thing and you play it consciously, you consciously mark out the
notes and squeeze the string, but there’s a sort of unconscious
thing there too. And the emotion comes from that; there are things
going into there where you almost don’t realize you’re putting
in. And I wanted the orchestra behind, every one of those parts,
had to have that tension in it and that emotion in it. So I didn’t
want someone just going like that on a keyboard [mimics a hand
hitting a chord above an imaginary keyboard], and synthesizers
were already beginning to be around and I didn’t want synthesizers
which at that time were very cold.
And every part, I was out there putting everything into it that I
could, all the emotion. And bending just where I thought it should
be bent. And the thing about guitar harmonies which still a lot
of people don’t realize, is that they shouldn’t be parallel any more
than vocal harmonies should be parallel. They should do all this
crossing over, and little dis-chords, they should be weaving in and
out of each other. Just the same way as people build up orchestral
scores, that’s how you get the most out of them. So, that’s what I
was trying to do.
Indeed, Brian May established himself as the premier virtuoso
of creating layered guitars around a rock backdrop. At the time of
this interview, he had just recorded ‘Star Fleet Project’, a sort of
quick in/quick out affair that found Eddie Van Halen on board.
There was not much substance here and in fact, Queen would
never again assume the position they did back in the 70s and early
80s.
In 1985, the band turned in a stunning performance at the
much ballyhooed Live Aid show though subsequent albums like
‘A Kind of Magic’, ‘The Miracle’ and ‘Innuendo’ failed to raise the
bar on any music previously recorded. On 23 November 1991, just
months after the release of this latter album, Freddie succumbed
to AIDS. In his honor, ‘Bohemian Rhapsod y’ was re-released and