Brian May interview with Sacha Reins from French magazine, mid-1978
Mar 4, 2024 8:57:13 GMT
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Post by fabiogminero on Mar 4, 2024 8:57:13 GMT
Hi everyone.
I would like to share today an article published in a French magazine in 1978: it is an interview with Brian May by journalist Sacha Reins - held during the European tour of "News Of The World" - originally published under the French title of Brian May, despote éclairé (translated into English as Brian May, enlightened despot).
The journalist specifies that the interview was held in an environment dominated by security (which she defined as "useless and grotesque") on an afternoon in Zurich after the Paris concerts of 23rd and 24th April 1978, Queen's first two French concerts; the band performed in Zurich on 30th April, so the interview may have taken place in the afternoon of that same day or the day before.
The long interview is divided into three parts and addresses numerous topics, first and foremost the two Parisian concerts; Brian turns out to be very satisfied with the two performances, especially the second, so much so that he defines the latter as "the best concert of this tour". The dialogue between Reins and May then continues on the theme of the Queen-Led Zeppelin comparison, on the band's security staff, on the majestic lighting rig, on the album "A Night At The Opera", on the use of pre-recorded studio tapes during concerts (the operatic section of "Bohemian Rhapsody") and then ends by talking about the Sex Pistols and their break-up and Queen's future projects; interesting how Brian expresses the desire to write music so beautiful that someone would make a film like Walt Disney's "Fantasia" out of it.
A really nice interview, which I translated for you from French...below the scan of the original article and the translation. Enjoy the reading!
Brian May, enlightened despot
I'm a Queen fan, it's no secret. So I immediately volunteered to do their interview. A few weeks later, the interview finally carried out, I had to face the facts: these young people are not clear in their heads. It was in fact just a series of meetings canceled at the last minute under bizarre pretexts. These gentlemen played the stars. The Sunday before the Paris concert, their press officer had flatly told me to stay at home in front of the phone and as soon as one of these gentlemen was OK for an interview, I would be called and I would have to come immediately.
What else could I do but give the arm of honor?
Then came the grotesque episode of the party. The evening of the second concert, a party was given in their honor in the lounges of a large restaurant with a gold disc awarded. This group did indeed come... but to lock themselves in a separate room and see no one.
Queen has surrounded himself with a team of security guards - bodyguards - managers who systematically create a barrier around the group.
When you manage to cross this barrier, you meet charming boys who seem surprised to see you furious at having been treated like mutts. They don't know anything! I hardly believe it.
Queen, in fact, makes the Rolling Stones complex. They would like, like the Stones, to be harassed by hordes of delirious fans. Alas, this is not the case, they form a famous group but individually do not excite the crowds. Also, to give themselves the illusion of... they surround themselves with a security service that is as useless as it is grotesque. The interview with Brian May finally took place one afternoon in Zurich. In the evening I had to attend their concert in this city and then have dinner with them afterwards. When the interview was over, I picked up my little things, called a taxi and headed to the airport to go home. I had had enough of their antics. Brian May was courteous but those around him are definitely too stupid. As Coluche says, "We're not here to be yelled at by losers."
The reign
Sacha Reins: Are you satisfied with your Parisian concerts?
Brian May: Yes, a lot. For us these two shows took place in a very special way. We had reached the stage where we thought that France was forbidden to us. None of our records had sold to you before the last "We Are The Champions". So when it was a success, we said to ourselves: well we have to go for it. The first evening we were nervous as beginners. We had been told so many times that the Parisian public was one of the most difficult in the world!!
We were very careful the first evening, almost reserved and I think the audience felt it. The second evening was totally different, contact had already been made. This concert was actually the best of this tour.
S.: I attended this concert and on several occasions you made me think of Led Zeppelin through the music and through the strange relationships that form and unravel between you and Mercury.
B.: This is not the first time that we have been compared to L.Z. on one level or another. In fact I think there were a lot more points of comparison between Queen and L.Z. a few years ago, when we started. But now we have moved away from this form of hard rock, we have developed our own harmonies, a style that is our own. That said, L.Z. and we follow similar routes because basically we were influenced by the same people.
