Brian Hiatt
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"Maybe one day I'm gonna wake up and think, 'Ah, maybe we should get out on the road,'" Brian May says in our new interview dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images Queen‘s Brian May has been spending a lot of time in his studio lately, from his work on the score to June’s Masters of the Universe (out soon on vinyl) to a collaboration with William Shatner. After decades of touring, he’s enjoying time at home, so he’s not anxious to play shows right now — but in a recent Zoom chat with Rolling Stone, he again made it clear that he’s not ruling it out. He also talked about Queen’s scores for Flash Gordon and Highlander, the newly restored Queen Budapest concert film, and more.
The composer Daniel Pemberton, who worked with you on Masters of the Universe, told me you’d sit and think for a while and then play fully formed parts. Yes, that’s the way I tend to be. If I can’t hear it in my head, I can’t play it. ’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.
One of my favorite bits on the Masters of the Universe album is the rock version of the Eternia theme that you put together with the Darkness. How did that one happen? I got it into my head that I needed somehow to do the definitive version of what I heard in my head as the Eternia theme. Daniel uses it throughout the movie in different forms. So I wanted to gather them all together and build it up as a rock track, as if it had all come from inside my head instead of his.
So I reconstructed the whole track, pulled everything in that I could find, with the help of Daniel. 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 I rang them up. They are really dear friends of mine. Dan came down first, Dan Darkness, as I call him — Dan Hawkins — and he came along 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.
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I already wanted Rufus Taylor to play drums. That’s the way I heard it in my head. I think Rufus is just a wonderful drummer, a great musician. I’ve known him since he was knee-high to a grasshopper and he’s a wonderful boy. He really is a beautiful player. So he did that for me, and we recorded it in his dad’s studio, in Roger’s studio. So then I had pretty much all the Darkness on there.
When Queen did Flash Gordon in 1980, that was something genuinely new — a rock band scoring an entire film. The truth is no one had done it, and they told me it couldn’t be done. So yes, you hear freedom, but you hear disbelief really, ’cause they said, “No, you can’t do a score with guitars and rock groups.” And I said, “Look, I can hear it in my head. I believe that we can do it for this, and I think it’ll work atmospherically.”
My favorite story, although it hurts me still, is — well, we saw the rushes, and we all, the four of us in Queen, went away and made little sketches, ideas that we thought we could contribute to the film. I had a few bits and pieces, including the main title “Flash” thing, which I thought would be great to bookend the film and to give it its character. And we reconvened after we’d made these demos of these ideas in Trident Studios with the director Mike Hodges and the producer Dino De Laurentiis. A big, big, big, big, big movie mogul producer.
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So he sat there at the control room looking very big and very imposing, and listened to it all, and went, “Yes, yes, yes.” He’s Italian. He doesn’t speak much English, not many words. And finally we got to my title theme, and I played it to him, and he sat there, and he didn’t move a muscle. His face was like stone. And at the end of it he said, “Yes, it’s very good, but it is not for my film.”
That was it. So my heart sank, and Mike Hodges, who’s next to me, whispers in my ear. He said, “Don’t worry, I’ll fix it. It’ll be fine.” And it turned out well, and when we got to the film premiere, Dino came up to me at the gathering after the movie, and he said, “You did a beautiful thing for my movie. I’m very happy.” So that was nice.
What was that about? The problem was that Mike Hodges and Dino had different images in their heads as to what the movie should be. Mike Hodges saw it completely as a retro pastiche, if you like. Kind of tongue-in-cheek comic book epic. Whereas Dino saw it as a very serious major film, in the style of King Kong, something rather serious. He didn’t really see the humor of it and the lovely kind of light touch that was in the original, the Buster Crabbe originals which we’d all seen.
So it’s a good story. It ended happily.
You did Highlander a few years later, and people are more familiar with the songs than the score. Yes, although we did quite a bit of scoring as well, and I personally did a lot of stuff with [composer] Michael Kamen, which I will forever be very proud of. Some of those battle scenes, there’s music behind there which you would never expect, and it was new in those days. I mean, these days people pick up tricks and it’s become commonplace. But in those days, battle scenes were always accompanied by kind of raucous music. Michael Kamen did this beautiful piece for the biggest battle of the movie, which was really low-key and very sad and drawn out, almost like slow motion, and put against the action. It was riveting. It’s the most amazing scene, I think.
So I played on that with him, and he played a few other things. He contributed, although we were sort of the main composers for the movie, what he called the Highlander theme, which not many people know about.And when we did “Who Wants to Live Forever” together, he did the orchestration for that and did a beautiful, monumental job. And if you listen very carefully, you will hear the Highlander theme woven into that.
I spent so many happy hours with Michael. He’s one of these people who can read music if you just put it in front of him, but he can also compose out of nothing. Usually people are one or the other. My dad could play anything by ear. You would sing it to him, and he’d sit down at the piano and play it, but he couldn’t read a note of music. His sister could read any piece of music that you put in front of her, and if you took the music away, she had nothing. I find a lot of musicians fall into one of those categories. I mean, really, I fall into my dad’s category, ’cause my reading of music is very limited. I’m mainly a person who hears things and speaks according to what he hears. But Michael had those two things, and he was wonderful to work with. I really miss having him around. Incredible musician.
The Highlander score has never come out — you released the songs on the Queen album A Kind of Magic instead. You’ve talked about someday putting out the actual score. We did, and yeah, very often that subject’s come up. I would love to do it someday. We skirted around — we avoided doing the soundtrack album, which wasn’t really my decision, but it was a group decision. We thought it would be better to have a Queen album out there rather than a soundtrack album. But yes, there’s a lot of lovely stuff which I would love to see on a CD sometime. Do they still have CDs?
