Welcome to Queen The Greatest.
This week we celebrate one of the corner stones
of any Queen song or performance.
The Guitar Solo.
Among the many things that make Queen so distinctive
is the extraordinary sound of Brian May's homemade guitar.
Through the band's eclectic range of styles,
the now legendary Red Special
has demonstrated a vast array of voices
from songs as diverse as Tie Your Mother Down....
…Killer Queen….
These Are The Days Of Our Lives
It was a feature of Queen's music that the band were rightly proud of,
and so unsurprisingly
it quickly became an established element of the live performances.
Brian's remarkable use of delay
created a special part of every Queen show,
due in part, as he explains here, to how it evolved over the touring years.
[Brian May] "The guitar solo, it's half and half.
I'd done it so many times, by that time,
that there are certain things which I know are going to be good things to try,
but basically, it's improvised.
But there are certain things which will always be in there because they work."
[Brian May] "I had to be very careful because you can fall into a trap.
If something works great and you get a good response,
the tendency is to keep doing it,
but it doesn't work that way.
You've got to, sort of, take it to its natural
peak and then let it go and try something else
because things get old.
You know, you have to keep yourself fresh and the audience fresh."
[Brian May] "Sometimes I would get fed up with it.
Sometimes I really would curtail it and not want to do the whole thing,
and then sometimes the mood would be right and you go for it
and it would just be great."
When Queen resumed touring in the 2000's,
first with Paul Rodgers,
and now with Adam Lambert,
the Guitar Solo had evolved once more,
and to this very day continues to produce a magical moment
that's unique to each performance.