Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Brian May
Artist: Brian May
Genre(s):
Soundtrack
Rock
Rock: Hard-Rock
Metal: Heavy
Discography:
La Musique De "Furia"
Year: 2000
Tracks: 22
Furia
Year: 2000
Tracks: 22
Red Special
Year: 1998
Tracks: 8
Live At The Brixton Academy
Year: 1994
Tracks: 15
Ressurrection - Japanese Impor
Year: 1993
Tracks: 8
Ressurrection (With Cozy Powell)
Year: 1993
Tracks: 8
Back To The Light
Year: 1992
Tracks: 12
Star Fleet
Year:
Tracks: 7
Few rock guitarists have a playacting style as straight off recognizable as Queen's Brian May. With his orchestrated guitar armies (multi-tracked guitar lines overdubbed on top of the inning of each other) and outright memorable, well-constructed melodic leads, May is in a course all by himself. Born in Hampton, Middlesex, in July 1947, May showed an interest in music at a very early age -- learning to play the ukulele and forte-piano ahead receiving his first guitar as a present on his seventh natal day. Shortly thereafter, May and his forefather began to build a usance guitar from prick. Completed deuce age afterwards, the one-of-a-kind instrument would suit known as the Red Special, a guitar that would later suit May's transonic and ocular trademark throughout his life history.
It wasn't long until May began to pick up a thing or two from such pop rock guitarists as the Shadows' Hank Marvin, Elvis Presley's sideman Scotty Moore, and Buddy Holly. As a pupil at lowly shoal, May formed his first gear grouping, the implemental stripe 1984, playing around London and regular porta a 1967 show at the Olympia Theatre for such soon-to-be full-grown names as Jimi Hendrix, Traffic, Pink Floyd, and Tyrannosaurus Rex (later T. Rex). After beginning studies at Imperial College (in the physics/infrared uranology field) and growing pall of their musical direction, May left hand 1984 in the spring of 1968.
During his college life history, May hooked up with drummer Roger Taylor (via an ad situated on a college noteboard) and a fellow ex-1984 member, bassist/vocalist Tim Staffell, forming the stone trio Smile. Shortly after graduating from college with an honors degree in physics and maths, May focused full-time on music when Smile signed to Mercury Records. Despite great assure, Smile but managed to publication one exclusive (titled "Earth") and a few unreleased tracks before Staffell left the mathematical group. But it was a admirer of Staffell's wHO would offer his services as the group's unexampled isaac Bashevis Singer -- Freddie Mercury. With the lineup change came a new identify, Queen, and a new musical direction -- heavy rock interracial with grand ballads and a flashily glam look.
Later sledding through legion bassists, Queen constitute a lasting fellow member in John Deacon -- resulting in a transcription take with EMI/Elektra and a self-titled debut following in 1973. With each serial release (1974's Queen II and Sheer Heart Attack), Queen's musical counselling and stageshow grew stronger and more than popular, until they were one of the world's biggest acts of the Apostles by the mid to late '70s, due to such megahit albums as Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, News of the World, and Jazz. Unlike other groups where a single fellow member supplied all the songwriting, all four-spot of Queen's members had their own songwriting credits equally, with May writing some of the group's nearly identifiable hits -- "We Will Rock You," "Juicy Bottomed Girls," "Now I'm Here," and "Tie-up Your Mother Down," among others.
During a myopic break in 1983, May issued his first solo release, the four-track EP Star Fleet Project (which featured an all-star put funding him -- Eddie Van Halen, REO Speedwagon drummer Alan Gratzer, and session bassist Phil Chen), and co-produced the debut recording from the obscure heavy metal outfit Heavy Pettin, coroneted Lettin Loose. Around the same time, an exact reduplicate of May's Red Special guitar was issued to the public via the Guild guitar troupe, and May recorded a video guitar lesson as piece of the Headliner Licks series.
Queen would proceed issuing hit albums and sold-out tours passim the former '80s (as they experimented with a spacious range of musical styles), until they became solely a "studio dance band" during their latter years, 1989's The Miracle and 1991's Innuendo (the reason for this was kept under wraps at the time, merely it subsequently became known that it was imputable to health reasons -- Mercury was diagnosed with AIDS). With Mercury's death in 1991, Queen went their separate slipway, with May direction on a solo life history and other projects (including hosting and playing at a 1991 Guitar Legends concert aboard Steve Vai and Joe Satriani).
May's first full-length solo album was preceded by the single "Driven by You," which reached the Top Ten in England and was featured in a Ford automobile commercial -- winning an Ivor Novello Award for Best Theme From a TV/Radio Commercial. 1993 last saw the going of Back to the Light, an album that was a sizeable hit in Europe, and light-emitting diode to May's first solo tour (which included members Cozy Powell on drums, Neil Murray on freshwater bass, longtime Queen sideman Spike Edney on keyboards, Jamie Moses on guitar, asset financial backing vocalists Shelley Preston and Cathy Porter). A twelvemonth by and by, a unrecorded papers of the circuit, Live at the Brixton Academy, was issued, intermixture modern solo corporeal with Queen classics. It wasn't until 1998 that May would progeny a proper studio follow-up, Another World.
In increase to sway music, May has retained his pursuit in uranology and is working on a book about T.R. Williams, a celebrated stereo system lensman of the 1850s. May has also well-tried his hand at writing original music for movies (the 1996 adaptation of The Adventures of Pinnochio) and a radio series (a BBC radio extra on the Amazing Spiderman), as considerably as recording the soundtrack for the Red and Gold Theatre Company's yield of Macbeth, which was staged at London's Riverside Theatre in the late '90s.
May's contribution to stone guitar remains great as his acting has proven to be a great influence on other noted rock guitarists past and confront, including Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins), Ty Tabor (King's X), Nuno Bettencourt (Utmost), and Phil Collen (Def Leppard), to name but a few.