Hi folks!
Brian May here.
I can just see you all out there, trudging your way through the
sludgy Internet - is it my imagination or is it getting ever slower
as technology advances? ! It certainly takes up way too much of
my time - I vow to change in the New Year and start doing more of the
Great Things in Life - and less staring at computer screens!!!
This is a Christmas message - Hope you are enjoying it; Christmas,
that is. My attitude these days is to regard most of December as
Christmas - and enjoy the hustle and bustle of it - it only gets
really stressful when you fall into the trap of thinking that Dec
25th is in some way more important than any other day of the year
- it ISN'T!!!
To me it's just as important to do good things, be good to people,
and ENJOY IT, on all the other days of the year. Aiming for
perfection on that fabled Christmas Turkey Day is heading for misery.
Well, that's my philosophy over for now!!
I've been feeling good about Queen World and my own smaller Other
World over the last few weeks.
The BEST AIR GUITAR ALBUM IN THE WORLD EVER has been doing fabulously
well, as you've all probably seen - the TV ads, and Word of Mouth on
the streets about how great the Track Listing really is, seem to have
propelled the album to ever greater heights. In the first couple of
weeks we were selling four or five thousand and being pleased about
that - but now the thing is doing around 35 thousand weekly and
they're working hard to print it fast enough to keep up! I'm really
very proud of it - it was just a fun idea at the beginning, just a
pipe dream from Pete, Justin, and I… But after a lot of serious
work it really did materialise into the kind of Dream Guitar Album
that I always wanted to make - it's been warming my heart in my car
ever since… and to be able to get all that magnificent seminal
guitar music to the ears of young folks just starting out playing
guitar is a great feeling for me.
Big Thanks to all who helped us make it happen!!! - especially Steve
Pritchard at Virgin records UK.
The new edition of the BRIAN MAY GUITAR is also doing brilliantly
well so far. It's JUST out on sale - and so far every one that's
been made is already sold. For those who haven't come across it,
it's the new edition of replicas of my own Homemade guitar which my
Dad helped me to build 40 YEARS AGO! We designed the original all
from scratch, aiming to make a guitar which would feed back through
the air in the best way, making an instrument that would 'Sing' with
its sustain and tone. Somehow it worked, and the 'Red Special' has
been the instrument I have used for 99 per cent of every Queen
recording and live shows, as well as my own outings for "Back to the
Light" and "Another World".
Two previous editions of "Brian May Models" were made by Guild
guitars of the USA, all now unobtainable except at ludicrously
inflated prices second-hand. Burns of England have now made a new
model, in close consultation with me, with Pete Malandrone my Tech,
and with Greg Fryer (who made me 3 beautiful identical clones of the
guitar 5 years ago, christened Paul, John, and George) which is
excellently made and sounds almost indistinguishable from the
original Red Special. It's also much more affordable, at 500 quid or
so.
The new BURNS BM model was rave-reviewed in GUITARIST magazine a
couple of months ago and they have now named it their Guitar of the
Year! Thanks Guys!!! So I am well happy with this new venture - and
hope that the guitar will inspire many more young players to ROCK!!!
I've been very busy. Just got back from L.A. where I was helping to
put the finishing touches to the new 5.1 Surround mix of our 1975
album, "A Night at the Opera". It sounds COLOSSAL!!! To hear it you
will need a 5.1 system, and a dedicated DVD player which plays the
Sound DVD format. The surround sound is produced exactly as in the
new Cinema THX systems - two speakers in front, left and right, two
in the back, left and right, a "hard cetre" speaker in the middle in
front, and a Sub-Woofer some place, preferably under your seat! The
ANATO album is perfectly suitable for surround - since there was
always too much on our multitrack tapes to condense down to just
stereo! It's amazing now to hear all those vocal harmonies and
guitar orchestras zooming all around your head. The project was
piloted by hugely respected producer Elliot Steiner, and our own
original co-producer, Roy Thomas Baker. I went over to Capitol
Studios (under that building that looks like a stack of 45 records on
Vine Street in Hollywood) to meet them, since I was the only one who
could remember where all that bounced stuff was meant to go! It was
also a chance to be creative in the new medium, and I tried to do all
the stuff we WOULD have done at the time if we'd had the technology
at our disposal. It's VERY interesting!!!
The final Surround mix of Bohemian Rhapsody, just one of the tracks
on this epic work, and by no means the most complex, is being rushed
to Munich for inclusion in the Planetarium show there which opens on
12th December.
The Planetarium Show is something Justin and I have been putting much
energy into, along with its creators, headed by Markus Steblei in
Munich. It's a trip - really - through Time and Space - you'll see
what I mean if you manage to get there some time in the next few
months - we've used much of the Planetarium's natural night sky
projections (they have probably the finest Zeiss projector in Europe,
if not the World) plus many very new laser and imaging devices, to
make a programme which at times will make you feel you are seeing
Queen as we might have been in the 3rd Millennium. I'm particularly
pleased with a disturbing and beautiful depiction of "Mother Love" in
a kind of cosmic graveyard, and a new edit I produced of "Track 13"
which is a trip in itself, as those of you who discovered its secret
on Made in Heaven will know…. You will also see many restored images
like the Cels used for the "It's a Kind of Magic" video, and - oh
yes, Bohemian Rhapsody as never before…
We hope that the Planetarium show will be able to be mounted in other
planetaria in the future, first in Germany, and then perhaps
elsewhere, where compatible technology becomes available.
Finally - WE WILL ROCK YOU - THE MUSICAL -! It's been unbelievably
time-consuming but in the best possible way - the development of the
ideas is continually challenging and exciting, and we are every day
coming into contact with great talented people - only today at what
must be our 50th day of just singing auditions we found a young lady
with a WONDERFUL voice - we're hoping to bring her into the cast. We
start rehearsals for real in the middle of January; the sets are
being constructed as we speak, and the arranging of the songs is in
the hands of Roger and myself and a great team of Professionals -
Mike Dixon being joint musical Supervisor with us. Movement,
direction, and script interpretation are also very interactive
between us, but headed by the great Chris Renshaw in the director's
chair, and the legendary Arlene Philips as chief choreographer. Our
trusty manager Jim Beach is Producer, along with ourselves and Ben's
Management team, and Robert DeNiro's company, Tribecca.
The phenomenal Ben Elton is of course our scriptwriter, and very
fabulous he is too - also No. 1 Fiction writer this Christmas -
Congratulations Ben! - with his fascinating book "Dead Famous". I
devoured it already - it's a great read - anyone remember Agatha
Christie? - well it's a bit like that, but with all the force
of Ben's devastating sardonic wit added in - a must!
OK, enough advertising! Have a WONDERFUL Christmas season - And
start working on the New Year RES's …. See you there!
Cheers and Hoorah!
Be Happy!
Be Peaceful! (Especially peaceful!)
Love
Brian
Queen is the best group of the world, that`s why
I have created this web site. My name is Guillermo Ursi from Argentina, e-mail me at:
