World-renowned rockstar.
Reluctant hair icon.
3D photography-loving astrophysicist?
While you might be familiar with his killer tunes, there’s a lot more to Queen’s guitarist
than even his biggest fans might realize.
This is the untold truth of Brian May.
Brian May is rightly most famous for his guitar skills, but his second best-known feature
is his mane of curly hair.
However, he has mixed feelings about his iconic locks.
In a 1998 interview with Q magazine, May admitted,
"Sometimes I wish I had a paper bag over my head and people just listened to the music.
. . I do think I'm in danger of becoming a prisoner of my own hair.""
May explained that although he's considered getting his hair cut for that very reason,
he likes it because it's "unfashionable."
He also enjoys upending people's assumptions, telling Q:
"People that aren't into Queen, see me and immediately assume that because I look this
way I can't have anything relevant to say about their lives.
And I like to surprise them by proving that it's not the case."
Given that he's been dealing with hair-related comments since the mid-'70s, it's understandable
that Brian May gets grumpy when people bring it up.
Even fellow British rock icons.
In 2007, Madness singer Suggs made a joke about May and his second wife Anita Dobson's
similar curly hairstyles.
May didn't see the funny side.
On his website, he called the joke "sad" and "old," adding,
"Ha frigging ha.
How disappointing people can be."
That's Dr. Brian May, thank you.
While honing his natural talents as a musician, in 1965 May landed a place on the undergraduate
astrophysics course at Imperial College London, where he earned a bachelor's degree.
He then started working on a PhD in astrophysics, also finding time to join several bands, one
of which eventually became the original lineup of Queen.
In 1971, the band was going well enough that May put his PhD on hold.
This caused tension with his dad, who didn't understand his son's musical ambitions.
May revealed to The Guardian,
"Dad was mortified.
. . He thought I was throwing away my education.
But, in the end, the pull of the music was too hard to resist."
Brian May returned to his stardust studies eventually, working from what he described
to Time as "a little office in Imperial College."
In 2007, he completed his thesis, titled "A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal
Dust Cloud," and officially received his doctoral degree from Imperial.
Queen was not Brian May's first rock 'n' roll rodeo.
While studying at Imperial College London in the mid-'60s, May played in a cover band
called 1984, alongside bassist Tim Staffell.
The pair formed their own band, Smile, in 1968, and recruited reluctant dentistry student/enthusiastic
drummer Roger Taylor.
Freddie Mercury - then going by Fred Bulsara - was a Smile fan who became a friend of the
band, and then Taylor and May's housemate.
He and Taylor even ran a market stall together.
Mercury was a regular at Smile gigs: Brian May recalled that he would come up to the
band after shows to give them feedback about their performance, specifically their image.
According to Rolling Stone, he would shout from the crowd,
"If I was your singer, I'd show you how it was done."
Mercury got his chance when Staffell quit.
As May remembered in an interview on British TV,
"The group broke up and Freddie said, 'I can sing' . . . we tried it out and by God, he
could sing.
And he played amazing piano."
In April 1970, May, Taylor, and Mercury regrouped into a new band, recruiting bassist John Deacon
in 1971.
Brian May has mostly left the wilder parts of his rockstar days behind him, but even
his gentler lifestyle has left him needing medical attention.
On May 6, 2020, he revealed on Instagram that a couple of days earlier,
"I managed to rip my Gluteus Maximus to shreds in a moment of over-enthusiastic gardening."
The injury turned out to be worse than May and his doctors thought.
In a later Instagram video, he said that a week after the accident, he was still in agonizing back pain.
"Now, a week later I'm in agony.
I mean, real agony.
I wanted to jump at some point because I could not believe the pain."
Another MRI revealed that he had a "quite severely compressed" sciatic nerve, which
he received treatment for.
May clarified,
"I'm a lot better now.
I'm actually free of that terrible pain."
During all this, Brian May had what he described as a small heart attack, saying in the Instagram post,
"It's not something that did me any harm."
May went on to explain that he experienced chest pains and tightness, a sensation in
the arms, and sweating - common heart attack symptoms - for about 40 minutes.
It was determined that he had three blocked arteries.
He passed on open heart surgery, instead having three stents put in.
He said he's back on form and thanked the doctors who operated on him "from the bottom
of my heart" - literally.
In March 1974, Queen released their second album - Queen II - and headlined their first UK tour.
They also started to look for success outside the UK.
They were booed off stage at their first international gig in Australia, but found a warmer welcome
in America, touring in support of Mott the Hoople.
Their first American gig was in Denver, Colorado, in April.
But just a month later, Brian May fell seriously ill with hepatitis.
Queen pulled out of the rest of the tour while May was repatriated back to England to recover.
The guitarist said he felt that he'd let the band down during their important win-over-America
tour, and set to work writing from his hospital bed.
And he wasn't out of the woods yet.
After spending six weeks recovering, Brian May eagerly rejoined his bandmates in the
studio, only to get sick again, this time with a stomach ulcer.
By the time he got back to work, he felt disconnected - in a good way.
May recalled to Louder:
"It was very weird, because I was able to see the group from the outside, and was pretty
excited by what I saw."