S.: Isn't there a sort of rivalry going on between you and Mercury?
B.: No, we are too close, we know each other too well, we have been through too many troubles together. Freddie is the natural focal point of the group and it's good that he is used in this way. The first person the audience looks at is always the singer, then it's the guitarist. That's how it is and it would be stupid of me to try to challenge Freddie for his reign on stage. Especially since he is a fantastic showman.
S.: Is there no leader in the group?
B.: No. Whenever we have a decision to make, whether it's about business or music, the four of us get together, talk for a long time and then decide what we're going to do. We are very complementary. John Deacon deals particularly with money problems. Roger Taylor, of our relationships with the outside world, I mean the world outside Queen.
S.: On this subject, I found that your behavior in Paris was a little strange.
All these appointments made and canceled almost on whim. This ultra-nervous security that formed a wall around you. This grotesque party during which you were together in a room with a big guy in front of the door who prohibited access to this room to other guests. As if journalists or programmers were going to jump on you! It was all very strange.
B.: It's not bad for our image to appear as a very protected group and difficult to reach. This makes people want to approach us even more. As for the party, I don't remember very well.
Gadgets
S.: Let's move on. Who gave you the idea for this lighting device?
B.: Nobody, we developed it together a year and a half ago with the help of our engineer Gerry Stickells.
S.: So it was well before ”Encounters of the 3rd Kind”.
B.: Well before. This resemblance between the spaceship in the film and our crown of light is therefore very strange. The Americans were very struck by this resemblance. We receive a lot of letters on this subject.
S.: You use a lot of stage gadgets. Have you been using this device that infinitely reproduces a guitar note for a long time?
B.: Since 1972. From the beginning we wanted one but we didn't have the money to pay for it, it was only in 72 that we were able to buy one. It is a very difficult device to handle and control. It took me a long time to learn how to use it properly, and I did. also modify it so that it can reproduce two different notes infinitely. Now I have perfect mastery of it and I can use it to play harmonies, counterpoints, chords. The trickiest part actually is adjusting the stage monitors perfectly so that I can hear exactly everything that comes and goes. If for some reason I can't hear what's going on perfectly, it's a disaster because I don't know how often to return the notes. But that doesn't happen anymore because we have everything we need on stage. We are sometimes criticized for the fortune we have invested in our equipment. This kind of criticism is rather unwelcome because if we spend so much money on equipment it is to ensure that the public is satisfied, both visually and musically. You see, we are keen to be able to recreate on stage what we do on record. The complicated harmonies and all that. But there are only four of us. four. So we have to get help from electronics, that's why Freddie and I have these infinite echo devices. We do not want, like some groups, to play on pre-recorded tapes. We think this is unfair.
S.: But you use tapes in "Bohemian Rhapsody".
B. Yes, but it's completely different. The passage from B.R. to which you refer is a total studio creation. We recorded this piece as an opera. Each of us sang around twenty different scores in order to exactly reproduce a classical grand chorale. It is absolutely impossible to reproduce this on stage.
We tried several times but the result sounded really too poor compared to the disc version so we decided to play pre-recorded tapes of this operatic passage. But so that there is not the slightest doubt or misunderstanding, we play these tapes in total darkness and only appear at the end of the first piece for the hard-rock cover when we play again in person. It's much more honest.
S.: Where do all these classical and baroque references that fill your music come from?
B.: I don't know because none of us does not have real classical bases. I think that all this is extracted from the depths of our childhood memory when our parents listened to waltzes on the radio or went to listen to brass bands in the parks on Sundays. It must come from there.
S.: In your latest album "News of the World", there are much fewer baroque references in this style.
B.: Yes. We returned to the hard rock of our beginnings. No frills. We went very far in this baroque, half-opera, half-rock style, and I don't think we could have done better than "A Night at the Opera". That's why we returned to more spontaneous music.
