amq by Edward Haworth

I was lucky enough to attend a talk that Brian May gave at the
Cambridge Union earlier tonight (yesterday). It was a great
priviledge to finally 'meet' the man himself. And whilst it makes me
feel vaguely like a spy typing this, he said some things I am sure you
are all itnerested in.

He opened his talk with a speech against the bombing of Afghanistan
and played Bob Dylan's "With God on Our Side" on acoustic - a great
song and very played. I was suprised by how political he could be, on
this issue and on animal rights he put forward a very persuasive, non
dogmatic and understated argument.
He closed by playing "We Will Rock You" on his red special and the
Deacy amp (!), which we got to isnpect (and even touch) later. He
mentioned that he came to Cambridge for an interview in his time and
talked briefly about his life (mostly academic) before Queen.

The rest oif his talk was given to questions. The songs he are most
proud of are "Too much love..." (the playing of which at the tribute
concert is his fondest live performance)and "We will rock you" and his
favourite album is "Queen 2" (and although he criticised The Works and
Hot Space he said he basically stood by them). On the subject of
albumst he wished people had the chance to listen to the studio albums
rather then the greatest hits releases. The song he would like most
of all to have written is Lennon's "Jealous Guy". He refused to go
into much detail when asked about the biggest bender Queen went on,
but mentioned female mud wrestlers and the infamous New Orleans party
:). He defended John against someoneone who asked if he had any real
input into the band "he wrote our best selling single..." (another one
bites..). He mentioned Freddie many times, and how he still misses
him, but he said he was finally comfortable talking about him again -
mostly.

In terms of the future he said he planned to record another solo album
"when he had something to say again". The Queen musical (no longer
directly about them) and a rock show/planetarium opening in Munich are
projects he is very pumped about. Also he mentioned the entire "Night
at the opera" album is being remixed into Dolby 5.1 (presumably DVD
audio) by the original producer - the first time he said anyone has
been allowed to mess with the original recording of BohRap. This
sounds fantastic and will be first heard at the Munich planetarium
opening. He spoke very enthusiastically about his positive
relationship with Roger, he said they ahd hoped to do more work with
Robbie Williams, but was dissapointed that this no longer looked
likely. Unfortunately he said both Roger and himself have very little
contact with John anymore, who had moved on. When I asked him later
if he thought Queen would ever work together on new material he said
he thought it was very unlikely - that that moment had passed and that
future collaboration between Roger and himself would carry on with the
musical and other projects as the closest thing to any new Queen work.
When I asked him if then Smile would ever reform he just laughed.

Hopefully some of the above will be interesting - it was a fantastic
evening - the man is amazing, the most unlikely rock star ever.


-the above was posted in amq by Edward Haworth

Just thought u lot might like to read it.

Sadly the gist of it seems to be that they arent talking to John. Which is unfortunate.

Thanks to oneworldwidevision and DeaconJohn for this information.