Brian May

Biography

Brian May forged an instantly recognisable guitar voice using equipment he helped design: warm harmonic texture, sustaining leads that sing instead of shrill, and a vibrato arm treated as orchestral tool.

As Queen’s harmonic architect beside Freddie Mercury’s compositional lightning, he contributed stone classics still drilled into collective muscle memory.

His playing philosophy prizes melody even during pyrotechnics—solos you can hum days later.

Playback quality matters: May’s layers rely on phase relationships and harmonic overtones that disappear when aggressive loudness processing smears midrange.

May’s guitar, the Red Special, was built in the early 1960s by Brian and his father Harold from a fireplace mantel, motorbike parts, and other household materials. He plays it with a sixpence coin rather than a pick, and the instrument’s feedback-friendly voice is the signature of Queen’s sound. He wrote or co-wrote songs including We Will Rock You, Hammer to Fall, I Want It All, and Who Wants to Live Forever.

Alongside music he pursued science. He studied physics at Imperial College London, paused his doctorate when Queen took off, and completed his PhD on interplanetary dust in 2007. May is also an outspoken animal-welfare campaigner and has written books on Victorian stereoscopic photography. His solo albums include Back to the Light (1992) and Another World (1998).