THE NEVER ENDING REIGN

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The Daily Telegraph
The
never
ending
reign
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‘I
down to his shoulders, glittery
t’s like looking through a
jackets and customised guitars,
family album,” Brian May
muses softly as he turns the in this sober setting 64 year-old
May is a master of reserve.
pages of 40 Years of Queen,
the sumptuously illustrated He rarely grants interviews
and guards his privacy fiercely
new history of the legendary
rock band. “But where’s Freddie when he does. I have been
warned in advance not to
on this one?” he puzzles,
ask him about his second
coming to double page
wife, the former
photograph, taken
EastEnders actress
from the back of the
Anita Dobson, who
stage in a stadium
is now appearing
in Ireland in the
in the new series
summer of 1986.
of Strictly Come
He reaches into
Dancing.
the breast pocket of
The questions he
his black, openreally dreads,
neck shirt and puts
YEARS though, are those
on neat, frameless
about Mercury,
glasses – even rock
OF
whose death from
stars get old – but
Aids in 1991 brought
still can’t locate
down the curtain on
Freddie Mercury,
Queen’s career as
Queen’s lead singer.
“He must be in the wings,” May one of the world’s most
concludes, and pushes the open successful recording bands.
“Sometimes,” May admits,
book to one side.
“I do feel I can’t do any more
We are sitting on either
retrospectives or I will be sick.
side of a white-clothed dining
The question, ‘what was it like
table in a private room at
working with Freddie?’ starts to
his favourite restaurant in
be the bomb that you see
London’s Notting Hill. Though
coming at your head.”
May’s image as Queen’s
guitarist was flamboyant, big,
bouffant black (now grey) curls
JIODIP@? JQ@MG@<A
40
CAMERA PRESS
QUEEN
Centre stage: Brian May joins the cast of the musical ‘We Will Rock You’ at the Edinburgh Playhouse, Scotland, in 2009. ‘I accept that Queen will always be part of me,’ he says
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W2
Saturday, September 24, 2011 | TELEGRAPH WEEKEND
T
JIODIP@? AMJH K<B@ 1C@ $M@<O
$GJ=<G
1M@<NPM@ %PIO
DEDOPULOS’S
CLUE OF THE WEEK
The pattern
Nero would have felt at home
among the shrieks and
groans. A hard truth, which
leads to an uncomfortable
realisation, for this
uncomfortable place: not all
recreation is healthy. Take
any quality to excess, and the
result can be a most
unfortunate imbalance.
There are other locations
like this, of course. Places
whose importance lies in
what they contain, in their
very nature itself. This is not a
Caxiense hill, nor a Caribbean
mud-hole, nor even Ramsay’s
seat. I am drawn here for a
finer matter.
I will confess however that
with my time here trickled
away, it is a pleasure to
abandon this drear place.
In The Great Global Treasure
Hunt by Dedopulos, words,
pictures and Google Earth
co-ordinates coalesce into a
mysterious challenge — if
you crack it you could bag a
¤50,000 (£43,740) cash prize
The Great Global Treasure
Hunt On Google Earth (Carlton);
hardback, £9.99, or enlarged
coffee table book, £20, and
available to buy as an ebook,
£7.49 from iTunes
Follow the Puzzle Master,
Dedopulos, on Twitter
twitter.com/dedopulos
www.jointhetreasurehunt.com
www.facebook.com/dedopulos
www.telegraph.co.uk/
treasurehunt
In life, Mercury could
eclipse May and the other
members of Queen (Roger
Taylor on drums and John
Deacon on bass). In one
interview during their glory
days, May voiced his
frustration at press coverage of
the band: “A lot of them are
only dimly aware that the rest
of the group exists.”
But in death, Mercury’s
shadow has grown bigger still.
“People who had made fun of
him, derided him, suddenly
began to regard him as a great
seer, with godlike status after
he died,” May says.
“I find it very funny. Once
they were queuing up to put
him down, and now he’s a
great prophet. It is a curious
thing when people who didn’t
know him start telling you
about your friend. Freddie was
an exceptional human being,
but he was a human being.”
Rock stars who die young
are often airbrushed into
plaster saints, resulting in
something of a dilemma for
those they leave behind. Do
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they play along, or do they put
the record straight and risk
sounding jealous?
Two decades on, May is still
trying to square the circle. He
is happy enough to celebrate
Mercury’s genius. Earlier this
month, as part of “Freddie
Mercury Day”, a fund-raiser
for Aids research that took
place on what would have
been the singer’s 65th
birthday, May and Taylor
hosted a party at London’s
Savoy Hotel attended by a new
generation of stars, plus the
Princesses Eugenie and
Beatrice.
