Brian May talks about working with Axl Rose
In a new post on Brian May's website, the Queen guitarist shed's some light on how it was working with Axl.
Brian May worked with Axl Rose back in 99/2000 on 3 tracks. One is known to be Catcher N' the Rye.
"Well, a lot of people have been asking about me and Axl.
It's very simple really ... Axl is making his record, and he can do whatever he wants ! After all these years I'm still a huge fan.
It was such a long time ago, it tends to recede into the mists of time, for me ... I certainly don't remember anything about disapproving of any 'comping' Sean Beavan had done - I remember it, I had actually comped it up with him myself. Of course, soon afterwards, Sean was taken off the project, although I have to say I thought the tracks were overall sounding bloody good at that time! I'm not sure if we know where the version that was 'leaked' to the public came from. I have my own rough mixes, which I took away at the time for the purposes of working on the stuff further if necessary, but nobody but me has ever heard those. I kept them totally private, because that's the professional way to be. I actually played on three tracks.
The scenario was very different from what folk-lore seems to be embroidering it into. So maybe I ought to say something ...
What happened, the way I remember it, was this. I had been on tour with GN'R, and had a very good relationship with them ... they were much kinder to me than they needed to be, as a support artist to them as they toured the USA and Europe. We had some great times. People will recall that GN'R also guested at our Freddie tribute concert, at the good old Wembley Stadium, as it was then. They did an amazing job on Dylan's "Knocking on Heaven's Door", and they donated all the proceeds of their live recording to the newly-founded Mercury Phoenix Trust - that's a nice answer to anyone who accuses GN'R of being anti-gay.
Well, some time later, once I was back home, Axl phoned me up, out of the blue, and told me he felt he was losing his way over guitars on the tracks on the album, and asked me if I would come over for a couple of days to LA and have look. The idea was not that I become part of the band! It was more about me coming in as a friend, giving what I could to the project, as an objective outside opinion, and doing a bit of guitar playing as well. I said I'd be very happy to do that. His people booked me on plane, and I arrived a couple of days later. It was fun. Axl came down to the studio from his house, where he was also working in parallel on other stuff in his home studio, and, with Sean, played about 20 tracks to me ... pretty much almost the whole album as it stood at that time. That's a lot of listening time! But it was all fascinating. My comments were mainly appreciations, and reassurances, and I liked most of the guitar that was already on there, but I remember having strong 'producorial' feelings about making sure Axl's great vocals didn't get swamped in too much guitar ornamentation.
Then I played some guitar ... working with Sean. Over the next couple of days I went in and spent most of day there, trying things out on various tracks. Axl actually stayed away from that time on, getting Sean to take up rough mixes of what we'd been doing each night, and sending back appreciative comments. Then I went home!
Oh .. we also had a nice evening having dinner up at Axl's home, with a few friends and record company guys, during which Axl played everybody a whole bunch of tracks that were NOT already on the album ... which he had been working on separately. It was evidently already a mammoth project.
In my mind, I gave it a small piece of my life, without any thought of getting anything back, except the feeling that I'd contributed a little to the journey of the album project. I didn't ask to be paid, or even credited, and I certainly didn't put any constraints on whether the guys had to use my work or not.
I'm totally relaxed about the outcome, as I always was, and I hope that Axl will now feel liberated, by the final emergence of his magnum opus, to move on, and get back out there where we all want him to be, rockin' around the world ...
It's interesting that, at the time of all this, I was completely sure that for us, as Queen, the days of playing packed stadium gigs were over. I never thought that in 2008, we would be playing, in Buenos Aires, for instance, in the same football stadium (Velez Sarsfield) as we played with Freddie all those years ago, to a reaction every bit as frenetic as in the Old Days. The reviews of Queen and Paul Rodgers in Brazil were ecstatic, to the point where one article said our show out-did the first Rock in Rio. So I'm very grateful that the wheel keeps turning, and even happier still to be in the Great River of Rock.
Cheers
Bri"
