“I always felt like I needed a rhythm guitar”: Brian May wanted Queen to have a second guitar player in their early days
Brian May didn’t feel confident as the only guitarist on stage during his early days in Queen, and originally thought they should be joined by a rhythm guitarist too.
Queen became known for their absolutely huge stage presence, and May as a guitar legend – and his mighty solo atop of Buckingham Palace or their unforgettable Live Aid set are just a couple of examples as to why. Thankfully, May realised that nobody actually missed the presence of another player early on in the band’s journey, leading to his own sound incorporating elements of both lead and rhythm as needed.
READ MORE: “It’s Brian May! That sounds like Brian May!”: The important guitar lesson Chris Shiflett learned from playing with a Queen legend
He tells Guitarist for its new print edition, “There’s videos from the early days and I think we were pretty good. Very early on, we arrived at this view that being a live act was not the same as the studio. Actually, it was simpler because there’s only four of us on stage and no overdubs.
“It took me a long time to feel confident about being the only guitar on stage. I always felt like I needed a rhythm guitar. But, gradually, I got into this habit of playing lead and rhythm at the same time – and I realised that nobody noticed the lack of it. So we had enough. You could fashion that live performance to make people feel they’d heard an orchestra,” he says.
Just as their four-piece set up stepped away from the rules of the typical five-piece rock band, May also strayed away from stereotypical rig set ups within Queen, especially during the prime area of the Marshall stack.
He also tells Guitarist, “I remember, we played one show at Olympia. Top of the bill was Jimi Hendrix and everybody essentially played through the same gear. So I plugged into a Marshall stack with my guitar and treble booster. Turned it all the way up – and it sounded so awful. I could hardly play. I didn’t know what to do. It sounded like an angry wasp. It didn’t have any depth or articulation, I couldn’t play chords. It was a really hard experience for me.”
Currently, May is still taking things slow following a stroke last summer. The medical incident caused him to temporarily lose control of his left arm, though thankfully he remains stable and has been able to play guitar again.
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