profile of brian may

Brian May was born in 1947 in London. He built his own guitar with his father Harold, in 1963. He named the guitar the Red Special and still continues to use it to this day.He has his own company Brian May Guitars that manufactures replica Red Specials. Brian May formed his first band Smile in 1968 which included future band member Roger Taylor. When Smile's bassist Tim Staffen left the group and Freddie Mercury joined, they looked for a new bassist and found John Deacon. Changing the name to Queen in 1971, the band achieved their first hit in 1974 with “Seven Seas of Rhye.” The band continued with the same line up until 1991 when Freddie Mercury died of AID's. Selling over 300 million albums Queen are among the best selling artists of all time. Brian May is a talented songwriter as well as a guitarist. He has written 22 hits for Queen including “We will Rock You”. He also plays keyboard and sings. Brian May has one of the most distinctive guitar sounds in the world. A skilled virtuoso, his guitar playing sounds unique. Brian May never uses a plectrum, preferring to play with a silver sixpence and keeps a ready supply of these coins handy when playing. Following the death of Freddie Mercury, Brian May formed the Brian May Band in 1992 although Queen reformed in 2004 and used Paul Rodgers as a replacement vocalist. Without Mercury, fans were displeased and the band split again in 2009. Awarded the CBE in 2005 for services to the Music Industry, one of Brian May’s most memorable performances was playing his own arrangement of “God Save the Queen” live from the roof of Buckingham Palace. In 2007 Brian May returned to Imperial College, London to complete his Doctoral Thesis in Astrophysics.