Brian May Quotes

At the moment the Queen stuff does sell really well, but there's no guarantee it'll go on forever.

My children hate me being such a big star. It's very hard for them to have a father who is always in the public eye.

Each gig should be unique. You're always treading that line between keeping yourself fresh and giving people something they want to hear.

I tend not to write on guitar very often. I tend to start off with keyboards.

I'd put a lot of work into playing guitar, and was thinking I was pretty damn good. But Hendrix came along and destroyed everyone.

George Harrison was a fabulous, fabulous, fabulous guitarist, and a wonderful example of what a rock star should be. I totally revered him as an innovator. He was always fresh, daring, magnificently melodic, full of spiritual quality, and totally conscious of the chord structure beneath the solo. And he had the courage to play simple. He never took refuge in effects, or tried to impress with speed. I hope he knew how much we all loved and respected him.

Doing Made In Heaven was like assembling a jigsaw puzzle, but I wouldn't have put my seal of approval on it if I hadn't thought it was up to standard.

I'm hopeless at playing scales. Try and be instinctive first and analytic afterwords, although it's good to study the theory of music.

This man (FreddieMercury) truly possessed the greatest voice in the history of rock. Journalists, culture experts and analysts have already made several hundred comments on this topic and nothing can be added here.

The potential audience seems to be dwindling in the states. I was kind of embarrassed for the band because of the size of the audience.

Every time I listen to Jeff Beck my whole view of guitar changes radically. He's way, way out, doing things you never expect.

There are a lot of things in Queen albums that you don't expect; that's why we threw them in.

The Wedding March has a bit of a death march in it.

The guitar was my weapon, my shield to hide behind.

The guitar has a kind of grit and excitement possessed by nothing else.

You want to go in the steam bath to get your vocals sounding well, but you don't want your fingers to get soft.

I'm pretty basic as far as technique is concerned. I don't use many gadgets, and I like the sound my guitar makes, anyway.

I'm a much better musician than astronomer. I think the world got the right choice.

Amazing uke playing to be relished.

Mantovani was a great influence on me.

It's wonderful for me to see what 'We Will Rock You' has done. 'We Will Rock You' and 'We Are the Champions' have kind of transcended the normal framework of where music is listened to and appreciated - they've become part of public life, which I feel wonderful about.

It has been said that, in scale, a human being is about halfway between an atom and a star. Interestingly, this is also the regime in which physics becomes most complicated; on the atomic scale, we have quantum mechanics, on the large scale, relativity. It is in between these two extremes where our lack of understanding of how to combine these theories becomes apparent.

The Oxford scientist Roger Penrose has written convincingly of his belief that whatever it is that we are missing from our understanding of fundamental physics is also missing from our understanding of consciousness. These ideas are important when one considers what have become known as anthropic points of view, best summarized as the belief that the Universe must be the way it is in order to allow us to be here to observe it.

I think music is about our internal life. It's part of the way people touch each other. That's very precious to me. And astronomy is, in a sense, the very opposite thing. Instead of looking inwards, you are looking out, to things beyond our grasp.

I think the popular view of Science is a solid body of truth, shared by a whole lot of learned men in a room, all agreeing on the answers to the questions of how the Universe works. Whereas nothing could be further from the truth!!! The one truth that I see emerging from the History of Science is that experiment has always surprised theorists. Einstein included!

I have to build my own boat this time. It's a big sea out there, and I have a pretty small boat. I have a lot of belief in it.

If I go to places where other people are playing, I often get up and play myself. I just enjoy the sound and feel of playing.

I'm into paradoxes. I wanted to make an album about them, but the group told me I was a pretentious fart. They were right.

Queen songs tend to be about very personal things: personal dreams and personal ambitions.

I've always lived in that guitar world. I have noticed kids being more into the real essence of guitar music now.

I don't surf the net in general. I have someone do it for me instead, because I find it sluggish.

I don't think anybody comes close to The Beatles, including Oasis.

To my mind Keep Yourself Alive was never really satisfactory. Never had that magic that it should have had.

Not for a million - years. I mean, I like the INXS boys, but I found the process very degrading, really. Reality television has eaten away at our standards of excellence. I don't like this whole culture, which has evolved, of TV being the king.

There's nothing I'm embarrassed about.

In print, people can do anything to you. Everything you do is picked apart. People love it; they're waiting for you to make a mistake.

I never took sheet music seriously. I could do better myself just by listening to other people and using my own intuition.

My big hobby is photography. I collect stereo photographs from the 19th century.

Sometimes if the guitar is the last thing to go on, it's very fresh.

A good video can make all the difference

I just want to be able to play as fast as my brain goes, and my brain doesn't go all that fast.

The first nine albums there was never a Synthesiser, never any Orchestra. There was never any other player except us on the albums.

When we were touring heavily in America, we based ourselves there for a couple of years, but now we're all back here and it seems to be the place.

My mum says I wanted to be a surgeon, but I don't remember that. I think from the time I knew what was happening, I wanted to be a guitar player.

I had this idea ... I wanted the sound to sing and have that thickness but yet still have an edge so that it could articulate. So my dad and I designed the guitar ... the one that was made from an old fireplace.

I think Queen tribute bands are great. However, we have to keep them at arm's length, otherwise it could be too dangerous.

I tend to be not a person who does everything right all the time.

The biggest emotion in creation is the bridge to optimism.

On the first few albums the songs would grow into strange shapes.

I think Hammer's very cool: he has a great voice and great presence.

There are times when I flick through magazines and think I'm in danger of becoming a prisoner of my own hair.

I go through major crises every few months, but then I have great peaks of belief and creativity. I'm a weird kind of animal.

Queen had its time and place, and at the moment I'm not concentrating on that era.

For a time I didn't want to answer any questions about Queen. I'd like to be viewed as something alive and relevant, not some fossil.

I'm not a person for sitting on beaches. What would I do?

We do play to our audience. It's very important. You can't create music in a vacuum.

A Queen track has those big, thick, block harmonies.