Beat Instrumental Magazine July 1975

PLAYER OF THE MONTH
BRIAN MAY

   If there has been one disappointing feature in rock over the past two or three years it's been the sad lack of new musicians of a statue of the Claptons, Becks, and Emersons of the mid sixties.
   It hasn't just been that the established musicians have got better and better, thereby throwing newcomers into the shade, it's been more a case of those new faces being pale imitators of established players or just being plain mediocre. Nevertheless, there have been some individuals coming on to the scene to challenge the status quo — Queen's excellent lead guitarist Brian May is one of them and is also a leading contender for the role of guitar hero of the seventies.
   May's playing is both fiery and lyrical, ranging from the relaxed sustained notes he draws out through Queen's slower numbers to the lightning fast runs he throws into tracks like Brighton Rock from Sheer Heart Attack. If there is one thing that makes Brian a pleasant guitarist to listen to it's that he has his own style. The last thing he does is copy those blues licks that you have heard time and time again; his playing is fresh and easily identifiable, bringing a new approach to what is in danger of becoming a rather stale instrument.
   Like many of rock's better musicians, Brian is self-taught. "The first thing I ever did was strum a ukulele that my family had. The chord shapes are the same as they are on a guitar and so when I got one I worked out what those chords would be when transferred. At the time I was into skiffle and spent a while playing in bands at school in Middlesex, using an old acoustic with a pickup on it that I had made myself and then made my own guitar which is the one I'm still using."
   Making his own guitar seems very characteristic of Brian. It wasn't a case of just bashing out a rough shape in a woodwork class at school as a stopgap until he could afford a better axe; he approached it with a thoroughness which few people could manage.
   "I did it because I knew exactly what I wanted" he explained, "and so I spent about two years working on it with my father in our spare time. We tried lots of experiments with truss rods and tensioning and I personally spent a long while on the calculations involved. My strong subject at school was maths and I had got to know quite a bit about acoustics so I deliberately set about designing the body to give me the feedback I wanted."
   At that time, it should be remembered, feedback was very much a new tool for guitarists. Jeff Beck was creating new areas of style with the Yardbirds, using feedback with creative intent, as was Pete Townshend with the Who. Whereas they were using established guitars to get their sound, May was quietly working on his own.
   "I built the guitar with small acoustic pockets in it and rigidly mounted the pickups to the body so that the whole thing interacts with the air. Originally I made the pickups myself but found they were too uneven in their response so I bought some Burns Tri-Sonics and re-wound them to get the sound I wanted."
   As a result of the acoustic properties of the guitar and the amplifier set-up Brian uses, his sound is very distant from that obtained via the more obvious makes of equipment. His idiosyncrasy extends as far as amplifiers, preferring to seven Vox AC 30 combination amps on stage (with two waiting by for spares) which he mikes up through the band's p.a. system and foldback equipment.
   "I work with very high gain so I don't hit the strings hard. I have a single transistor pre-amp which I built to get that gain and I combine that with using a lot of treble so a lot of the power which people say is my style is just lightly touching the strings with the sixpence I use for a pick." That use of sixpence is very much a Brian May idea, born not of imitation but of finding the way of doing things which suits him best.
   "You can get a very smooth sound just using it parallel to the strings but if you want a rasp you just twist it round and make use of the milled edge."
   Another May trademark is the permanent damping effect with the heel of his right hand, which he rests lightly on the strings, "It's a kind of habit I have but it does enable me to control the length of the notes. If I stopped at any time on stage and let the guitar take over, the whole thing would just burst forth into an amazing feedback, so I'm permanently holding that back with a bit of damping."
   A guitarist, though, is far more than just the product of his choice of equipment (or, rather, he should be more than that) and Brian has a good enough left-hand technique to exploit the combination of equipment and right-hand style, although, as his comments show, he is typically modest about it.
   "Quite honestly, my left hand technique isn't very good. I started off with bad habits using just three fingers and I've never really got over it. It just holds me back now if I try to use my little finger except on a few things. It's not all on the debit side, though, because you lose things and you gain them. I've found that I've gained a little more rapport with the strings because of the limited contact I have with them through only using three fingers."
   Perhaps the key, though, to his style of playing, rather than the sound he uses to put over that style, is the knowledge that he has spent a lot of his playing life as a rhythm guitarist. Early on he was concerned in experimentation with variations of chord shapes, concentrating on the development of a working relationship with chords rather than learning clichéd blues runs. He is more inclined, for a solo, to pull notes out of the particular chord he has been using during the song and then choosing his chords to fit that feedback situation he mentioned earlier.
   Certain chords, he feels, work better on the edge of distortion than others. An added bonus (or drawback, depending on how well you can use the style) is the production of false harmonics partly through the interference which is an integral part of high volume playing. What Brian has done is to merge a good technique with unusual equipment and then allow his style to adapt to the situations produced. Traditionally, nobody would have actually built a guitar which produced screeching feedback. Nobody would have played having to dampen notes all the time just to stop a chaotic situation from arising. Brian has accepted these limitations and moved further than many of his contemporaries by turning them to his advantage.

Choice
   Another facet of his odd taste in instruments in his choice of acoustic guitars. Although certainly wealthy enough to by any guitar he wanted, he is still playing a cheap acoustic he had back at school. A low action and light strings gives the guitar a buzz which might provoke most players to hurl it into the nearest lake — not Brian, he uses the weakness of the instrument to great effect. A good example of this can be heard on White Queen where an apparent sitar is, in fact, this ancient acoustic being used because of its buzzing.
   Whatever anyone might say about Queen's image (their flamboyant stage presentation, their showmanship) there can be no denying that they are one of the most vital and fresh bands around. Neither can there be any argument about their ability as musicians, and that is what places them far above mere pop bands.
   Brian May is the cornerstone of that success and his unorthodox yet through approach has a lot to offer the younger player who might be tempted to slavishly imitate the greats. Brian got there by working things out for himself. It shows in the way he has risen to the top of the tree.

by GARY COOPER