Brian May of Queen

Brian Harold May, born 65 years ago on July 19, 1947, is a musician, an animal rights activist and the holder of a PhD in astrophysics. He is best known as the guitarist for Queen. Queen was a highly versatile band that performed songs in a wide variety of genres. But two distinguishing features that were present in most (though not all) of the band’s songs, making them instantly recognizable as Queen songs. One was Freddie Mercury’s voice, and the other was Brian May’s guitar. In addition to his guitar playing, Brian May, like the other members of the group, wrote numerous songs and also occasionally played keyboards. His singing was a key part of the vocal sound for which Queen was famous, mostly as a backing vocalist for Freddie Mercury, but on some songs or parts of songs as a lead vocalist. He was largely responsible for ensuring that the band remained connected to its hard rock roots, as he contributed most of the band’s heavier, guitar-oriented songs, though he also wrote a few of the group’s best known ballads, and made occasional forays into other genres, such as the Dixieland-style “Good Company” and the vaudeville-style “Dreamers Ball”. May also was the first member of the band to address more serious topics in his lyrics on songs like "White Man", "Put Out the Fire" and "Hammer to Fall", though Roger Taylor likewise included some social commentary in his later lyrical contributions.

Brian May played in a number of groups in his youth, before founding Smile in 1968 with his school friend Tim Staffell on vocals and Roger Taylor on drums. Smile evolved into Queen in 1970 after Staffell left and Freddie Bulsara, who soon took the stage name Mercury, took over on vocals, soon after which the group settled on John Deacon as their bassist. As noted above, May’s guitar was a key element in the group’s sound from the beginning, especially the complex guitar harmonies he created on many tracks. Notably, many of his guitar parts were played on his Red Special, an electric guitar made by May and his father when May was in his teens. At the time Queen’s career took off, May was close to finishing a PhD in astrophysics, but he abandoned it for his music career, only completing it in 2007. In recent years he has also been active in promoting animal rights, particularly in fighting for a ban on fox hunting and the culling of badgers.

On the group’s 1970s albums, May and Mercury dominated the group’s songwriting, with May averaging about four songs per album, including hits and major album tracks like “Keep Yourself Alive”, “Now I’m Here”, “‘39” (the only song I know of to deal with time dilation, an effect of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity”), "The Prophet's Song", “Tie Your Mother Down”, “We Will Rock You” (which remains one of Queen’s best known songs), and “Fat Bottomed Girls”. An example of his versatility as a composer can be seen in his songs for 1975's A Night at the Opera, which included "sci-fi skiffle" ("'39"), hard rock ("Sweet Lady"), progressive rock ("The Prophet's Song") and Dixieland trad-jazz (the aforementioned "Good Company"). In the early 1980s the songwriting was split more evenly, but May still wrote at least two songs on each album, among them tracks such as “Save Me”, “Flash”, “Hammer to Fall” and “Who Wants to Live Forever”. On The Miracle and Innuendo, the last two albums released in Mercury’s lifetime, all of the songs were credited to the group as a whole, as were several songs on the group’s last album featuring Mercury, Made in Heaven. Nevertheless many of these songs were largely or entirely written by one member of the band, including several, such as the hits “I Want It All” and “Headlong”, which were written by May. May also wrote the last new Queen song on which John Deacon played, a tribute to Mercury called “No-One But You (Only the Good Die Young)”, several songs on a collaboration between May, Taylor and vocalist Paul Rodgers, and the majority of the tracks on his two solo albums, Back to the Light and Another World. At the beginning of his career, he wrote several original songs that were performed by Smile, one of which was later recorded by Queen as a non-album B-side, and co-wrote several more with Tim Staffell (one of these, retitled "Doing All Right", appeared on Queen's debut album). There was also one original song on his first solo venture, an EP called Star Fleet Project, one of the other two songs being a cover of the theme song from a Japanese cartoon (the eponymous Star Fleet) and the third a lengthy jam with the other musicians involved, including Eddie Van Halen. May has also released a soundtrack album and a live album. Oddly enough, despite writing more songs for Queen than anyone else in the band except Freddie Mercury, fewer of his songs reached the top 10 in the UK, the only one officially attributed to him to do so being "Flash" (aka "Flash's Theme), though "I Want It All", written entirely by May but officially credited to Queen, was a number 3 hit (in the UK, "We Will Rock You" was technically considered a B-side to "We Are the Champions", so it did not hit the charts). This may be because May's songs were less pop than some of those the others wrote. However, many of his songs have been among those with the greatest staying power, particularly "We Will Rock You", which may actually be the most widely-known Queen song of all, at least in some parts of the world.

Since May has written too many songs for me to list them all here, I have instead picked some of the best and most widely known of his compositions. As usual, this list is not exhaustive. There are many good songs that I didn’t include, and there are some songs that I didn’t even consider because I’ve never heard them (e.g., the songs on Another World) or because May was not the sole writer of the song (e.g., “One Vision”, “The Show Must Go On”, “Too Much Love Will Kill You”, the solo track "Resurrection", and “Mother Love”). May was the chief writer of “The Show Must Go On”, for instance, but Deacon and Taylor wrote the main chord sequence and Mercury decided on the song’s theme with May and helped write the first verse, so May can’t be given all the credit – otherwise I’d have included it, as it is one of the best latter day Queen songs.

The Best of Brian May
(All songs performed by Queen except where otherwise noted)
Keep Yourself Alive (Lead vocals on bridge by May and Taylor)
Procession
White Queen (As It Began)
Brighton Rock
Now I’m Here
Dear Friends
’39 (Lead vocals by May)
The Prophet’s Song
Good Company (Lead vocals by May)
Tie Your Mother Down
Long Away (Lead vocals by May)
Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together)
We Will Rock You
It’s Late
Fat Bottomed Girls
Dead on Time
Dragon Attack
Save Me
Put Out the Fire
Las Palabras de Amor
Hammer to Fall
Who Wants to Live Forever (Lead vocals on first verse and part of bridge by May)
I Want It All (Lead vocals on bridge mostly by May)
Headlong
No-One But You (Only the Good Die Young) (Lead vocals by May and Taylor)
Back to the Light (Brian May solo track; vocals by May)
We Believe (Queen+Paul Rodgers)

Honorable Mentions: The Night Comes Down, Some Day One Day (Lead vocals by May), Sweet Lady, White Man, All Dead All Dead (Lead vocals by May), Leaving Home Ain't Easy (Lead vocals by May), Sail Away Sweet Sister (Lead vocals mostly by May), Flash’s Theme (Lead vocals on several lines by May), The Dark (Brian May solo track), Love Token (Brian May solo track; vocals by May), Just One Life (Brian May solo track; vocals by May), Still Burnin’ (Queen+Paul Rodgers), Some Things That Glitter (Queen+Paul Rodgers)