.:Queen ft. Paul Rodgers Tour:. B. May a Klos Radio

BRIAN MAY: Nah, no. He ain’t so.

JL: Alright. Go ahead, Fox.

CYNTHIA FOX: Ah, well, ah, the question that I have is, first off I have to say, you’ve thought ahead so much, Brian, that, in the book, given that it is Cinco de Mayo, you’ve even included the Sombrero Galaxy, which I thought was very thoughtful.

BM: (laughs) Of course.

CF: Very smart. And before we go any further you have to say ‘Hello’ to Tokyo because I think we right now have a lot of listeners. A couple of weeks ago we had a tour, a guest tour, of a group of FM radio broadcasters, coming in FROM Japan to see what was going on. And when I mentioned that you would be in the studio, you cannot believe the Ooh’s and the Aah’s. They wrote down… theyre possibly, very possibly listening.

BM: 'Konnichiwa,' to all you people in Tokyo.

CF: (Laughs).

BM: I’m glad you’re listening. It’s a very International thing these days, isn’t it, radio?

JL: It’s great. I love the future, I mean because the technology is, you know, we’re living in Star Trek now. I mean we’re just living there. If you look at the communicator Kirk used to use, which is basically a walkie-talkie, now it’s your whole life in the email (indistinct) [environment].

BM: The Star trek thing was modelled on that I think, wasn’t it.

JL: Yeah.

BM: …. design.. It’s odd though, isn’t it – I was thinking today, you know, your show now, you know, is online so it’s an International thing. So there may be a point where things change, you know, because at the moment you are the glueing force for this community here, you know, the community of Los Angeles. I wonder if that changes if you become truly International?

JL: I hope it just adds to the tribal consciousness…

BM: Hmm.

JL: that people in Iowa or Japan will tune in and go, ‘This is how they rock in LA’? And then perhaps we’ll get some of their ideas.

BM: Yeah. Well you’ve got listeners in England tonight, I know, for sure, ‘cause a lot of them told me. Hi folks!! (laughs)

CF: Aw… it’s fantastic. Well…

BM: I should say Britain, not England…. In Britain.

CF: Well, there is so much going on in your life right now. We appreciate you taking the time to do this because tomorrow there will be an announcement about the Hyde Park Concert that you are organising. Queen and Paul Rodgers will be performing. It’s a very nice salute to Nelson Mandela…

BM: For his birthday.

CF: … his 90th birthday, and you continue to raise money to fight AIDS worldwide and certainly support his work in fighting AIDS and poverty in South Africa.

BM: Yeah.

CF: So you’ve got that. I don’t know if you wanna give any… drop any major hints about who might be playing?

BM: I’m not gonna drop any hints. (all laugh) It’s a tough call, actually, strange enough. You might think it’s all… I mean there is some fun to it, but it’s actually quite difficult, because, obviously, all kinds of people want to do it and you can’t say ‘Yes’ to everybody. And at the same time there’s lots of people we’d love to have and we can’t necessarily get, or else we don’t know. It’s not been an easy call, you know, but the object is to give him a fabulous birthday and to back him in what he’s trying to do, which is still this great awareness thing for the problems that Africa has, and is trying to emerge from the AIDS thing and the poverty thing. So Nelson Mandela is our complete guru. We would do anything he told us. He just… you cannot say ‘No’.

CF: I think it’s again, another remarkable aspect of your life is that you can go straight to South Africa, meet with Nelson Mandela, and discuss the things…

BM: Incredible. It’s beyond a dream really, yeah. But it’s a great privilege and it’s…

CF: And a responsibility too.

BM: Yeah. Exactly, exactly.

CF: Sure. Again something that you’re doing that raises the consciousness of the planet and maybe people will be a lot more inclined to have more of a global consciousness and look beyond their borders and see that…

BM: Yeah. It’s strange how life works as well, because one of the most tragic things, one of the most awful things that ever happened to us was losing Freddie, of course, yeah, but in a sense it led us into the sort of whole AIDS arena, which we’ve been in ever since trying (huge sigh) to do, to do things globally about that and we have been through the Mercury Phoenix Trust, you know, and then it, that actually wasn’t the reason we met Nelson Mandela. It was through a completely different reason, but the things converge. There’s a strange convergence to our lives - I think, to a lot of people’s lives as well – and you find that a lot of things add up to make you what you are. Mmm. It was Dave Stewart (chuckles) that led us to Mandela, saying, ‘Help, help, help – we can’t put this concert on Can you help?’ That was the first one in Johannesburg a few years ago.

