Every musician has a unique origin story. For some, it began with hearing The Beatles; for others, like Mick Jagger, it was witnessing Muddy Waters and feeling inspired to bring blues to the UK. For Brian May, his musical journey started in a workshop with his father, where they worked together to build a guitar.
May always had a passion for music and dreamed of becoming a guitarist. However, guitars were expensive, and the family wasn’t wealthy, so they had to get creative.
“I desperately wanted a guitar, so when I was seven, Mum and Dad scrimped to buy an acoustic – which I still have – and he taught me the shapes on his banjolele. It wasn’t long before I had electrified it, plugging it into a homemade amplifier,” May recalled. “At 16, I was eager for a proper electric guitar, but we couldn’t afford one, so Dad and I decided to make one ourselves.”
Brian May’s guitar has become iconic. Instantly recognizable, it has played a crucial role in every Queen album and even has its own bodyguard when May goes on tour. It has also inspired a business producing replicas that fans can purchase. It’s astonishing to think that this legendary instrument began life as scraps from the May household, including old coffee tables, fireplaces, and matchsticks.
“I was seventeen, and my dad, being a skilled electronics engineer and craftsman, joined me in building the guitar,” May said. “Unable to afford a Stratocaster or a Gibson, we thought, ‘Why not make a guitar ourselves and perhaps create something better than anything anyone else had made?’”
May attributes this can-do attitude to his father’s influence, a mindset he has applied to his music as well: “My dad’s approach was, if a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly.”
The Red Special is renowned not just for its appearance but also for the distinctive sound it produced. May and his father had no constraints when crafting the guitar, allowing them to experiment with the configuration, neck size, and pickups. This experimentation significantly shaped the guitar’s unique sound, evident in May’s recordings with Queen.
“The combinations you can get from three pickups, in and out of phase, are extensive,” May explained. “I had a separate switch for each pickup and a phase switch for each pickup. This setup allowed for a wide range of tones and sounds.”
Once completed, the guitar was named The Red Special. May sometimes refers to it as The Old Lady. Regardless of the name, one thing is clear: May and his father created a piece of music history in their workshop.