S.: "A Night at the Opera" having been the group's best-selling album, don't you think that you disappointed a lot of audiences who loved these musical antics.
B.: We always disappoint someone, whatever we do. When we launched into this baroque style, we disappointed our first fans who loved us for our pure hard-rock.
S.: They say that you hardly take any vacations.
B.: That’s right, we work a lot. We stay in the studio for two to three months every year, then a two-month American tour, two months also in Europe, two in Japan and Australia and then when all that ends it's time to return to the studio for the next album. . We have been following this rhythm for five years.
S.: With groups like Queen and, in general, all the major British groups, we have seen in recent years an escalation of the means used for the stage. Now everyone has their lasers, complicated scenes that make smoke, etc., etc. Where will all this end?
B. The world of entertainment will always continue to follow with interest the technical progress in everything related to audio-visual and to use it to put on even bigger, more beautiful, more impressive shows. There is nevertheless a very clear reaction from a fraction of the public (I am talking about rock audiences) especially in England where many young people want to see groups return to a sobriety of stage means, like ten years ago. I am not against it, but we come up against a mathematical impossibility. To play without artifice, you have to play in small rooms, even clubs where your energy and your sweat mix directly with your audience. Indeed, there is no need for a rotating stage and smoke, everyone is in direct contact with the music. However, it is impossible for a well-known group to play in small venues because that would tie them up in one place for too long. Look at Paris, we played in front of 18,000 people in two days. In a room with two thousand seats we would have had to stay nine days to satisfy everyone and eighteen in a club. At this rate it would take us ten years to go around the world, it's unthinkable. So you have to accept playing in huge venues (and believe me, the Pavillon de Paris is far from being the biggest thing we do) and the only way to do it is supported by enormous technical means. so that the nine thousand spectators who are at the back left can hear as well as if they were in front and also see something.
Now, to answer the question you asked me, I don't know where this will stop but I know what the next step will be: holography. The hologram is a three-dimensional photographic projection in space. This will therefore allow you to create incredible settings, projecting in one second the Grand Canyon of Colorado or the skyscrapers of New York in three dimensions as if you were there. The basic system is ready but it is the application in large volumes that we are still struggling to achieve.
Fantasy
S.: What do you think of the Sex Pistols?
I would like to share today an article published in a French magazine in 1978: it is an interview with Brian May by journalist Sacha Reins - held during the European tour of "News Of The World" - originally published under the French title of Brian May, despote éclairé (translated into English as Brian May, enlightened despot).
The journalist specifies that the interview was held in an environment dominated by security (which she defined as "useless and grotesque") on an afternoon in Zurich after the Paris concerts of 23rd and 24th April 1978, Queen's first two French concerts; the band performed in Zurich on 30th April, so the interview may have taken place in the afternoon of that same day or the day before.
The long interview is divided into three parts and addresses numerous topics, first and foremost the two Parisian concerts; Brian turns out to be very satisfied with the two performances, especially the second, so much so that he defines the latter as "the best concert of this tour". The dialogue between Reins and May then continues on the theme of the Queen-Led Zeppelin comparison, on the band's security staff, on the majestic lighting rig, on the album "A Night At The Opera", on the use of pre-recorded studio tapes during concerts (the operatic section of "Bohemian Rhapsody") and then ends by talking about the Sex Pistols and their break-up and Queen's future projects; interesting how Brian expresses the desire to write music so beautiful that someone would make a film like Walt Disney's "Fantasia" out of it.
A really nice interview, which I translated for you from French...below the scan of the original article and the translation. Enjoy the reading!
Brian May, enlightened despot
I'm a Queen fan, it's no secret. So I immediately volunteered to do their interview. A few weeks later, the interview finally carried out, I had to face the facts: these young people are not clear in their heads. It was in fact just a series of meetings canceled at the last minute under bizarre pretexts. These gentlemen played the stars. The Sunday before the Paris concert, their press officer had flatly told me to stay at home in front of the phone and as soon as one of these gentlemen was OK for an interview, I would be called and I would have to come immediately.
