Queen guitarist Brian May has remisced on his time spent with the inimitable, extraordinary Freddie Mercury.
The stalwart rocker recently sat down on TalkRADIO’s Kevin O’Sullivan Show. During the interview, May was asked what it was like touring with Mercury during the band’s zenith. “Challenging and always entertaining,” he mused.
“He was a very unpredictable guy, but wonderful to work with. He had a great spatial awareness, and that’s something very important.
“If you’re working with people on a stage, you need to have musical contact, but you also need the kind of physical chemistry going on — the awareness of where you are and where you’re aiming your energy.”
Brian May went on to reveal that Freddie Mercury was incredibly self-disciplined, a trait that echoed in his otherworldly stage presence.
“Freddie was wonderful for that, and we just clicked from the very beginning. From the days when he was very much a training singer, but he had all the presentation, he had that connection, and it was his amazing kind of skill that he managed to bring himself up to the point where he was using his talent to the best end. He really did work on himself. He was an incredible self-made man.”
When asked to recall a highlight from his time in Queen with Mercury, May revealed that Live Aid remains to be the most special memory.
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“It was so strange kind of reliving it for the [Bohemian Rhapsody] movie recently. They recreated it so incredibly faithfully, and to be there on that set was really spine chilling; it brought it all back.
“And at the time, we weren’t aware of what an epoch-making thing it was, really. We came off [stage thinking], ‘Well, that went kind of okay.’ But we didn’t realize that it had made such a lasting impression on the ether. ‘Cause it sort of lives on, doesn’t it?”
