COVER STORY
COVER STORY
May quickly discovered the guitar track
was not to his liking. “I thought the guitar
just didn’t make it. It seemed weak in
comparison to the way the song had
evolved,” he observes. “I said, ‘Look,
Fred, I have to get back and redo that.’
So I redid everything. There’s a little
piece towards the end when I was trying
to make the guitar sing along with
Freddie’s vocals. He was really pushing
himself on the vocals at the end, so I
tried to push the guitar and express
the way I felt. It’s hardly audible on the
record. It’s not like a major feature, but
you can hear the guitar and the vocal are
kind of straining against each other.
That’s the sort of thing I like to listen
to now. It’s a nice moment that’s been
captured there.”
Ultimately, what May’s meticulous
revamping of the guitars on “We Are the
Champions” shows is the keen analytical
process inherent to the very core of
the man’s best work alongside Mercury.
“For some reason Freddie had a way of
painting a picture which I always felt I
had something to contribute to. Almost
always, when it came to the point where
I was going to play on a song Freddie had
written, I knew what I wanted to play.
Sometimes I would say to him, ‘I want
the chords to be a certain way so I can do
that.’ Playing the solo was just a matter of
reproducing what was in my head. I could
hear it as part of the song all along. I’d
always know when the time came to do
my bit, and I knew what it was going to
be like.”
Rather than rely purely on his improv
skills, to a certain defgree May tended
to work out his parts in advance. “In
that sense, they were worked out but
I wouldn’t normally sit down and write
things out,” he explains. “Hopefully the
only time I would get analytical was after
the event. I think it’s best to normally
“We are the Champions” by Queen
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GUITAR TRICKS INSIDER
DIGITAL EDITION
MAY / JUNE