What else could I do but give the arm of honor?
Then came the grotesque episode of the party. The evening of the second concert, a party was given in their honor in the lounges of a large restaurant with a gold disc awarded. This group did indeed come... but to lock themselves in a separate room and see no one.
Queen has surrounded himself with a team of security guards - bodyguards - managers who systematically create a barrier around the group.
When you manage to cross this barrier, you meet charming boys who seem surprised to see you furious at having been treated like mutts. They don't know anything! I hardly believe it.
Queen, in fact, makes the Rolling Stones complex. They would like, like the Stones, to be harassed by hordes of delirious fans. Alas, this is not the case, they form a famous group but individually do not excite the crowds. Also, to give themselves the illusion of... they surround themselves with a security service that is as useless as it is grotesque. The interview with Brian May finally took place one afternoon in Zurich. In the evening I had to attend their concert in this city and then have dinner with them afterwards. When the interview was over, I picked up my little things, called a taxi and headed to the airport to go home. I had had enough of their antics. Brian May was courteous but those around him are definitely too stupid. As Coluche says, "We're not here to be yelled at by losers."
The reign
Sacha Reins: Are you satisfied with your Parisian concerts?
Brian May: Yes, a lot. For us these two shows took place in a very special way. We had reached the stage where we thought that France was forbidden to us. None of our records had sold to you before the last "We Are The Champions". So when it was a success, we said to ourselves: well we have to go for it. The first evening we were nervous as beginners. We had been told so many times that the Parisian public was one of the most difficult in the world!!
We were very careful the first evening, almost reserved and I think the audience felt it. The second evening was totally different, contact had already been made. This concert was actually the best of this tour.
S.: I attended this concert and on several occasions you made me think of Led Zeppelin through the music and through the strange relationships that form and unravel between you and Mercury.
B.: This is not the first time that we have been compared to L.Z. on one level or another. In fact I think there were a lot more points of comparison between Queen and L.Z. a few years ago, when we started. But now we have moved away from this form of hard rock, we have developed our own harmonies, a style that is our own. That said, L.Z. and we follow similar routes because basically we were influenced by the same people.
S.: Isn't there a sort of rivalry going on between you and Mercury?
B.: No, we are too close, we know each other too well, we have been through too many troubles together. Freddie is the natural focal point of the group and it's good that he is used in this way. The first person the audience looks at is always the singer, then it's the guitarist. That's how it is and it would be stupid of me to try to challenge Freddie for his reign on stage. Especially since he is a fantastic showman.
S.: Is there no leader in the group?
B.: No. Whenever we have a decision to make, whether it's about business or music, the four of us get together, talk for a long time and then decide what we're going to do. We are very complementary. John Deacon deals particularly with money problems. Roger Taylor, of our relationships with the outside world, I mean the world outside Queen.
S.: On this subject, I found that your behavior in Paris was a little strange.
All these appointments made and canceled almost on whim. This ultra-nervous security that formed a wall around you. This grotesque party during which you were together in a room with a big guy in front of the door who prohibited access to this room to other guests. As if journalists or programmers were going to jump on you! It was all very strange.
B.: It's not bad for our image to appear as a very protected group and difficult to reach. This makes people want to approach us even more. As for the party, I don't remember very well.
Gadgets
S.: Let's move on. Who gave you the idea for this lighting device?
B.: Nobody, we developed it together a year and a half ago with the help of our engineer Gerry Stickells.
S.: So it was well before ”Encounters of the 3rd Kind”.
B.: Well before. This resemblance between the spaceship in the film and our crown of light is therefore very strange. The Americans were very struck by this resemblance. We receive a lot of letters on this subject.
S.: You use a lot of stage gadgets. Have you been using this device that infinitely reproduces a guitar note for a long time?
