“Not everybody liked him. A lot of people found him kind of abrasive”: Brian May says it was “unnerving” working with Freddie Mercury at first
Brian May has looked back on the “unnerving” experience of working with Freddie Mercury during Queen’s early days. Describing his late bandmate as a “born performer”, May says that Mercury already had the makings of a rockstar the first time they’d met.
READ MORE: “It was a mess… it was difficult to hold together”: Brian May reflects on the “tough times” recording Queen’s debut album
“When we first met, we were all at colleges, different colleges. [Freddie]’s at art school. I’m at Imperial College, Roger’s at a dental school, Deacy is doing electronics,” says the guitarist at last month’s Red Special Meetup event [via Ultimate Guitar]. “We get to know each other socially. And Freddie is, in his mind, already a star. He’s very flamboyant; he dresses like a rockstar… He’s a born performer, I suppose, ‘cause he has that belief in him.”
“When we first worked with him, it was a little unnerving, because he did a lot of running around the place and screaming his head off. So we thought, ‘Is this going work?’”
And while Freddie would go one to become one rock’s greatest frontmen, May reveals that not everyone had taken to the Queen singer at first.
“Not everybody liked him, to say. A lot of people found him kind of abrasive, but they all thought he was interesting and entertaining. At that point, though, he wasn’t the singer that we all got to know as Freddie Mercury,” May explains. “What happened was, we went into the studio, and it happened during those first demo sessions we did in De Lane Lea [Studios].”
“As soon as Freddie heard his voice coming back, he went, ‘Oh, I don’t like it. I’m gonna do that again.’ And he would go back, and back, and back until he got it the way he wanted it. So, he became instantly, very aware of what he sounded like, and incredibly quickly fashioned himself into the singer he wanted to be.”
It was a process that “probably went on forever,” May says, adding that “Freddie would push himself further” every time Queen were going to make a new album.
“He would hear himself come back, and he would say, ‘No, I want to do better, longer, more passion, more…’ whatever it was. He was always looking for new textures, and looking to get more out of himself.”
He continues: “Yes, we did help [with that process] because every time one of us is in the studio, the rest of us are in the control room. So a lot of the time, I’m sitting with the engineer [while] Freddie’s doing a vocal. And he goes, ‘Well, how’s that?’ And I go, ‘Well, we kind of like that bit, but we didn’t like how it kind of went that way…’ So we’re helping to build what works, and the same [was] the other way around. If I’m doing a guitar solo, Freddie was there. We’re pushing each other the whole time, and it’s really valuable.”
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