They’re on a bit of an upswing, actually. Kids are buying them to collect, some without owning a CD player. It’s nice to have something that you can touch and feel and hold.
So people were under the impression recently that you swore off touring with Queen. Oh, yeah, I got kind of misinterpreted, slightly misquoted there. 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. So I’m getting to see my kids, I’m getting to see my grandchildren, getting to do a lot of projects on the side which I’ve dreamed of doing. I get to do more astrophysics. I get to do more animal welfare and animal campaigning work. And all round, it’s been a good decision for me so far.
Maybe one day I’m gonna wake up and think, “Ah, maybe we should get out on the road.” But I don’t think I will be committing to nine-month-long tours again. I think I’ll be happy just doing — I mean, at the moment I get to play just when I want to, which is not a bad deal really. I just played with Andrea Bocelli at the Starmus Festival. It’s great fun. It’s a different kind of challenge altogether. And I played with Benson Boone, which I really enjoyed, and I get to do loads of stuff in the studio.
What about the Sphere? You were fairly warm on that idea when we last spoke. Yeah, I don’t know what to tell you about that. I don’t even know where we are on that. I really don’t. Things change so fast.
I’m still very much caught up with the idea of this 360-degree surround environment for music, and particularly for us in some kind of retrospective. It wouldn’t be like the ABBA thing. Everybody says, “Oh, you’re gonna do what ABBA did.” But no, it would be something different from that, because we have a different history and a different path or whatever. And I still have a template in my head of what we could do, but I don’t think we’re progressing very fast on it for various other reasons. So you’re kind of getting “I don’t know” from me.
You told me you’d played around in the studio with Adam Lambert to try some new Queen music. Is that still a possibility? Well, it was a long time ago. That was very early in the relationship. We did try it once. I think it was in Nashville. Went in for a night, and it seemed to be an interesting avenue, but we didn’t really feel it was quite happening, and we never returned. That’s all I can tell you.
Are you still in touch with Adam? If there’s a project, is he the singer, or is that open too? We’re in touch. I went to see him when he came over. I enjoyed seeing his show when he was over here at the Roundhouse. We haven’t talked about doing anything. I suppose I’m not in that place, really. I don’t want to be a touring animal at this point, and I don’t want to retrace those steps. Again, I can’t say never. How could you ever? So yeah, it’s a sort of open question[s].
You said you’ve been doing a lot in the studio instead. What’s come out of that? I love taking up a challenge. I like being offered a gig in the studio, in a sense. So I did this track with William Shatner, which I think is stupendous. I just love it. You know, the guy’s 95 and he’s decided to make a heavy metal album, and I was very happy to contribute to that track, which I think is actually very significant. It’s based on Dylan Thomas. And it’s very well done, I think. So I kind of put my producer’s hat on as well, and decided to do a few things with it.
But that’s a thrill. I’ve worked with my grandson. We have a new track, which is, I think, coming out in a couple of months’ time. That’s an interesting track, completely new, and he plays most of the guitar, to be honest, which is great. I have a grandson who can play guitar, and write songs, and be in a group. Who would have thought?
And Graham Bonnet came with a track which is a dedication to Rory Gallagher, a great hero of mine, so we did it together. Very happy with that. I’ve just seen the first cut of the little video that we’ve been putting together about that. Very satisfying for me, ’cause Rory was such a massive influence on me. And as the song said, really nobody played anything in memory of him, so now they have. This is a commemorative track to him.
Who else? I’m also working with a guy called Noel Fitzpatrick. I don’t know if you know him, but he is the Supervet on TV. He’s the guy who can repair animals that nobody else can fix. And he can do things with dogs and cats which people can’t even do with humans, like growing new limbs. It’s quite incredible. He’s become a very dear friend of mine, and his whole mission in life is to bring medicine together, animal medicine and human medicine together, rather than animals being experimented on in order to make medicine for humans. He says everything should march forward together. We are all basically one species when it comes down to it. So he’s a great guy to work with. We have a track which we’ve been working on, which kind of says all this.
So what does he do musically? He writes most of the lyrics — I think probably all of the lyrics. He has a band. And he plays guitar. Now, he took up guitar about probably 18 months ago, and I gave him one of my guitars to encourage him. And we spent some time together, and I had no idea that he would really take it that seriously. I mean, he’s one of the world’s greatest veterinary surgeons, but he’s up between three and four AM practicing every night, and he now is a guitarist. So they do some gigs, and they’ve written this bunch of songs, and I was very drawn to this particular one, which I’ve now played on, and I’ve actually sung it as well now, as tends to happen sometimes.
So I’ve been a busy boy, really.
The restored Queen Budapest film is out. What did seeing it bring back? What the hell do I say about this? You open that box, and there we were in this kind of touring bubble, and the ever-increasing position of Queen in the world, and we’re doing our first ever stadium tour. We’re kind of flying high, and Freddie’s in wonderful form physically and mentally. We’ve just done Wembley Stadium, two nights, packed, sold out, wonderful, a year after Live Aid, when we’d sort of made our first appearance at Wembley Stadium. We’re now back out in Europe, in Budapest, behind the Iron Curtain, where no rock group has ever been able to play, and it’s a monumental moment. It really is.
So to go back into that — and it was well filmed, very well documented by the top cinematographers of the time, who happened to be pretty much all Hungarian. And it was beautifully edited, and they filmed us in the city. There’s all sorts of little insights into what we were doing offstage as well as onstage, and I think it’s beautiful, and it was great to be able to restore it sound-wise and visual-wise. The wonderful people in New Zealand did the restoration of the visuals, the people who do Lord of the Rings and stuff. And we did the sound restoration, and it’s beautiful.