B.: Since 1972. From the beginning we wanted one but we didn't have the money to pay for it, it was only in 72 that we were able to buy one. It is a very difficult device to handle and control. It took me a long time to learn how to use it properly, and I did. also modify it so that it can reproduce two different notes infinitely. Now I have perfect mastery of it and I can use it to play harmonies, counterpoints, chords. The trickiest part actually is adjusting the stage monitors perfectly so that I can hear exactly everything that comes and goes. If for some reason I can't hear what's going on perfectly, it's a disaster because I don't know how often to return the notes. But that doesn't happen anymore because we have everything we need on stage. We are sometimes criticized for the fortune we have invested in our equipment. This kind of criticism is rather unwelcome because if we spend so much money on equipment it is to ensure that the public is satisfied, both visually and musically. You see, we are keen to be able to recreate on stage what we do on record. The complicated harmonies and all that. But there are only four of us. four. So we have to get help from electronics, that's why Freddie and I have these infinite echo devices. We do not want, like some groups, to play on pre-recorded tapes. We think this is unfair.
S.: But you use tapes in "Bohemian Rhapsody".
B. Yes, but it's completely different. The passage from B.R. to which you refer is a total studio creation. We recorded this piece as an opera. Each of us sang around twenty different scores in order to exactly reproduce a classical grand chorale. It is absolutely impossible to reproduce this on stage.
We tried several times but the result sounded really too poor compared to the disc version so we decided to play pre-recorded tapes of this operatic passage. But so that there is not the slightest doubt or misunderstanding, we play these tapes in total darkness and only appear at the end of the first piece for the hard-rock cover when we play again in person. It's much more honest.
S.: Where do all these classical and baroque references that fill your music come from?
B.: I don't know because none of us does not have real classical bases. I think that all this is extracted from the depths of our childhood memory when our parents listened to waltzes on the radio or went to listen to brass bands in the parks on Sundays. It must come from there.
S.: In your latest album "News of the World", there are much fewer baroque references in this style.
B.: Yes. We returned to the hard rock of our beginnings. No frills. We went very far in this baroque, half-opera, half-rock style, and I don't think we could have done better than "A Night at the Opera". That's why we returned to more spontaneous music.
S.: "A Night at the Opera" having been the group's best-selling album, don't you think that you disappointed a lot of audiences who loved these musical antics.
B.: We always disappoint someone, whatever we do. When we launched into this baroque style, we disappointed our first fans who loved us for our pure hard-rock.
S.: They say that you hardly take any vacations.
B.: That’s right, we work a lot. We stay in the studio for two to three months every year, then a two-month American tour, two months also in Europe, two in Japan and Australia and then when all that ends it's time to return to the studio for the next album. . We have been following this rhythm for five years.
S.: With groups like Queen and, in general, all the major British groups, we have seen in recent years an escalation of the means used for the stage. Now everyone has their lasers, complicated scenes that make smoke, etc., etc. Where will all this end?
B. The world of entertainment will always continue to follow with interest the technical progress in everything related to audio-visual and to use it to put on even bigger, more beautiful, more impressive shows. There is nevertheless a very clear reaction from a fraction of the public (I am talking about rock audiences) especially in England where many young people want to see groups return to a sobriety of stage means, like ten years ago. I am not against it, but we come up against a mathematical impossibility. To play without artifice, you have to play in small rooms, even clubs where your energy and your sweat mix directly with your audience. Indeed, there is no need for a rotating stage and smoke, everyone is in direct contact with the music. However, it is impossible for a well-known group to play in small venues because that would tie them up in one place for too long. Look at Paris, we played in front of 18,000 people in two days. In a room with two thousand seats we would have had to stay nine days to satisfy everyone and eighteen in a club. At this rate it would take us ten years to go around the world, it's unthinkable. So you have to accept playing in huge venues (and believe me, the Pavillon de Paris is far from being the biggest thing we do) and the only way to do it is supported by enormous technical means. so that the nine thousand spectators who are at the back left can hear as well as if they were in front and also see something.
