{"id":291268,"date":"2025-11-30T10:58:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T10:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/291268\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T10:58:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T10:58:07","slug":"the-unnatural-queen-riff-brian-may-still-struggles-to-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/291268\/","title":{"rendered":"The “unnatural” Queen riff Brian May still struggles to play"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Brian<\/p>\n

(Credits: Raph Pour-Hashemi)<\/p>\n

Sun 30 November 2025 8:00, UK <\/p>\n

To all intents and purposes, the Hollywood depictions of when Freddie Mercury first brought \u2018Bohemian Rhapsody\u2019 to the rest of Queen<\/a> is like the lightbulb moment when they knew they were destined to be gods.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In reality, the reception was a little more lukewarm. In fairness, could you really blame them? Mercury was hardly known for being a wallflower at the best of times, let alone when he presented a six-minute warbling rock opera of a song to the world in 1975, a year and era which was hardly known for its artistic free thinking. There were many mountains to climb.<\/p>\n

Of course, the frontman could write down all the notes for his epic composition and have grand visions for it in his mind, but it fell to the rest of the band to actually deliver on that ambition, which was no easy ask. Poor Brian May must have suffered some pretty sleepless nights wondering whether he would manage to get his end of the bargain over the line, or else the whole dream would fall to pieces. <\/p>\n

In the end, the challenge obviously paid off for Queen, and they sailed off into the league of unparalleled rock genius over the scores of \u2018Bohemian Rhapsody\u2019. Nothing will ever come close to it, and they can rest easy knowing that. To make things even better, now that we\u2019re some 50 years down the line<\/a>, they can probably reel out the song as if it were second nature, right? Well, not so fast.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was admittedly quite humble of May to admit that the song still possesses the ability to bring him down a peg or two<\/a>, even after all this time. But really, you have to cut him some slack considering his big moment in the song wasn\u2019t even written with his instrument in mind. \u201cIt\u2019s the most unnatural riff to play you could possibly imagine. It\u2019s not a riff that a guitarist would naturally play, and that\u2019s a double-edged sword,\u201d he once said in an interview with Total Guitar.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, I still don\u2019t find it easy!,\u201d he confessed. \u201cI can play it at home OK, but in the heat of the battle, when we\u2019re playing it live, and there\u2019s huge adrenaline, it\u2019s the climax of the show, and that riff comes along, it\u2019s not the easiest thing to play.\u201d Having the beady eyes of your expectant fans resting squarely on you is pressurising for most, let alone when you have to deliver the defining rock anthem of the century. <\/p>\n

As much as May clearly always rises to the challenge, there\u2019s also bound to be the weight of knowing that Mercury is watching from somewhere above, still the harshest critic even though his words can\u2019t be heard. The man single-handedly created a masterpiece in 1975; it would be a crime to throw that legacy down the drain. <\/p>\n

So, to any budding guitarist out there struggling to hone their craft, it must come as some reassurance that even after over half a century, May still doesn\u2019t have his most famous riff completely down to a tee. It\u2019s a testament to perseverance, but also the fact that, without question, \u2018Bohemian Rhapsody\u2019 will always be the king in all of rock.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Raph Pour-Hashemi) Sun 30 November 2025 8:00, UK To all intents and purposes, the Hollywood depictions of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1005,96,128,1006,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-291268","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-brian-may","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-queen","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}