But, alongside such tributes,
he quite reasonably expects
credit for his part in Queen’s
phenomenal success. He for
instance wrote many of their
best-known songs, including
We Will Rock You, Fat-Bottomed
Girls and I Want It All. And
finally, this essentially modest
man is also keen to make clear
that he is still a creative force
at the top of his game.
Does he ever have moments
when he wants to put the past
completely behind him? “I’ve
been through periods like
that, yes, notably straight after
Freddie went. There were a
couple of years or more when
I didn’t want to be in Queen.
$JJ? QD=M<ODJIN Brian Wilson at the Royal Albert Hall telegraph.co.uk/culture
I wanted to be me, to reclaim
myself. That is the way it felt,
at least.
“I went on two tours, one
with Cozy Powell, in which I
would play the odd Queen
song but basically it was my
material. I thought Queen was
in the past, and I strove to
make it that way. But there
came a point where I felt I was
protesting too much, and it
became apparent to me that
what I was doing was going
through a grieving process by
refusing to look at the past.
And… well I got over it.”
While he says that headlines
about him being suicidal in
the aftermath of Mercury’s
death are overblown, May is
candid about his struggle with
depression. “It is something
I’ve lived with in my life and
at certain periods I got it bad.
I’m not sure how many times,
perhaps four, but then, about
15 years ago, I decided I had to
get treatment.”
May took himself to
Cottonwood Clinic in Tuscon,
Arizona, “and threw away the
key. All that mattered was
getting better because
otherwise I was no good to
anyone. And so slowly I rebuilt
my life and re-emerged as a
different person.”
The “new” May is generally
adept at combining in one
seamless thread his past,
present and future. “There
are still moments when I
want to get on with my life,”
he concedes, sipping at a
glass of water, “but, on the
whole, I accept that Queen
will always be part of me.
It’s like you have built this
beautiful house and one day
you have to move out of it,
but you don’t stop enjoying
looking at it now and again.
UPPA LTD; IAN WEST/PA; MARTYN GODDARD/REX FEATURES
JQ@M NOJMT
You just don’t want to live in
it any more.”
If it doesn’t extend the
metaphor too far, you might
argue that May does still
occasionally take up temporary
residence there. In 2008-2009,
for example, he went on tour
with Taylor and the former
lead singer of Free, in an act
billed as Queen + Paul
Rodgers. “What happened
came about naturally,
organically. And Paul brought
his own legacy, so it was a
coming together of different
threads.
“There was coalescence for
a while, but it was not an
attempt to make Paul into
Freddie. I don’t particularly
enjoy having other people sing
our songs. At the Savoy gig for
Freddie’s 65th, we played with
various singers. It was OK, but
I had a strong feeling then that
it is not my favourite thing to
do. I want to do new things,
take the creative part of Queen
into new areas.”
Occasionally, though, the
struggle to fit all the pieces
together neatly can still trip
him up. Does looking at all the
old pictures in the new book
make him feel nostalgic, I ask.
He hesitates for a few
minutes before answering.
Finally he replies, gently and
apparently genuinely puzzled,
“Define nostalgic?”
I talk about that sense many
of us have, when looking back
on high days and holidays in
photo albums, of wishing we
had lived more in the moment,
appreciated then how lucky we
were. “I suppose,” he says,
“I’m very used to it. Sorry, I’m
not explaining myself very well
today. But our past as Queen
still lives with us very strongly.
“So, nostalgic? Yes and no.
There is a bit of sadness
looking at these. A lot of the
people here have gone.”
Queen came together in the
late Sixties when May was well
on his way to a high-flying
academic career in
astrophysics. He had been
brought up in the west London
suburb of Feltham, where his
father was a draughtsman at
the Ministry of Aviation by day
but a keen amateur musician
in his spare time.
Science and music were
competing for May Junior’s
attention in 1969 when he was
introduced to dental student,
Roger Meddows-Taylor, and
discovered they both wanted to
be in a rock band. Then along
came graphic design student
Mercury – or Freddie Bulsara
as he was at the time – and
finally John Deacon, who was
doing a degree in electronics.
Queen’s first album in 1973
failed to reach the charts, but
two years later they spent nine
weeks at number one in the
UK singles chart with
Bohemian Rhapsody. Their
Greatest Hits remains the
biggest-selling UK album ever.
