Queen’s Brian May talks about the band’s composition process

Queen guitarist Brian May talked in an radio interview the band’s composition process and about what Freddie Mercury was like. The musician said that the singer was inspired by Cliff Richard and Jimi Hendrix.

Queen’s Brian May talks about the band’s composition process

“Well, by various means really, but all four of us wrote. So there was always some kind of discussion – at the best of times, arguments at the worst of times… And basically, if you have a song, it’s kind of your baby, but you throw it into the middle of the ring and everybody has a go at saying what they want to say about it.”

“We work on it together, but sometimes it’s difficult because you can’t let your baby go. So there was an unwritten law that the person who brought the song would have the final say over how it came out.”

“But it’s difficult, it wasn’t easy in the studio, and I think we all kind of broke up every time we went into the studio and sort of lost patience with each other before we managed to forge a new direction.”

About Freddie Mercury, the guitarist said:

“He was; he’s very shy, Freddie, everything that goes with that, I think he wove a kind of world around himself. Of course, he was incredibly outgoing on stage, but that was his sort of stage persona, and I think he came from that perspective, he’d been very shy as a boy.

“He’d been inspired by people like Cliff Richard and Jimi Hendrix, and he made himself into what he wanted to see, in a sense. So he had that amazing knack in no matter how big the place was, Wembley Stadium or whatever. He would involve every single person because he would somehow identify with those people. He’s saying, ‘You can be a rock god like me,’ kind of.”