Brian May recalls the “supreme injustice” of Roger Taylor’s Queen B-side earning as much as Bohemian Rhapsody: “It was a real sticking point for the band”
Brian May has reflected on the tensions within Queen over songwriting credits early in their career and one particular Roger Taylor B-side that still stings decades later.
In a new interview with MOJO, Queen’s Brian May and Roger Taylor open up about the band’s tangled songwriting dynamics and the financial sore spots that occasionally surfaced – most notably when Taylor’s I’m In Love With My Car, the B-side to Bohemian Rhapsody, ended up generating just as much money as the band’s magnum opus.
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“We were aware of the injustice of I’m in Love With My Car making as much money as Bohemian Rhapsody. It was a real sticking point for the band and it’s good we got through it,” May admits. “I think our sense of humour saved us. How long did it take me to get over it? Oh, quite a while.”
For much of Queen’s career, songwriting credits – and the royalties that came with them – were tied directly to the individual who wrote the lyrics.
“It was Freddie’s idea that whoever wrote the lyrics would claim the song,” says the guitarist. “None of us argued with that back then and it became the norm, but looking back, it wasn’t always very accurate.”
Describing the band’s songwriting process as “always interactive”, May recalls the way he or Mercury would come in with an idea and let it “get pulled apart, worked on and rebuilt by the whole group”.
Over time as the band evolved, both Taylor and bassist John Deacon began contributing more songs. While this shift helped smooth out tensions, it didn’t erase them entirely.
“This is what creates the most ill-feeling in a band – the realisation that the guy who wrote the song is making all this money and everybody else is enabling him by going on tour and playing it,” says May.
“It was Freddie’s idea, bless him, to split everything equally after a while,” Taylor adds. “He was very generous that way. You win and you lose, but it felt like the grown-up thing to do.”
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