Brian May: Taking guns off the estate

You can throw a lot of things at Brian May - and, periodically, I do - but you can't accuse him of not being prepared to put his money where his mouth is.

According to the Western Morning News, he's considering buying a hunting estate on Exmoor. And turning it into a nature reserve.

It's especially sweet because the estate is in part of the country where DEFRA is keen to carry on killing badgers because, as Owen Paterson told MPs "they might spread TB to cows, or be witches in disguise, or just generally up to something dodgy. Probably it's badgers dumping fridges and what-not in pretty hedgerows."

I'm not sure it makes listening to Fat Bottom Girls on repeat a social good, but... well, watching this video might save a badger's life.*

* - Sounds like the worst telethon ever.

Attention: Brian May out of We Will Rock You musical has something to share

Brian May has decided that Tom Jones is lowering himself.

In a post which manages to be both short and rambling, May kicks The Voice about a bit because, er, apparently listening to somebody's performance "isn't what music is about":

It brings singing down to the level of a stupid obstacle course on 'It's A Knockout'. This is not – NOT – what music is about.

When we sing, or play, for real, we are NOT screaming at the top of our lungs trying to persuade someone to notice us.

Yes, you'd never get Brian May involved in a show which encouraged people to scream in a bid to get themselves noticed.

Except, of course, for his repeated guest slots on American Idol and Australia's Got Talent. But that would be totally different, wouldn't it?

Brian May calls for a cultural boycott

The Cameron government plan to shoot badgers to death in order to make cows healthier is, like most ideas coming from the Tories, wrong-headed, and you can't but be impressed with Brian May's tireless work against the decision.

But it slides into parody with the reports that May is calling for a cultural boycott of areas culling the mammals:

Launching the ‘Team Badger’ campaign, the RSPCA and others urged people not to visit the tourist hot spots where badgers are being killed and to boycott dairy products made in those areas.

The problem with cultural boycotts, Brian, is that sometimes high-profile acts break them, and then spend the rest of their lives trying to justify, say, ignoring a UN cultural boycott of Apartheid South Africa.

Freddie Mercury returns to the stage

Because we can't leave the dead alone anymore, of course Freddie Mercury is going to be dragged on stage for the 10th anniversary of We Will Rock You.

Speaking to the BBC, [Brian] May said the anniversary performance of the popular West End show, on May 14 at the Dominion Theatre, will be celebrated with an "an optical illusion of sorts" that will leave the audience saying "'did we actually see Freddie?'"

No, I don't think they will. If Freddie Mercury really was on the stage, I don't think anyone would be in any doubt, would they?

And, seriously, who'd go to all the trouble of reanimating a corpse unless people were going to notice?

May is quite clear what this won't be:

He added that the effect would be similar to the one created for the late rapper Tupac, who 'appeared' onstage at last month's Coachella Festival in California as a hologram. May explained: "It's a little unfortunate they did that thing with Tupac as we've been trying to make Freddie appear on the stage for quite a while."

May went on to say that they would not, however, be using the same technique to bring back Mercury, who passed away in 1991, saying the hologram technology "is something we've looked at ourselves but I think probably for a show that runs eight shows a week it's not really quite practical."

In other words it's too expensive, then.

Not clear exactly what the "optical illusion" will be, then: perhaps it'll be a drawing that's a duck when you look at it one way, but then is a still from Crazy Little Thing Called Love when you look at it another? Or maybe the programme will have a little flicker book of Mercury in the corner, and the audience will be told to thumb through their pages in tune to Radio GaGa?

Brian May grumbles at lack of Brian May in Jubilee bunfight

Who can forget the Golden Jubilee, when Brian May stood on top of Buckingham Palace playing 'Look At Me, I'm Sandra Dee'?

Nobody can forget. Nobody can. Sometimes it might slip from your mind for a few seconds, but then Andrew Marr looms into your face, waving the video of the event: "It's evidence for how vital and amazing the Queen remains" enthuses Marr, "that she can have an actual rock star on the roof of the actual house she sometimes lives in. Isn't the Queen marvellous? She's marvellous. Like some sort of marvellous marvel - and she's cheap. If you had a president, it would cost three times as much, you know."

It's a little-known fact that May has remained on the Palace roof for the last ten years, surviving on energy bars lobbed up to him by Prince Harry. "I'm clearly going to be asked to stand on the roof and play 'I'm 'Enery The Eight I Am' to mark the Diamond Jubilee, so it's not worth coming down" May has explained.

But - oh dear - Gary Barlow, who has been put in charge of the "gig" - has chosen not to ask May to play. Not that May's bitter about it:

“No, we haven’t been asked at all which is a shame — maybe next time we will, perhaps the one after diamond, whatever that is,” May, 64, tells [The Telegraph's Tim Walker] at the Whatsonstage.com awards concert at the Prince of Wales Theatre.

“I don’t how they’re going to top the Golden Jubilee event we were involved with, but that’s Gary Barlow’s problem. They’ll have to drop him from a helicopter or something.”

