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Brian Harold May (Twickenham, 19 July 1947) is a British guitarist, songwriter and composer, famous for being a member of Queen, a band he founded together with Roger Taylor and Freddie Mercury. He is the author of some of the group's most famous songs, such as Tie Your Mother Down, We Will Rock You, Flash, Hammer to Fall, Who Wants to Live Forever, I Want It All, Save Me, '39, No-One but You (Only the Good Die Young) (with Taylor and Deacon), The Show Must Go On. Figure at 26th place in the ranking of the best guitarists of all time compiled in 2011 by Rolling Ston magazine. In June 2020 he was nominated as the best guitarist in rock history by the prestigious British magazine Total Guitar.
He is also an astrophysicist: over the years he has been involved in the study of asteroids and the possibility of modifying their trajectory should it prove necessary in order to avoid a collision with planet earth.
Brian May was born in Twickenham (a suburb of London) on July 19, 1947. At the age of five he began playing the piano, but his true passion is the guitar. He begins to become familiar with the guitar by playing the ukulele-banjo or banjolele (George Formby style) brought to war by his father. May learns the fundamentals of the instrument very quickly and soon tries his hand at playing a flamenco guitar amplified by a pick-up he built himself. His parents, Harold and Ruth May, are unable to buy him an expensive Fender Stratocaster, so in 1963, at the age of sixteen, May, with the help of his engineer father, begins to build his Red Special using the wood of a lintel and a wooden part of the fireplace. Only the mechanics and electronic parts were purchased and installed externally. This was completed in 1965 and still used today.
An anecdote is related to the Red Special, the guitar that May usually plays; As all the finest and most palatable guitars were economically beyond the reach of his family, young Brian and his father, a passionate modeling engineer, built one in house with makeshift components made from oak and parts lintel (100 years old) of a mahogany fireplace for the keyboard. The markers were made by hand shaping buttons taken from mother Ruth's sewing basket. Bridge and tailpiece-tremolo block were designed from May and built at the workshop located inside his school. The tremolo was equipped with springs taken from an old motorcycle and with the lever made from a bicycle seat and a knitting needle. Only the pickups were bought in the store, (Burns Tri-Sonic) and later modified by Harold and Brian, rewinding them with more turns and dipping them in epoxy resin (Potting). The guitar sound did not satisfy the guitarist, however, who was completely satisfied only when he decided to use a 6p dime as a pick, after countless tests [citation needed].
The Red Special, as the instrument was christened by Brian's friends, was of such fine workmanship that even after achieving success May refused to use other guitars, except on rare occasions. It is by far the most expensive object in May that also binds him in some way to his father, who helped young Brian in the construction of the instrument. In 2014 he published a book dedicated to his guitar called Brian May's Red Special. May's basic sound can be achieved by pairing a Red Special (activating the pick-ups in the center and bridge in phase with each other), a Treble booster pedal and a Vox AC30 tube amp pushed to maximum power using the Normal channel. |