Brian May & Roger Taylor birthday special

Mon, 20 Jul 2009

July welcomes not one, but two birthdays of members of the same band, this time it's Brian Harold May and Roger Meddows-Taylor from the legendary Queen who are respectively celebrating their 62nd and 60th birthdays.

In 1968 Brian and Roger first got together and formed the band Smile, which signed to Mercury Records the following year. Lead singer Tim Staffell, who knew a guy called Farrokh Bulsara whom he introduced to the band and became an instant fan. After Staffell quit Smile, Bulsara changed his name to Freddie Mercury and joined up with the remaining members of Smile to form Queen.

It was not until 1971 that they settled on John Deacon as the bassist, as previous members had not fit the chemistry of Queen and finally two years later they released their epnonymic titled and critically acclaimed debut album.

It wasn't until the release of the next two albums 'Sheer Heart Attack' and 'A Night At The Opera' that the band made their mainstream breakthrough, spawning hits such as Killer Queen, Now I'm Here, You're My Best Friend and what is considered by many as Queen's magnus opus - Bohemian Rhapsody.

Throughout the remainder of the '70s the band went from strength to strength with the albums A Day At The Races, News Of The World and Jazz which featured more hits such as Somebody To Love, We Will Rock You, Fat Bottomed Girls, We Are The Champions and Tie Your Mother Down which is featured as a classic track lesson on the website.
 Brian May

The dawn of the 1980s saw the band embrace synthesisers into the set up, further diversifying their already eclectic sound. A number of mainstream films such as Highlander, Flash Gordon and Iron Eagle featured Queen's music and in 1985 they gave what many consider their finest performance at Live Aid to a global audience of millions.

Despite Freddy Mercury's untimely death in 1991 the band continued to work together until 1997 when John Deacon retired from his bass duties and since then Brian and Roger have worked together on Queen related projects with Paul Rogers fronting the collaboration until it was recently announced that this was coming to an end.

Brian himself is best know for playing his 'Red Special' guitar, which is a totally custom built guitar crafted by Brian and his father Harold way back in 1963 and despite numerous repairs and customisations throughout the years, it apparently still retains the original frets! Currently three separate companies manufacture Red Special replica models, Brian May Guitars (which took over from Burns), RS Guitars (US) and KZ GuitarWorks (Japan)