Yeah, because that's the only way they'll top the bloke married to Angie Watts playing a guitar on a roof. There is literally no other way than tossing Gary Barlow out of a helicopter over the crowd, without a parachute, making him play the riff from the Hawaii Five-O theme tune.

Not that May's bitter - did we mention that he's not bitter? - because he's too busy elsewhere:

May says he is, in any case, pre-occupied with the sequel to the West End show We Will Rock You, a celebration of the music of his Queen rock group. “We have it written now,” he says. “I can’t tell you what it will be called, but it’s looking good – we’ve had input from Ben [Elton], who wrote the original and is like a member of the band now, so we talk all the time. We’re looking at where we can take it as it’s at production stages.”

Looking for somewhere to take a sequel to We Will Rock You? I think we can come up with a few ideas.

Gordon in the morning: The dead cannot complain

News of the failed Freddie Mercury & Michael Jackson project being revived this morning:

IT has been a while since Michael Jackson fans had anything to celebrate.

Really? I'm pretty sure I spotted most of the rump turning a manslaughter verdict into a tailgate party just a few days ago. But do carry on:

But his loyal army can now look forward to songs he recorded with Freddie Mercury being released next year.

You say that like it's a good thing.

These recordings were done in 1983, and were so toxic they have been stored ever since in a sealed metal box somewhere under Pencross Fell. So why disinter them now?

Brian [May] has put to rest any money-making conspiracies that always seem to surface.

To be fair to May, I suspect he's being honest - he has a track record of being led by curiosity into doing terrible things - although it's hard to believe that's the motivation for the Jackson family.

Still, something that was so disappointing that the people involved didn't want them released while they were still alive. Why drag it out now?

Brian May gives sanctuary

This is a sad story, but with a happy ending: Brian May has given sanctuary to an abused hedgehog.

You could almost forgive him for playing-guitar-on-the-palace-roof business. What a lovely thing for someone to do.

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Brian May

io9 digs Brian May's Spider-man theme from whatever corner it went off to die in:

Now the city's sleeping
Spy-D do his creeping
Creeping, he is creeping
We'll be weeping, weeping, weeping, woo!

They've got the full weepingm weeping, woo on their site. Thanks to Michael M.

We are all of us in the gutter, but some are pretending to be seeing stars

They're taking We Will Rock You on a tour round the country - I think the phrase is "sharing the pain" - and they're planning to make a bit of a fuss in Edinburgh:

Queen stars Brian May and Roger Taylor have revealed they will join the star-studded cast of the smash hit musical based on the band for the opening night at the Playhouse next Wednesday.

Didn't ask Paul Rogers, then?

Still, a star-studded cast. That's exciting. Who have you got studding the cast with these stars?

The announcement is a huge boost for the thousands of fans who have already snapped up some of the tickets for We Will Rock You, expecting to see the likes of Darren Day and Coronation Street actor Kevin Kennedy sing Queen classics.

Is that a star-studded cast or not? Because the phrase "it's a huge boost" implies that, without the presence of May and Taylor, it'd be a bit of a let-down. "Cheer up, there's two of the people who actually got in the way of Freddie Mercury going to be on stage."

May said: "We are completely hands-on, and we will be visiting.

"People definitely come out of the theatre feeling that in a strange way they now know us, Queen, and our struggle, our journey."

They come away understanding your journey? But this is the plot of the play:

We Will Rock You' is a futuristic tale which tells of a massive corporation - Globalsoft - which sends computer generated music to all of the people on the planet. Singing, musical instruments, and any expression of creativity, are banned. But Lost Texts are known to exist which talk of music from years gone by. A group of rebels (the Bohemians) strive to discover the lost music, and bring down the corporation. The two heroes, Galileo and Scaramouche, discover musical instruments buried in rock, which they use to vaporise the head of the corporation (The Killer Queen), and send the Power Of Rock around the world to free the masses, thus enabling the masses to be musically creative once again.

You do know that isn't something which happened to you, don't you, Brian? If people are coming out of the theatre going 'thank god Scaramouche out of Queen found those hidden guitars', not only have they not understood your journey, but they've confused made-up bobbins with real life.

Brian May upset by something or other to do with Michael Jackson

I'm not entirely clear why Brian May has got such a hump on by the Jackson-Mercury tracks popping up on the web:

May revealed the existence of the songs earlier this week (begs29Jun09), saying, “He (Jackson) used to come and see us when we were on tour in the States. He and Freddie became close friends, close enough to record a couple of tracks together at Michael’s house, tracks which have never seen the light of day.”

But the rocker has been left incensed after two tunes by the pair, State Of Shock and There Must Be More To Life Than This, ended up on video sharing website YouTube.com.
He fumes, "The music thieves at work as usual."

I love the way ContactMusic explain what YouTube is, just in case you don't know.

Is May's hump as "music thieves" (who has actually stolen anything?) down to that now, when he goes "ha ha, there was a secret session no common folk have ever heard" people will go "actually, yeah, we have."

