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Queen · S1 E2
The Red Special
Brian May and his father Harold build a guitar from a Victorian fireplace mantel, motorcycle valve springs, and a knitting needle. The instrument that will define Queen's sound
A suburban bedroom in Hampton, Middlesex, August 1963. A sixteen-year-old boy and his father lay an 18th-century oak fireplace mantel across two chairs and begin carving the neck of a guitar that will be heard by a billion people.
Queen, Hammer to Fall. Twenty years after Brian and his father carved the Red Special from a fireplace, this is what it sounds like at full power. Every note of that opening riff comes from the same piece of oak, the same motorcycle springs, the same hand-wound pickups.
The Problem
Brian Harold May is born on July 19, 1947, the only child of Harold and Ruth. Harold is an electronics engineer at the Ministry of Aviation who plays ukulele at home and teaches Brian his first chords. By his mid-teens Brian is obsessed with electric guitars, but the family cannot afford a professional instrument.
“My dad was always inventive. When I said I needed a proper guitar and we couldn't afford one, he just said, "Well, why don't we build one?"”
— Brian May (Brian May's Red Special, Simon Bradley and Brian May, 2014)
Scrap Parts, World-Class Sound
The fireplace mantel comes from a house being demolished across the street. The tremolo springs come from a 1928 Panther motorcycle found at a scrapyard, the tremolo arm is a hardened steel knitting needle. Harold designs the real magic: a switching circuit that lets each of the three pickups be independently activated and flipped in or out of phase, giving the guitar more tonal range than instruments costing a hundred times more.
Hammer to Fall, Queen (1984)
Written by Brian May for The Works, this is the Red Special at its rawest. The opening riff is a wall of layered guitar that could only come from one instrument: the combination of Burns Tri-Sonic pickups, the oak body's natural resonance, and Brian's sixpence attack creates a tone no factory guitar has ever replicated. Listen for how the guitar multiplies through the choruses. That's Brian recording pass after pass on the same instrument, building what he calls a "guitar orchestra" from a single piece of wood his father helped him shape in a bedroom.
Hampton, Middlesex
The quiet London suburb where Brian May grew up and where he and his father Harold spent eighteen months building the Red Special in Brian's bedroom. The guitar that defined Queen's sound was born in a house indistinguishable from every other house on the street.
TAP TO REVEAL: What does Brian May use instead of a guitar pick on every Queen recording ever made?
What unusual material did Brian and Harold May use for the Red Special's tremolo springs?
Red Special: The Specs
White Queen (As It Began), Queen (1974)
From Queen II, this track is the clearest demonstration of what the Red Special was built to do. Brian layers the guitar dozens of times, creating cascading harmonics and a shimmering wall of sound that moves like an orchestra. The tonal shifts you hear are all from Harold's switching circuit, different pickup combinations and phase positions sculpting each pass into something new.
Brian May now has his guitar. Four thousand miles southeast, eight-year-old Farrokh Bulsara is being sent to a boarding school in the mountains of India. Next: Panchgani, a school band called the Hectics, and the shy boy who discovers he was born to perform.
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