Learning the true stories behind popular Queen songs makes fans love them even more.
And the story of "We Will Rock You" is especially heartwarming because Brian May wrote it specifically
to get the audience involved.
He told Billboard that he'd loved watching Queen's audience sing along with the band
at a gig in Bingley Hall near Birmingham, UK - something that was considered uncool
among serious rock fans at the time.
He wanted to embrace that participation by creating a song in which the audience could
lead the band by stomping their feet and clapping.
May was also inspired by playing in the Boston Garden, a since-demolished arena in Boston,
Massachusetts, which had a wooden floor and ceilings that exaggerated every sound the
audience made.
May told Billboard:
"I went to sleep and woke up with 'We Will Rock You' in my head."
Back in the studio, the band put the song together in a process similar to the scene
shown in Bohemian Rhapsody, but with more technical wizardry.
Brian May had them stamp on the floorboards and clap and built up the sound with delays
and backing vocals, so that it would sound like a real crowd.
You've probably sung along to something that came from Brian May's head, but he's written
more than songs.
May has authored and co-authored numerous books on a broad range of topics, including
the historical dangers of crinoline fabric, his homemade electric guitar, and space.
For Bang!
A Complete History of the Universe, May teamed up with astrophysicist Chris Lintott and his
hero Patrick Moore, presenter of long-running British astronomy TV show The Sky at Night.
One of May's more esoteric interests is 3D photography.
In 2008, May restarted the London Stereoscopic Company, a once thriving photographic company
originally founded in London in 1854, which sold 3D photos and the stereo viewers required
to view them.
May not only collects these Victorian souvenirs, he takes his own, including some of Queen
which were published in a book in 2019.
He's also co-authored a book showing 3D photos of stars, titled Cosmic Clouds 3-D: Where
Stars Are Born.
Another of Brian May's stereoscopic books is a little more out there than space.
Diableries showcases stereoscopic pictures originally published in 19th century France,
showing devils engaging in debauched behavior of various kinds.
"This is a labor of love."
Music fans know Brian May primarily as a guitarist, rock star, and hair icon, but if he had his
way, he'd prefer to be remembered for the work he's done to help protect wildlife.
May is an avowed animal lover.
He started the Save Me Trust in 2010: the organization works to protect animals in need,
especially foxes and badgers who are at risk of hunting and culls, as well as conserving woodland.
"We are save me, working to give care when it's needed, but also to give wild animals a voice."
May has been a vocal campaigner against the culling of badgers.
In 2019, he stated that he won't play major UK music festival Glastonbury because founder
Michael Eavis supports badger culls.
In 2020, May praised the UK's government's plan to limit badgers' ability to spread TB
through vaccines.
He's also taken caring for animals at home to a new level.
Brian May has an animal sanctuary - Harper Asprey Wildlife Rescue - on his estate in
Surrey, England.
The sanctuary nurses sick animals back to health, including hedgehogs, badgers, and owls.
May told the Times that watching animals brings him tranquility after his hectic rockstar years.
He admitted that he understands that people will probably remember him most for Queen,
but went on to add:
"I would much rather be remembered for attempting to change the way we treat our fellow creatures."
Brian May has been open about struggling with depression at various points in his life.
One especially dark time started in 1991 when May's father died, followed soon after by
his friend and bandmate Freddie Mercury.
Queen had "finished," as May put it to the Daily Mail, although the untold truth of Queen
is that they never officially split up.
Even though they later reunited, at the time, May said, it felt like he was losing his family.
In 2002, May told the Mirror of this period,
"I thought my life was over.
I was totally and utterly depresse.
. .. It's like you're paralyzed.
. . Even music didn't get to me in the worst moments.
Depression would clamp down like a fog."
His second wife, actress Anita Dobson, got him through.
May told the Mirror:
"If I didn't have Anita, all the therapy in the world wouldn't sort me."
Although he recovered from that period, Brian May still gets hit with waves of depression
sometimes, especially in the holiday season.
In an Instagram post from January 2, 2020, he wrote,
"There's something about this time of the year that [paralyzes] me.
Depression, hopelessness, fear.
. . I get engulfed."
It turns out, being a rock star doesn't fix everything.
Don't believe disaster movies: the truth is that it's highly unlikely that an asteroid
that size is going to collide with the Earth.
But Brian May wants us to know that asteroids are a real danger.
"I do have a particular personal fascination with asteroids."
In 2014 he co-founded Asteroid Day, which happens annually on June 30, to promote awareness
of objects that are coming perilously close to Earth.
May is not totally anti-asteroid, however.
He even has one named after him: Asteroid 52665 Brianmay.
And he's not the only Queen member with a namesake in the heavens.
In 2016, May announced that the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center had
named an asteroid discovered in 1991 - the year of Mercury's death - Asteroid 17473 Freddiemercury,
in honor of what would have been the singer's 70th birthday.
Brian May isn't just looking at asteroids, he's taking 3D pictures of them.
He was a co-author of a paper published in the scientific journal Nature on May 27, 2020.
On Instagram, May explained that he contributed the stereoscopic 3D imagery, along with researcher Claudia Manzoni.
Not your average musician's Instagram post from a not-so-average musician.