Credit: Far Out / Raph_PH
Mon 3 August 2026 10:00, UK
There are several Everest heights in the world of rock that Brian May can point to as career-defining.
It could be symbolising the 1970s’ most ornate moment with Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ spectacle, as well as paving the path to MTV with the A Night at the Opera lead single’s iconic promo video. Perhaps the guitarist and astrophysicist’s most immortal moment is gifting sports culture one of the most enduring crowd stompers, lifting the chantalongs heard below ringing around British football terraces for Queen’s anthemic ‘We Will Rock You’, written by May.
Most, however, would guess for Queen’s 21-minute set at 1985’s Live Aid as towering in May’s estimation, routinely celebrated as the greatest performance of all time and frontman Freddie Mercury’s “Ay-yo!” vocal exchanges with the audience ringing around the old Wembley Stadium’s pop-cultural landscape, as well as etched into Queen lore as the band’s finest hour.
Yet, for May, the apex of his career was reached years later, long after their singer had passed away and Queen had released their final LP bow, 1995’s Made in Heaven’s collation of Mercury’s remaining unreleased vocal sessions. It took the regal pomp and ceremony of Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee celebrations in 2002 for May to fight through adrenaline and white-knuckle terror for the moment he was most proud of.
Initially, organisers had reached out to May with the suggestion of his performing Britain’s ‘God Save the Queen’ national anthem while strolling through the state rooms of Buckingham Palace in the vein of Jimi Hendrix. It’s likely the creative team headed by George Martin were thinking of the old Experience guitarist’s scorching rendition of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock Festival, swapping all its political critique in favour of a soggy embrace of the imperial state and its royalist bloat.
May’s objections lay not in lacking Hendrix’s subversive commentary but in the simple fact that he thought it’d be “naff” to try and emulate America’s most famous guitarist. He was right. Instead, he proposed another idea: to play atop the Palace’s rooftops with an orchestral back-up below. Martin loved the idea and arranged such a feat with The Royal Household, May duly taking a corner of the upper battlements without a safety net and grappling with the anxiety-inducing 200 million viewers around the world. Such a weight of responsibility made itself clear to May when preparing for the BBC’s Party at the Palace’s main event.
“Nothing could ever quite top that, really, for sheer management of terror,” May reflected to The Guardian in 2023. “It’s hard to function, you have so much fear – and it was the whole opening of the Golden Jubilee, so everything depended on it. If it had gone wrong, I would have forever been the guy who messed it up.”
Further reading: From The Vault
It was touch and go. First, despite appearing as the coda to 1975’s A Night at the Opera, ‘God Save the Queen’, May and the band never actually performed the song live, only ever using the track as a staple finale soundtrack played out of venue PA’s when rounding off their shows. Then there were the mishaps on the day. While having practised with the orchestra, it turned out that when May was on deck to unleash his solo, the small monitor May was given to see Michael Kamen’s conducting was hard to glean on the tiny screen, plus potentially facing a sound swallow of the orchestra due to May’s mammoth AC-30 amps near his person.
Still, he pulled off the solo, helped with Queen drummer Roger Taylor below on timpani orchestration, and gifted the Party at the Palace its most memorable moment once the feed kicked in. He’d return 20 years later for the Platinum Jubilee, following the Queen’s stilted interaction with Paddington Bear and busting out a blast of ‘We Will Rock You’ with Adam Lambert on vocals and Her Majesty’s Royal Marines on drum duties, along with Taylor.
It couldn’t match the personal satisfaction and conquest of feat as that rooftop show back in 2002, however. “It was all real, and all live, and I will never ever forget it,” May concluded. “The adrenaline was incredible.”
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