\u201cFreddie envisioned it very much as a piano song, akin to Elton John, really,\u201d May told Total Guitar<\/a> of the track \u201cDon\u2019t Stop Me Now,\u201d from 1978\u2019s Jazz.<\/p>\n \n Queen performing onstage in 1985. (Image credit: Bob King\/Redferns)<\/p>\n \u201c[He heard] powerhouse piano, powerhouse vocal, and that\u2019s it. I played lots of rhythm guitar on it, and Freddie still said, ‘No, no, no, no \u2014 it’s a piano song!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s the way we thought about things,\u201d he says. \u201cI said, \u2018Okay, give me a verse, and let me see what I can do.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Brian May<\/p>\n Mercury \u2014 whom May later honored with a touching tribute<\/a> on his first signature guitar \u2014 eventually came around, conceding, \u201c\u2018Well, it does need a solo. I need you to take over the vocal.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n As May explains, that kind of push-and-pull was typical of their working dynamic.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the way we thought about things,\u201d he says. \u201cI said, \u2018Okay, give me a verse, and let me see what I can do.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cAnd again, being in the studio and hearing it evolve, I could sort of hear the solo in my head before I actually picked up the guitar to do it. As very often with me, it\u2019s a kind of little diversion. It\u2019s a countermelody.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not the actual tune of the verse. But it\u2019s something which goes with it, a sort of counterpoint, and it\u2019s something I could sing. And it was just a question of transferring it to a guitar.\u201d<\/p>\n In hindsight, May feels vindicated \u2014 not by theory, but by audience response.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very simple,\u201d he concludes. \u201cI sometimes feel a bit apologetic about it. But I do notice that when it\u2019s played in the dancehall, it gets a reaction from people in the solo and it steps up the energy quite a bit, even from a song that\u2019s got high energy, so I\u2019m happy with it the way it is.\u201d<\/p>\n That instinctive, vocal-like phrasing is central to May\u2019s sound, which is built on a highly individual rig: his homemade Red Special<\/a>, a Treble Booster pushing a Vox AC30 \u2014 an amp<\/a> he came to with a little help from Rory Gallagher<\/a> \u2014 and his famously unconventional pick: an old British coin<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In all the years Queen\u2019s Brian May and Freddie Mercury wrote and performed together, creative friction was part…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-283843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/sofqJda5KtEdPh8UeW4KjD.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\n