian May scooping up yet another Classic Rock award, then click the link below.