Roses bloom without May

During the long, long birth of Chinese Democracy - as part of the throwing of everything at the wall stage - Brian May stepped down from his traditional perch on the roof of Buckingham Palace to record some bits.

May's work, recorded back in 1999, hasn't made the final cut. May, for once, isn't raging, but quietly accepting of his fate, blogging:

Well, it is a shame, perhaps ... I did put quite a lot of work in, and was proud of it.

But I could understand if Axl wants to have an album which reflects the work of the members of the band as it is, right now.

I do have mixes of the tracks with my guitar on, work tapes at the time, but they will remain private, out of respect for Axl.

That would be mutual respect, of the sort where you don't bother to tell someone that you've dumped their work from an album and leave it to someone sneaking a peek at the credits on an early copy of the artwork, of course.

Brian May: where's the respect?

Brian May - a man who has the hump so often he could go on as Quasimodo without make-up - is annoyed that ITV didn't treat the not-quite-Queen set at Nelson Mandela's birthday show with the respect he thinks it deserved. (Key words here are "he thinks", of course.)

"It baffles me how, given the privilege of televising an internationally significant event, a TV company can miss the point so badly.

"All (they) had to do was televise the whole event, with no insertions from them. Well, it seems they largely failed. I wonder who's responsible for these bad decisions?"

It's hilarious that May thinks that, effectively, all ITV's editorial input should consist of is switching on the camera at the start and putting up the copyright caption at the end. And, indeed, that anyone would feel that - in the context of an event which celebrated the life and achievements of a truly brave and decent statesperson against a backdrop of the Zimbabwean nightmare - a couple of Queen tracks being cut out of an ITV programme is the sort of thing to make a fuss about.

Brian May loses Planet Rock

Putting aside his worries about Wikipedia ("anyone is free to lie"), Brian May has posted a confirmation that his consortium has lost its bid to buy Planet Rock off GCap:

Our chaps have been pressing on with GCAP's lawyers, finalising the arrangements, the principles having been agreed a few weeks ago, but, out of the blue, we heard a rumour that someone else was involved, and this morning someone 'unofficially' confirmed that rumour.

MediaGuardian reckons that an official announcement is due. May worries that the buyer might not keep the station on-air, although it's hard to imagine what they'd be buying it for if they weren't going to - it's not for the slot on DAB, that's for certain.

May to rescue Rock?

The threatened-but-healthy digital radio station Planet Rock might yet have a future - apparently Brian May is pulling together some sort of rescue package to buy the network from GCap:

"I can't tell you who I am 'in league' with, but I am part of a small group of people who have great hopes that we will succeed in taking over the station, and putting it on a firm footing, for the benefit of its growing audience," May wrote on his website, www.brianmay.com.

"I regard Planet Rock as rather more than just a radio station - it is a symbol of free radio ... radio which is not run by large corporate organisations for the purpose of making tons of money, and has a free choice of what it plays."

That's how you see Planet Rock, is it, Brian? Despite it being run by a large corporate organisation and talking openly about its playlist on its website?

Brian May respects the Spears

Plodding Queen musical We Will Rock You has been revised at the request of Brian May, who didn't feel it right to have a character called Britney any more:

"We have taken out references to her in deference to the fact she is going through such a hard time. The references have always been intended as good-natured fun and even a kind of tribute to her. But we didn't want there to be any risk of the show adding to her pain.

"We are very sensitive to the feelings of our fellow artists. We never feel comfortable with anything other than a non-destructive, affectionate gag."

Yes. We imagine that a throwaway reference in a terrible piece of musical theatre is probably the thing which keeps Britney awake at night right now.

Queen's university

There aren't many jobs which could see Brian May replacing Cherie Blair. The chancellorship of Liverpool John Moores University (the Poly as was) is one such job, and the Queen will replace the PM's wife heading up the ceremonials from now on. It's an extra bonus for those who matriculate from JMU: not only do you get to graduate in the Cathedral, but you get a warm handshake from Mr. May, too.

May not, then

Brian May was planning a duet with Joss Stone during tonights Mawkathon Difest - but has now decided not to. Apparently, he was afraid of embarrassing himself:

: "I just could not get my head around the way they have arranged it.

"I didn't want to risk embarrassing them - or myself! It was too short notice for such major changes.

"I have chatted to Joss and we are going to create something new together soon."

You'd have thought that Brian May would have been beyond embarrassment by now, though, wouldn't you?

Freddie Mercury is frozen

Faceless megaconglomerate Unilever's cheeky cheery face Ben and Jerrys have launched an ice cream flavour inspired by Queen, called Bohemian Raspberry. Like the band, it seems like a sweet treat, but quickly loses all its charm and you're left with a tub hanging around the back of the freezer forever that nobody quite has the heart to throw away, but still doesn't want to go near.

Brian May, of course, is on hand to talk about it:

"It's Queentastic! Rhapsolicious! So cool it's not funny! But only if the next one is 'We Will Chock You'!"

If the ice cream is as delicious as Brian May is hilarious, we're going to Haagen Daas.