Brian May Bio

Brian Harold May was born on July 19th 1947 in Twickenham. By the age of five he was learning to play the piano, but often got frustrated with it and ended up "...slamming down the lid and walking away". When he was six he was playing the ukulele, and on his seventh birthday he was given his first acoustic guitar, which he soon began altering it to make it easier to handle and to give it an electric sound.

Although he had found an instrument he loved, by his mid-teens he was dissatifised with the sound of an acoustic guitar, and wanted an electric guitar. His family could not afford one, but Brian was a budding astronomer and a talented physics student, and his father was an electronics engineer, so in August 1963 they set upon work on building a new guitar.

The parts that made up the guitar were unusual. The neck is made from the mahogany of an old fireplace, the body is mostly made from oak, and the tremolo assembly included a knife edge and two motorbike valve springs. Even the fret-markers are made from old pearl buttons! As he had done for his first guitar, Brian wound his own pick-ups, but he didn't like the resulting sound, so he finally purchased Burns pickups, which he soon filled with epoxy. Soon, Brian's guitar affectionately became known as the Red Special. After some experimentation, Brian found that he preferred the sound of an old sixpence coin to the usual guitar picks. He found that it gave him more control and contact with the strings. Sixpences have not been in circulation since the early 70's, but in late 1992/early 1993 Brian asked the Royal Mint to make up coins with his likeness on them for use as picks, and they were sold on the Back To The Light tour.

In 1969, Brian formed the band Smile with Tim Staffell and Roger Taylor. They recorded their first album, Gettin' Smile, but it was only released in Japan in 1982. Soon Tim split from Smile, and so Brian and Roger formed a new band with Freddie Mercury - Queen.

Brian is famous for his amazing hair and white clogs. He has a number of successful songs under his belt, from Now I'm Here to Too Much Love Will Kill You (with Frank Musker and Elizabeth Lamers). The latter song was about Brian's split from his wife, and now is with Anita Dobson, who incidentally played Angie in BBC's Eastenders, the rival soap to Coronation Street, which the I Want