(Credits: Far Out / Paul Williams)
Wed 10 December 2025 8:12, UK
It is quite difficult to remove the people from the icons they have become. The members of your favourite band are, underneath the mystique and spotlight, just like you or me. They have wants and woes, they have desires and passions and they, hopefully, love music, just like you. That’s certainly the case for Queen’s Brian May.
The mild-mannered guitarist has always felt different from the rest of the rock and roll set that triumphed in the 1960s and ’70s. While more than capable of delivering a serious solo, it felt like May was never too much concerned with the spotlight his six-string afforded him. Instead, he was a complete devotee to making music, and that stemmed from his earliest passions.
Every single member of Queen was responsible for making them what they were. Even though Freddie Mercury may get the lion’s share of the praise in the group, the amount of effort put into the band’s singular sound was all down to the four musical minds working in unison to unleash a massive sonic structure through the speakers. While Brian May may have been responsible for the symphony of guitars, he admitted that this band helped him understand the concept of rock and roll harmony.
When looking through the band’s catalogue, though, it’s easy to see which genres they were cribbing from on every single project. In their early years, the band constantly tried to mould heavy riffs in the same vein as Led Zeppelin, whether on guitar with ‘Great King Rat’ or the fantastic piano concerto in ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’.
Throughout the rest of their career together, Queen would remain ahead of the game in terms of musical trends. On albums like Hot Space, they would try their hand at working various synthesisers into their sound, while their final outings would see them getting back into the world of progressive rock with the help of guitarists like Steve Howe on the album Innuendo.
When May started, his guitar knowledge consisted of a ukulele-banjo, which he inherited from his dad after carrying it through the war. With the chord shapes transferring over to the guitar, May would be shell-shocked the first time he heard rock and roll. Though Chuck Berry and Little Richard may have had their fans, May was in love the first time he heard The Everly Brothers sing.
Featuring gorgeous two-part harmonies, the band would become a foundation of early rock and roll, inspiring young John Lennon and Paul McCartney when they started to take up harmony singing. Although May carved out a path of his own in Queen, he remembers always wanting to become an honorary Everly.
When memorialising Don Everly, May would say how much the group meant to him, remarking on his website, “The influence they had on me, especially with regard to how to sing harmonies, has been massive – and is evident on lots of Queen records as well as my solo recordings. I always hungrily absorbed both parts that they sang on every record – and of course, I still can sing every word – every note. And I got into the habit of singing a third harmony part along with them. I wanted to be part of their group!”
Although Queen certainly had their fair share of knowledge in harmony singing from The Everly Brothers, their impact on May is evident in how he sculpted his guitars. Since many of his solos veer into harmony halfway through, each singular part feels like a perfect melody, the same way that Don and Phil’s harmonies blended on tracks like ‘Bye Bye Love’ or ‘Wake Up Little Susie’. Despite May’s habit of turning the guitar into an operatic instrument, he knows everything originates from combining two harmonies, just like The Everlys did.
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