CF: Yeah.

JL: But you couldn’t possibly give a better memorial to Freddie than what you’re doing and the lives that you’re touching, and saving…

CF: On a continuing basis, that’s right.

BM: Yeah. Yeah, I like that idea, but I also – I’m in the back of my mind I always want Freddie to be remembered for what he did and not from the way he died, you know. That’s… I want his music to be heard and his whole persona to be remembered while he was alive, and incredibly alive. My God, was he alive! (chuckles) You know, he lived life more intensely than almost anyone, well, anyone I’ve ever known.

JL: I think that’s, that is, I mean it’s an aspect that he could have died in a car accident, he could have died any way. The fact that he died of AIDS doesn’t diminish anything. It’s just, it’s nice that you instead of you know, just moving on, you’re doing this in his memory, and I think that’s a wonderful thing. I think he would be thrilled.

BM: Well he gave us the mandate to do it by announcing the fact that he was about to die. He gave us the opportunity to do that and he knew what he was doing – as he always did, dear Fred.

JL: Well, let’s listen to the voice of Freddie Mercury in happier times on 95.5 KLOS.

PLAYS "BRIGHTON ROCK"

JL: Someone was surely showing off there!!

CF: This is why he’s such a scary guy. This is why it’s so hard to talk to Brian May, because…

BM: So strange. It is like looking back on another life, I have to say.

JL: Yeah.

BM: It seems SUCH a long time ago.

CF: But you know, there are so many guitarists out there, their jaws have now just hit the pavement, going…

BM: I don’t know about that.

CF: … “How did he do that?!”

BM: No, no no no. There’s nothing difficult there.

CF: (laughs loudly).

BM: It’s great that, you know I never usually listen to our stuff and Jim Ladd has it cranked up very loud (clapping). I really enjoyed that. What is that? It’s amazing… yeah.

JL: I hope you don’t mind. I never know with people, but I have to have it to keep my…

BM: No, that’s what rock ‘n’ roll is, isn’t it? Isn’t rock ‘n’ roll loud?

JL: Yes Sir. (CF laughs loudly).

BM: It’s amazing, made me feel - my brain went all sorts of places, listening to that, ‘cause I really don’t listen to that. It’s quite amazing. I don’t know if we would have the balls to do anything like that these days. (much laughing) It’s SO full of stuff. My God, all the different … I remember recording all those different guitars in different places, like, you know, behind corners in the studio and little booths and things. Used to get all those weird sounds. Speeding up, slowing down, backwards and phasing stuff, and putting microphones in places, so it would deliberately be out of phase so you’d get a kind of quadraphonic effect. That’s all in that track.

JL: Right.

BM: So funny, but the other thing is the nice thing I noticed in that piece before the Echoplex section, Roger and I just playing together and there’s no way that could be not real. You can hear me like racing ahead, and he’s catching up, and then he’s racing and I’m catching up, and I love to hear that stuff. You don’t get that much these days – people really, truly playing together in the studio. But, you will get it on the new Queen and Paul Rodgers album.

JL: Really.

BM: That’s what we did. We went in and played, every day, and ALL kinds of stuff happened - all kinds of great stuff happened. And you’ll be able to tell. You know that it’s real. You can hear us, little bits of chemistry happening between us and you can hear us laughing and stuff. It’s good, organic stuff. We still produce. You know, there’s a lot of production in there and there’ll be big stuff and, you know, lots of guitar orchestras and stuff like our old trademarks, but at the core of it you’ll hear Roger and Paul and myself playing and it’s, I hope people will feel the same about it as they did when that Brighton Rock thing came out, you know – they’re listening to something real, ‘cause it’s true.

JL: And see, and I think ‘feel’ is a big part of it. The Doors – all of that stuff that they did with the ending when the music sort of… that was them, in the studio, live.

BM: Mmm. You need that.

JL: Yeah. All right.

BM: Unfortunately, since Pro Tools came along, which is a wonderful thing, you know, unfortunately it’s not that easy to believe that’s where music comes from any more, but it definitely does.

JL: It definitely does.

BM: Yeah.