How May and drummer Roger Taylor managed to carry on to this day owes something to Mercury and a gift he gave to the band in his final days.<\/p>\n
You may like<\/p>\n
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![\"Freddie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/xZADQCvw3UAqPqHygpam5k.jpg\")
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Freddie Mercury and Brian May onstage September 1, 1984. (Image credit: Phil Dent\/Redferns)<\/p>\n
Speaking recently with Sammy Hagar<\/a> on Rock & Roll Road Trip for AXS TV, May recalled that Queen had long agreed that if any member died, the group would stop.<\/p>\n \u201cI suppose what we did was give it up,\u201d May explains. \u201cWe actually did give it up when Freddie died. We’d always said, \u2018If one of us goes, that’s it.\u2019 So Roger and I both went out kind of grieving to the max and saying it’s over.<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t even want to talk about it for quite a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n But in the singer\u2019s final months, Mercury \u2014 who had once fought with May<\/a> over one of his most celebrated guitar solos<\/a> \u2014 himself had already been laying the groundwork for the band to continue. Despite rapidly declining health, May says the frontman was determined to record as much as possible before the end.<\/p>\n \u201cFreddie, in his last days, was like, \u2018Okay guys, I\u2019m not going to be here long. Just give me stuff to sing,\u2019\u201d May recalls. \u201cWrite me stuff on the back of a cigarette packet \u2014 whatever. Just give me stuff to sing.\u201d<\/p>\n \n May says Mercury was working on music to the end. (Image credit: Bob King\/Redferns)<\/p>\n The band obliged, bringing Mercury fragments of songs so he could record vocal parts whenever he was physically able.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then when he’d gone\u2026 he was very undramatic about it,\u201d May says. \u201cHe was never maudlin, ever. I never saw him cry or go into self-pity. He never did that. He was like, \u2018Let\u2019s just do it. Let\u2019s keep doing stuff.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n What to read next<\/p>\n Freddie was always inspiring. If he was here now, we’d be doing what we always do, I’m sure.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Brian May<\/p>\n Those final recordings eventually became the foundation for Queen\u2019s 1995 album Made in Heaven, released nearly four years after Mercury\u2019s death. The surviving members built new arrangements around Mercury\u2019s last vocal and piano performances.<\/p>\n \u201cWe made the last album, the Made in Heaven album, with the tracks Freddie had left us to play with,\u201d May says. \u201cIt became a real labor of love because he left some lovely little bits and pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n For May, Mercury\u2019s presence is still felt whenever the band performs.<\/p>\n \u201cFreddie was always inspiring,\u201d he notes. \u201cIf he was here now, we’d be doing what we always do, I’m sure.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Onstage at Chase Center, in San Francisco, November 08, 2023. (from left) Adam Lambert, Roger Taylor and May. (Image credit: Miikka Skaffari\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n In recent years, Queen has found new life touring with vocalist Adam Lambert, who has fronted the group alongside May and Taylor since 2011.<\/p>\n According to May, Lambert\u2019s willingness to reinterpret the band\u2019s classic material keeps the music from feeling frozen in time.<\/p>\n It blows my mind \u2014 the range that Adam has and the courage he has to morph things into a new place. I love working with that right now.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Brian May<\/p>\n \u201cAdam brings fresh views on things,\u201d May says. \u201cHe\u2019s not afraid to say, \u2018Why don\u2019t we try it this way or that way?\u2019 So the songs are not fossils. They’re alive and evolving with Adam.\u201d<\/p>\n Lambert\u2019s vocal range, in particular, continues to astonish the guitarist \u2014 especially when the band performs Queen\u2019s epic ballad \u201cWho Wants to Live Forever.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes he blows my mind,\u201d he adds. \u201cWe do \u2018Who Wants to Live Forever,\u2019 which Freddie would do at times, but if he if he felt a little off color, then that was going to be a little bit too much strain for Freddie.<\/p>\n \u201cAdam will always do it and always pull it off, and he\u2019ll take it higher and higher. I\u2019m standing there playing and sometimes I\u2019m going, \u2018What did he just do?\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cIt blows my mind \u2014 the range that he has and the courage he has to morph things into a new place. I love it. I love working with that right now.\u201d<\/p>\n While Queen + Adam Lambert have performed a number of the group\u2019s biggest hits, May says there\u2019s one song they\u2019ll never play<\/a>, out of respect for Mercury.<\/p>\n The band has no official plans to tour right now. Should that change, don\u2019t expect to see them in the U.S. for the immediate future. May has said \u201c\u201cAmerica is a dangerous place<\/a> at the moment,\u201d in the wake of the U.S. government killing American citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota in January.<\/p>\n May has also sworn off performing at Glastonbury<\/a>, due to the culling of badgers that has occurred at the farm where the festival is held.<\/p>\n In related news, Steve Vai recently revealed that he had a chance to play May\u2019s Red Special<\/a> \u2014 his home-built electric guitar<\/a> \u2014 around 1980 when he was 20, and found the guitar impossible<\/a> due to its incredibly baseball bat\u2013like neck.<\/p>\n \u201cBetween the gauge .008 strings, ultra-low action, and a neck the size of a small tree, I played it like a baby giraffe on roller skates,\u201d the guitar virtuoso says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than three decades after the death of Freddie Mercury, Queen continues to perform \u2014 a reality that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":{"0":"post-383724","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Brian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/RvdCiALLYoN4NracQwrk9S.jpg\")
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