Brian May explains why he revamped all guitar parts for reissue of Queen’s debut album: “I remember my dad saying, ‘There’s no ambience, Brian’”
Brian May has explained why he revamped his guitar parts on Queen‘s debut album for the new reissue.
The legendary band released a newly mixed, mastered and expanded edition of their 1973 self-titled first record last Friday (October 25). It contains a selection of alternative takes, demos and rare live tracks.
‘Queen I’ was remixed and restored by recording engineers Justin Shirley-Smith, Joshua J Macrae, and Kris Fredriksson “to sound the way the band always wanted it to”.
During a recent interview with MOJO, May said he reworked all of the guitar parts on the LP in an effort to give fans “the debut album we always dreamed of bringing to you”.
“I’m not saying the original version was bad – it just wasn’t what we dreamed of,” he told the outlet. “Freddie [Mercury, singer] and John [Deacon, bassist], too, were always conscious of this thing in our past which seemed like it couldn’t be fixed.”
The musician went on to explain that “everything” from the original version had been improved on the reissue. “Every instrument has been re-examined from the bottom up,” May continued.
“The guitars were originally recorded very dry, so we’ve remedied that.”
He then recalled some criticism he had received from his father about the sound of Queen’s debut record. “I remember my dad saying, ‘There’s no ambience, Brian. I don’t feel like I’m in the room with you playing next to me’,” he said.
“But we weren’t in a position to lay down the law, and we felt that if we stepped out of line we would lose the opportunity altogether.”
May added: “Roy Thomas Baker [producer] did an excellent job under the circumstances, but he was wedged between us young hopefuls and this management company [Trident Audio Productions] who saw us as a can of beans.”
He also said that Queen’s 1974 follow-up, ‘Queen II’, “deserves that treatment” too: “There are many layers on that record and there wasn’t really the technology to make that heard. I think we’ll stop there, though. By [third album] ‘Sheer Heart Attack’ we had everything under our fingers.”
In the sleeve insert notes of the ‘Queen I’ reissue, May wrote: “This is not just a remaster. This is a brand new 2024 rebuild of the entire Queen debut album, which, with the benefit of hindsight, we have re-titled ‘QUEEN I’.”
May continued: “All the performances are exactly as they originally appeared in 1973, but every instrument has been revisited to produce the ‘live’ ambient sounds we would have liked to use originally.
“The result is ‘Queen’ as it would have sounded with today’s knowledge and technology – a first. ‘Queen I’ is the debut album we always dreamed of bringing to you.”
In other news, Roger Taylor recently teased new music from Queen – almost 30 years on from their latest album. The band shared a rediscovered track featuring Freddie Mercury’s vocals, ‘Face It Alone’, in 2022.
Last month, May’s wife Anita Dobson shared an update on the musician after he revealed that he had suffered a “minor stroke”.
Queen wrapped up a run of tour dates with Adam Lambert in February, and do not have any other shows scheduled currently.
Queen Extravaganza, the official tribute band of Queen, are due to embark on a UK and Ireland tour in 2025. The upcoming gigs will celebrate the 50th anniversary of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.
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Tom Skinner
NME