May continues to work
closely with Taylor overseeing
the band’s legacy – “as wise
uncles” is the distancing
phrase he chooses. Relations
with Deacon, who retired in
1997, sound cool. “We let him
know what we are doing and
he lets us know if he objects,”
he says.
Current projects are the hit
“Queen musical” We Will Rock
You, now in its 10th year, a
planned movie (starring Sacha
Baron Cohen as Mercury and
written by Peter “The Queen”
Morgan) and re-releasing old
recordings on a new label.
And what about May’s own
recent output? There have
been successful solo albums
post-Queen. He produces and
tours with the singer Kerry
Ellis, and has just finished
working with Lady Gaga and
My Chemical Romance. In
2002, before a global
audience of billions, he
performed a memorable solo
spot on the roof of
Buckingham Palace playing
his own arrangement of God
Save the Queen as part of the
Golden Jubilee celebrations.
It was quite an achievement.
Many in his shoes might
consider that they had now
proved themselves capable
of being successful with and
without Queen and would
therefore rest on their laurels,
spend time with the family
– May has three grownup children from his first
JHK@ODODJI
We are offering two
lucky readers the chance to
win a copy of 40 Years of
Queen, signed by Brian May
and Roger Taylor, plus
Island Records’ remastered
collection of 22 Queen
albums, including Deep
Cuts as well as the Live
from Wembley DVD. Five
runners-up will win an
unsigned copy of the book.
Enter online at
telegraph.co.uk/
promotions before noon on
Friday, September 30.
Entrants must be UK
residents aged 18 or over.
Full terms and conditions
available online.
Rock gods: clockwise from
above, Freddie Mercury
and Brian May at the
Hammersmith Odeon,
London, in 1978;
with second wife Anita
Dobson, in 2004; and
(from left) John Deacon,
Mercury, Roger Taylor
and May in 1976
marriage, to Chrissie Mullen,
which ended in 1988 – and
enjoy an estimated fortune
of £85million at the rock-star
mansion in Surrey he shares
with Dobson. But instead May
keeps stressing how busy
he is. Today, he admits, has
been his first chance to look
properly at the forthcoming
Queen book.
As well as music, he has
picked up his abandoned
academic career. In 2007, he
returned to Imperial College,
London, to finish his doctoral
thesis in astrophysics and get
his PhD. He is now a visiting
researcher there as well as
Chancellor of Liverpool John
Moores University.
“But that’s different,” he
adds, “it is more a PR and
outreach role.” So what chance
of him turning up to give
lectures to undergraduates?
“I’m not sure I’m good enough
to do it.”
There again is that
endearing humility about May.
He appears anxious, at all
stages, not to talk himself up
or claim some innate talent.
“I’ve always worked very hard
at everything I’ve done,” he
emphasises.
His current writing project
– on astronomy – is with his
great friend, 88 year-old Sir
Patrick Moore. Occasionally
he does guest appearances
on Sir Patrick’s long-running
television series The Sky at
Night. Another contributor
once remarked that far from
looking like an archetypal
rock star, May was the spitting
image of Isaac Newton.
And then there is his
campaigning. May has been
vocal in his online “soapbox”
– “I was doing it long before
anyone used the word blog” –
in opposing any repeal of the
fox-hunting ban. “I’m not a
political person,” he explains,
“and my temptation is always
to run away from politics, but
I am appalled by the images
I have seen of cruelty to
animals. The current ban,
however patchily it is
enforced, is better than
nothing. We have just got to
get over this idea that humans
are the only ones that matter.
We are animals too.”
His gaze has returned, as
he talks, to the book that lies
on the table between us. He
starts once again to look
through it and stops at the
spread on Queen’s headlinegrabbing appearance at the
Live Aid concert in 1985.
There is a picture of him
being introduced backstage to
Diana, Princess of Wales. “She
was a lovely human being,”
he remarks.
Will the book, I wonder, only
appeal to diehard fans? “Our
fans have always been very
important to us,” May
concedes. “So for the people
who have followed us, this will
be like recapturing their youth.
But” – and here there is a note
of genuine excitement in his
voice – “there’s a whole new
generation of young people
now fascinated by what we did.”
Queen, he seems to be
saying, isn’t only about
revisiting the past.
40 Years of
Queen by Harry
Doherty
(Goodman) is
published Oct 3. To
order (available
from today) for
£26 + £1.25 p&p call Telegraph
Books Direct on 0844 871 1515 or
visit books.telegraph.co.uk