Now, to answer the question you asked me, I don't know where this will stop but I know what the next step will be: holography. The hologram is a three-dimensional photographic projection in space. This will therefore allow you to create incredible settings, projecting in one second the Grand Canyon of Colorado or the skyscrapers of New York in three dimensions as if you were there. The basic system is ready but it is the application in large volumes that we are still struggling to achieve.
Fantasy
S.: What do you think of the Sex Pistols?
B.: It's a group that we really liked (we're Queen) and I'm sincerely sorry that they broke up. But it was almost inevitable.
S.: Why?
B.: Because of the enormous pressure there was on them. The English music press (which is the worst in the world) has made life impossible for these guys by making them both heroes and scapegoats. The English press needs stars so much to sell its paper that it produces stars in two months. And it's not easy for a young guy to go from young wanker to star. Most of them don't know how to master all of this. If fortunately they manage to remain the masters and truly become popular stars, then the same press which has hyped them up demolishes them because it feels that they are beyond its control and that they can now survive without it. The English press is destructive and the Sex Pistols are far from being the first victim. We were lucky to succeed without this press. They never talked about us when we started and when they did, it was three derogatory lines. As a result, we were able to gain the support of the public little by little and without artifice. This became more and more important until the day this press was forced to stop ignoring us.
S.: How much longer do you plan to stay together?
B.: It's hard to say. For the moment everything is going well, we get along well, we have success all over the world. Why separate?
S.: Do you still imagine yourself playing rock on stage at forty?
B.: Perhaps by then our music will have developed in another direction. Perhaps we will have other ambitions. What I personally want is to always have a goal to reach, something to achieve, like the conquest of France, for example. Stuff like that. Fill Madison Square Garden or Earl's Court. If one day we reach the stage where there is nothing left that we could want because we would have obtained everything, then we would be in real danger. This is what happened to Elton John. Everything he could have wanted, he got. He couldn't be more famous or richer. He can only go back down when he is at the top. He is unhappy because life can no longer bring him anything new. I never want to be in this position.
S.: You wanted to conquer the French public, it’s done. What is your new goal?
B.: Losing the French public in order to win it back. No, just kidding. Write music so beautiful that a designer can create a film as beautiful as Fantasia from it. And finally be able to take a vacation. A big vacation.
Comments collected by Sacha Reins.
S.: Why?
B.: Because of the enormous pressure there was on them. The English music press (which is the worst in the world) has made life impossible for these guys by making them both heroes and scapegoats. The English press needs stars so much to sell its paper that it produces stars in two months. And it's not easy for a young guy to go from young wanker to star. Most of them don't know how to master all of this. If fortunately they manage to remain the masters and truly become popular stars, then the same press which has hyped them up demolishes them because it feels that they are beyond its control and that they can now survive without it. The English press is destructive and the Sex Pistols are far from being the first victim. We were lucky to succeed without this press. They never talked about us when we started and when they did, it was three derogatory lines. As a result, we were able to gain the support of the public little by little and without artifice. This became more and more important until the day this press was forced to stop ignoring us.
S.: How much longer do you plan to stay together?
B.: It's hard to say. For the moment everything is going well, we get along well, we have success all over the world. Why separate?
S.: Do you still imagine yourself playing rock on stage at forty?
B.: Perhaps by then our music will have developed in another direction. Perhaps we will have other ambitions. What I personally want is to always have a goal to reach, something to achieve, like the conquest of France, for example. Stuff like that. Fill Madison Square Garden or Earl's Court. If one day we reach the stage where there is nothing left that we could want because we would have obtained everything, then we would be in real danger. This is what happened to Elton John. Everything he could have wanted, he got. He couldn't be more famous or richer. He can only go back down when he is at the top. He is unhappy because life can no longer bring him anything new. I never want to be in this position.
S.: You wanted to conquer the French public, it’s done. What is your new goal?
B.: Losing the French public in order to win it back. No, just kidding. Write music so beautiful that a designer can create a film as beautiful as Fantasia from it. And finally be able to take a vacation. A big vacation.
Comments collected by Sacha Reins.